The next fight over freedom will run through AI models



When it comes to artificial intelligence, the Trump administration has made its position clear: America will not choke innovation with red tape.

That instinct is understandable and, in many ways, correct. AI is moving fast, and heavy-handed regulation could do real damage. If the United States cripples its own companies, China will gladly take the advantage. And no one on the right wants blue-state politicians using AI rules to smuggle “woke” ideology into the next generation of powerful models.

The goal should be straightforward: Build an American AI future in which freedom is embedded from the start, and constitutional guardrails shape the systems that will increasingly shape us.

As White House AI adviser David Sacks recently put it, “We don’t like seeing blue states trying to insert their woke ideology in AI models, and we really want to try and stop that.”

Fair enough.

But what happens when resistance to bad regulation hardens into resistance to any regulation at all?

That question is now surfacing in Utah, where the White House is reportedly opposing a Republican-sponsored AI transparency bill. The fight may sound parochial, but it raises a much larger question: Do conservatives have the discipline to protect constitutional liberty in the AI age?

Utah isn’t California

The Utah proposal is not a European-style crackdown. It would not impose speech codes, mandate ideological compliance, or try to centrally plan the AI economy.

At its core, the bill focuses on transparency and accountability. It would require frontier AI companies to disclose serious risks, plan for safety in advance, report major problems, and protect whistleblowers who raise alarms.

That’s far from radical.

If the administration’s AI strategy is to stop progressive states from embedding political orthodoxy into algorithms, Utah’s bill does not belong in that category. The measure is about making sure the companies building extraordinarily powerful systems acknowledge the risks up front and take responsibility when things go wrong.

Treating that effort as if it were blue-state social engineering confuses two very different problems. There is a real difference between using AI regulation to enforce ideology and asking powerful firms to level with the public about systems that could reshape society.

The myth of an ‘unregulated’ AI market

Another uncomfortable truth lurks beneath this debate: AI is not operating in anything like a free-market vacuum.

The European Union has already enacted its sweeping AI Act. That regulatory regime will not stop at Europe’s borders. American companies that operate globally will feel its force, and American users will feel the downstream effects.

If the United States adopts a posture of total federal non-engagement, it will not preserve a neutral market. It will hand the regulatory initiative to Brussels.

That would be a serious mistake. Europe does not regulate with American constitutional principles in mind. It regulates through a bureaucratic worldview that prizes centralized control over freedom. If Washington refuses to establish clear guardrails rooted in our own constitutional tradition, foreign regulators and multinational firms will fill the void.

Power without constitutional guardrails

AI is quickly becoming part of the infrastructure of modern life. These systems increasingly shape how information flows, how public opinion forms, and how daily choices get nudged.

That is power.

We have already watched major corporations use private power to shape public life. Social-media companies moderated, suppressed, and curated speech in ways that tilted public debate. Large firms adopted ESG frameworks that embedded political priorities into lending, hiring, and investment. In both cases, powerful institutions pushed ideological outcomes without a vote being cast or a law being passed.

Nothing suggests AI will escape those pressures.

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The companies building frontier systems carry their own assumptions, incentives, and cultural biases. If those assumptions get baked into foundational models — and those models then get integrated into education, finance, media, hiring, and governance — ideological influence will move from the margins to the infrastructure of society.

Yes, clumsy central planning would hurt innovation and weaken America’s position against China. But the answer cannot be blind faith that market incentives alone will protect liberty. That asks a great deal of institutions that have already shown a willingness to steer political and cultural outcomes in their preferred direction.

The real challenge is making sure extraordinary technological power develops inside a framework that respects constitutional rights, individual liberty, and personal autonomy.

A pro-liberty AI framework

The Trump administration is right to resist ideological manipulation in AI models and to oppose sweeping regimes that would handicap American innovation while China races ahead.

But someone will shape the boundaries of this technology. The only real question is whether those boundaries reflect American constitutional principles or the preferences of foreign regulators and corporate boards.

Red states such as Utah should be treated as allies in that effort, not obstacles. They can serve as proving ground for approaches that protect transparency, due process, free expression, and individual autonomy without strangling innovation.

Artificial intelligence will shape the next century more than any single statute. Total non-engagement may sound pro-growth, but in practice it leaves the foundational rules of the AI era to someone else.

The goal should be straightforward: Build an American AI future in which freedom is embedded from the start, and constitutional guardrails shape the systems that will increasingly shape us.

