For years, influencer Nara Smith has been celebrated online as the glamorous face of the “tradwife” movement, attracting millions of followers with videos showcasing homemade meals, family life, and domestic routines.

However, during a recent appearance on “Call Her Daddy,” Smith pushed back, insisting she never saw herself as a traditional homemaker.

And BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey isn’t buying it.

Stuckey points out that Smith went “on a podcast that is so opposed to the values” that she displays and trashed “the category” that she makes her living embodying.

“For her to be like, ‘No, I’m a boss babe,’ and ‘how dare you categorize me as this.’ This is the trend and the category that has made you what you are, Nara Smith,” Stuckey says. “And for you to go on this degrading sex podcast and trash that, I don’t like it.”

In a clip from her appearance on the podcast, Smith tells host Alex Cooper that she was used “as the poster child for the tradwife movement,” which she found “very bizarre.”

“I don’t prioritize being a homemaker. I’m a working mom,” she said.

“Do I love cooking because it’s my passion and because I kind of have to do it given my autoimmune? Absolutely. But that’s a passion of mine. It’s a hobby,” she continued. “It’s not something that I need to be doing.”

“Primary caregiver for my kids? No. My husband and I split it 50/50.”

“I don’t think a tradwife would be cooking in like Schiaparelli, you know, or a Moschino look straight off the runway. Like, I don’t think that’s what a tradewife would do,” she added.

“I just think that this is gaslighting,” Stuckey comments.

“I think that she knew very well exactly the trend that she was capitalizing on, and now that we have books like ‘Yesteryear’ saying that this is problematic, she’s like, ‘No, no, no, what? That was never me,’” she continues.

“Maybe you didn’t mean for it to be, or maybe you now don’t want it to be, but that is what you were doing, and that is what you were playing upon,” she adds.

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.

​Call her daddy, Influencer, Allie beth stuckey, Nara smith, Tradwife, Yesteryear, Alex cooper, Blazetv show 

A 50-foot bronze statue of the pagan god Prometheus is rising out of the Texas dirt near SpaceX’s Starbase, holding a torch over the launch site that is supposed to carry mankind toward the stars. The symbolism is not exactly subtle.

Prometheus, the Greek Titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity, has long represented man’s acquisition of knowledge and technological power. The French classical foundry Atelier Missor, which is behind the project, says the completed statue will stand at Starbase “holding high the torch of the West.” The statue is apparently not a SpaceX commission or some monument Elon Musk ordered for himself. Atelier Missor reportedly financed the project itself and is assembling it on private land near Starbase as a tribute to technological progress.

It is tempting to love the whole thing. After decades of public art that seems deliberately designed to be ugly, alienating, or incomprehensible, here are artists building an enormous, muscular figure from classical mythology. Atelier Missor is openly hostile to the abandonment of monumental Western art, and its founders have sculpted Hercules, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon while talking without embarrassment about beauty, heroism, civilization, and great men. Its website declares that “gigantic titanium statues” will “guide us to a beautiful future,” while the atelier describes itself as a classical foundry “on its way to building a new Rome.”

You are not the beginning of the world. You are an heir.

Good. I would rather live in a civilization that builds rockets and enormous bronze statues than one that tears its statues down and lectures its children about the shamefulness of their inheritance. Atelier Missor’s revolt against deliberately ugly public art is refreshing, and SpaceX is doing things that would have sounded like science fiction not very long ago.

But if Prometheus is going to hold the “torch of the West,” we ought to ask whether he is carrying the right torch. He represents an important strand of Western civilization, perhaps one of the dominant strands of the modern West, but he does not represent the whole thing.

There is also something unmistakably Randian about the spectacle, and not merely in the philosophical sense. The enormous idealized body, the heroic pose, the industrial backdrop, and the celebration of human power all recall the visual world associated with Ayn Rand’s novels, especially the iconic cover art created by illustrator Nick Gaetano for editions of “Atlas Shrugged,” “The Fountainhead,” and “Anthem.” Those images helped give Rand’s books a visual identity built around monumental human figures, architecture, industry, and individual striving. Put Prometheus beside a launch complex, and the resemblance is hard to miss.

Ayn Rand would have recognized the type

The resemblance gets stranger once you actually open the books.

The protagonist of Rand’s “Anthem,” Equality 7-2521, lives in a suffocating collectivist society where individual achievement has been suppressed. He secretly studies science, rediscovers electric light, defies the ruling authorities, escapes into the wilderness, discovers the word “I,” and chooses a new name for himself: Prometheus.

