An English musician was kicked off a U.S. tour just hours after videos surfaced of her saying she supports Republicans.

Rapper M.I.A., whose real name Mathangi Arulpragasam, is of Sri Lankan descent but was born in London in 1975. Aside from having hit records, the artist has generated headlines in recent years for calling out the music industry as a bastion of Satanism that pushes degeneracy.

‘I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks.’

Now, the “Paper Planes” artist has found herself booted off the American tour of five-time platinum rapper Kid Cudi. M.I.A. was taken off the Rebel Ragers Tour this week — with more than two dozen stops remaining — after she was recorded making remarks that allegedly offended the headliner’s fans.

Cudi’s cowardice

“I’ve been canceled for many reasons. I never thought I would be canceled for being a brown Republican voter,” she told one audience. The rapper also said she “can’t do ‘Illegal,'” referring to one of her songs, but added, “though some of you could be in the audience.”

Apparent backlash from the remarks was enough to garner a response from Kid Cudi, whose real name is Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi.

Mescudi responded on his Instagram page on Monday, writing that he was kicking the 50-year-old Brit off his tour.

“TOUR UPDATE: M.I.A is no longer on this tour,” he wrote, per Variety. “I told my management to send a notice to her team before we started tour that I didn’t want anything offensive at my shows, cuz I already knew what time it was, and I was assured things were understood.”

RELATED: Fighting the darkness: M.I.A. on music, spirit, and breaking free from industry chains

– YouTube

The 42-year-old then claimed he had been “flooded with messages from fans” that were upset by M.I.A.’s on-stage remarks.

“This, to me, is very disappointing,” Cudi went on, “and I won’t have someone on my tour making offensive remarks that upsets my fanbase. Thank you for understanding. Rager.”

Devil music

M.I.A. did not mince words in her reply, saying that her commentary had been misconstrued and that Cudi was, in effect, doing Satan’s work.

“I wrote ‘illygal’ on the Maya LP a song from 2010. I started this intro to the song with the statement saying I’m illygal, and I said my team hasn’t gotten visas yet. Then played a song that had lyrics saying ‘Fu&% the law’, which I still believe, if the law is unjust f@%& it,” the rapper wrote on X.

She continued, “Do not gas light my words. That is the work of Satan.”

The Londoner added that she wrote her hit songs before Kid Cudi “thought immigrant rights were cool.”

“I’ve had [these] battles by myself without the help of millions of fans backing me. I don’t need this virtue signal era to all of a sudden erase an entire life I’ve led. Jesus was an immigrant and a rebel.”

RETURN: M.I.A. explains why artists like Cardi B are destroying the music industry: ‘What is cool is Satan’s playground’

Blushing bride

Cudi is no stranger to controversy, in part because of his close relationship with Kanye West. In 2020, he disavowed his friend’s association with Donald Trump.

“We just don’t talk about it. I totally disagree with it,” Cudi said.

In 2021, Cudi attempted to make a statement by wearing a wedding dress to a fashion awards show. The Cleveland native walked hand in hand on the red carpet with designer Eli Russell Linnetz, who told People he texted the artist ahead of the show, “Will you be my bride?”

Cudi has also been open about his battle with depression, even allegedly checking into rehab in 2016 over “suicidal urges.”

M.I.A. said on Monday that she believes Jesus has returned to “lead the world justly because there is injustice in this world.”

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​Align, American, Christianity, Faith, Hip hop, Kanye west, Musician, Rap, Republicans, Satan, Entertainment 

Lights! Camera! OnlyFans!

“My Name Is Earl” alum Jaime Pressly is the latest starlet to embrace the provocative web portal. The 48-year-old star follows in the footsteps of Shannon Elizabeth and Drea de Matteo, who also found a home on a site known for very adult material.

We don’t need Columbo to figure out who killed late-night TV. It was a homicide committed in plain sight.

