Category: Blaze Media
Stop feeding Big Tech and start feeding Americans again
America needs more farmers, ranchers, and private landholders — not more data centers and chatbots. Yet the federal government is now prioritizing artificial intelligence over agriculture, offering vast tracts of public land to Big Tech while family farms and ranches vanish and grocery bills soar.
Conservatives have long warned that excessive federal land ownership, especially in the West, threatens liberty and prosperity. The Trump administration shares that concern but has taken a wrong turn by fast-tracking AI infrastructure on government property.
If the nation needs a new Manhattan Project, it should be for food security, not AI slop.
Instead of devolving control to the states or private citizens, it’s empowering an industry that already consumes massive resources and delivers little tangible value to ordinary Americans. And this is on top of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s execrable plan to build 15-minute cities and “affordable housing.”
In July, President Trump signed an executive order titled Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure as part of its AI Action Plan. The order streamlines permits, grants financial incentives, and opens federal properties — from Superfund sites to military bases — to AI-related development. The Department of Energy quickly identified four initial sites: Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, Idaho National Laboratory, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Last month, the list expanded to include five Air Force bases — Arnold (Tennessee), Davis-Monthan (Arizona), Edwards (California), Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (New Jersey), and Robins (Georgia) — totaling over 3,000 acres for lease to private developers at fair market value.
Locating AI facilities on military property is preferable to disrupting residential or agricultural communities, but the favoritism shown to Big Tech raises an obvious question: Is this the best use of public land? And will anchoring these bubble companies on federal property make them “too big to fail,” just like the banks and mortgage lenders before the 2008 crash?
President Trump has acknowledged the shortage of affordable meat as a national crisis. If any industry deserves federal support, it’s America’s independent farmers and ranchers. Yet while Washington clears land for billion-dollar data centers, small producers are disappearing. In the past five years, the U.S. has lost roughly 141,000 family farms and 150,000 cattle operations. The national cattle herd is at its lowest level since 1951. Since 1982, America has lost more than half a million farms — nearly a quarter of its total.
Multiple pressures — rising input costs, droughts, and inflation — have crippled family farms that can’t compete with corporate conglomerates. But federal land policy also plays a role. The government’s stranglehold on Western lands limits grazing rights, water access, and expansion opportunities. If Washington suddenly wants to sell or lease public land, why not prioritize ranchers who need it for feed and forage?
The Conservation Reserve Program compounds the problem. The 2018 Farm Bill extension locked up to 30 million acres of land — five million in Wyoming and Montana alone — under the guise of conservation. Wealthy absentee owners exploit the program by briefly “farming” land to qualify it as cropland, then retiring it into CRP to collect taxpayer payments. More than half of CRP acreage is owned by non-farmers, some earning over $200 per acre while the land sits idle.
RELATED: AI isn’t feeding you
Photo by Brian Kaiser/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Those acres could support hundreds of cattle per section or produce millions of tons of hay. Instead, they create artificial shortages that drive up feed costs. During the post-COVID inflation spike, hay prices spiked 40%, hitting $250 per ton this year. Even now, inflated prices cost ranchers six figures a year in extra expenses in a business that operates on thin margins.
If the nation needs a new Manhattan Project, it should be for food security, not AI slop. Free up federal lands and idle CRP acreage for productive use. Help ranchers grow herds and lower food prices instead of subsidizing a speculative industry already bloated with venture capital and hype.
At present, every dollar of revenue at OpenAI costs roughly $7.77 to generate — a debt spiral that invites the next taxpayer bailout. By granting these firms privileged access to public land, the government risks creating another class of untouchable corporate wards, as it did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two decades ago.
AI won’t feed Americans. It won’t fix supply chains. It won’t lower grocery bills. Until these companies can put real food on real tables, federal land should serve the purpose God intended — to sustain the people who live and work upon it.