Stopping the steal: Sen. Lee, Republicans demand Election Day integrity ahead of SCOTUS fight over 'rolling' ballot counts



The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on March 23 regarding whether federal Election Day law pre-empts a state law allowing election workers to count mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

A band of conservatives including Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) urge the high court in an amicus brief to be filed on Thursday to consider the inevitable harms that would follow permitting states to flout the Constitution and render Election Day little more than an "abstraction," Blaze News has exclusively learned.

'Congress chose one day for federal elections, and one day only.'

The case in question, Watson v. Republican National Committee, is the result of a years-long battle over a COVID-era Mississippi law passed by the Magnolia State's Republican trifecta that permits the counting of mail-in absentee ballots postmarked by the date of the election but received up to five business days after Election Day.

The RNC and the Mississippi GOP stressed at the outset that mail-in voting is "starkly polarized by party" and "the late-arriving mail-in ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats."

While it has narrowed since 2020, the partisan divide in mail-in voting remained substantial in the 2024 election — which helps explain why so many Democrat-aligned groups have defended the practice and the Mississippi law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against Mississippi in October 2024, stating that its late-ballot counting statute was pre-empted by federal law. Last year, however, the state asked SCOTUS to get involved and reinstate its post-Election Day grace period.

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Mississippi maintains that late counts are acceptable as "federal election-day statutes require only that the voters cast their ballots by election day" — that "an election requires ballot casting — not ballot receipt."

Sen. Lee, eight other GOP senators, and 15 congressional Republicans joined the American Center for Law and Justice in filing an amicus brief on Thursday in support of the legal challenge, underscoring that Mississippi's absentee ballot scheme threatens the electoral reliability and uniformity "foundational to democratic government."

Lee said in a statement to Blaze News, "Congress, exercising its constitutional authority to set the times, places, and manner of federal elections, designated one federal Election Day."

"States counting ballots received after Election Day clearly violate the certainty, finality, and trust Congress intended to establish by having nationwide elections take place on one set date," continued the senator.

The brief:

  • emphasizes that the purpose of the relevant federal Election Day statutes "was and is to prevent voter fraud and state manipulation of federal elections and to promote uniformity in the selection of federal officers";
  • rejects "the notion that strict construction of this arrangement violates principles of federalism"; and
  • seeks to show "how, absent strict construction of the Election Day Statutes, there is no limiting principle and thus the Constitution's Election Clause would be meaningless or unenforceable."

"A Constitution that so jealously rationed federal power chose, in this specific domain, to speak unequivocally: Congress would have the last word in the 'Times' of Elections for federal officers," says the brief. "Congress exercised that power here. It picked a day. One day."

The brief intimated that should the state law and the corresponding legal interpretation stand, the "very evils Congress enacted the Election Day statutes to prevent — rolling elections, strategic voting, and prolonged uncertainty" — would be likely become inevitable.

The brief suggests further that to treat Election Day as a "philosophical concept untethered to actual deadlines" would liberate states from much-needed guardrails and render them "free to continue the election well beyond the Congressional mandated election day."

"Congress chose one day for federal elections, and one day only," the brief says in closing. "The counting of late-arrived ballots [flouts] this choice by altering the pool of received votes after Election Day, in other words, by changing the results of an election that has already taken place."

Sen. Lee noted that he looks forward "to the Supreme Court recognizing that states are not permitted to conduct interminable rolling elections with late-arriving ballot surprises that invite fraud and undermine trust in American elections."

Should the high court affirm that federal law pre-empts the state law, 18 other states would likely be impacted.

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My court fight over DEI at Arizona State isn’t culture-war noise



“Who will rid us of this meddlesome philosopher?”

Arizona State University hopes the Arizona Supreme Court will. I’m confident that my case against required diversity, equity, and inclusion training raises issues far larger than one professor or one ideological program. Fundamental questions about employee rights, public accountability, and the rule of law hang in the balance.

If I succeed in showing that ASU bears legal responsibility — and that employees can hold it accountable — the implications reach far beyond one HR program.

Why would the largest state university in the country defend mandatory DEI training in court? Why would it spend thousands — likely tens of thousands — defending its “inclusive communities” training, a program that teaches employees about the alleged moral and social failures of “whiteness” and “heteronormativity”?

The answer defies common sense. Yet ASU presses forward. In doing so, it has turned what many dismiss as a culture-war skirmish into an employment-rights case with statewide consequences.

Most people hear “DEI” and instantly map the political lines. This case deserves a different reaction. Required ideological training should make any employee — left, right, or indifferent — pay attention.

