Category: Blaze Media
AI isn’t killing writers — it’s killing mediocre writing
For years, we were warned that artificial intelligence would eventually eliminate the need for writers. In mere seconds, it would be able to crank out essays, articles, reports, blog posts, you name it, rendering flesh-and-blood writers obsolete.
Well, those days are here. AI writing floods our inboxes, social media feeds, and web pages every single day.
But it’s not quite the product we were pitched. While bots can indeed string coherent sentences together, the end result is mediocre at best. Its flat, em-dash heavy, idiosyncrasy-free, polite prose is easily recognizable to average readers, most of whom are disenchanted by the lack of human touch.
It turns out AI — beholden to algorithms and formulas — cannot counterfeit the voices of the deeply complicated, unique creatures that are human beings.
Christopher Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman, BlazeTV hosts of “Rufo & Lomez,” believe that AI writing may actually make writers more valuable — but just the ones with genuine talent.
AI is undeniably eliminating the massive class of mediocre writers. The kind of text AI produces is quickly becoming “the default sound or voice of people who don’t have talent, who can’t do things on their own. … It’s becoming the default voice of stupidity,” says Keeperman.
On the flip side, “Anybody who can write at a level above [AI] now has more value.”
The pervasiveness of AI copy seems to suggest that those genuine talents are few and far between.
“I am seeing [AI writing] everywhere. I am seeing it in published books. … Tons of ad copy even for really prominent companies that obviously have huge marketing departments [are] leaning on these sort of tripartite adjectival phrases. … There’s all these sort of syntactical signals that are giveaways,” says Keeperman, “but it’s also making me attuned to people who can write really well, and I find myself gravitating towards those people.”
But that doesn’t mean writers can’t use AI to their advantage. It is an excellent tool for “research,” “aggregating a lot of information,” “analysis,” and “brainstorming,” Keeperman adds.
Rufo agrees. “Terrible writing, [but] it’s good for discovery. … I think for certain tasks, it’s better than a Google search or a search engine search.”
For someone like him, who conducts large-scale research, AI can expedite the process of sifting through hundreds of pages of PDFs, but it’s not fail-proof.
AI is “maybe comparable to an undergraduate research assistant but … an unreliable [one],” says Rufo.
“You double-check the work, and you realize that the AI makes up 30% of the things that it’s telling you.”
“It seems like something that has huge potential, but I just see it slowing down in its improvement. I see it still having some fundamental flaws that would prevent it from being a trustworthy object of delegation,” he says.
“I remain extremely skeptical of the AI doomers or AI fatalists who think that this is going to take over the world and the machines are going to be controlling everything. It’s like it can’t even format citations. I think we’re a long ways away from the AI taking over the world.”
To hear more, watch the episode above
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Top 5 of 2025: Women who fought back when coming face-to-face with crooks
Women have been fighting back for a long time now when confronted by crime, and the year 2025 was no exception.
In one instance, a woman was shopping in a store and used her Second Amendment rights against a male who reportedly was groping other customers and even pulled out a gun and threatened their lives … then we have a story about a mother who hid in a closet with her baby after a man broke into her home, and she permanently ended the threat … and then there was a tale that might make you smile about a woman who faced down a crook and took care of business with her bare hands, to the amazement of her husband.
Here are our top-five moments of 2025 when women decided to take matters into their own hands when facing down criminals:
Video: Woman pulls male intruder out of her car, throws him to the ground with ease — while her amazed husband watches
Astonishing surveillance video from a Hollywood gas station shows the moment when a woman pulled a male intruder out of her car and threw him to the ground with ease.
The woman, Star Carter, was sitting in the driver’s seat of her red Alfa Romeo at the gas station Nov. 4 when a male stranger walked up and tried to open her passenger door, KCBS-TV reported.
Her husband, Michael Carter, was pumping gas at the time and was on the other side of car — and initially thought he successfully told the guy to get lost.
But after Michael got back in the passenger seat, the crook sneaked back and opened the driver-side rear door closest to the gas pump and actually got into the back seat, video shows.