“I’ve always believed in evolving with the times. … This is another way for me to connect directly with my audience, on my own terms, with creativity and intention. I’ve loved meeting fans at various Comic Cons, and the excitement of having those real face-to-face moments made me want to seek options like OnlyFans.”

Not sure it’s your face they’ll be coming to see, Jaime.

To be fair, not all OnlyFans content is adult in nature, but aligning yourself with the porn-centric platform does generate certain expectations — and a lot of buzz.

And sometimes the buzz is enough. Elizabeth reportedly made $1 million in her first week — and if disgruntled Reddit users are to be believed, she did it without posting anything racier than bikini pics.

The bigger picture? Starlets often struggle in youth-obsessed Hollywood to find steady work, forcing more … creative options after the age of 40.

For de Matteo, her unwillingness to follow draconian pandemic protocols helped push her out of Hollywood Inc. Progressive Hollywood, with all its MeToo starlets, didn’t have her back.

Hamill’s dark side

The force is wrong with this one.

Actor Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill shared an image of a dead President Trump on, where else, Bluesky, with the phrase “If Only” attached. The “Star Wars” icon loathes the president, but this seemed an escalation that most — but not all — celebrities wouldn’t go near.

The post got plenty of attention, including some from major entertainment news sites. They usually hide stories that paint liberal stars in a bad light, but this was too ugly to ignore.

That spurred Hamill to backtrack, somewhat, but show little actual remorse.

“Accurate Edit for Clarity: ‘He should live long enough to… be held accountable for his… crimes.’ Actually, I was wishing him the opposite of dead, but apologize if you found the image inappropriate. 💙-mh”

Some “apologize” (sic). And sick …

No-kill Bill

Here’s betting Bill Maher isn’t eager to chat up Hamill.

The “Club Random” podcaster is liberal, like the erstwhile Skywalker, but he draws the line at wishing his political opponents dead.

He’s old-school like that.

In fact, Maher admonished some of his fellow Democrats for joining Team Hamill.

“If you’re one of these people — and there’s many in this country — who watched that and was disappointed the president wasn’t killed … you’re not a good person. Or a smart person.”

But, chances are, the ones who felt that way were watching Jimmy Kimmel that night …

RELATED: ‘Crawl’: Killer gators make for gruesome guests in overlooked creature feature

Paramount Pictures

Kombat pay

“Mortal Kombat II” is barely a movie. The sequel to the 2021 reboot hits theaters May 8, and it’s earning begrudgingly positive reviews — currently at about 69 percent “fresh” at Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s not shabby for a film with all the depth of a late spring puddle. Call it Extreme Guilty Pleasure Cinema.

Producer Todd Garner wasn’t satisfied, apparently, with that reasonably positive rating.

“Some of these reviews are cracking me up. It’s clear they have never played the game and have no idea what the fans want or ANY of the rules/canon of Mortal Kombat.”

He may be partially right. It is a film meant for gamers, first and foremost. And it’s still a movie-movie, and many producers would be tickled to get reviews above the 60% mark.

At least Garner didn’t single out a particular critic and cry, “Finish him!”

Murder, they wrote

Remember how Lieutenant Columbo would sniff out the killer, often by attempting to leave the room before returning with a final question?

“Just one more thing,” he’d croak, and the villain would get very nervous. Viewers knew the gooses were about to get cooked.

We don’t need Columbo to figure out who killed late-night TV. Endless one-note monologues and ostracizing half of the country proved the weapons of choice. It was a homicide committed in plain sight.

Even David Letterman, the old guard who put the funny first, thinks the format may go the way of the 8-track tape in a year.

The murder suspects are planning to gather later this month to honor the host set to depart first.

Stephen Colbert’s farewell tour as “The Late Show” host will bring Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and John Oliver on for one the CBS show’s final episodes. The quintet, comically dubbed the Strike Force Five for their brief pandemic podcast, will help wish Colbert a fond farewell.