The gatekeepers are fighting each other now
For most of human history, people could only dream of having ready access to all the world’s knowledge. Books were highly prized rarities, literacy was uncommon, and news could take weeks or months to arrive. The idea that the sum of human experience could fit into a little box in everyone’s pocket once sounded utopian — a paradise of informed, free citizens.
Instead, when handed access to everything, most people went looking for someone to tell them what to think.
The information age isn’t a utopia or a nightmare — it’s a permanent revolution. And it’s only getting wilder from here.
Humans are social creatures, political animals, as Aristotle observed. We crave belonging more than truth. We need a story about our place in the social order, status to pursue, and a circle to protect. Our minds aren’t wired to handle thousands of relationships. Dunbar’s number — about 150 — marks the natural limit of our social world. Online, we can connect with millions, but our capacity to process that much humanity collapses. We stop seeing people as people.
The same is true of information. In theory, access to all knowledge should make us wiser. In practice, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. Facts alone don’t illuminate anything without context, and the flood is too vast for anyone to master.
So people specialize. Like workers on an assembly line, each focuses on one task and trusts others to handle the rest. Expertise becomes a kind of currency, and every expert becomes a gatekeeper, a choke point through which understanding must pass.
Manufacturing consent
Control over that flow of information is control over perception itself. From the birth of mass media, political actors understood this. In “Public Opinion” (1922), journalist Walter Lippmann argued that elites must guide the public toward the “right” decisions because ordinary citizens couldn’t process the flood of modern information. Governments — including our own — and corporations eagerly agreed, building propaganda systems to shape consent.
Mass communication democratized information but kept control in a few hands. Printing presses, radio networks, television studios, and movie production required massive capital. The means of communication were concentrated in a small elite that decided what counted as “truth.” These media barons and their favored experts built a system in which opinion was managed from the top down. The gatekeepers defined what the public got to see, hear, and believe.
For decades, political and media elites relied on this system to shape public sentiment. Academics, think-tank analysts, and professional commentators framed policy for the masses. People felt informed while repeating narratives crafted by others. The monopoly on expert opinion kept both left- and right-wing elites secure.
RELATED: Conservatives turn their fire on each other after Charlie Kirk’s assassination
Blaze Media Illustration
Then came the internet, which shattered the old paradigm and plunged our system into chaos. Anyone with a microphone and a laptop could broadcast to the world. Legacy media cut costs, and now its anchors sit in home offices on the same streaming platforms as the amateurs they used to mock. The line between credentialed gatekeeper and average guy with an opinion has all but disappeared.
The result? Panic.
Mutating information war
Liberal elites were horrified to see Donald Trump, JD Vance, and countless populists bypass their filters and speak directly to millions of people. Podcasts hosted by comedians or outsiders broke through censorship walls. Conservative leaders cheered — until their own control started slipping. As legacy conservative networks fractured and independent creators rose, the movement’s “approved experts” lost their monopoly too.
Now both sides are scrambling to rebuild the gates. The establishment insists that chaos proves we need “trustworthy experts.” But the expert class discredited itself, and the internet made gatekeeping technologically impossible. The average citizen may not always discern truth from falsehood, but the public no longer trust those who claim to decide it for them.
The information war isn’t ending. It’s mutating. Every collapse of authority spawns a new order, and every new order fights to become the next gatekeeper. Unless governments impose hard censorship, as Europe has begun to do, the chaos will continue. The information age isn’t a utopia or a nightmare — it’s a permanent revolution. And it’s only getting wilder from here.
Lawsuit Alleging Gavin Newsom ‘Facilitated’ Anti-Semitic Campaign Against National Guard Commander Headed to Trial, Judge Rules
A former commander of the California National Guard who says Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) “facilitated” an anti-Semitic campaign that resulted in his wrongful termination will have his day in court, a judge ruled Friday. The move could cause a major headache for Newsom ahead of his expected 2028 presidential campaign.
The post Lawsuit Alleging Gavin Newsom ‘Facilitated’ Anti-Semitic Campaign Against National Guard Commander Headed to Trial, Judge Rules appeared first on .