Prometheus is central to Rand’s treatment of the heroic individual. The Ayn Rand Institute’s discussion of “Anthem” describes the character’s discovery of the individual self as the foundation for his rejection of collectivism and embrace of egoism. He comes to regard his own reason, judgment, will, and happiness as authoritative rather than looking outside himself for sanction.

Now the visual resemblance takes on a philosophical dimension too. A colossal, idealized male figure stands beside rockets, holding mankind’s stolen fire aloft while a technological enterprise reaches beyond the Earth. It is not hard to see why this imagery feels so natural to a culture rediscovering the appeal of heroic individualism, industrial power, and men who refuse to be told that something cannot be done.

RELATED: The rockets are still blowing up. So why is Elon laughing on his SpaceX earnings call?

Joshua Lott/Washington Post/Getty Images

That does not make the comparison an insult. Rand understood something real about civilization that our managerial class has spent decades trying to suppress. Societies need exceptional people. Progress often depends on stubborn men and women who ignore the consensus, refuse to accept that something cannot be done, and build the thing anyway. Bureaucracies rarely invent the future, and committees are not known for producing cathedrals, transcontinental railroads, moon landings, or reusable rockets.

The problem comes when one virtue becomes an entire philosophy of civilization. The West is not reducible to heroic individual will, however badly we may need more of it.

The old stories were more suspicious of fire

There is something especially strange about turning Prometheus into an uncomplicated symbol of technological optimism, because the Greeks themselves did not tell his story that way.

Yes, Prometheus gives humanity fire. In “Prometheus Bound,” he also claims credit for teaching mankind numbers, writing, medicine, navigation, mining, and other useful arts. In the surviving text, fire becomes more than warmth. It becomes the foundation of civilization itself.

But then Prometheus gets chained to a rock, which is a fairly important part of the story and one that tends not to make the inspirational posters.

In Hesiod’s telling, Zeus’ response to the theft of fire includes Pandora and the suffering that follows her arrival among mankind. The Prometheus myth was never simply an ancient Greek version of “move fast and break things.” It wrestled with power, rebellion, knowledge, suffering, and the possibility that acquiring a new capability does not automatically give mankind the wisdom to use it.

The Greeks were hardly alone in associating technological power with rebellion and danger. Genesis contains a curious detail that is easy to pass over. Cain, after murdering Abel and going into exile, becomes a builder of cities. A few generations later, his descendants are credited with some of the basic technologies of civilization. Genesis 4 associates Jabal with livestock and tents, Jubal with musical instruments, and Tubal-cain with the forging of bronze and iron.

The biblical text does not say that metallurgy or music are evil. Scripture is much too interesting for such a simple lesson. But it does place the rapid development of civilization inside the line of Cain, alongside violence, pride, and Lamech’s boast that he has killed a man for wounding him.

The ancient Book of Enoch makes the connection darker still. There, rebellious heavenly beings descend to mankind and teach forbidden knowledge, including the working of metals and the manufacture of weapons. The resemblance to Prometheus is hard to miss. In both stories, beings who rebel against the heavenly order hand mankind powers he did not previously possess, and those powers do not arrive without consequences.

These traditions are not telling identical stories, but they are asking a remarkably similar question: What happens when man’s technical ability races ahead of his moral ability?

Later Western writers understood the problem perfectly well. Mary Shelley did not subtitle her novel “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” because Victor Frankenstein was an uncomplicated civilizational hero. He is brilliant enough to acquire a power humanity previously lacked, but not wise enough to understand what he is unleashing.

That seems like a fairly relevant warning for a civilization simultaneously developing artificial intelligence, editing genes, building autonomous weapons, attempting to settle other planets, and giving increasingly powerful machines control over more of ordinary life.

The question is not whether man should have fire. Obviously he should. The question is whether possession of the fire makes him wise enough to decide what ought to be burned.

The West is something we inherited

I have a particular bias here. Part of my work with Chapter House is devoted to putting old books back into the hands of families and students, which means I spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about phrases like “the Western canon” and “Western civilization.”

The more time I spend with those books, the less satisfying it becomes to define the West by any single principle. It is not merely individualism. It is not merely Christianity. It is not merely Greek reason, Roman law, technological progress, free markets, republican government, or the heroic individual. It is the long and often uncomfortable argument among all of them.

RELATED: Will America need a Caesar?

chudakov2/iStock/Getty Images

That is why recovering Western civilization cannot mean taking the modern cult of progress, stripping away the diversity consultants, and giving it bigger muscles. That is still modernity, only with much better aesthetics.

