Washington eliminated the federal EV tax credit. California didn't waste much time replacing it.

Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom launched MyFirstEV, a new state program offering first-time zero-emission vehicle buyers $3,500 off a new vehicle or $1,750 off a used one, right at the point of sale.

Instead, somebody with no intention of buying an EV is helping pay for someone who does. And MyFirstEV doesn't even reserve that help for people who couldn't otherwise afford the car.

And Californians apparently noticed. Tesla's allocation of MyFirstEV money was exhausted almost immediately. According to Tesla, buyers had to place their orders between August 3 and August 7 to qualify, and the company now says its allocated funds have been depleted.

California split

The federal government spent years offering buyers a tax credit of up to $7,500 to encourage electric vehicle adoption. Congress eliminated the credit, ending it for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025. California's response was essentially to build its own version.

The state has committed $135.5 million to MyFirstEV, with participating automakers matching California's contribution dollar for dollar. That creates a combined $271 million for first-time zero-emission vehicle buyers. On a new vehicle, California puts up $1,750 and the manufacturer contributes another $1,750. Used vehicles can receive $1,750, also split between the state and participating manufacturer.

Automaker participation is voluntary, but it's telling that manufacturers are willing to put up their own money to keep these incentives alive.

They have plenty invested in the EV transition. Automakers spent billions on battery plants, retooled production lines and new electric models in anticipation of a rapid shift toward EVs. Consumers haven't always moved as quickly as government planners and automakers expected. Now Washington has removed one of the financial incentives supporting that transition, while California is putting another one in its place.

RELATED: Think the EV mandate is over? One state has other plans.

Steven Gottlieb/Bloomberg/Getty Images

No cap

The rules get more interesting the closer you look.

MyFirstEV is limited to Californians buying or leasing their first zero-emission vehicle. If you already bought an EV, installed a Level 2 charger in your garage, loved the experience, and now want another one, you don't qualify.

But someone buying his first EV can qualify regardless of income.

New vehicles generally must have an MSRP of $50,000 or less, while used vehicles must sell for $25,000 or less through participating manufacturers' pre-owned programs. But CalMatters reports that automakers headquartered in California aren't subject to the same vehicle price cap.

So California has created an EV subsidy with rules that can favor California-based manufacturers.

Why subsidize?

And Sacramento isn't stopping with vehicle rebates. On August 18, Newsom announced another $95.2 million for electric charging and hydrogen-fueling infrastructure as California continues its push toward zero-emission transportation.

Which leaves me with a pretty basic question: If EVs are ready to compete on their own merits, why do taxpayers still need to subsidize their purchase?

I'm not anti-EV. If an electric vehicle fits your life, buy one. They're quiet, quick, increasingly capable, and inexpensive to operate in the right circumstances. If you want a hybrid, buy that. If a gasoline pickup works best for your family or business, buy that instead.

Give consumers choices and let them decide.

Instead, somebody with no intention of buying an EV is helping pay for someone who does. And MyFirstEV doesn't even reserve that help for people who couldn't otherwise afford the car.

Supporters can point to Tesla's experience and say the program is working. Buyers moved quickly enough to exhaust the company's allocation within days.

But I'd ask the obvious question: If buyers were lining up quickly enough to burn through the money in five days, why did they need the subsidy?

California has answered Washington's retreat from EV subsidies by spending state money to keep them going. Californians can decide whether that's what they want their government doing.

The federal EV subsidy may be gone, but in California, taxpayers are still picking up the tab.

It's been almost a full year since Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University. In that time, numerous liberals have outed themselves as bloodthirsty extremists, expressing joy over the murder of the young father of two.

The Lone Star State made abundantly clear that it would not tolerate such extremism — especially not among public servants and those charged with educating the youth.

'The Court’s order is not what we were hoping for.'

This evidently vexed American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and the Texas American Federation of Teachers, who announced a lawsuit in January challenging the crackdown on Texas educators' public expression of pro-assassination sentiments.

The lawsuit did not go over as planned.

How it started

Two days after Kirk was assassinated, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath sent a letter to district superintendents, warning that his agency was aware that some Texas public school educators had posted or shared "reprehensible and inappropriate content on social media" about Kirk and his death.

A Klein Independent School District employee had, for instance, apparently called Kirk a "racist, homophobic, a misogynist, transphobic nasty person." A high school teacher in the Midland Independent School District allegedly told students that Kirk "deserved what he got."

"In response to such posts, I am referring all documentation of educators that have proliferated such vile content to TEA's Educator Investigations Division," wrote Morath. "Such posts could constitute a violation of the Educators' Code of Ethics, and each instance will be thoroughly reviewed to determine whether sanctionable conduct has occurred and staff will investigate accordingly."

RELATED: WaPo ordered to rehire anti-white radical fired over Charlie Kirk assassination comments

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath. Rick Kern/Getty Images for Alpha School.

Morath emphasized that free speech is a fundamental right but does not "give carte blanche authority to celebrate or sow violence against those that share differing beliefs and perspectives."

AFT President Weingarten and TAFT President Zeph Capo announced a federal lawsuit against the TEA and Morath on Jan. 6.

The lawsuit claimed that Morath's Sept. 12, 2025, letter violated the First Amendment rights of Texas AFT members "because it is impermissibly vague, overbroad, and chills their protected speech."

"Sadly, Texas officials, unlike their colleagues in Utah, decided to exploit the tragedy of Mr. Kirk’s senseless murder, rather than deescalate," said Weingarten, a leftist who was instrumental in keeping schools shuttered in 2020.

"Their actions are a transparent effort to smear and shame educators, divide our communities, and deny our kids opportunities to learn and thrive. They are a state-sponsored attack on teachers because of what they thought were private comments to friends and family."

How it's going

U.S. District Judge Alan Albright, an appointee of President Donald Trump, delivered the TAFT bad news late last month, dismissing the lawsuit due to lack of standing.

In his Aug. 21 ruling, Albright noted that the teachers' union failed to show standing because its members' injuries, "to the extent they exist, are not traceable" to Morath and his letter.

The Trump judge rejected the premise from TAFT that Morath's letter constituted a new policy. After all, the letter identified "current, in-place policies," "did not announce any new policy or expand any existing policy," and simply stated that the commissioner would refer to the appropriate authority content that potentially violated the Educators' Code of Ethics.

"Thus, any harm Plaintiff's members suffered was due to the already existing Code of Ethics, the current investigatory process of the Educator Investigations Division, the in-place State Office of Administrative Hearings’ process, or the like," wrote Albright.

As for the suggestion that Morath was responsible for radical educators' visitation by consequence over their vile comments, Albright noted, "These injuries can only be caused by the in-place policies and procedures, none of which were altered by the Morath Letter."

While Albright dismissed the case, he did so without prejudice, meaning the TAFT could refile.

"The Court’s order is not what we were hoping for and we disagree with its conclusions," the TAFT said in a statement to KXAN-TV. "The order is based on a unique factual situation, and we do not believe it creates precedent that will harm Texas AFT members in the future."

The TEA and Weingarten's ATF did not immediately respond to Blaze News' requests for comment.

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Women on social media have been crossing lines left and right that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, and as BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales has noticed, it just keeps getting worse.

“Obviously, I have spoken out about the brain rot that takes place because of social media,” Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” calling it a “double-edged sword.”

“Social media can be really great and used for really great things, and you know, you get to see the side of stories that the news, you know, the mainstream media doesn’t want to show you,” she says.

However, social media has also exposed the darker side of people.

