Fox News Channel
GOP Rep. Gill: MN Welfare Fraud Money ‘Could Have Been Funneled to Al-Shabaab Terrorists in Somalia’
During an appearance on Fox News Channel's "Hannity," Rep. Brandon...
Don't miss...
Legendary coaches praise Trump’s new college sports EO as president vows to protect women’s, Olympic sports
President Donald Trump laid out new ground rules for college-level sports and athletes in a new executive order being praised by some of the biggest names in collegiate sports.
However, some of the president’s proposed limitations are sure to bother some, especially top-earning college athletes.
‘I urge Congress to pass bipartisan legislation and SAVE COLLEGE SPORTS!’
Following a college sports roundtable at the White House in March, the president signed an executive order on Friday to implement “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports.”
The order puts a theoretical cap on student-athlete pay, sets a five-year window for athlete eligibility, and even limits transfers to one per student-athlete in a five-year period.
At the same time, the order — and subsequent fact sheet — make clear and repeated mention of the president’s intention to boost women’s and Olympic sports at the college level. This includes “implementing revenue-sharing in a manner that protects and expands opportunities in women’s and Olympic sports.”
In response, legendary college football coach Nick Saban said the directives allow universities to “preserve opportunities for all sports, including women’s and Olympic sports, not just football and basketball.”
Saban, who coached Alabama from 2007 to 2023, told Fox News that he wanted to “thank the president” for helping “manage and fund all sports.”
Brandon Sumrall/Getty Images
Similarly, Arkansas men’s basketball coach John Calipari came out in defense of the president against any criticisms surrounding the limitation on student-athlete revenue.
“I’ve spent my entire life focusing on the success and well being of student athletes,” Calipari wrote on X Saturday. “Their success in both sports and academics is paramount. I have no problem with Athletes making money and I have had that stance for many years. But what we have been dealing with the last few years is harmful not only to their total success but also the longevity of College Sports as we know it.”
Calipari added: “Yesterday, President Trump took bold action to preserve and protect Collegiate Athletics. I urge Congress to pass bipartisan legislation and SAVE COLLEGE SPORTS!”
Trump’s executive order made specific mention of an alleged “fraudulent name, image, likeness (NIL) scheme” where student-athletes were being paid above “actual fair market value” to play for certain programs.
The idea behind the regulation is to prevent “pay-for-play or player eligibility” in which large schools would essentially pay student-athletes large sums of money through collectives or sponsorships to entice them to their program.
Otherwise, the order states, “fair competition cannot occur.”
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Trump’s executive order defines the fair market value compensation cap around how much a student-athlete can be paid by a third party that is not affiliated with a school’s athletic department.
Henceforth, the student-athlete would have to be paid at rates commensurate with that of non-student-athletes of similar notoriety or fame.
Trump has called on Congress to pass the SCORE Act, which, aside from the above, would prevent schools from restricting students from entering NIL agreements and require schools that generate more than $20 million annually to provide medical benefits to student-athletes, while maintaining at least 16 varsity sports teams.
Trump’s executive order is currently set to take effect August 1.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
‘As long as I’m governor …’: Abbott’s resurfaced message to Indian community faces renewed scrutiny online
As more people become aware of the way the H-1B visa program is transforming Texas, many are turning to see what their leaders have to say about it.
Unfortunately, in the case of Texas, the answer is not what Americans might expect from a red state.
‘We will continue to celebrate Diwali here in the great state of Texas.’
In a resurfaced video clip, Governor Greg Abbott (R) can be heard giving a message to the “Indian community,” apparently around the time of Diwali.
“As long as I’m governor of this great state, Texas will be a land for the Indian community,” Abbott says in the clip.
ARUN SANKAR/AFP/Getty Images
“We will continue to celebrate Diwali here in the great state of Texas. Happy Diwali, everybody!”
The clip, which went viral on Monday, appears to originally be from a November 3, 2024, Diwali celebration at the governor’s mansion.
A video of his remarks was uploaded on TikTok two days after the event, on November 5, 2024.
Diwali is a major Hindu holiday, celebrated in the lunar months of Ashvina and Karttika, that marks the victory of light over darkness, according to Britannica. A notable feature of this pagan holiday is the “row of lights” that is associated with the celebrations.
Abbott’s office has previously denied to Blaze News any involvement in facilitating the H-1B program in Texas, noting that it is a federal program. His office has also touted the governor’s pause of H-1B visas at state-sponsored institutions.
A Blaze News analysis of Department of Labor data from the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 found that Texas companies sponsored and certified over 11,200 H-1B visa applications, second only to California, which brought in over 13,700 H-1B visas, according to available data.