And perhaps they’ll take turns telling Trump jokes for old times’ sake. Chances are, this will be a recurring featuring until it’s finally “and then there were none” time.

​Donald trump, Michael, Entertainment, Culture, Movies, Daily show, The view, Toto recall, Mark hamill, Star wars, Only fans 

As the divide between the right and the left continues to deepen, BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre explains that Americans are writing off what they don’t understand about each other as a “form of mental illness.”

“This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it’s hard for us to comprehend their actions, and there is certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor,” MacIntyre says. “But today people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.”

“Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people, the mutilation of children to turn boys into girls — these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain,” he continues. “Of course, that’s not the only explanation.”

“The other option is that some people have a very different set of values that drive them to pursue goals that we view as evil. The average American would like to avoid this truth, because it comes with an unnerving conclusion: Your political enemies aren’t crazy; they are sane people who hate you and want to hurt you,” he adds.

MacIntyre explains that believing that a radical leftist who wants to mutilate children is mentally ill “is far easier than addressing the alternative.”

“The idea that half of America is crazy because they don’t share your political views is obviously absurd,” he says. “The truth is much darker. We’re at least two societies, with mutually exclusive understandings of morality and purpose, trapped in one country.”

“The theoretical neutrality of the liberal system allowed this drift to occur under the surface, but the differences have become too extreme to ignore. Both sides have their own internally consistent understanding of the world, but they’re entirely incompatible with each other,” he explains.

“One side is going to win and one side is going to lose, and the winning side is going to impose its way of life on the other. There is no way to avoid this reality,” he continues. “And obscuring the truth with comforting fictions about mental illness only ensures that you’ll be on the side that loses.”

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abortion, Americans, Auron macintyre, Blazetv, Christians, Evil, Hatred, Mental illness, Neutrality, Political enemies, Radical leftist, Serial killer, The auron macintyre show, White people, Morality, Leftism, The blaze, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals 

Politicians are progressively pushing for harsher age verification legislation. Some lawmakers think certain apps should require an ID to sign in, while others want to limit the reach of AI chatbots under the guise of child protection.

Now, a new bill proposed by Democrat Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) would require operating system developers — including Apple, Google, and Microsoft — to verify the ages of their users when setting up a new device.

The bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection.

This is the Parents Decide Act

The new bill, unassumingly named the Parents Decide Act, includes several key requirements that all platform holders would have to recognize if the bill passes. These include:

Strict guidelines that state OS platform holders must verify the age of every user when they set up a new device. The bill is clear that it’s not enough to have users self-report their date of birth and age; hard-proof verification is required.Custom content controls that let parents set age-appropriate parameters on their children’s devices. This includes the ability to limit access to social media, apps, and even AI platforms.A pathway to ensure that all apps installed on a device are tuned to adhere to the custom controls in the previous point. No workarounds or exceptions will be allowed.A trusted multi-platform standard that bans children from accessing what the government labels “harmful” or “explicit” content on any device made by any OEM on any software platform. On the surface, this can include adult content and conversations with AI chatbots, although “harmful” or “hateful” speech has taken on different meanings to the left over the years, usually to describe speech that doesn’t align with their views.

To be clear, the Parents Decide Act would require these protections to be built directly into the software of every device — it would become a core feature within iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. There are questions as to how the government would enforce the bill on open-source Linux, but it will certainly try.

The quiet part of the bill

The piece that’s missing from the bill announcement is how platform holders will verify the ages of their users. At this time, a government-issued ID is the only valid method on the table. Essentially, the government is asking Big Tech platform holders to create a system that stores and verifies the digital IDs of their users — a database filled with users’ names, dates of birth, heights, weights, and, of course, a recent photo.

Glenn Beck has spoken enough about the dangers of digital IDs to know this is a very bad idea.

RELATED: Glenn Beck sounds the alarm on Apple’s digital ID: ‘Control of absolutely everything’

Blaze Media

The irony is palpable

This bill proposal couldn’t come at a better time as leftist politicians argue the faux injustice of the SAVE America Act, which would require American citizens to show a valid ID at the voting booth to participate in our elections.