“But then it also brings out this just like, you know, the TikTok girls who are throwing ice in their bathtubs because they want to be like Lindsay Clancy because they low-key just hate their kids,” she explains.

“Now, you have an entirely new unhinged level where people think it’s cute to make abortion announcements,” she adds, before showing a post from an Instagram user who goes by “Black Girl Chica.”

Chica posted a picture with an announcement that read, “Baby Cancelled. Due date was April 14, 2027.”

A onesie laid out next to the announcement read, “Mommy changed her mind, daddy wasn’t s**t.”

“The words fail me at this point. Words actually fail me. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there were people encouraging her in the comments,” Gonzales says.

“It ain’t never been smart to bring kids into a world of chaos. Good for you lol,” one user commented.

“Laugh out loud,” Gonzales mocks. “Ha, ha, ha. It’s so funny that you killed your own child.”

“The point is, we have just, in 2026, reached just total levels of depravity when it comes to women killing their own children. You’ve got Lindsay Clancy and the women who are just, you know, loving her, and then you have this,” she continues.

“We really need to rethink how we’re using social media and why,” 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.

A reasonable viewer could spend the opening minutes of “The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin” wondering whether he clicked on the wrong show.

Daily Wire promised an Arthurian epic, yet here are the doomed inhabitants of Atlantis, bull dancers, pagan priests, and a princess named Charis fleeing a civilization about to sink beneath the sea. Camelot is nowhere in sight; neither is Arthur.

Christianity belongs to the world of 'Pendragon' as naturally as its mud, blood, and steel.

That bewilderment contains the key to the series and its considerable ambition. “The Pendragon Cycle” is not another retelling of the sword in the stone. Instead, it attempts to dramatize what had to happen before Arthur could arrive: the transformation of a pagan world into one capable of producing the Christian king of legend.

Passion project

“The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin,” a seven-episode series that premiered earlier this year exclusively on DailyWire+ and arrives on Prime Video in the U.S. today, was created by Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing and draws principally from “Taliesin” and “Merlin,” the first two novels in Stephen R. Lawhead’s sprawling “Pendragon Cycle.” Boreing has dreamed of bringing Lawhead’s books to the screen for nearly three decades, and it shows. Nobody could accuse “Pendragon” of cutting corners.

Consider Atlantis. Rather than have its inhabitants speak English with exotic accents, the production hired classical scholar and Daily Wire contributor Spencer Klavan to invent an Atlantean language, complete with grammar, vocabulary, and a fanciful linguistic genealogy reaching back before the Fall.

Shot in Hungary and Italy, “Pendragon” also makes splendid use of forests, mountains, rivers, and untamed country. The CGI impresses when called upon, but some of the show’s best special effects were provided by God. Nature is beautiful, immense, and frightening, as it ought to be in a story about men trying to build a civilization from the ruins of another.

Multifaceted Merlin

The largely unfamiliar cast helps. Tom Sharp carries Merlin through a formidable range — warrior, husband, broken exile, prophet, and bard — without turning him into a wizardly caricature. James Arden gives Taliesin a searching, otherworldly quality that makes his eventual conversion feel earned. Rose Reid anchors the strange Atlantean opening as Charis and, thanks to her people's extraordinary longevity, provides a living connection to that vanished world.

Finney Cassidy makes an appealingly restrained Aurelius, a would-be king of the Britons, while Myles Clohessy supplies the martial force as his warrior brother Uther. Brett Cooper, probably the one face Daily Wire viewers will recognize immediately, disappears effortlessly into Ganieda, Merlin’s wife.

The history underneath all this is real enough. Roman rule in Britain effectively collapsed in the early fifth century, leaving a fractured country vulnerable to invasion and internal warfare. It is somewhere in this murky post-Roman world that the distant roots of the Arthur legend are generally thought to lie.

The legend itself came later and accumulated over centuries. Brittonic tales of a heroic Arthur were expanded and transformed by Geoffrey of Monmouth, French romance writers, and eventually Thomas Malory, gathering along the way Camelot, Lancelot, the Round Table, the Grail, and the explicitly Christian moral universe we now associate with King Arthur.

'A new power at work'

Lawhead, who served as a producer on the television adaptation, works backward from that inheritance. He takes the myth and plants it in the soil of post-Roman Britain, imagining the people, conflicts, and spiritual transformations that might have prepared the ground for Arthur.

Christianity is crucial to that transformation, but Lawhead doesn’t have it simply sweep away the enchanted pagan world that preceded it. The bard remains a bard; prophecy, mystery, and supernatural power remain. What takes place is closer to a baptism of myth, in which the old stories and powers are not discarded so much as given a new orientation.

That begins with Taliesin and Charis, Merlin’s parents. Both inherit pagan worlds and find them spiritually inadequate. Taliesin encounters the Christian priest Dafyd; Charis has already watched the splendor and religion of Atlantis fail catastrophically.

The decisive contrast arrives when Morgian, Charis’ sister and a powerful pagan priestess, sacrifices a foal she and Taliesin had once saved, then offers herself to him and proposes that together they build a world more powerful than Atlantis. He refuses. “There is a new power at work in the world,” he tells her. “I’ve seen it. A God who does not ask us to sacrifice what we love, but who sacrifices what He loves for us.”

Charis eventually embraces Taliesin’s faith and is baptized. Their son therefore inherits the bardic and prophetic world of his father and the lost Atlantean world of his mother. Merlin’s struggle is not to acquire power — he already possesses plenty — but to discover what that power should serve.

His answer eventually becomes explicit: “Not by my power, Jesu, but thine.”

RELATED: Cry 'God for England'

Nina Power

Christianity unsoftened

This is unapologetically Christian television, yet it rarely feels like a stereotypical “Christian movie.” Christianity belongs to the world of “Pendragon” as naturally as its mud, blood, and steel.

That allows the series to be dark without becoming decadent. There is war, lust, treachery, mutilation, and genuine evil. But unlike HBO's “Game of Thrones,” “Pendragon” has little interest in treating sexual degradation or cruelty as proof of adult sophistication. Its Christian worldview actually permits it to be darker rather than lighter: The world is fallen and men do terrible things, which means courage, mercy, and sacrifice can also mean something.

That same idea shapes the series’ understanding of leadership. Uther is the more formidable warrior, but his brother Aurelius begins to reveal a different kind of strength. When warned against risking himself for people under Saxon attack, Aurelius replies, “I have only one thing to offer my people: everything.”

There, in miniature, is Lawhead’s conception of Christian kingship. The pagan conception of power sacrifices others. The Christian king sacrifices himself.

Trusting the material

Boreing and company don’t always make things easy for the viewer. Seven episodes carry a formidable load of characters, kingdoms, generations, and mythology, and the chronology occasionally doubles back on itself. This is a show that rewards close attention — you’re going to want to put your phone down. In an era of television designed for “second screening,” there’s something refreshingly demanding about that. “Pendragon” assumes its audience is willing to keep up.

A more cautious, commercially minded adaptation would get to the familiar beats immediately: the boy, the sword, Camelot, Guinevere, the Round Table. Boreing has enough faith in the material to let it breathe. He spends an entire season on Atlantis and Taliesin, the retreat of Rome, the making of Merlin, and the spiritual formation of the Britain Arthur will inherit. Only in the final moments do we reach the threshold of the Arthurian story most of us know.

There is plenty of story waiting on the other side. Lawhead’s central cycle has been complete for decades, with “Arthur,” “Pendragon,” and “Grail” still ahead of the television series. A second season has not yet been announced, though Boreing says a first draft has already been written and the cast is ready to return.