Blaze News reached out to Abbott’s office for comment about the resurfaced video but did not receive a response.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Elon Musk announces plans for PERMANENT lunar city
Elon Musk has virtually mastered the space race. SpaceX regularly sends up Falcon 9 rockets, autonomously lands boosters, and embarked on the most ambitious space exploration program ever dreamed up by mankind with Starship. Now Musk wants to launch a whole new kind of object into orbit — a data center meant to power xAI’s growing portfolio of products and services.
And it all starts with a momentous new lunar mission.
To the moon
In early February, two of Elon Musk’s most ambitious companies — space pioneering venture SpaceX and generative AI startup xAI — merged into one organization. With a unified brand, Musk claims that the move will “improve speed of execution” of the monumental new off-world undertaking.
We’ll finally be rid of the resource-hogging data centers that hamper our infrastructure here on Earth.
The goal? Establish Moonbase Alpha, a permanent lunar city planted on the surface of the moon. The base will serve as a manufacturing hub and a launch site for spacefaring data centers that will power Musk’s growing AI endeavors, including xAI, Grok, Imagine, Optimus robots, and more.
It sounds like something out of a science-fiction novel, but if Musk has his way, Moonbase Alpha will be up and running by approximately 2030.
While this project would mark the first time any human has set up residence on the moon, this isn’t the first time SpaceX has launched permanent objects into orbit. The company currently manages a fleet of 9,600 Starlink satellites that circle the earth daily, beaming wireless internet to regions all around the globe. Presumably, the new space data centers would fall in line along the same or similar paths.
A data center, however, is a little more complicated than a wireless internet router in space. Data centers consist of thousands of GPUs, TPUs, cooling systems, and other networking components. They must have the bandwidth to process, store, and utilize large stores of data. For LLMs in particular, data centers also have to be able to train and maintain new models as AI evolves.
Clearly, there are some pros and cons to running an AI data center in space. Let’s get into them.
Pros of space-based data centers
- Space: Data centers take up a lot of acreage. The largest data center on earth is 800,000 square feet, or approximately 13.9 football fields. That’s massive! Space, however, has more space. There’s plenty of room for expansion without invoking eminent domain, chopping down forests, or snatching up vacant plots of land. AI is free to grow without encroaching on the general public.
- Power: Data centers also require a ton of energy. Collectively, the nation’s data centers consume up to 8,190 MW per year on a 70 MW-per-center estimate. In comparison, your home uses 10.8 MW of power per year. While this need is a big strain on Earth’s power grid, orbital data centers have a direct line of solar power straight from the sun, free from cloud cover, pollution, or severe weather events. It’s just straight solar power all the time, a perfect renewable resource without the limitations of a living planet.
- Maintenance: Data centers have plenty of moving parts and energy demands that all generate a lot of friction and heat. While it takes specialized water cooling systems to mitigate high temperatures on earth, space is a whole different story. Above the atmosphere, it’s much colder, there’s almost no friction, and zero gravity makes it easier for parts to work without additional drag. Together, these unique qualities of space may reduce wear and tear on data centers and allow them to run longer with fewer repairs.
RELATED: NASA astronaut gives very American response to DEI questioning
Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Cons of space-based data centers
- Maintenance: While orbital space centers will likely require less maintenance, when something does break, it could be harder to send a repairman — either from Moonbase Alpha or Earth itself — for a quick fix. Alternatively, perhaps Elon will have a team live on the data center itself, but even then, having a specialized crew on board at all times would be costly.
- Rapid unscheduled disassembly: More than a few times, a Starlink satellite has veered off course enough to tumble toward Earth and burn up in the atmosphere. Now imagine a multibillion-dollar data center the size of Rhode Island careening into the Atlantic Ocean. Not only could unpredictable flight path failures cause an orbital data center to burn up in the sky, such an event could also turn one of those centers into a meteor that strikes Earth on the scale of “Deep Impact.”
- Space junk: Space is so big and vast that it’s hard to believe it’s getting crowded, but that’s exactly what’s going on above the atmosphere. Low-orbit space is filling up so fast with satellites and space junk that it has created collision risks for future rocket launches. Adding massive data centers to the mix would only make space missions more complicated and dangerous.
A moon-shot mission for a new age
Despite weighing the risks against the benefits, Elon Musk believes that space is an essential piece of AI development: “Current advances in AI are dependent on large terrestrial data centers, which require immense amounts of power and cooling,” he explained in a recent post at the SpaceX website announcing the merger. “Global electricity demand for AI simply cannot be met with terrestrial solutions, even in the near term, without imposing hardship on communities and the environment. In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale. To harness even a millionth of our Sun’s energy would require over a million times more energy than our civilization currently uses!”
He’s right. The only way to sustain AI in modern society is to move it to a place where it can’t siphon away our vital resources, namely power, water, and land. It needs to operate in its own sustainable vacuum. What could be better than space?