The reaction that produced this new fascination with classical statues, technological power, masculinity, conquest, great men, and civilizational vitality is understandable. Western societies spent decades teaching ambitious young men to be less ambitious, powerful nations to apologize for exercising power, artists to sneer at beauty, and institutions to regard excellence with suspicion. Naturally, a counterculture emerged that likes Roman statues, rockets, weightlifting, the conquest of Mars, and men who actually accomplish things.

There are much worse rebellions.

At its worst, however, the Promethean vision says that human will, liberated from artificial constraints and armed with sufficient technology, can conquer whatever stands in its way. The Randian variation substitutes the heroic individual for the managerial bureaucracy, which is often an enormous improvement, but it still leaves unanswered the most important question a civilization can ask: Toward what?

The civilization that produced SpaceX also produced Socrates. It produced Roman law, monasteries, universities, cathedrals, families, guilds, constitutional government, and a Christian moral order that insisted there were things even kings were not permitted to do. Western civilization honors the man who acts, but it also asks what he owes. It honors reason while recognizing limits, admires strength while asking strength to serve something beyond itself, and celebrates individual genius while reminding the genius that he inherited a world he did not create.

A civilization composed entirely of Howard Roarks would probably erect some spectacular buildings. I am less certain anyone would want to live there.

There is an irony here because Atelier Missor founder Missor Movahed’s own conversion to classical art contains exactly the humility missing from a purely Promethean worldview. As he has told the story, he was a nihilistic young man until an encounter with the monuments of Paris forced him to confront the achievements of generations before him. Standing beneath the Vendome Column, he felt as though Napoleon were asking him who he was to judge centuries and millennia of civilization.

That is a profoundly anti-Randian insight. You are not the beginning of the world. You are an heir.

Yet the monument now chosen to carry the “torch of the West” is the great mythological rebel who steals divine power and hands it to mankind. That tension is more interesting than either condemning the statue or worshipping it.

Keep the statue. Remember the warning.

Prometheus should stay at Starbase. In fact, it is hard to imagine a more appropriate place for him.

Rockets are controlled fire, and spaceflight is mankind refusing to accept one of the oldest boundaries nature imposed upon us. SpaceX’s entire reason for existence is bound up with looking at supposedly immovable technological constraints and asking why they cannot be moved. A gigantic Prometheus standing beside Starbase makes almost too much sense.

But perhaps he belongs there as something richer than a mascot.

Build the rockets. Cast the bronzes. Raise monuments again. Recover the confidence that allowed Western civilization to build ships, cities, cathedrals, laboratories, railroads, skyscrapers, and spacecraft. Reject the dreary managerial philosophy that mistakes timidity for wisdom and decline for virtue.

Just do not confuse the power to build with the wisdom to know what ought to be built. Human beings need ambition, courage, invention, and the occasional madman who refuses to take no for an answer, but they also need inheritance, duty, restraint, and a moral order capable of telling that madman when the answer really should be no.

Prometheus gave man fire. The West spent the next several thousand years arguing about what man should do with it.

The fire alone is not our civilization. That argument is.

​Western civilization, Tech 

For months now, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales has been on the ground in Texas exposing alleged H-1B visa fraud — knocking on doors of ghost offices, confronting company owners, and uncovering shell companies used to import foreign workers. Her reporting has helped spark state investigations, lawsuits from Attorney General Ken Paxton against dozens of suspect firms, and growing federal attention.

Investigative reporting like Sara’s takes time, resources, and a team willing to keep digging when the answers aren’t easy to find. By subscribing to BlazeTV+ with code SARA, you’re directly supporting independent journalism and helping give Sara and her team the resources to keep asking the questions that need to be asked.

And now, buttressed by your support, Sara’s back again with another explosive H-1B exposé. The Texas native sets her sights on Dallas resident Mohammed Abbas, who has allegedly been scamming people with the promise of sponsoring green cards and H-1B visas.

“My team received tips from multiple people, unrelated, who say that they were scammed by one person who promised to sell them sponsorship for either green cards or H-1B visas. These people were charged thousands of dollars for this. One of the victims even said he paid $60,000, but the sponsorship never came through,” says Sara.

“Oh, and here’s the thing,” she adds. “It’s illegal to take payment from people to sponsor them for visas.”

Once she identified Mohammed Abbas as the alleged scammer at the center of the tips, Sara set out to confront him.