Most Arthurian stories begin with a Christian moral universe already in place. “The Pendragon Cycle” goes backward to imagine how that world came into being — how pagan myth might be gathered rather than discarded, how power might be subordinated to something higher than itself, and how a shattered country might become capable of producing a king.

A former Texas teacher was arrested and charged with tampering with evidence and furnishing alcohol to minors, following a year-long investigation into alleged inappropriate relationships with students.

The Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office last week announced that it launched a "lengthy and intensive" investigation a year ago — on Aug. 28, 2025 — after receiving information regarding "allegations of inappropriate relationships between an Angleton High School teacher, identified as Holly Schroedter Adams, and students."

Adams reportedly invited students to her home to perform chores, and she allegedly admitted to speaking with three members of the school baseball team on Snapchat.

Police said they conducted several interviews with "both current and former students" and examined "evidence related to the allegations."

The sheriff's office secured indictments from a grand jury tied to the ongoing investigation.

Adams, 41, was arrested Tuesday and booked into the Brazoria County Detention Center.

Adams was charged with one count of third-degree tampering with physical evidence and two counts of purchasing/furnishing alcohol to a minor, a Class A misdemeanor.

Texas law states that a conviction of tampering with physical evidence is punishable by a prison sentence of two to 10 years, along with a fine of up to $10,000.

A Class A misdemeanor carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000.

Brazoria County jail records show that the purchasing/furnishing alcohol to a minor charges were filed on July 1, 2025. Meanwhile, records said the tampering with physical evidence charges were filed on Aug. 30, 2025.

Adams has not been charged with having a physical relationship with a student.

Adams was released on a $26,000 bond the same day she was arrested, according to jail records.

RELATED: Married teacher shows cops where in classroom she allegedly had sex with student — offered to leave husband for him

KTRK-TV reported that sheriff's deputies "served a warrant at Adams' home and seized four cell phones, 11 nude photos, and a photo book of nude photos."

A student informed school staff that Adams was having an inappropriate relationship with a former student, according to the warrant obtained by KTRK.

An unnamed student told school officials that an alleged victim initiated a FaceTime call to him from a bedroom inside Adams' home during the summer, and the bed was covered in nude photos of the teacher, according to the warrant.

The warrant added that the student also stated that the alleged victim shared a photograph showing himself and Adams cuddling on a sofa.

Fox News said Adams reportedly invited students to her home to perform chores, and she allegedly admitted to speaking with three members of the school baseball team on Snapchat.

According to local newspaper the Facts, the felony indictment accuses Adams of destroying a Snapchat account in August 2025 while she knew an investigation was under way and intended to keep investigators from using it as evidence.

A spokesperson for the Angleton Independent School District confirmed to Fox News that Adams no longer works for the school district.

Neither the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office nor the Angleton Independent School District immediately responded to Blaze News' requests for comment.

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American education has reached a point where the average high school graduate struggles to read a simple sentence or calculate a 15% tip without having a nervous breakdown. National assessment scores resemble a downward slope on an ill-fated ski trip, with reading proficiency sinking to levels that make basic literacy look like an endangered luxury. Math skills have declined to the point that fractions now strike terror into the hearts of 17-year-olds. The supposed greatest country in the world is systematically producing generations of young adults who can’t perform elementary calculations, yet somehow emerge with diplomas certifying their intellectual readiness for adulthood.

The sheer scale of this intellectual deflation, and dare I say fraud, was once confined to lower-tier institutions, but viruses have a nasty habit of spreading.

Attempts to police this behavior are truly comical.

Enter the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an institution that built its global reputation on turning human beings into relentless calculating machines. MIT shaped the computer age. It pioneered artificial intelligence and taught generations of engineers that suffering through grueling problem sets was the only true path to enlightenment. If any institution knew how to put technology in service of human ambition, it was this concrete citadel on the Charles River.

Those days, however, appear to be long gone.

Read it and weep

A recent, rather sobering institutional report from MIT reveals that the machines have officially outmaneuvered their creators. Artificial intelligence has breached the gates, and the faculty are left staring at the wreckage of their traditional curriculum. The bread and butter of elite higher education — take-home exams, late-night coding assignments, research essays, and endless problem sets — has been rendered obsolete in an instant. A possibly stoned student can now prompt a neural network from the comfort of a dorm bed, generate a flawless solution to a graduate-level physics problem, and return to sleep without exercising a single neuron.

This creates a deliciously absurd dynamic in the classroom. Professors spend their weekends running student submissions through detection software that regularly lies to them, trying to deduce whether a brilliant essay on quantum mechanics was penned by a future Nobel laureate or a 19-year-old with a smartphone and 15 minutes to spare. Study groups have vanished. The traditional struggle of learning — the painful, frustrating, essential process of making mistakes and fixing them — has been bypassed completely by a software script.

Attempts to police this behavior are truly comical. Universities that try to ban AI are essentially trying to battle a tsunami with an umbrella. The software improves every day, while the administrative committees tasked with combatting it meet once a month to discuss formatting guidelines for their strongly worded warning memos.

RELATED: This founder says he's cracked the code on news that writes itself

mathisworks/Getty Images

The leaders at MIT recognize that pretending it's still the year 2016 is a speed run to complete institutional irrelevance. Their proposed solution involves dismantling the entire system of passive evaluation.

Nuking the rules

Instead of assigning written homework that will inevitably be outsourced to a close friend named Claude, the university is leaning into high-stakes, face-to-face accountability. This is a sensible approach. In truth, it’s probably the only approach that makes sense.

This means the return of oral examinations, a format that historically reduced anxious undergraduates to tears and will now serve as the ultimate truth serum. If a student claims to have written a brilliant algorithm, he must sit in a room with an actual human being and explain how it works line by line. Homework is being replaced by mandatory physical laboratory work, real-time group problem-solving, and practical project defense. Education is forced to become physical, immediate, and painfully personal simply because digital submissions can no longer be trusted.

The broader mandate involves teaching students how to rigorously interrogate machine outputs rather than accepting them as divine revelation. Software tools routinely invent historical facts and fabricate mathematical proofs with supreme confidence. The modern skill lies not in generating text, but in catching the machine in a lie before it ruins a project.

Transform or die

Of course, this crisis isn’t confined to elite research labs in Cambridge. MIT is merely the canary in the coal mine, coughing up blood to warn the rest of the nation that oxygen is in short supply. Every community college, high school, and state university that relies on take-home assignments is headed in the exact same direction.

Whether you love AI or loathe it isn’t the point; it will keep embedding itself in more offices and laboratories across the nation. The choice facing the entire American education system couldn’t be any clearer: Completely redesign the rules to test actual human capability, or continue collecting tuition while handing out degrees to human proxies for automated text generators.

Matt Dunlap is running as a Democrat for Maine's 2nd Congressional District, claiming to have cut government waste and improved bureaucratic efficiency as Maine secretary of state and state auditor.

His track record tells a different story. After more than two decades in office, Dunlap leaves in his wake an illegal-alien armed robbery scandal, a federal voting lawsuit, a string of missed deadlines, and even flunked exams.

'He’ll be held accountable for his failures at the ballot box in November.'

During his first tenure as secretary of state from 2004 to 2011, Dunlap's subordinate Robert O’Connell helped an illegal alien acquire the identification necessary to buy a gun. That alien later used that gun to commit armed robbery.