Musk isn’t alone, either. Google is also putting data centers into orbit. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, “We are taking our first step in ’27. We’ll send tiny, tiny racks of machines, and have them in satellites, test them out, and then start scaling from there.”
And just like that, the AI age of the space race has begun. As for who will win, mankind is the biggest benefactor — not because renewable AI will magically make everything better, but because we’ll finally be rid of the resource-hogging data centers that hamper our infrastructure here on Earth while Big Tech sets its sights on moon-shot missions in the stars.
WATCH LIVE: Artemis II crew to get first glimpse of the dark side of the moon
Artemis II is preparing to make history as it faces a very important milestone in the voyage’s 10-day journey to the moon and back.
The lunar mission, launched on the evening of April 1, is preparing to fly by the dark side of the moon on Monday.
‘The Artemis II crew is preparing for today’s lunar flyby, when they will see the Moon’s far side.’
Artemis II is preparing to set a new distance record from Earth, which was last set by the manned Apollo 13 mission in April 1970, according to NASA.
NASA said that Artemis II will surpass the previous record of 248,655 miles by about 4,105 miles. The astronauts are expected to travel a maximum distance of 252,760 miles from Earth.
RELATED: NASA astronaut gives very American response to DEI questioning
NASA
Live coverage of the flyby event will begin at 1 p.m. ET Monday and continue through 9:45 p.m. ET.
The seven-hour lunar observation period will begin around 2:45 p.m. ET, and the astronauts are expected to reach their closest approach to the lunar surface around 7 p.m. At their closest distance, NASA said, the moon will appear to the astronauts about the size of a basketball held at arm’s length.
On Monday morning, NASA posted two photos of the inside of the spaceship with the caption: “Morning routine: Wake up, shave, make the bed, witness something that’s never before been seen by human eyes.”
“The Artemis II crew is preparing for today’s lunar flyby, when they will see the Moon’s far side,” the caption continued.
NASA reported that the crew received a message from the late Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell as they prepared for this historic day. The message, recorded before Lovell’s passing last year, said:
Hello, Artemis II! This is Apollo astronaut Jim Lovell. Welcome to my old neighborhood! When Frank Borman, Bill Anders, and I orbited the moon on Apollo 8, we got humanity’s first up-close look at the moon and got a view of the home planet that inspired and united people around the world. I’m proud to pass that torch on to you — as you swing around the moon and lay the groundwork for missions to Mars … for the benefit of all. It’s a historic day, and I know how busy you’ll be. But don’t forget to enjoy the view. So, Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, and all the great teams supporting you — good luck and Godspeed from all of us here on the good Earth.
The Orion spacecraft is expected to depart the Moon’s sphere of influence on Tuesday afternoon at a distance of 41,072 miles.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Will the Iran war tip the scales in the race to replace MTG?
The special election to replace former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia could have a lot more to do with foreign policy than candidates initially anticipated.
Greene’s falling out with President Donald Trump marked a major fracture within the GOP, prompting a special election to fill her seat on Tuesday. Apart from the typical party distinctions, foreign policy could be the deciding factor between the Democrat and Republican nominees vying to represent Georgia’s 14th congressional district.
‘He has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.’
Democratic nominee Shawn Harris has taken a harsh stance against the ongoing war in Iran, which has become increasingly unpopular with voters, while Republican nominee Clay Fuller has remained a supporter of the conflict.
The horseshoe theory about the political spectrum seems to be in full swing as Greene’s increasingly critical remarks about the war and the Trump administration more broadly seem to echo Harris’ positions far more than Fuller’s.
RELATED: This scandal-ridden Democrat just got one step closer to being expelled from Congress
ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP/Getty Images
Days before the special election, Greene doubled down on her criticism of the war, condemning Trump’s Easter ultimatum to Iran.
“Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness,” Greene said in a response to Trump’s post threatening to attack civilian infrastructure like power plants and bridges. “I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.”
“Trump threatening to bomb power plants and bridges hurts the Iranian people, the very people Trump claimed he was freeing,” Greene added. “On Easter, of all days, we as Christians should be reminded that the son of God died and rose from the grave so that we can be forgiven once and for all of our sins. Jesus commanded us to love one another and forgive one another. Even our enemies.”
RELATED: Veterans slam Democrat candidate for allegedly fudging military record
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Greene has refrained from endorsing either candidate, although Fuller has secured support from Trump. While an endorsement from Trump would typically all but guarantee the candidate’s success, especially in a rural, red district in Georgia, Harris narrowly outperformed his Republican challenger in March.
In a crowded 17-candidate race, Harris brought in 37% while Fuller finished with 35%. The candidates’ respective numbers were likely affected by the many candidates who no longer qualify for Tuesday’s election. It should also be noted that a Trump-endorsed Greene beat Harris by nearly 30% back in 2024.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