“He owns a number of companies. … All of them sponsor a bunch of H-1B visas,” she explains, “and guess what: They’re all conveniently located in the very same suite at an office building in Dallas, which also you’re not allowed to do.”

When Sara failed to locate Abbas in his office suite, she attempted to track him down at home — but to no avail.

She was successful, however, at calling him on the phone, but he didn’t give up his cards easily. When Sara confronted him about allegedly selling green cards and H-1B visas, he assured her that any fraud allegations against him were “not true.” But when Sara inquired about where she could speak to him in person, he refused to give a straight answer and eventually hung up.

Sara wasn’t surprised by his denial. Abbas’ “marketing agency,” Molabs Media, she says, has several red flags. Not only does his company sponsor several H-1B visas for seemingly unrelated tech jobs, but it also “took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in PPP loans,” which she says were later forgiven.

While Sara never heard back from Abbas, she did get a call from his lawyer, who was unhappy that she was digging into his affairs. Their contentious conversation ended in the lawyer hanging up as well.

She then turned her sights on Abbas’ alleged partner, a woman she identifies as Rachel Samuel, who apparently served as a “recruiter.”

“She spent years posting want ads all over LinkedIn, and when they got a bite, she would reach out to these people to arrange payment. And in WhatsApp messages we received, she is often seen sending the wire information for where they needed to send the money, either to Mohammed’s bank account in Pakistan or to the bank account in the United States,” Sara explains, noting that “some of these victims never got their money back even when the cases were clearly rejected.”

Samuel, she says, also had her own company (located in the same office suite as Abbas’ companies) that sponsored H-1B visas. “Its right to do business was terminated in Texas, but despite that, she continued sponsoring visas,” she says, adding that she tried to locate Samuel at her personal residence but was unsuccessful.

Sara then went back to Abbas’ Dallas office suite, and this time, she could see people in the office, but despite her knocking, they refused to look at her or open the door.

While the day ended with Sara’s team being escorted out of the office by police, the quest to bust Abbas was far from over.

Sara later returned with Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito. To see how it ended, watch the episode above.

Sara’s investigation doesn’t end here, and neither does the work it takes to uncover stories like this. If you want to help make the next investigation possible, subscribe to BlazeTV+ with code SARA and directly support the independent journalism that keeps Sara and her team in the field, asking questions and demanding answers.

​Sara gonzales, H-1b visas, H-1b fraud, Anthony d’esposito, Texas, Blazetv show 

Flock cameras — the automated license plate readers that photograph passing vehicles to capture their license plates, make, model, color, and other details, turning them into searchable records — are popping up all over the country. Proponents argue that they help solve crime and keep Americans safe, but is that actually true?

According to Glenn Jacobs, mayor of Knox County, Tennessee, the answer is no. He argues that Flock cameras actually endanger Americans by putting them under constant surveillance, giving the government a complete record of every citizen’s movements.

On this episode of “Kibbe on Liberty,” Matt Kibbe sits down with Jacobs to discuss why he believes Flock cameras are a dire threat to privacy and the Fourth Amendment.

“The more I’ve researched [Flock cameras], the more I dislike them and consider them a very dire threat to our privacy and to the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment,” says Jacobs.

Kibbe, calling Flock cameras “Orwellian,” is concerned that such surveillance will turn America into China 2.0.

“How is this any different than kind of a Chinese surveillance system?” he asks.

Jacobs indicates that it’s not all that different. Flock cameras, he explains, are marketed as license plate readers, but “they do a lot more than that.”

“With the Flock system, it is literally harvesting data. Every car that goes by, it pulls their license plate, but it also uses AI to develop a vehicle footprint,” he says.

“So it’s your license plate, but also make, model, color, distinguishing features, roof racks, bumper stickers, all these different things that then go into a database and remain there for 30 days or more, depending on the policy of that particular agency. Then it can be searched through without a warrant for whatever,” he continues.

The lack of established parameters around Flock cameras also gives Jacobs serious pause.

“In Tennessee there’s no state rules about how this can be used, and there’s no federal guidelines either, so what’s happened is this technology has gone out there and it’s — until now, it’s kind of flown under the radar,” he says.

Then there’s public opinion to consider. As Americans find out more and more about Flock cameras, the opposition has only grown.

“These things are not popular at all, and the more people learn about them, the more they literally hate them,” says Jacobs.

For example, it’s coming out that Flock cameras can gather enough data to form “a pattern of your movements.”

Jacobs illustrates the danger of such power with a hypothetical.