Back in March 2006, O’Connell, then the Maine DMV’s director of licensing services, met with Irish native Niall Clarke at a Boston bar and discussed getting him a driver’s license in Maine. O'Connell personally expedited Clarke’s application.

The Irishman's visa expired that April. In October 2006, Clarke used a gun purchased with his Maine ID to rob a Bangor Bank of America, making off with over $11,000 before being apprehended by police.

RELATED: Graham Platner's replacement has history of violence, unearthed police report reveals

Brianna Soukup/Portland Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

Dunlap declined to discipline O'Connell after an investigation by Dunlap's office later that year determined that O'Connell had not broken any laws or state policies.

"It probably would be the easy thing to put Bob under suspension, throw him under the bus, but the fact is we have to let the process work," Dunlap said at the time.

Clarke was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison and later deported.

That same year, Dunlap also ran afoul of the federal government. In July 2006, the Department of Justice sued the State of Maine and Dunlap for allegedly neglecting voter registration list maintenance and disability access upgrades for polling places.

Maine had already received $17 million from the federal government to aid in these tasks when the suit was filed. Dunlap blamed a truant vendor for the delay. Though both parties later agreed to resolve the issue via consent decree, the oversight raised concerns about Dunlap’s ability to manage public wealth.

The scandals didn't stop there.

RELATED: When government breaks the law, can you even sue?

JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images

In 2007, local news outlet WGME strolled onto the State Lottery Commission’s property and scooped up numerous discarded records, including citizens’ names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, and other sensitive data. There was enough material there for mass identity theft, according to the outlet.

Despite the alarming exposure of citizens' private information, Dunlap said about the trashed documents, “I think that’s incredibly healthy,” arguing that 10 years earlier, people would have wondered, "What’s the big deal about Social Security numbers in the trash?"

The incident resulted in changes to state document disposal policy, such as mandatory shredding and contracted waste disposal.

Dunlap faced another lawsuit in 2009 after he failed to certify a people’s veto petition that aimed to repeal Democrat then-Governor John Baldacci’s sales tax expansion. Activist group Still Fed Up with Taxes sued after Dunlap’s office blew past the October 13 deadline for signature verification.

Dunlap ultimately relented, and the measure reached the June 2010 ballot. The measure passed, and a judge later ruled that Dunlap’s office had no authority to miss the deadline.

“[Dunlap] said his staff was overworked, neglecting to mention that, instead of checking off names, he’d spent a week of that crunch time at a conference in Kentucky,” the Portland Press Herald reported in 2012.

Dunlap tried to leave his secretary of state scandals behind him in 2021, switching gears to become state auditor. Dunlap admitted he was “utterly unqualified” for the state auditor role, just as he was when he ran for secretary of state in 2004, according to Bangor Daily News.

Dunlap later failed two accounting exams required for the auditor position and stepped down in October 2021. Then-state Senate President Troy Jackson — whom Democrats recently substituted for Graham Platner as their U.S. Senate candidate to run against longtime Sen. Susan Collins (R) — appointed Dunlap to the auditor role in November 2022 after he eventually passed his exams.

"Whether it’s failing to protect Mainers' sensitive information, hold bad actors accountable, or simply do his job properly, incompetent radical Matt Dunlap proved to Mainers time and again that he is not a trustworthy steward of their tax dollars,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Maureen O’Toole told Blaze News. “He’ll be held accountable for his failures at the ballot box in November."

Dunlap did not respond to a request for comment. O'Connell and Clarke could not be reached for comment. Dunlap will square off against former Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage in November's midterm elections.

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As a crusty, curmudgeonly original CNN special assignment correspondent from the early 1980s, I have used these pages more than once to vent about the second-rate dingbats who have populated my old network over the past quarter-century.

You know them: cockwomble Chris Cuomo, blowhard Don Lemon, lumbering harpy Candy Crowley — a parade of television solemnity occasionally interrupted by journalism.

I spent enough of my career pulling leeches off myself in Nicaragua to admit I have an old-school correspondent’s prejudice against television interviews conducted in hermetically controlled studios.

But few CNN creatures trigger my counter-alimentation reflex faster than Brian Stelter, whose talent for institutional obsequiousness survived even the departure of his long-cashiered former boss, Jeff “Mother” Zucker.

Stelter was bounced during the Zucker debacle, then rehired in a fit of corporate dementia, and eventually returned to “Reliable Sources.” The title remains CNN’s best joke.

His latest exercise in reliability is a defense of NBC’s Kristen Welker after she characterized Donald Trump’s primary election endorsements as producing “mixed results.” The figures at issue were 100% of his endorsed Senate candidates winning and 98% of his other endorsed candidates winning. “Mixed” is doing some heroic work there.

Trump, unsurprisingly, was not amused. He made some noises about the “fine people” of the FCC taking a look at NBC’s news division.

Stelter initially jumped on X to declare the mystery solved in Welker’s favor:

And here’s the weirdest thing of all: Trump wrote that @kwelkernbc “just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates” — but she said no such thing on today’s @MeetThePress. Where’d the quote come from? It’s baffling.

Then came the update: He found it. Welker had said “mixed” during a pre-show live shot on NBC’s Washington, D.C., affiliate, WRC-TV. Stelter noted that six Trump-backed House and gubernatorial candidates had lost their August primaries.

So much for “baffling.” The quote existed. The only real question was whether “mixed results” fairly described a batting average that would make Ted Williams rise from the grave and demand an audit.

Welker is free to characterize the record however she likes. First Amendment and all that. But viewers are equally free to notice when a journalist selects the one formulation that makes overwhelming success sound like a coin toss.

And there is some history here that Stelter’s defense neglects.

Go back to the “Meet the Press” interview in which Welker tangled with Orange Man Bad and got herself nuked.

I spent enough of my career ducking bullets in Grenada, pulling leeches off myself in Nicaragua, and dodging security thugs in Suriname to admit I have an old-school correspondent’s prejudice against television interviews conducted in hermetically controlled studios.

Welker was perfectly coiffed, made up, lighted, and wired through an IFB while a control room full of producers stood ready to help. Fine. That is television. But the polished setup made what happened next considerably funnier.

RELATED: Trump exposed the cracks in our elections. The media proved his point.

Rob Newell/CameraSport/Getty Images

After Trump cut the interview short, the grand inquisitor suddenly became the supplicant: “Mr. President, let’s please ...” Then came her complaint that she had traveled “all the way to Wisconsin” for the sit-down.

Trump later blasted Welker over the exchange. You do not need a degree in Freudian analysis to wonder whether being called stupid, cut off on camera, and reduced to pleading for a few more minutes might leave a residue.

“All the way” to Wisconsin! Did she walk there in the rain? Cross the Appalachians by mule? Ford Trimotor to Duluth, then Bactrian camel to Green Bay? Comcast has resources. Wisconsin is not Outer Mongolia.

NBC’s “best in the business” may well have no grudge at all. Perhaps “mixed results” simply struck her as the perfect phrase. But Stelter’s job, on a program called “Reliable Sources,” should be to examine that possibility rather than leap reflexively to the defense of a fellow establishment journalist.

Instead, he first declared Trump’s quotation baffling, then discovered it was real, then carried on as if the important fact were that six endorsed candidates had lost rather than that nearly all had won.

That is not media criticism so much as reputation management with a chyron.

So Brian the Obsequious rides again, defending the guild and ignoring the obvious context. As I said: So much for “Reliable Sources.”

Wisconsin police are investigating a 47-year-old man over human remains that were found in his basement along with a shrine to serial killer Ed Gein and nude photos of women.