First, the training relies on racial essentialism. It instructs ASU employees to view themselves and others primarily through skin color, then assigns moral weight and collective guilt on that basis.

Second, it attacks traditional Christian moral teaching, especially marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Either flaw should have pushed administrators to retire the program long before I raised formal objections.

A third issue should unite every employee, regardless of where they stand on DEI: ASU treated this as an employment matter. The university did not admit error, revise the program, and move on. It hired Perkins Coie to defend racial essentialism. Yes, Perkins Coie — the firm widely associated with the Hillary Clinton-era Steele dossier controversy. ASU employs a full team of in-house attorneys. Why pay a nationally prominent and politically charged firm to defend a training program many already viewed as controversial — and, I argue, unlawful?

ASU’s posture gets stranger. The university has since taken down the required training, yet it continues paying lawyers to defend it in court. When this ends, Arizona lawmakers and taxpayers will want a number: How much did ASU spend on legal fees, and which administrators approved the contracts?

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ASU’s legal strategy aims at dismissal. The university claims I lack standing. Put plainly, ASU argues that an employee cannot hold his public employer accountable for violating state law. At that point, the dispute stops being about DEI and becomes about every employee in Arizona. If ASU wins at the Arizona Supreme Court, employees across the state lose a crucial tool for legal accountability.

Professors to my political left may sneer at my critique of DEI. They should still worry about the precedent.

Imagine a scenario pulled from their nightmares: A future administration takes over ASU and imposes mandatory ideological training from the opposite end of the political spectrum — required ICE-themed training, or MAGA-themed training. If that training violated Arizona law, those same professors would demand the right to sue. ASU’s argument would bar them. This case concerns enforceable employee rights, not just contemporary politics.

ASU’s first bid to dismiss the case failed. A lower court rejected the university’s argument. ASU appealed, and the appellate court sided with the university. That posture put the case on a path to the Arizona Supreme Court.

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Two facts matter here. The Arizona Senate and the state representative who authored the law I claim ASU violated have filed an amicus brief supporting my position. Their message is simple: A public employee has standing to hold a public employer accountable for breaking the law. The statute prohibits the kind of racial blame and collective guilt that ASU’s training promoted. The principle should not require explanation: Don’t assign moral fault to entire groups based on skin color.

So why does ASU defend this?

Because ASU does not view this fight as one training module that can be swapped out and forgotten. Race-based blame sits near the center of the contemporary left’s approach to education. If I succeed in showing that ASU bears legal responsibility — and that employees can hold it accountable — the implications reach far beyond one HR program. ASU’s initiatives aimed at combatting “whiteness” would come under scrutiny. Its embedded social justice goals face legal challenge and public examination. Students could follow with suits over race blame in a “decolonized curriculum.”

“Who will rid us of this meddlesome philosopher?” ASU really hopes the Arizona Supreme Court will.

Every employee in Arizona should watch what happens next. The outcome will determine whether public institutions answer to the law — or whether employees must comply silently, no matter what ideology administrators impose from above.

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From 911 to broadband, criminals are unplugging America



Imagine calling 911 and no one answers. A hospital loses internet access mid-surgery and your child is the patient. You can’t work, access your bank, or contact your doctor — all because a few thieves ripped copper wiring from the ground to sell for scrap.

These aren’t distant hypotheticals. They’re happening across the country right now. In recent weeks alone, copper wire thefts darkened 5,500 streetlights in Tucson, shut down Denver’s A-Line train, and caused $1.25 million in losses in Bakersfield, California, where thieves stripped wiring from electric-vehicle charging stations.

Broadband is critical infrastructure — the digital lifeline of daily American life. Protecting it is not a corporate issue but a consumer one.

The problem isn’t slowing down. Two new reports reveal a stunning rise in theft and vandalism against America’s broadband and wireless networks. Between June 2024 and June 2025, more than 15,000 incidents disrupted service for over 9.5 million customers nationwide. In just the first half of 2025, incidents nearly doubled from the previous six months.

Hospitals, schools, 911 dispatch centers, even military bases have been hit — exposing a growing national vulnerability.

Not just a local nuisance

The cost of stolen wire is trivial compared with the damage it causes. Between June and December 2024, theft-related outages cost society between $38 million and $188 million in losses. California and Texas took the biggest hits — $29.3 million and $18.1 million — while smaller states like Kentucky suffered millions too. Every cut cable ripples outward, silencing entire communities.