“I’m wrestling with him inside the car,” Michael told the station, “and I’m kinda pushing him and pushing him, and all I know is he just disappeared.”
With that, Star’s husband smiled and told KCBS that “I’m looking over the back, and I said, ‘Oh … ohhh!'”
Michael’s, shall we say, starstruck reaction was due to the fact that his wife got out of her driver’s seat, got to the back door, ripped the intruder right out the car, and tossed him to the ground.
“I don’t condone violence, but I do condone self-defense,” Star told KCBS in the aftermath.
Wisely, the intruder ran off after Star introduced him to the concrete. But she also had some parting advice for him: “I just said, ‘Don’t you ever do no stupid [word redacted in KCBS video] like this again!'”
The station said the Carters actually continued their night out, going to a comedy show at the Hollywood Improv. In the end, her husband was grateful that Star stood up to the crook.
“She is indeed my hero,” Michael noted to KCBS with a laugh in the aftermath. “Thank you, Star!”
Creep with violent past allegedly gropes store customer, threatens to kill others — so woman in store shoots him dead instead
A 42-year-old man followed another customer into the Pink Beauty Supply store in Compton, California, on Oct. 19 and “groped her once inside” the store, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Lieut. DeJong told KCBS-TV.
When employees told him to leave, the man allegedly refused and began to verbally assault them and some customers before he started throwing objects inside the store, KCBS added.
Employees and customers noted that the male had an object in his hand that they believed was a knife, the sheriff’s department said, adding that the male made verbal threats that he was going to kill and harm everyone in the store.
With that, one of the customers — not the one he allegedly groped — pulled out a gun, KCBS said.
Fearing for the store employees, herself, and other customers, the sheriff’s department said she fired a warning shot at the male. But the male turned toward her, officials said — and fearing she was going to be attacked, she fired a second shot, striking the male.
DeJong noted to KCBS that “he went down.” The sheriff’s department said the male was pronounced dead at the scene.
Investigators noted to KCBS that the woman who pulled the trigger was a customer at the store, and she remained at the scene to cooperate with officials. Detectives added to the station that parking lot surveillance video indicates the man was loitering in the area and drinking alcohol.
“He alleged he was a gang member, and LASD says it appears he was a gang member; unknown if still active,” DeJong told KCBS while adding that the male had a lengthy criminal history that included assaults, robberies, thefts, and disturbing the peace.
KNBC-TV said the woman is in her 50s, that she surrendered the gun, and that no one was arrested.
Mother hid from home invader in closet with her baby — then shot thug in the head, police say
A man with a long criminal record faced the ultimate penalty for breaking into the wrong home after discovering an armed mother, according to Illinois police.
The Joliet Police Department said they responded to a residence on Hadrian Drive on the far west side of Joliet around 10:30 p.m. Aug. 15.
Police said they saw signs of forced entry at the home and found an unresponsive man on the second floor with gunshot wounds. Paramedics pronounced the man dead at the scene.
They also found a woman at the home with her baby. She told them she hid in a closet in her bedroom with her child after she heard the break in. She also had a handgun with her, and when the man entered the bedroom, she shot him in the head.
Police said they found a screwdriver in the man’s possession and noted he was wearing gloves at the time of the shooting.
The Will County Coroner’s Office identified the man as 36-year-old Shelby Hurd of Chicago. Hurd had been convicted of burglaries in 2022 and 2023 as well as identity theft and burglary in another county. He had been paroled on Feb. 24.
Stalker shows up at woman’s workplace, begins punching her, cops say. But victim has a gun — and she uses it.
A stalker showed up at a woman’s workplace in Pensacola, Florida, on the morning of Feb. 10 and began punching her, police said.
But the victim had a gun on her and shot the male once in the leg in self-defense, police added.
Marquise James, 35, was arrested in connection with the 11:30 a.m. incident at the Downtown Pensacola Holiday Inn, WEAR-TV reported.
Records show James was in the Escambia County Jail on charges of stalking, battery, smuggle contraband, possession of cocaine, possession of marijuana, resisting an officer, and simple assault. His bond is set at $26,500.