“They could say, you know, Glenn goes to the gun range at least once a week, twice on Sundays. If this happened during COVID, you know, he goes to anti-COVID meetings and rallies. All of a sudden they have a profile on me,” he says.

“No, we do not have an expectation of privacy when we’re in public places and on public roads, but the Supreme Court has ruled that without a warrant, your movements can’t be tracked like that. They ruled that in Carpenter v. United States in 2018,” he continues, predicting that it’s a matter of time before the Supreme Court will “squash” Flock cameras.

“But in the meantime, it’s just important that people are aware that these are not your grandma’s license plate readers. These are something much much different,” he warns.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Matt Kibbe?

To enjoy more of Matt’s liberty-defending stance as he gets in the face of the fake news establishment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Ai technology, China, Flock cameras, Matt kibbe, Surveillance state, Surveillance technology, Blazetv show 

Artificial intelligence has become a national political issue and increasingly a local one. Communities across the country are fighting over the massive data centers needed to power the AI boom. Environmental groups warn about water consumption. Ratepayers worry about electricity bills. Workers fear the technology will undermine their livelihoods.

The backlash crosses ideological lines, and many of the concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But too often, the debate begins and ends with a terrifying number stripped of the context needed to understand it.

As AI advances, America will face difficult choices. The only way to make them intelligently is to start with the facts rather than with numbers selected for maximum panic.

There are genuine questions surrounding AI — privacy, surveillance, censorship, individual autonomy, and concentrated power among them. But three of the most common criticisms of AI and data centers are often overstated.

Claim 1: Data centers are consuming all our water

Stories about data-center water use often begin with numbers designed to shock. One project may use millions of gallons a day. Another state may be projected to consume billions of gallons annually. In a water-stressed community, those figures can absolutely matter.

But scale matters too. A 2026 analysis published by the Florida Water and Pollution Control Operators Association estimated that all U.S. data centers combined accounted for roughly 0.3% to 0.4% of total daily U.S. water withdrawals, based on 2021 figures.

Cooling methods also vary dramatically. Some facilities rely heavily on evaporative cooling. Closed-loop and air-cooled systems can use far less water. Location, water source, cooling design, and the condition of the surrounding system matter enormously.

Industrial comparisons help restore perspective. Data centers are hardly unique in consuming large volumes of water. U.S. golf courses use roughly 30 times as much water annually, while California almond production alone has been estimated at well over 100 times as much.

That does not mean a poorly located data center cannot strain a local supply. It means “millions of gallons” is not an argument by itself. The relevant question is whether a particular facility imposes a meaningful burden on a particular water system.

Claim 2: Data centers are consuming all our power

The electricity numbers are enormous too. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers consumed about 200 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, roughly 4.7% of total national electricity consumption.

From there, critics often assume that more data-center demand must translate directly into higher household bills. The evidence is less straightforward. Some research suggests that recent data-center growth has had only a limited effect on retail rates, while broader inflation and energy-policy choices may explain more of the increase consumers have seen.

That does not mean new data centers are costless to the grid. Poor rate design can shift infrastructure costs onto ordinary customers, and badly planned projects can strain local capacity. But the obvious answer to rising demand is not simply to suppress demand. It is to build more abundant, reliable power.

RELATED: AI is coming for your job, your voice … and your worldview

LPETTET/iStock/Getty Images

The AI boom may be creating exactly that incentive. Amazon recently acquired an 8,000-acre site in Texas for a data-center project that could include up to 7.65 gigawatts of on-site natural-gas generation. Microsoft, meanwhile, signed a deal tied to the restart of Three Mile Island to supply roughly 835 megawatts of nuclear power.

America spent decades making it harder to build reliable energy. If AI demand helps reverse that habit, that is not obviously a national disaster. It may be the pressure needed to start building again.

Claim 3: AI is going to displace all our jobs

Of the three claims, job displacement deserves the most caution. I have written before about the real possibility that AI could eliminate certain jobs, especially entry-level positions. Long-term forecasts are difficult because nobody knows how capable these systems will become. Still, history gives us reason to distrust the most apocalyptic predictions.

In 2016, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton argued that people should stop training to become radiologists because machines would soon outperform humans at reading medical images. A decade later, radiology is hardly disappearing. Research shows the number of active U.S. radiologists rose over the past decade, salaries increased, and workloads expanded along with the use of medical imaging.

That may be an example of “Jevons paradox”: When technology makes a resource or service cheaper and more efficient, total demand can rise. A recent medical paper applied the idea directly to AI and physicians.