Of course, there’s a reason Rep. Gottheimer doesn’t outright admit that a valid ID is necessary to make the Parents Decide Act work. That would expose the absolute hypocrisy of the left that wants to leave voting rights open to noncitizens but limit the access of digital technology and the internet to everyday Americans unwilling to give their ID to Big Tech or the government.

What’s in a name?

Democrats love to misname bills — like the Inflation Reduction Act, which weaponized the IRS against the American people.

Keeping the tradition alive, the “Parents Decide Act” is less about parental control and more about government control. It requires all users — namely adults (since children rarely have valid forms of identification) — to submit their photo IDs to verify their ages. Parents don’t get to opt their children out of this process, so that’s clearly not the decision parents get to make as part of the bill. Parents don’t get to protect their kids from government overreach, so that’s not a decision either.

In fact, if the bill did what its title suggests, it wouldn’t exist at all! Instead, parents would have the freedom to decide whether their children have access to an internet-connected device on their own terms. Right?

While the Parents Decide Act may be disguised as a benevolent way to protect children, the bill is actually a Trojan horse for mass data collection, digital ID databases, and a power grab to control young users’ access to information. Why? I’m going out on a limb, but since Democrats are finally losing control over the education system, they have to find new ways to keep children from learning things they don’t want them to know, and restricting internet access is one of the best ways to do it.

Bad problem, worse ‘solution’

If there’s any grace worth throwing at the Parents Decide Act, it’s this: It’s true that many places online aren’t meant for children (they’re not meant for adults either, if we’re being honest). But legislation isn’t the answer. Parents should have complete control over their children’s access to devices and the internet from inside their home. Not the government. Adult users also shouldn’t be forced to provide an ID to use their devices and the internet.

This is complete, authoritarian-level control over device and internet access that affects all Americans.

Rep. Gottheimer isn’t the only Democrat fighting for age verification either. California is already initiating its own state-level bill titled Digital Age Assurance Act. However, we expect these kinds of restrictions in a left-wing hub. If passed, the federal Parents Decide Act would make age verification mandatory for the entire country, and once it’s signed into law, none of us are exempt. You will comply, or you will lose access to your phone, your laptop, your tablet, and the internet.

​Tech, Big tech, Parents decide act 

While many Americans claim that the founding fathers were not deeply shaped by Christianity but rather secular, president and CEO of the Museum of the Bible Dr. Carlos Campo and BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey beg to differ.

“Is that true what we hear — that all of the founders were just deists, that they didn’t really have any faith imbued in our founding documents?” Stuckey asks Campo, whose museum is currently showing an exhibit on the founding of America and the role of the Bible.

“Can we say that every founder was an orthodox Christian? No. And we wouldn’t say that. See, we have a mandate, unlike other places, that we have to tell the story fully and faithfully,” Campo tells Stuckey.

“But if we could only exhume the bodies of these men and talk to them again, I don’t think we can even fully understand how the Bible was truly part of the air that they breathed,” he explains.

“Even as we look at the different versions of the Declaration … this was a text they worked on together, and that they added the word ‘Creator’ with a capital ‘C’ — that in and of itself tells us, perhaps in many ways, all we need to know,” he adds.

“That’s such a good point that it was so ubiquitous in their culture … that they just didn’t realize how special and unique it was,” Stuckey responds.

The principles of the gospel, she explains, “filled them with this really radical and revolutionary idea that your rights don’t come from a monarch.”

“They come from you being a human being. … But of course, I think through the Holy Spirit they did put some of those principles into our founding, which is amazing,” she continues.