Pensacola Police Officer Mike Wood told WEAR that the stalking “has been going on for quite some time” and that “this male individual has been … using social media, using phones” to do so.
Wood added to the station that “he’s come to her place of employment before, and she told him to leave, and he did. But this time when he came, he saw her in the laundry room, he approached her and began punching her.”
With that, Wood told WEAR that the victim “drew a handgun that she had legally and shot him once in the leg.”
“He’s much larger than she is, and she did what she had to do,” Wood noted to the station, adding that “she did nothing wrong. She was protecting herself like she should have done.”
Police told WEAR that no charges are being filed against the woman.
Wood added to the station that when James “was at the hospital, he kicked one of our officers.” Wood also told WEAR that James “had cocaine and marijuana on him.”
Thug allegedly recorded himself raping woman at gunpoint — before she shot him
A woman said she was sexually assaulted at gunpoint before she was able to retrieve her own gun and shoot the accused rapist, according to Indiana police.
The victim said she was assaulted on the afternoon of Sept. 16 at her home on Meadowlark Drive on the northeast side of Indianapolis, according to court documents.
She said that she was forced to have sex at gunpoint with the male, who was also recording the assault on his cell phone. When the man left the home, she got her gun and shot at him. She appeared to have shot the back window of a blue Toyota that was parked on an adjacent street.
A neighbor called police, and the victim identified the alleged attacker as 23-year-old Trevon Haynes.
About an hour later, a police officer noticed a car with its hazard lights flashing and saw that the driver had been shot in the leg. Haynes was arrested, and police said they found a firearm in the car.
He was charged with rape, intimidation, and burglary, while being armed with a deadly weapon.
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Surveillance everywhere, justice nowhere: Brown University shooting exposes the illusion of safety
A dystopian surveillance state is what so many Americans fear their country is becoming, while some have just accepted that a surveillance state is our past, present, and future.
“There comes a point where, as a society, we just end up getting used to the massive surveillance state that we live in,” Glenn Beck’s head researcher and former DOD intelligence analyst Jason Buttrill tells Glenn.
However, while we’re used to the surveillance state, it doesn’t appear to be doing its job — especially when you look at the response to the recent shooting at Brown University.
On Saturday, Dec. 13, a gunman opened fire inside a first-floor classroom at the Barus and Holley building on Brown’s campus — and the gunman remains elusive.
“If you go back to around 2021, there were people writing about how Brown University was one of the most surveilled campuses in the United States,” Buttrill explains.
“How is it we only have one picture of this guy from the back?” Glenn interjects, adding, “Apparently the one thing that will help you get away with any crime is a hoodie.”
“Yeah, wear something over your head and a coat. Apparently that foils the entire surveillance state, y’all,” Buttrill agrees. “So I guess we have nothing to worry about with surveillance.”
“And on top of that, Kash Patel, the FBI director, said that, you know, they sprung into action and they activated their cellular monitoring system to help identify the person that has now been let go,” he continues.
“Again, that’s another layer of this surveillance state that I think a lot of us should be worried about, and that didn’t do anything either,” he says, adding, “That helped give us the wrong suspect.”
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If parental rights can be bypassed in Alabama, no state is safe
Millions of Americans fled deep-blue states like California and New York because they believed the rules were different elsewhere. They moved to places like Alabama to escape lockdowns, mandates, and ideological capture of public institutions. They believed red states meant red lines.
That belief is proving dangerously naïve.
If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.
Alabama is one of the most conservative states in the country. It has a Republican supermajority and some of the strongest parental rights laws on the books: bans on gender-transition procedures for minors, curriculum transparency requirements, legal definitions of male and female, protections for girls’ sports, and a rare requirement that parents must opt in before schools provide any mental health services, including discussions of suicide or bullying.
And yet those protections are now being quietly hollowed out — not by legislators, but by bureaucratic subversion.
The footnote loophole
The Alabama State Department of Education is undermining parental consent by inserting exceptions into the fine print of a required opt-in form distributed after a new parental consent law took effect Oct. 1.