Crazy Nancy Cashes Out
Nancy Pelosi, the wildly successful investor and power-lusting Democrat who made history as the first octogenarian to serve as speaker of the House, is finally calling it quits. Pelosi, 85, announced Thursday she will retire from Congress when her term expires next year. “With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your representative,” the iron-fisted stalwart said in a video message to constituents.
The post Crazy Nancy Cashes Out appeared first on .
Female caught on video tossing cup of scalding coffee on McDonald’s manager, who suffers burns
A female was caught on video tossing a cup of scalding coffee on a McDonald’s manager in Michigan earlier this week — and the manager suffered burns as a result, MLive reported.
The incident took place Tuesday morning at a McDonald’s at 3700 Dixie Highway in Buena Vista Township, the outlet said. Buena Vista Township is a few miles east of Saginaw.
‘F**k you, b***h! Catch that hot-a** coffee!’
Buena Vista Township Police Detective Russ Pahssen told MLive that the female manager called 911 saying an angry customer assaulted her.
More from MLive:
The customer had placed an online order and sought a refund for two sandwiches, Pahssen said. Another patron recorded the last two minutes of the interaction at the restaurant’s front counter.
The manager handed the customer a coffee and tried pacifying her, while the customer claimed she had been there for more than an hour, the footage shows. The conversation reaching an impasse, the manager told the customer to have a great day and turned to walk away.
The female customer removed the lid from the coffee cup, threw the contents at the manager, and yelled, “F**k you, bitch! Catch that hot-ass coffee!” as she exited the restaurant, according to video of the encounter without redacted audio.
The video also shows the McDonald’s manager screaming after the coffee hits her body.
Pahssen told MLive the manager suffered minor burns; the outlet noted that the coffee burned her back and left arm.
Pahssen shared video of the assault on Facebook and asked the public to help identify the assailant, the outlet said.
“I must have gotten about 100 tips,” Pahssen noted to MLive. “Within about two minutes, we had her identified.”
The following is video of the encounter with redacted audio; the coffee toss takes place toward the end of the clip just after the 1:45 mark:
However, Pahssen said officers weren’t able to locate the 48-year-old suspect, MLive reported, adding that police have submitted paperwork to the Saginaw County Prosecutor’s Office, requesting she be charged with felonious assault.
Investigators did not name the woman Thursday because she had not been arraigned on any criminal charges, WJRT-TV reported.
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Unhinged student who flipped Turning Point USA table gets arrested and faces 5 charges
A 19-year-old student is facing five charges after being identified as the person who flipped a Turning Point USA display table at the University of Iowa campus.
A TPUSA social media account posted video of the altercation where a smiling student walks up to the display table of hot chocolate and then overturns it before walking away. The TPUSA members then cheerfully begin to clean up the mess on the video.
‘While the outcome of these investigations are considered confidential, discipline is based on the severity of the violation.’
Authorities identified the suspect as Justin Pham Calhoon and booked him into the Johnson County Jail on Wednesday.
TPUSA reported that Calhoon was charged with two counts of disorderly conduct, fifth-degree criminal mischief, and two counts of third-degree harassment.
A university spokesperson confirmed the arrest to the College Fix.
“All Iowa students are expected to follow the Code of Student Life, which sets standards for student behavior and conduct,” Chris Brewer wrote. “While the outcome of these investigations are considered confidential, discipline is based on the severity of the violation.”
Cabot Phillips, an editor at the Daily Wire, then posted a video appearing to show the same person overturning a table before his event at the university.
“This same student literally did the exact same thing last week ahead of my event there,” he posted on social media.
RELATED: Church vandalized ahead of Turning Point USA event — message calls speaker the Antichrist
That incident is from Oct. 25, according to the University of Iowa Department of Public Safety.
The student wore a dress in the second video, leading many to believe Calhoon identified as transgender.
Calhoon has no prior criminal history aside from a traffic violation.
A Blaze News request for comment to Turning Point USA was not immediately answered.
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