These aren’t weekend thieves looking for beer money. They’re organized, brazen, and increasingly strategic. Some know exactly which copper or fiber-optic lines to hit. Others destroy fiber cables by mistake, assuming they contain metal. Either way, the result is the same: chaos, cost, and danger.

Consumers pay the price. Each attack disrupts 911 access, paralyzes small businesses, and stalls health care, banking, and remote work. Broadband expansion — especially in rural and underserved areas — slows to a crawl.

When vandalism becomes sabotage

Some of these attacks are so severe that investigators now treat them as potential acts of domestic terrorism. Charter Communications reports a 200% increase in felony attacks on its Missouri fiber network this year. In Van Nuys, California, vandals cut 13 fiber lines in one night, knocking out 911 dispatch, a military base, and hospitals for 30 hours. These were no petty crimes. They were coordinated strikes that endangered lives.

Businesses, taxpayers, and consumers have invested billions to build these networks. Letting criminals dismantle them for pocket change is unacceptable.

Yet under current federal law, destroying broadband infrastructure isn’t punished like attacks on pipelines, railways, or power grids. In many states, penalties are outdated or nonexistent — effectively giving vandals a free pass to cripple critical systems.

A bipartisan fix

Congress has begun to respond. Reps. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) and Marc Veasey (D-Texas) have introduced H.R. 2784, the bipartisan Stopping the Theft and Destruction of Broadband Act. The bill would amend federal law to explicitly criminalize the destruction of broadband infrastructure, giving law enforcement the tools needed to act.

Adding broadband systems to the list of protected critical assets under Title 18 of the U.S. Code would send a clear message: This isn’t scrap-metal scavenging — it’s sabotage, and it will be prosecuted as such.

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To defend consumers and our connected economy, lawmakers must:

  • strengthen penalties for theft or destruction of communications infrastructure, matching protections for other critical sectors;
  • crack down on black-market copper sales by holding scrap dealers accountable;
  • increase funding and coordination for law enforcement to investigate and prosecute network attacks; and
  • support industry-led security upgrades without adding regulatory burdens that slow innovation.

States like Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina have already moved to deter these crimes. Congress should follow their lead.

Defend what we built

Broadband is critical infrastructure — the digital lifeline of daily American life. Protecting it is not a corporate issue but a consumer one. Americans shouldn’t have to wonder whether their connection will work when they need it most.

We built the connected economy. Now we must defend it — before the vandals win.

The game was fixed long before the bets were legal



The integrity of sports is in trouble again, or so the headlines say. The FBI last week arrested more than 30 people in a wide-ranging gambling probe that ensnared Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier.

A former Cleveland Cavaliers player, Damon Jones, was also charged in two separate cases — one involving sports betting improprieties, the other tied to Billups’ alleged participation in an illegal poker ring linked to the mafia.

Cheating is illegal. Addiction is tragic. But gambling itself isn’t a sin against the republic.

Given the timing — amid public debate over legalized sports wagering since 2018 — the FBI’s sweep might look like vindication for critics of betting. It isn’t.

Millionaires behaving badly

When federal agents arrest millionaire athletes and coaches for gambling crimes, it raises an obvious question: Is legalized sports betting really to blame?

Rozier’s salary cap for the 2025-26 season is $26.6 million. His career earnings total more than $160 million. Billups made $4.7 million during the 2024-25 NBA season. Disgraced Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter, 25, had earned $2.7 million before his ban for sharing medical information to steer bets.

When people earn sums that most Americans can’t even imagine, they often invent new ways to ruin themselves. The average NBA salary in 1991 was $800,000; today it’s more than $8 million. As David Cone of Crain and Company observed, “Even if you’re just on a roster, you make more than doctors make. There’s no excuse.”

There really isn’t. This scandal is less about gambling and more about human nature — about greed, self-destruction, and the moral rot that wealth alone can’t fix. The Supreme Court’s decision to legalize small wagers didn’t make multimillionaires betray their sport for a few illegal dollars. They did that on their own.

The moral lesson that hasn’t changed

When infielder Fred McMullin went down in the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal, he earned $3,500 a year — roughly $67,000 in today’s money. Those players were underpaid and easily tempted. No one can say that about professional athletes or coaches today.

Legalized betting didn’t create this corruption, and FBI Director Kash Patel said as much during an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.

Critics overplay their hand

A video clip from ESPN’s “Get Up” made the rounds this week after producers hastily removed an on-screen ad for ESPN Bet during coverage of the scandal. The network’s discomfort spurred an online feeding frenzy from the right’s new morality police, who pounced on the moment as proof of hypocrisy.