The law itself is unambiguous. Parents must provide prior written consent before schools offer mental health services, including discussions related to suicide or bullying. But the department claims in the footnotes that mental health-related conversations may still occur “as appropriate” in other school settings — and that these interactions do not require parental permission.
The ALSDE has stated that “instruction, advisement, and occasional interventions are not subject to opt-in requirements, as these are regular duties of school counselors and other educators.”
That language does more than stretch the statute. It appears designed to bypass it entirely. When schools engage minors in discussions with clear psychological or therapeutic implications — trauma, gender identity, suicidal ideation — without parental consent, they move into legally and constitutionally questionable territory.
Same playbook, new label
Parents have seen this before. During COVID, mandates were imposed first and justified later. Dissent was sidelined. Authority flowed downward, not outward.
Now the same model is being applied to school-based mental health. Whether embedded in social-emotional learning, “student wellness,” or character education, the result is the same: psychological interventions delivered by school employees, not licensed physicians, without parental oversight.
This is not a gray area. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed parents’ fundamental right to direct the upbringing of their children. When school systems create end runs around opt-in requirements — especially on matters involving suicide or gender ideology — they invite serious legal and civil rights challenges.
No state is immune
This is not an Alabama anomaly.
Illinois now mandates mental health screenings for public school students, with no opt-in. Mississippi is rolling out a statewide “youth wellness platform.” Tennessee is placing mental health clinicians in every public school through a $250 million trust fund. Ohio is expanding school-based health centers that embed mental health treatment directly on campus.
These programs erase the line between education and health care. They normalize a system in which children’s emotions are monitored, recorded, and interpreted by the state without parental consent. That is state-sponsored emotional profiling.
Who decides what helps?
This debate is not about whether children need support. It is about who decides what support looks like — and who has the authority to provide it.
Parents possess a fundamental right to make decisions about their children’s mental and physical health. The Supreme Court’s decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor reaffirmed that when schools impose ideologically loaded services or content without notice or opt-out, they burden parental rights and religious liberty.
RELATED: ‘Incredible victory’: Federal judge prohibits trans-related grooming efforts in California schools
Photo by Luis Soto/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Alabama’s counseling framework includes DEI-driven language encouraging students to “identify individual differences” and “describe and respect differences among individuals.” In practice, that language provides a vehicle for embedding gender ideology and values-based content into guidance lessons.
When that content is paired with school-based interventions, the issue is no longer education. It is ideological formation funded by taxpayers and imposed without consent.
Alabama’s warning
If this can happen in Alabama — arguably the most pro-parental-rights state in the country — then no state is safe.
Agencies should not be allowed to bury statutes in footnotes, reinterpret laws by memo, or use therapeutic language to bypass parental authority. These are not technical disagreements. They are unconstitutional and demand legal pushback.
If red states cannot enforce their own parental rights laws, then the red-state refuge is a myth.
Strong laws matter, but enforcement matters more. Parents must demand both.
America First energy policy is paying off at the pump
When it comes to gas prices, what a difference one administration can make. After peaking above $5 a gallon under President Biden, prices at the pump are now at their lowest levels in more than four years — and still falling. Today, the national average for regular gas sits at about $2.85, and a growing number of stations are dipping below $2. That’s a real Christmas gift for working families, one that makes a meaningful difference.
Falling gas prices bring immediate relief to households worried about affordability while also easing pressure across the broader economy. Compared with this time last year, Americans are saving a collective $400 million per week at the pump, according to GasBuddy.
Cheaper fuel deserves celebration, but there is more work to be done to lock in these gains and drive prices even lower.
Most people associate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act primarily with tax cuts. But it may prove to be one of the most consequential pro-energy laws passed in years. Lower gas prices do not happen by accident. They are the result of deliberate policy choices — specifically, President Trump’s reversal of the anti-energy agenda pursued by the Biden administration.
That agenda, driven by radical environmental activists, sought to force a rapid transition away from oil and gas regardless of cost. It relied on higher taxes, blocked infrastructure projects, restricted leasing, and constrained production. Taken together, those policies drove up prices and fueled inflation that hit working families hardest.