The bizarre discovery was made after a Madison woman reported to police that Benjamin Larson was stalking her.

'Benjamin Larson had these human remains on display amongst naked photos of unidentified women and with binders of women he had been stalking.'

The woman said Larson's actions had caused her serious emotional distress and fear, which led to his arrest on a felony stalking charge.

Police said they found human remains and other disconcerting items when serving a search warrant at his rural home in Taycheedah.

Among those items are 10 binders labeled "Edward Gein Book," which refers to the murderer who inspired the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movies. Other items related to serial killers John Wayne Gacy and the Zodiac Killer.

Police also found the following:

• A mummy with a sign reading "Princess Taheb 1600"
• Skeletal remains in a glass casket
• Human skulls displayed
• Horror movie memorability
• A life-size mannequin of the Jason Vorhees character from the "Friday the 13th" movies

Then they found a padlocked room and forced entry to find a bedroom inside. The bedroom had a lifelike silicon sex doll on the bed and a painting above the bed of a woman similar to the accuser's likeness.

The complaint also said that various items related to the accuser were found, including an earring, a coin, and a pressed flower.

The woman said she had casually dated Larson for two months in 2013, later moved to Canada, and had been receiving letters, gifts, and emails from him over the years. She had not given him her new address.

One of the documents allegedly included statements of anger against the woman's husband and child and recorded that Larson had watched them at their home while wearing black clothing and holding a machete.

"Benjamin Larson had these human remains on display amongst naked photos of unidentified women and with binders of women he had been stalking," read the arrest warrant."

Officials are working to identify the origin of the human remains.

"The forensic anthropologist's initial physical examination determined that many of the remains are likely ancient Native American in origin; however, several of the skeletal remains require specialized forensic testing at a laboratory to determine their origin," said the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Office.

RELATED: Man hacked off victim's head with machete while his wife and child watched, police say

Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney expressed anger at the "shockingly low cash bail" ordered by a judge over the allegations he called "beyond disturbing."

Larson was released after posting a $15,000 cash bail on Friday.

He is scheduled for arraignment on Sept. 11.

Larson has not been yet charged in relation to the alleged human remains.

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Ontario officials are cracking down on American alcohol so aggressively that even a grocery store display of California wine sparked a government response after a citizen tipped off local media.

“We were alerted to this by a viewer who said a store in Kemptville had set up a full display in the front of the beer and wine section, prominently selling wine from California,” CTV News anchor Dylan Dyson reported.

“I saw the wine on display this morning, and within hours of contacting Loblaw, the dusty U.S. bottles were pulled from the shelves once again.

"When CTV News reached out to Loblaw, the parent company of the independent grocer chain, it said the wine was put on the shelves without the approval of the store owner,” he continued.

“And once identified, it was removed immediately,” he added.

“I don’t know why they would do it,” one resident told cameras in response to the store having American wine on their shelves.

Ontario’s minister of finance responded as well, saying, “We have been clear — US alcohol will remain off shelves. We expect all retailers, including this grocer, to follow the rules.”

According to the CTV News Ottawa report, the incident helped in “reigniting shoppers' patriotism amid trade tensions with Donald Trump and the United States.”

“If these Canadians hate us so much, why not boycott all 30,000 American businesses that dominate your craphole country? You know why they won’t?” BlazeTV host Pat Gray asks.

“Because they can’t. They’re far too dependent on us to actually put their money where their inflated egos are,” he adds.

Gray notes that Canada is also dependent on the U.S. for protection.

“No more NORAD either. How about we just remove our protective shield from you guys?” he asks. “We’ll just let you figure out how to defend yourselves for a change.”

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Mexico should be rich. It shares a 2,000-mile land border with the largest consumer market on earth, coastlines on two oceans, abundant natural resources, and a young workforce. Prosperity should have arrived decades ago.

The industrial boom did. Mexico is now America’s largest trading partner for the third consecutive year, selling the United States $534 billion in goods in 2025. It has become a major manufacturing power, and the nearshoring wave that followed the trade war with Beijing made it one of the world’s most sought-after industrial destinations.

‘We are not applying to be the world’s next sweatshop. We are applying to be America’s trusted factory floor.’

But too little of that prosperity reached the people doing the work. For decades, Mexico’s biggest export was not cars or electronics. It was Mexicans: More than 12 million now live abroad, most of them in the United States. A thriving country does not export its own children by accident.

Alejandro Martínez Araiza, national general secretary of the National Trade Union for Food and Commerce, Mexico’s oldest private-sector union, has an explanation economists rarely say out loud.

“Cheap labor was never an accident. It was the design,” Martínez Araiza told me. “Investment came for the low wage, and the system was built to guarantee the wage stayed low. Protection unions were the lock on the door. Corruption was the guard. The worker was never meant to prosper, because his poverty was the product being sold.”

That diagnosis is relevant today because the old design now stands between North America and its goal of competing more effectively with China. Martínez Araiza is candid about the scale of the challenge: China still dwarfs Mexico in manufacturing output.

“Can Mexico replace China? In volume, never, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling you something,” Martínez Araiza said. “You do not defeat China by trying to be China. You defeat it by being the neighbor China can never be: next door, with shared interests, and rules you can actually verify. We are not applying to be the world’s next sweatshop. We are applying to be America’s trusted factory floor."

That is why he treats labor enforcement as supply-chain security. A real factory with real workers, better wages, and an independent union able to walk the floor is harder to disguise as a front company. In his formulation, labor enforcement becomes a certificate of origin that paperwork alone cannot fake.

His proposals for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement review follow from there: automatic consequences for violations, enforcement covering warehouses and logistics as well as factories, a regional wage floor of $7.25 an hour, and a verification alliance of democratic worker organizations across all three countries.

RELATED: Meet the man making Mexico useful again

Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu/Getty Images

Martínez Araiza is equally candid about Mexico’s vulnerability. More than 80% of Mexican exports go to the United States.

“China can survive a trade war with America. Mexico cannot, and I will not pretend otherwise,” he told me. “That is exactly why Mexico’s only rational strategy is a USMCA so credible and so enforceable that no one ever needs a trade war. Certainty is the cheapest stimulus that exists."

Then comes the part Washington rarely considers. Mexico maintains trade agreements with about 50 countries. “Everyone talks about Mexico as somebody's back door,” Martínez Araiza said. “I want the opposite: Mexico as America’s front door. Build it together in North America, and sell it to the world through our agreements. Close the back door. Open the front door. Made in North America, sold to the world.”

When work pays, people stay. "Pay a real wage, and Mexico’s biggest export goes back to being products, not people," he says. Border security, in his telling, begins on the payroll.

American readers may be skeptical of a Mexican union leader offering trade advice. But the incentives line up. His program raises the cost of the labor arbitrage that moved American factories south while reducing one of the pressures that drives migration north. President Trump’s trade agenda seeks both outcomes.

Martínez Araiza proposes to pursue them with something the American taxpayer does not have to create: organized workers already inside the supply chain, using secret-ballot elections and replacing the old protection-union system workplace by workplace.

The design that kept Mexico poor is breaking. The question is whether North America can replace it with something that lets workers, manufacturers, and both countries prosper together.

“There is no fair trade on poverty wages,” Martínez Araiza said. “The best tariff is a good wage.”

The Florida Department of Transportation has ordered all Flock cameras and other license plate readers to be shut down by law enforcement agencies.

A release from the department said that the "recent exponential increase" in plate-reading devices forced the agency to intervene in order to preserve Floridians' "sovereignty and quality of life."