Stuckey even pulls out a quote from John Adams, who once said, “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity, as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

“So I don’t think anyone who studies the founding of our country could say, ‘Well, yeah, they were just kind of agnostic. They had a relativistic moral worldview,’” she says. “That’s clearly not true.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Americas founding, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Christianity, Creator, Declaration, Founding fathers, Gospel, Holy spirit, John adams, Moral worldview, Museum of the bible, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relativistic, Secular, The blaze, Thomas jefferson 

Recently, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett revealed that the White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would regulate and evaluate AI models similar to how the Food and Drug Administration evaluates new food and drugs.

This is a good idea that deserves serious consideration. Here is why.

Frontier models are automating complex, multistep cyberattacks at ‘machine speed.’

There are several major concerns with AI cybersecurity that haven’t been fully addressed.

There is the use of AI to attack a cyber asset (adversarial), and there are attacks on AI tools like chatbots and voicebots that AI can accomplish with amazing speed and cleverness (AI security).

There is the use of AI in phishing attacks, and there are deepfakes. All of these pose grave threats to American businesses and the federal government, with the potential to affect financial information, privacy, personal data, trade secrets, and national security.

The CEO of CrowdStrike recently sounded the alarm on this issue.

We’re seeing an explosion of new threat actors that may not have all the superior skills to figure this out, but they can use generative AI to advance their attacks very quickly and to make them scalable. There’s going to be a greater proliferation of adversaries than we’ve ever seen. And that is just going to grow, probably exponentially.

A recent report by the National Counterintelligence and Security Center highlighted findings from the AI Security Institute showing that frontier models are automating complex, multistep cyberattacks at “machine speed.”

With some models already matching the pace of human experts at a fraction of the cost, and other models and systems completely outpacing humans, the threat is accelerating due to both the expanding expertise of humans and the expanding capabilities of the AI models, as recently announced by Anthropic about its latest models’ ability to find vulnerabilities in “well-tested” systems.

Another report by ReliaQuest described how a new malware strain called “DeepLoad” can use AI-enabled obfuscation to bypass traditional static defenses in enterprise environments.

These kinds of reports are useful, but it is difficult for us mere humans to keep up with the new daily threats. We need a machine-readable database, much like the computer virus databases that have existed for decades.

The great variety of threats that are invented on a daily basis is extremely concerning. While the Open Worldwide Application Security Project AI Top 10 list is a useful start, it is far from what today’s systems need to address emerging threats.

Our federal government must prioritize a framework solution immediately.

The technology industry has databases of cyber threats, but we also need to share information on how to mitigate them. This can be deeply technical and require specialized knowledge, not just of large language models but of other complicated technologies like audio signal processing.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a non-regulatory federal agency within the Department of Commerce, has been a leader in providing recommendations for responsible AI; however, it needs greater enforcement authority.

RELATED: The terrifying scale of the data center land-grab

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Governments are usually slow to update anything, as they should be. Legislative branches are even slower. Congress should not be writing detailed technical metrics and methodologies for cybersecurity.

A solution is that Congress should empower a regulatory agency to monitor and enforce AI safety standards. A somewhat similar example is the FDA, which protects public health by ensuring the safety and security of food, drugs, biological products, and medical devices. It regulates products by reviewing research and conducting inspections.

What Congress should do is address the need for an AI cybersecurity framework by statutorily tasking NIST with creating and managing a centralized AI cybersecurity threat database to which all software vendors can (and should) submit new threats.

While NIST would be a great place to centralize communications of the resources, it is the private sector that will provide most of the intelligence around what the threats are and how to mitigate them.

After all, NIST is already mandated to provide similar resources as part of the Secure Software Development Framework under federal cybersecurity policy and Executive Order 14028, and through the National Vulnerability Database.

We need a framework that not only keeps up with attacks, but is ahead of the antagonists in the AI war, no matter who they are or what their intentions may be. A NIST-led national framework would ensure that Americans, businesses, and the federal government can be protected from the lightning-fast, ever-advancing cybersecurity threats.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Ai models, Ai regulation, Ai security, Deepfakes, Executive order, Generative ai, National security, Large language models, Privacy, Opinion & analysis