On day one, President Trump moved quickly to unwind many of those decisions, issuing nearly half a dozen energy-focused executive orders that restored certainty for producers. That early action was followed by his signature legislative achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which combined broad-based tax relief with policies designed to restore American energy dominance.
The bill reduces production costs by repealing the Inflation Reduction Act’s misguided fee increase on oil and gas produced on federal lands. It cuts that fee by 25%, making domestic production more attractive and more affordable for drillers.
Just as important, the OBBBA restores predictability to federal leasing. The law mandates nearly 40 offshore oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of America, Alaska, and other regions. It also establishes quarterly onshore lease sales and biannual offshore sales, giving the private sector long-term certainty. Under President Biden, leasing all but ground to a halt, with fewer leases issued than at any point since the 1960s — crippling the pipeline of future energy projects.
The bill also repeals or tightens a range of Green New Deal-style tax credits that heavily subsidized renewables at the expense of oil and gas. Those credits masked the true costs of renewable projects and distorted electricity markets, contributing to grid instability and higher energy prices.
RELATED: 5 truths the climate cult can’t bury any more
Justin Hamel/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The bottom line is simple: The OBBBA encourages more oil and gas production at lower cost. Over the next decade, that means a steadier supply of crude ready to be refined into affordable gasoline.
Still, Congress and the administration should not take their foot off the gas. Cheaper fuel deserves celebration, but there is more work to be done to lock in these gains and drive prices even lower.
At the top of the list is permitting reform. Energy projects routinely take longer to permit than to build. Environmental reviews intended to inform decisions have morphed into open-ended processes that stretch on for years. Even approved projects can be tied up indefinitely by duplicative reviews and serial lawsuits from activist groups. The result is uncertainty that discourages investment and delays infrastructure Americans depend on every day.
America First energy dominance is working, and families are saving real money because of it. The House has already passed several pro-energy permitting reforms, but meaningful engagement with the Senate will be required to deliver a comprehensive overhaul to the president’s desk. Without permitting reform, the full benefits of the OBBBA’s energy provisions will remain unrealized.
The lesson is clear: Energy dominance follows when government gets out of the way. If permitting reform advances next year, producers will gain the certainty and speed they need to deliver reliable, affordable energy to consumers. In 2026, Congress should finish the job.
‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’: The perfect song to drown out 2025’s pop dreck
The top songs this Christmas should certainly offend anyone who thought “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was worthy of outrage.
At the height of the woke era, media outlets argued over whether the 1944 Frank Loesser classic should be banned, as radio stations pulled the song because its lyrics allegedly alluded to “date rape.”
‘Baby, I’m a dog, I’m a mutt.’
The media apparatus sprung into action with parody after cross-dressing parody. Few defended the song — surprisingly, Variety was one of the biggest outliers — and the “Me Too” mantra carried on looking for more scalps to take.
Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” soon received similar treatment, despite garnering almost a billion views on YouTube. With featured artist Pharrell saying the song he profited off of was evidence of a prominent “chauvinist culture,” that art was not allowed to exist as art.
While offense can be taken in any generation’s music, it seems appropriate to note that it seemingly goes one direction, and progressive cookie-cutter sexual content cannot be questioned.
This has not changed in 2025, as slop tops the charts with stereotypical soft-core imagery.
Sombr, ‘Back to Friends’
Topping the Billboard charts in the rock and alternative category as of Dec. 17 is “Back to Friends” by Sombr. In this song by New Yorker Shane Michael Boose, he talks about the difficulty of returning to a normal friendship with some one he has slept with.
The song about being forgotten by a presumed love one remains fairly generic until the music video is taken into account, which features multiple gay make-out scenes juxtaposed with explosions of lava.
RELATED: Taylor Swift isn’t a role model — and it’s time for moms to stop pretending she is
Leon Thomas, ‘Mutt’
The R&B and hip-hop category is led by Leon Thomas’ “Mutt.”
Although the song came out in 2024, it is hitting new highs for the 2025 Christmas season, with lyrics about Thomas convincing a woman that there is no need for them to wait to have sex, because, “Baby, I’m a dog, I’m a mutt.”