Saagar Enjeti circled the ad and captioned it, “Spot the problem.” But the real problem isn’t the ad; it’s addiction and bad character. Billups apparently got hooked on poker. Rozier and Jones broke the law and got caught in an era when every transaction and text leaves a trail.

Enjeti calls this “uncontrolled.” Tell that to the players facing federal indictments. Gambling today is more visible, traceable, and regulated than ever before. The temptation hasn’t changed — the surveillance has.

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Americans were always betting

Critics say the explosion of legal sportsbooks has opened new avenues for corruption. Maybe. But it has also pulled a massive shadow economy into the light. Americans didn’t wait for the Supreme Court’s permission to wager; by 2015, they were already betting an estimated $150 billion a year on illegal offshore sites.

Yes, the sector’s growth has been explosive. And yes, it’s unsettling to see leagues, networks, and sportsbooks growing so intertwined. But that doesn’t make moral crusaders the saviors of integrity.

The real vice

Take Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who reportedly won $1.4 million playing blackjack in Las Vegas last year — less than 1% of his net worth. Critics didn’t call that a moral crisis.

The point is simple: People should be free to spend their discretionary income as they choose. Cheating is illegal. Addiction is tragic. But gambling itself isn’t a sin against the republic.

The latest pro sports scandal offers a moral lesson, but not the one the prohibitionists want to hear. Legalized betting didn’t corrupt sports — people did. And no law can outlaw greed.

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Trump’s crime plan can’t repeat his first-term mistake



President Trump is right: It’s a disgrace that violent criminals and gangs roam freely through the nation’s capital — even in neighborhoods housing top government officials. Federalizing control over D.C. law enforcement and deploying the National Guard makes sense. But the deeper rot isn’t a lack of police presence. It’s the collapse of deterrence through weak sentencing and a revolving door for repeat offenders, especially juveniles.

If Trump truly wants to make Washington safe — and follow El Salvador’s tough-on-crime model — he must break from the “criminal justice reform” movement he once embraced. Those same policies have turned D.C. into a carjacker’s paradise.

The bipartisan experiment with leniency has failed. The bipartisan demand for safety is loud and clear.

No cherry-picked statistics can hide the reality: Lawmakers, staffers, and high-ranking officials fear walking around parts of the city, including Capitol Hill, even during the day. The recent attack on DOGE official Edward Coristine by a pack of 10 juveniles attempting to steal a woman’s car says everything. In 2023, D.C.’s carjacking rate hit 142.8 per 100,000 people, up 565% since 2019. Juveniles committed 63% of those crimes, with guns involved in more than three-quarters of cases.

The crime wave wasn’t random. In 2018, the D.C. Council passed the Youth Rehabilitation Act Amendment, allowing most offenders under 25 to get reduced sentences and sealed records. Repeat armed carjackers face little risk of long-term prison time. Even FBI agents have been victims. Mayor Muriel Bowser admitted some juvenile carjackers have six or seven priors — and still walk free.

Other “reform” laws stacked the deck. The Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act allowed resentencing for crimes committed before age 18. The Second Look Amendment of 2020 expanded that leniency to criminals sentenced before the age of 25 — prime time for violent crime. These measures all but erased the deterrent effect of sentencing.

And this isn’t just a problem for left-wing dystopian cities and states. Republican lawmakers in red states have pushed softer juvenile laws, too. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had to veto several leniency bills. He remains one of the few willing to confront the bipartisan jailbreak agenda.

Over the past decade, leaders in both parties have embraced the “decarceration” canard. They’ve reduced sentences, ignored parole violations, and wiped criminal records — all in the name of shrinking prison populations.

The result? Predictable chaos.

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President Reagan’s Task Force on Victims of Crime saw it coming four decades ago: “Juveniles too often are not held accountable for their conduct, and the system perpetuates this lack of accountability.”

Trump himself backed the First Step Act, which released dangerous offenders early. One of them — Glynn Neal, with a long record of violent crime — walked free just one day before stabbing a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

Troops on the street can help. But this is more than a policing problem — it’s a policy problem. Trump’s second term should reject the leniency consensus and restore deterrence, starting with nullifying D.C.’s soft-on-crime laws.

If he wants to win the public’s trust on crime, he must trade “criminal justice reform” for criminal justice enforcement. The bipartisan experiment with leniency has failed. The bipartisan demand for safety is loud and clear.