'It’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that.'

A nationwide campaign has arisen by citizens accusing Flock cameras of violating their privacy rights by tracking their movements.

Supporters of the camera network say the data is invaluable to law enforcement investigations and privacy concerns are overwrought.

Among those opposed to the cameras is Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently criticized the technology over privacy concerns.

"They claim that the companies aren’t going to misuse it, but no one’s watching that," the governor said in Jacksonville on Monday. "And I know you can make some money selling cameras, but you really can make a lot of money if you can sell people’s data, and that’s what the legislature is going to need to address."

He cited some examples in which the tech was abused and residents' privacy was violated.

"We know there was an officer in Florida who was using the LPR data to track, like, an ex-girlfriend or something like that," he added. "I don’t think we had really strong penalties at all for that type of misuse."

The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office indicated in a statement responding to the order that it was already in the process of dismantling the cameras.

RELATED: FIVE police officers FIRED and charged after allegedly abusing Flock system

"Prior to this state directive, the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office had already proactively initiated the removal of Flock ALPR cameras previously located along county-maintained rights-of-way," read the sheriff's office statement.

The removal did not apply to "approximately 20 privately owned and operated ALPR cameras" in the county, the statement added.

"You know, you want to get in your car, and you want to go to down to Buc-ee’s in Saint Augustine," said DeSantis. "It’s really none of the government’s damn business if you’re doing that."

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“The End of Oak Street” — the sci-fi thriller starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor that follows a 1982 suburban family as their neighborhood is ripped through a wormhole into a dinosaur-filled prehistoric landscape — is garnering mixed reactions. While critics have been overwhelmingly positive in their feedback, audiences are conflicted, with some praising the spectacle as a fun, surprising throwback and others complaining about plot holes and pacing issues.

BlazeTV host Steve Deace falls into the critical camp, but his complaints have less to do with narrative gaps and uneven pacing and more to do with the “worldview” the film promotes.

On this episode of the “Steve Deace Show,” Deace gives his brutally honest review — spoilers included!

“We have got to talk about the worldview of this film, and since this is not, you know, some cinematic brilliance, I'm fine spoiling it,” says Deace.

His primary issue is the characters.

McGregor plays Greg Platt, a struggling suburban dad who’s secretly working as a pizza delivery driver. Hathaway, who plays his discontented wife, Denise, also has her secrets. Unbeknownst to everyone save her embittered widowed neighbor, she’s been writing a book — but it’s not just any book. It’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a woman who wants to leave her family.

Their daughter is Audry, a cosmology-obsessed lesbian who dreams of going to Cornell to study under Carl Sagan, who famously wrote, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”

Deace finds this ironic since “[Sagan’s declaration] turned out to be, according to modern science, completely total science fiction.”

“Modern conventional science doesn't believe that anymore [but] believes the universe actually had a beginning and has an end,” he notes.

The family's younger son Brian has his own coming-of-age subplot. He has a crush on the new kid in the neighborhood — a black Catholic girl named Jeanette who, much to his dismay, has a crush on his sister, Audry.

“Can you see some of the seeds getting planted here?” Deace smirks.

When the dinosaurs come out and wreak havoc on the neighborhood, the family’s happy facade begins to crumble.

“Here's what you find out. The dad actually lost his job, OK? But he is so emotionally bullied by the wife that he doesn't have the balls to tell her he lost his job because he doesn't want to take it from her anymore, so he's day-drinking in the garage and delivering pizzas at night to help pay the bills,” says Deace.

Greg, he explains, sneaks into the basement one day and finds his wife’s secret book.

“It's basically her feminist manifesto: Nobody understands me. I'm taken for granted as a woman. I give give give give give. The kids are ungrateful. The husband doesn't love me and cherish me the way that I should. I'm a desperate housewife here, and I want to leave my family and go and find my inner child and discover myself,” Deace summarizes.

Add to that the overlapping crushes between Audry, Brian, and Jeanette, and it’s clear what the film is trying to say, he argues: “Everything in the suburbs is a lie.”

“Your Reagan '80s thing is a lie. The past you want to go back to that you think was taken away from you never was there,” Deace continues.

“Underneath the surface, these women were taken advantage of and wanted to be freed by feminism, and the men were a bunch of wussies and wouldn't provide or do their jobs ... and you're raising sons to be creepers, and the daughters want to expand to their lesbian fortunes, and they're being also inhibited by the strident tyrannical standards of the suburbs.”

But eventually this undercurrent shifts.

“It's girlbosses against dinosaurs until they go up against the Tyrannosaurus rex,” laughs Deace.

“Guess who leaps in to save them? ... The dad! The dad that they all betrayed, they all looked down on, they all thought they were better than, that they all emasculated,” he answers.

“And in the process, he gets bitten in half by the Tyrannosaurus rex and sacrifices himself ... and it's at that moment now the family realizes what douchebags they've really been this entire time, and they just explode in appreciation and tragic sadness for the loss of the dad.”

The film concludes idyllically, with the Platts going back in time through the wormhole to save Greg and the rest of the slaughtered victims.

“The idyllic ending they all get to at the end is the very nuclear family they spent the entirety of the film deconstructing on the way there,” scoffs Deace. “What does this all mean? I have no idea.”

To hear more of his analysis and commentary, watch the video above.

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Jelly rolls are meant to make people happy, not spout political messaging.

This might be why platinum-selling singer Jason DeFord, aka Jelly Roll, did not handle the backlash to his partisan jokes very well.

'The American dream should be for everybody.'

Tears of a clown

Jelly Roll finished his week as the guest host of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on Thursday, with a near-20-minute monologue addressing the blowback from his jokes about President Donald Trump's weight.

While DeFord's jokes did not approach the realm of egregious — although he remarked that the president likely couldn't see his penis — he was seemingly unprepared for the responses a spot on the obviously liberal talk show would garner.

Jelly Roll spent most of his time trying to convince the audience he is neither liberal nor conservative.

"Just because I watched a fight on TV doesn't mean I support everything this administration does," he said, referring to the UFC event at the White House. "Just like hosting Jimmy Kimmel's show doesn't mean I have all of Jimmy Kimmel's politics. Sure, I lean left on some things, but like most folks, I'm pretty down the middle. I am a Christian. I am a country music singer. I'm a farmer. I'm a bow hunter."

Then DeFord made fun of the comrades on staff at Kimmel, describing them as "communist Antifa friends" and the most talented group of "Chihuahua-hugging, oat-milk latte-loving lefties on God's green Earth."

It was from there that the 41-year-old made an impassioned and tear-filled speech about loving thy neighbor, with the message that dignity and compassion are not partisan issues. However, Jelly Roll's bottom line came across as supportive of illegal immigration.

"Pain and healing knows no partisanship," Jelly Roll said. "Hurting hearts are more important than poll numbers, and there are no boundaries or borders for broken families."

After claiming "the American dream should be for everybody," the singer appealed to Jesus' teachings for how to treat a "neighbor."

"There wasn't an asterisk after neighbor. There wasn't a political party exemption. It did not require us to know what country you were born in. There wasn't a sentence afterward that said, 'Unless you're afraid of them.' It just said, 'Love your neighbor.'"

RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel has a plan to get Stephen Colbert back on late-night TV

Fair shake

In front of an awfully partisan audience, Jelly Roll felt the need to explain away the handshake he exchanged with the president at a UFC event in 2024.

The musician said he would "always" shake the POTUS' hand when asked, noting that his father would have been "disappointed" had he not.