Thomas notes that he wishes for him and his new lady to “break in” his new apartment, while adding that he believes in the Second Amendment, with the lyrics: “Thirty-two, like my pants size ’cause a n***a tried breaking in.”
The song is really not offensive, but neither are lyrics from the 1940s saying, “My mother will start to worry.”
RELATED: The viral country anthem that has girlboss Twitter melting down and trad women cheering
Kehlani, ‘Folded’
Not to be forgotten at No. 2 on the R&B list is Kehlani’s “Folded.”
Kehlani Ashley Parrish, an Oakland-born singer who once aspired to be a Juilliard-trained dancer, shows off her moves in the video, where she sports a completely see-through dress and essentially dances naked alongside women in their underwear.
Again, while this is not a new phenomenon for a music video, it seems extremely egregious when placed next to the 1949 film “Neptune’s Daughter” that popularized “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
While Kehlani carries laundry and talks about folding clothes in her music video, the obvious inference is that she is talking about her preferred sexual position.
The lyrics website Genius states, “Here, Kehlani seems to be implying she can ‘fold’ her body for her lover if they decide they want to become romantic again.”
Taylor Swift, ‘The Fate of Ophelia’
It comes as no surprise that Taylor Swift is topping the pop charts with “The Fate of Ophelia,” even though the music video came out in October. Swift obviously sexualizes herself — maybe Dean Martin did too? — as a 1950s showgirl, but the song centers on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and has Swift nearly dying from heartbreak in the lyrics.
Some lyrics are almost direct lifts from “Hamlet,” but the song as a whole is light-years away in terms of degeneracy in comparison to the other items on this list.
However, it is hard to imagine how it is conceivable that Swift dancing in lingerie and being groped on a pirate ship is less controversial than, “My sister will be suspicious (Gosh, your lips look delicious).”
While music lovers may notice that wild offense-taking now skips the industry unless it serves a political purpose, that equilibrium rarely holds forever. Cultural pendulums do swing.
When they do, the correction sometimes arrives loudly — through provocation, politics, or spectacle. But just as often, it comes quietly, in the form of art that refuses to scandalize at all.
Ella Langley, ‘Choosin’ Texas’
Which brings us to Ella Langley. Topping the country charts this Christmas with “Choosin’ Texas,” the Alabama native commits a far subtler transgression: She sings plainly about heartbreak, drinking alone, and the ache of love gone wrong — without sexual exhibitionism, ideological signaling, or manufactured outrage. She even manages to say a few positive things about Texas and Tennessee. In 2025, that kind of restraint may be the most disruptive posture left.
Preparedness isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition.
A certain smug comfort belongs to people who have never stood between a riot line and a camera, never smelled accelerant on the wind, never watched their phones lose signal while fire chewed through an entire neighborhood. They talk about “heated rhetoric” and “charged atmospheres” as if danger were theoretical. For women reporters on the ground, it isn’t.
The front line is not a metaphor. It is a place. And it is getting more dangerous by the year.
This is not a gadget story. It is a survival story.
I have covered Antifa riots where the mob knew my name before I reached the sidewalk. I have been screamed at, followed, and threatened by people who publicly denounce violence while privately practicing it. I have watched law enforcement stand down under progressive policies that place the comfort of agitators above the safety of citizens. And I have learned, the hard way, that when cities become unlivable, women pay first.
The left loves to talk about “lived experience.” Here is mine: Democrat governance has made America’s major cities objectively less safe, and being a female independent journalist in them now requires the mindset of a survivalist.
That became brutally clear during the Los Angeles wildfires of 2025.
I was there when the sky turned orange and evacuation orders contradicted one another. Cell towers failed. Emergency lines were overwhelmed. Friends and family lost homes — not hypothetically, not statistically, but completely. In that chaos, the only reason I was able to coordinate help, locate people, and call for assistance was a satellite phone. While 911 systems collapsed, that device worked. No signal dependency. No excuses.
That is not a gadget story. It is a survival story.
The same lesson repeats itself elsewhere. In Washington, D.C., shootings now occur in places that once felt immune — near offices, events, and corridors of power. I was at Butler. I have been steps away from moments that could have gone very differently. Anyone insisting that “these things don’t happen here” is either lying or sheltered by privilege.