"I'm proud that I was able to shake the president of the United States' hand. I'm also proud that I live in a country where I can make jokes about him," the country artist added.

But Jelly Roll made sure to reiterate to Kimmel's studio audience that he disagrees with the president more often than he agrees.

"Taking a picture with a political figure or anybody else for that matter doesn't mean you agree or disagree with their policies or politics. More often than not I f**king don't."

RELATED: HEAD CASE: Kathy Griffin whines she's real 'victim' of tacky Trump decapitation stunt

Randy Holmes/Disney/Getty Images

Both sides now

The emotional diatribe culminated in the Tennessee native describing his appreciation for free speech and, despite making his liberal leanings obvious, his disdain for both political parties.

"[I support] the same freedom of speech that both sides of the aisle claim they want until they hear something they don't want to hear," he added.

He then placed blame on "politicians and algorithms" for convincing the public that the "person across the street" is the reason life is hard, before adding:

"Our leaders on both sides of the aisle are doing an absolute s**t job of trying to bring us together, y'all."

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Longtime White House correspondent Maggie Haberman of the New York Times angered President Donald Trump after her report on events commemorating the 9/11 attacks.

Haberman, who has previously interviewed the president many times, reported that Trump refused to attend the World Trade Center event for 9/11 because he would not be given the opportunity to give a speech.

'She’s been falsely writing about me for years — She’s a stalker, and should be forced to turn over any and all money that she’s made through her fake reporting on me.'

The president forcefully denied the report and then excoriated Haberman in a screed on Truth Social Monday.

"Maggot Hagerman, the Fake Reporter from The Failing New York Times, an unattractive person both inside and out, and who knows less about me than most reporters on the beat (She’s a SCAMMER!)," he wrote, "made up a story that on September 11th, I’m not going to the World Trade Center, in New York City, because they won’t let me make a speech, and I’m going to the Pentagon in D.C., because I’m a featured speaker."

The president went on to say he preferred not to give a speech at the event.

"I never even thought of what Maggot made up," he continued.

"Maggot Hagerman is a PHONY, and The New York Times knows it!"

He threatened to sue her as well as the New York Times and accused her of falsely reporting on the Russian hoax.

"If she were ever forced to reveal her 'sources,' you will find out they either don’t exist, or didn’t say what she reported. She’s been falsely writing about me for years — She’s a stalker, and should be forced to turn over any and all money that she’s made through her fake reporting on me," he concluded.

CNN's Jake Tapper took exception to the insults against Haberman and defended her on social media.

"I’m not going to repost the filth the president wrote about Maggie Haberman, but suffice it to say she’s a great person, beautiful inside and out, an incredible mom and wife and colleague, and an amazing journalist. The president’s comments are disgusting and beneath the office," he wrote in one post.

RELATED: NY woman who allegedly thanked Allah for 9/11 schemed to BOMB state Capitol

"We should never get used to this deterioration in our expectations for how a president should behave. Never," he added in another.

Haberman responded to the president's insults in an interview on MS NOW.

"We went to the White House. We were quite transparent with them about what we were reporting, including the part about that part of the reason why he was not going to New York was because he did want to speak, and the White House did not say anything, pushing back on what we were reporting," she said.

"And then 24 hours later, the president started attacking the piece," she added. "You know, so readers can make their own assessment about a denial that comes a day later."

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Numerous Americans have died horrifically after foreigners were issued commercial driver's licenses and took to the roads in what U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has characterized as "80,000 pound missiles."

To neutralize these threats, the Trump administration has cracked down on unqualified drivers and taken off the road those commercial truck drivers who can't speak English; purged thousands of unqualified training schools from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration registry; and barred DACA recipients, asylum-seekers, refugees, TPS holders, and other noncitizens from obtaining, renewing, upgrading, or transferring non-domiciled CDL licenses.

'Congress must now do its part.'

Expanding on this campaign to keep American roads safe, the DOT announced on Monday that it has executed the emergency closure of over 110 commercial driver-training schools linked to thousands of drivers who failed English language proficiency tests.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration checked the records of over 5,000 CDL holders who failed the ELP requirements against records in the Training Provider Registry to determine which schools were certifying these failed assimilators. The agency ultimately identified over 110 entry-level driver training providers that must now cease all operations.

The FMCSA also launched nearly 400 investigations into training schools in 40 states. Investigators found "serious cases of non-compliance," resulting in hundreds of additional proposed removals from the Training Provider Registry.

According to the DOT, drivers certified by the over 160 training schools that were served with notices of proposed removal are linked to 239 commercial motor vehicle-related fatalities.

"To fully root out the scourge of fraud, hold criminals accountable, and restore safety, we need the support of federal law enforcement," Duffy said in a statement. "I am so grateful for President Trump raising the alarm on this issue, and to Vice President Vance for leading the charge to crack down on fraud nationwide. From states failing to follow the law to shady training schools and illicit companies, together we will tackle every link in the chain."

The DOT is hardly alone in this campaign to spare Americans from incompetent foreign truckers.

RELATED: Massachusetts fought the rule that would have kept Pennsylvania trooper's alleged killer off the road

Homeland Security Investigations is working with the DOT and FMCSA on a criminal investigation initiative focused on "CDL fraud, unauthorized employment, identity-document fraud, financial crime, money laundering, labor exploitation, and potential links to human smuggling, drug trafficking, and cartel activity."

Starting Monday, HSI conducted a surge at over 200 driving schools and targeted CDL-related businesses, schools, carriers, and employers.

"Criminals who exploit our nation’s transportation systems through fraud and deception are not only breaking the law — they are putting the safety and security of the American public at risk," said HSI acting Executive Associate Director John Condon. "HSI will bring the full weight of our investigative authorities, financial expertise, and global law enforcement capabilities to this historic, whole-of-government effort."

Enforcement and Removal Operations will participate in the surge this week, which will focus on Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. ERO officers will work with FMCSA-certified inspectors to "conduct commercial vehicle enforcement activity and inspection checkpoints at separate locations."

The Justice Department, which is also involved, announced on Monday the formation of Joint Task Force Crossroads of America — an interagency task force committed to enhancing roadway safety in part by deterring illegal trucking practices and holding offenders accountable.

Vice President JD Vance emphasized the importance of cracking down on fraud in the trucking industry, telling reporters on Monday that fraudulent CDLs in recent years not only made American streets and highways "a lot less safe" but were "bad for people's jobs" and undercut American wages.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association lauded this interagency initiative.

President Todd Spencer said in a statement given to Blaze News, "OOIDA and professional truck drivers across America commend Secretary Duffy and [FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs] for taking concrete actions to crack down on fraudulent training operations and restore rigorous English language proficiency enforcement."

Spencer added, "Congress must now do its part and pass Dalilah’s Law to ensure CDL mills remain closed and English language proficiency enforcement is permanently made the law of the land."

H.R. 5688, Dalilah's Law, would ban states from issuing commercial driver's licenses to illegal aliens and limit issuance to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and holders of specific work visas. The legislation would also require the revocation of any existing ineligible CDLs.

The proposed law takes its name from Dalilah Coleman, a little girl injured in a car accident allegedly caused by an illegal alien from India who obtained a commercial driver's license from Gov. Gavin Newsom's Department of Motor Vehicles.

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Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberals in dissenting from a stay that lets President Donald Trump continue White House ballroom construction.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation filed the lawsuit to halt construction, claiming the president did not have the power to unilaterally build the ballroom.

'We have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury.'