When whistleblowers reach out to me, they do not do it over casual cell calls. They use secure satellite communications, because they understand something our leaders prefer not to acknowledge: privacy is safety. Satellite phones are resistant to interception, independent of fragile infrastructure, and immune to spam and shutdowns. When people have something dangerous to say, they choose tools that help keep them alive.
This is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition.
People have died hiking because there was no signal. Boaters have vanished because help could not be reached. Hurricanes do not care about ideology. Fires do not check voter registration. Yet one party consistently opposes disaster preparedness, energy independence, and resilient infrastructure — while demanding blind trust in systems that fail precisely when they are needed most.
Preparedness is not extremism. It is common sense.
Redundancy in communication is not political. Neither are solar-powered backups or hardened devices. Nor is concern about electromagnetic vulnerabilities when our lives run through centralized, fragile networks. Thinking ahead does not make you radical. It makes you female in a country that keeps telling women to be brave while stripping away the tools that make bravery survivable.
And yes, it matters who builds those tools.
If I am calling for help, I want American customer service — American voices, American-owned companies. Safety should not come with a foreign accent and a hold button. Trust is part of security.
This is why satellite phones, solar chargers, emergency kits, and hardened cases are no longer niche products. They are rational responses to an increasingly unstable political and physical environment. They are also meaningful gifts — because nothing says you care like giving someone a way to come home alive.
RELATED: A nation without trust is a nation on borrowed time
Photo by Jay L Clendenin/Getty Images
Which brings us to 2026.
Around President Trump, TPUSA events, or Republican members of Congress, the threat environment is asymmetric. The left has normalized political violence while denying it exists. Media figures excuse it. Politicians minimize it. Prosecutors decline to prosecute it. And women journalists who refuse to conform are expected to absorb the consequences quietly.
I won’t.
The question voters should ask heading into the midterms is not which party sounds kinder on cable news. It is which party acknowledges reality — and equips Americans, especially women, to survive it.
One side treats chaos as a political tool. The other treats safety as the foundation of freedom.
I know which one kept me connected when the fires closed in. I know which one refuses to pretend riots are “mostly peaceful.” And I know which one understands that strong borders, strong policing, resilient infrastructure, and personal preparedness are not luxuries in dangerous times.
The front line is expanding. It runs through our cities, our forests, our streets, and our inboxes. Women are already on it — whether policymakers realize it or not.
The only question left is whether America will choose leaders who take our safety seriously or continue sacrificing us to ideology.
Because the danger is real. And pretending otherwise is the most reckless policy of all.
School credit ‘recovery’ plans are apparently being misused for racial equity — and disadvantaging students even more
An educational program meant to help students make up for their mistakes in school is apparently being misused by racial equity proponents and leading to children receiving high grades for very little work.
Credit recovery is a practice in which students, usually of high-school age, are given a second chance to learn a subject and prove their proficiency in that subject outside of normal class time.
‘Credit recovery is the scandal hiding in plain sight in American education.’
Proponents say the practice can be very positive and effective when students fail because of circumstances out of their control, such as a death in the family or sudden financial loss and duress.
But in recent years, the program has seemingly been manipulated by diversity, equity, and inclusion advocates, resulting in even worse educational outcomes. Rather than giving students a second chance to prove themselves, the policy is being abused to unfairly allow failing students to pass on to the next grade level without actually completing learning objectives.
Some manage to complete the “recovery” work through make-up courses that can last a few hours or even a few minutes.
“The credit recovery classes have become, in many instances, get-out-of-jail-free cards for students who are chronically absent, truant, or are chronic disruptions in class,” wrote Mike DiMatteo, a former teacher, for the Freedom in Education organization.
“They’re receiving the same credit, but doing significantly less work — often as little as one-third to one-half of what a traditional course requires,” he continued. “The evidence supports these concerns: Critics have raised alarms when students complete a semester of work in a matter of weeks or even days. In one egregious example, the NCAA discovered students receiving grades and credits for a semester’s worth of work in a matter of days, sometimes hours, and in some cases just minutes.”
DiMatteo cited one anecdote of a student who received an A- and a year’s worth of credit in biology after only one four-hour recovery class split over two days.
“In Los Angeles, which reported that 16,000 students took at least one credit recovery course in 2016-2017, a student described raising his biology grade from an F to a C in one week,” he added.
One study from 2020 found that credit recovery policies were being used to help disadvantaged black students but that often they ended up hurting rather than helping the students.
RELATED: Mass. teachers union says standardized tests have allowed ‘white supremacy to flourish’
Robert Pondiscio, a teacher and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow, calls it an educational “scandal.”
“Credit recovery is the scandal hiding in plain sight in American education,” he wrote. “When districts say they’ve raised graduation rates to pre-COVID levels, ask what percentage of graduates finished with one or more classes completed with ‘credit recovery.'”
The policy is just one part of the puzzle explaining how public schools are seemingly failing children more and more, as standardized testing shows across the nation.
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Why kids can’t stop yelling ‘six seven’: This ‘innocent’ internet fad has roots so demonic, you’ll gasp
The youth are always cooking up some new saying, joke, or dance move that makes older generations scratch their heads and shrug. Most of the time, these trends are innocent and silly, but there’s one that’s wildly popular right now that has a much deeper meaning than most realize.
Earlier this year, a song titled “Doot Doot (6 7)” by Philadelphia rapper Skrilla went viral on social media, sparking a trend where kids randomly yell “six seven.” The phrase gained explosive traction through youth basketball culture — syncing with highlight reels of 6’7″ NBA star LaMelo Ball and viral courtside chants at games — before spreading widely among children.
While the phrase in the song is speculated to be a reference to 67th Street in Philly, the meaning behind the internet trend is ambiguous, with some interpreting it to mean “whatever” or “so-so.” Most agree, however, that it’s just a nonsensical, internet-fad slang phrase intended to be absurd and annoying.
Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of the spiritual warfare podcast “Strange Encounters,” however, says parents who dismiss this trend as the foolish whims of adolescents have the wool pulled over their eyes.
The phrase “six seven” in Skrilla’s song may be pitched as a reference to a street in Philadelphia to squash any skepticism surrounding the viral phrase that has our youth in a chokehold, but it’s really a dark Easter egg pointing to the sinister beliefs of the artist.
Rick plays a clip that’s gone viral of Pastor Nathan Bentley at LifePoint Church in San Tan Valley, Arizona, warning that Skrilla is “a self-confessed member” of the Church of Satan, who has boldly admitted in podcast interviews that he worships pagan gods — even sacrificing animals to them for career success in Hollywood.
“He talks about since he’s really dedicated himself to this, since he’s begun to put blood oaths into it, his career took off,” Bentley said from the pulpit.
And it’s true. Last year, on the “No Jumper” podcast with Adam Grandmaison, Skrilla admitted to sacrificing animals as part of his religion.
Bentley also pointed out the song’s strange combination of sex and drug themes and the iconic “Baby Shark” earworm composed for children. “Now, tell me, why would a rapper, who’s got this hardcore persona, who’s singing about things that are very mature and whatnot, throw in the middle of his song the ‘Baby Shark’ thing?” Bentley asked, positing that the artist’s explicit intention was to lure children.
Rick, who dove into the research himself, confirms everything Bentley warned of.
“It’s ugly, ugly stuff,” he sighs.
“Do you want your children doing some sort of ritual with six and seven that comes out of a pagan religion … and includes worship of pagan gods, animal blood sacrifices, omens, mysticism, [and] blood oaths?” Rick asks.
If the answer is no, he encourages squashing this trend in our homes.
“The demons that I think are clearly at the root of this six-seven thing — I think one of the things that they have banked on is that all of us, as parents and grandparents, will think it’s cute and will determine it is no big deal,” he says.
“And if you let it continue with your children and grandchildren, that’s certainly your decision. … But I would go find out everything I could possibly find out about ‘six seven.’ … And I pray that your children are not about to experience a strange encounter.”
To learn more, watch the full episode above.
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