The trust was able to obtain an injunction against the building from the D.C. District Court, but the ruling Monday allows the president to continue construction.

"Today, we do not pass upon the legality of the government’s East Wing project. We conclude only that, based on the submissions before us, the government is likely to prevail in showing that the Trust lacks ... standing to challenge the project in federal court," read the majority decision.

Roberts had previously allowed construction to continue while the rest of the court considered the full issue, but he joined the liberal justices in the dissent Monday.

"Construction of the ballroom has proceeded apace for the better part of a year. That construction is likely unlawful," Roberts wrote.

The trust claimed a preservationist member who lives in Washington suffered "professional and personal injuries" while walking by the White House. However, the majority said the government could "likely" show that such distaste would not be enough for the trust to have standing.

"To the contrary, we have repeatedly held that mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury," the court said.

RELATED: Trump team mocks outrage of 'unhinged leftists' as construction of ballroom begins

The trust had argued that the president needed the "express authority of Congress" before ordering construction on federal land in Washington, D.C.

The Trump administration argued that the construction was necessary in part because of threats of political violence and the lack of sufficient security at venues available for political events.

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If it seems like more conversations today than ever before go nowhere, that’s because it’s true. And according to Frank Turek, this is happening because Americans are increasingly operating from entirely different understandings of reality itself.

In his new book, "The War on Reality," Turek and co-author Phoenix Hayes tackle what they see as a growing assault on truth, reason, and common sense.

And BlazeTV host Nick Freitas is no stranger to this attack either.

“Once upon a time, you kind of understood how to respond to things. If you were arguing about tax policy or you were arguing about abortion or whatnot, you just went through the process,” Freitas tells Turek.

“You looked at the facts. You looked at the evidence. And both of you could do that and you could come to different conclusions and maybe share different perspectives,” he says.

“But more and more people are finding themselves in arguments and debates where they’re like, ‘I don’t even understand where this person is coming from. It’s like we don’t even share the same reality,’” he adds.

“So much of reality is under attack,” Turek agrees. “I mean, just in the past, say, 10 years, Nick, notice we’ve had people say to us after 5,000 years of human history that what we thought was reality suddenly isn’t.”

“That there are an infinite number of genders. That, you know, men can get pregnant. That math is racist … that reason and logic are tools of oppression,” he says, explaining that even “pulling baby parts out of mothers” is now called “health care.”

“The war on reality is everywhere,” he adds.

And the inability to agree on what reality is has reached the point of violence more than once. Most notable, however, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

“When people are confronted with logic that they can’t answer, they emote, and sometimes they even get violent. Our mutual friend Charlie Kirk was a victim of that. Here we had a trans person or a person involved in a trans relationship emoting to a point where he didn’t think Charlie Kirk should live any more,” Turek says.

“He tars him as a fascist, because we all know, Nick, that a fascist tactic is to hand your opponent the microphone and say, ‘Please give me your case. Make your case and we’ll have a discussion,’” he adds.

Freitas points out that this is why “defining one’s terms” has never been more important or, unfortunately, more difficult.

“Defining one’s terms is absolutely critical because otherwise you end up talking around each other, and emotions get involved, and people have different perspectives or they understand words differently,” he says.

“Because when you say the ‘war on reality,’ OK, define your terms. What’s reality?” he asks.

“First of all, truth corresponds to reality, and reality is the sum of all truths. And the only one that knows all of reality is, of course, God, because he’s omniscient,” Turek says.

“We know some of reality but not all of reality. Now, you can deny reality, you can fight against reality, but ultimately reality is going to win. Reality is undefeated,” he continues, noting that within his book is the argument that “reality does not have pronouns.”

“There’s not my reality and your reality,” he explains. “You may perceive reality different than me, but there’s a reality out there independent of both of us. Maybe you’re closer to it than I am. OK, fine. That’s what we call a disagreement.”

“Secondly, there’s not my gravity or your gravity. There’s not my math or your math. There’s not my laws of logic or your laws of logic. There’s not my law of morality that says, ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ but you have a different law that says it’s OK to murder,” he continues.

“These are all fixed in reality based on the nature of God,” he adds.

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Republican candidate Mike Rogers lobbed a heavy rhetorical attack against Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed in their high-profile battle to win one of two Senate seats for Michigan.

The political ad includes several instances during the campaign where El-Sayed referred to sexual themes, including one widely ridiculed online.

'She's like, "Damn I have to sleep with him." ... I mean, I guess she's pregnant, so I guess something's happening.'

"We've decided he's just weird!" said Fox News host Laura Ingraham in the opening clip of the political ad.

"Are you circumcised?" El-Sayed asks in a clip taken from a debate with Jesse Watters of Fox News over sex-rejection surgeries for minors.

In another clip, El-Sayed appears to think about the sexual relationship between Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, asking, "What do you think is going through Usha's head when he talks?"

"She's like, 'Damn I have to sleep with him,'" he jokes.

"I mean, I guess she's pregnant, so I guess something's happening," he laughs.

In another widely mocked incident, El-Sayed says he's shocked that practically every other video on his Instagram account is from an OnlyFans model.

"And, like, the things that I actually look at on Instagram," he says. "Every third video that scrolls on its own is going to be some OnlyFans model."

Many noted that the algorithm on Instagram is tailored to the interests and views associated with the user of the account, suggesting El-Sayed may be getting OnlyFans videos because he's looking at OnlyFans content on the app.

"Abdul, Michigan's not going for that," says Fox News' Jesse Watters at the end of the video. "That is sick stuff."

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"Conman Abdul El-Sayed — too extreme, and too weird for Michigan," wrote Rogers on social media with the ad.

El-Sayed is the first Muslim to be nominated to run for a U.S. Senate seat. El-Sayed beating Rogers in November is pivotal for Democrats' hopes of retaking the Senate.

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Loud hums, pollution, and electricity costs may be the price to pay for having a data center nearby.

According to the president, though, not having one might be worse.

'If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.'

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Monday morning to address the growing resistance to putting massive buildings filled with computer processors in American towns and cities.

Some polls, like Politico's from January, have shown that data centers struggle to garner majority appeal to voters on either side of the aisle.

While just 45% of Trump voters supported the idea of a data center three miles from their home in that survey, the president had a more hard-line approach to the issue.

"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," Trump posted as a "truth."

He further explained that if communities want to be "successful and rich," with lower taxes and more jobs, they should "let Data Reign."

The president then warned that not accepting data centers would only result in foreign prosperity.

"The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can't believe it is happening!" Trump concluded.

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Later on Monday, Vice President JD Vance was asked about Trump's remarks about how "Americans should get on board" with wanting more data centers.

"What the president said about data centers is they're an important part of the AI economy," Vance replied.

"But when people build them, they have to build the power plants along with the data centers. I think probably 99% of the backlash to data centers has come in areas where building a data center means higher utilities and higher electricity for the people on the ground," Vance continued.

Vance was referring to the president's demand from February that tech companies provide whatever power their campuses or data centers require.

"They can build their own power plants as part of their factory so that no one's prices will go up, and in many cases, prices of electricity will go down for the community, and very substantially down," the president stated at the time. "This is a unique strategy never used in this country before."

The pledge was almost immediately agreed to by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI.

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Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

"If you build a data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out," Vance added on Monday. "And if that is happening, I don't think the data centers are that controversial. It's when the utility bills get so much higher, that's when it's a real problem."

People surveyed back in January said they saw new job opportunities as the main benefit of having a nearby data center at 37%. At the same time, 29% said rising electricity costs were the primary drawback.

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