The same possibility applies beyond medicine. If AI makes a programmer five times more productive, it is tempting to assume the economy will need one-fifth as many programmers. But economies are not static. If software becomes dramatically cheaper to produce, businesses that could never afford custom software may suddenly buy it. New applications become economical. Entirely new product categories can emerge.

None of that guarantees that every displaced worker will land comfortably in a new job, or that every profession will grow. Technological change creates winners and losers. The point is narrower: Productivity gains do not translate mechanically into equivalent job losses.

RELATED: The next fight over freedom will run through AI models

wildpixel/iStock/Getty Images

The concerns we should consider

None of this means AI is safe or harmless. The strongest concerns may simply be different from the ones dominating the headlines.

As AI becomes embedded throughout society, these systems could shape what information people see, how institutions make decisions, and how individuals interact with government and business. Massive data collection could strengthen surveillance. Ideological biases could be embedded in algorithms. Dependence on AI could weaken personal autonomy and concentrate decision-making power in governments and corporations.

Those questions deserve more attention than sensationalized claims about water, watts, and workers.

As AI advances, America will face difficult choices. The only way to make them intelligently is to start with the facts rather than with numbers selected for maximum panic.

The goal should be to preserve individual liberty, privacy, transparency, personal autonomy, and constitutional principles while allowing innovation to flourish. Exaggerating the easy concerns only makes the difficult ones harder to confront.

​Artificial intelligence, Data centers, Opinion & analysis, Technology, Innovation, Water, Electricity, Employment, Energy 

Things have gone from bad to much worse for a 19-year-old Florida male who allegedly put a gun to the head of a man delivering banana pudding of all things earlier this month.

According to an arrest warrant, a food delivery man on Aug. 6 was dropping off an order of banana pudding in the 20300 block of Northwest 34th Court in Miami Gardens when Jabari Thomas and another man — 20-year-old Demetrius Tromain Travis — tried to rob him, WTVJ-TV reported.

‘Threw his life away for a couple of bucks! Make it make sense … smh.’

Thomas got into the back seat of the victim’s car and at one point allegedly put a gun to the delivery man’s head, the station said, citing the warrant.

The suspects also were trying to access the delivery man’s CashApp when the victim pulled his own gun and opened fire, WTVJ reported, citing the warrant.

Travis was shot in the leg, chest, and face, the station said, adding that he was airlifted to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The delivery man stayed at the scene and wasn’t charged, WTVJ added.

Witnesses said a second suspect was seen fleeing the scene and running toward a white vehicle, the station said, adding that police issued a “Be On the Lookout” for the car.

The vehicle later was found in Miramar, police told WTVJ, and Thomas was taken into custody.

Thomas is facing charges for armed robbery — as well as second-degree felony murder, the station said.

RELATED: Teen thug points gun in face of Marine Corps veteran, demands his car keys. But punk definitely picked wrong victim.

Why the murder charge? WTVJ said Thomas is being blamed for Travis’ death because the killing happened during the alleged armed robbery.

Thomas appeared in court in Miami-Dade on Wednesday where he was ordered held without bond, the station said, adding that he could face life in prison if he’s convicted.

Commenters under WTVJ’s Facebook post about the incident were incredulous:

“Threw his life away for a couple of bucks!” one commenter exclaimed. “Make it make sense … smh.””Felony murder charges are the best,” another user quipped.”Chair,” another commenter bluntly stated.

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​Murder, 2nd amendment, Self-defense, Fatal shooting, Florida, Arrest, Armed robbery, Fighting back, Crime 

For 80 years, American science has operated under the Vannevar Bush model that was established in the wake of World War II. In his 1945 report, “Science, the Endless Frontier,” Bush argued that the government should fund “curiosity-driven basic research,” with panels of peer scientists choosing which projects deserved financial support.

His goal was not merely to subsidize scientists’ intellectual whims without regard for visible applications, but to secure American technological supremacy by developing fundamental knowledge before its practical uses were apparent.

In practice, however, Bush’s vision mutated into a bloated, risk-averse bureaucracy split between government and universities, stifling the very innovation it was designed to foster.

By funding researchers directly with stable, modest support, we can recreate the fertile conditions that historically produced revolutionary advances.

After eight decades, the weaknesses of Bush’s project-grant model are clear. As the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy points out in its new report, academic researchers spend up to half their time writing, formatting, and defending grant proposals rather than actually doing science. Moreover, because review panels naturally gravitate toward proven concepts, researchers are incentivized to propose incremental work that is guaranteed to succeed, often because they have already accomplished it.

The human cost of Bush’s model is staggering. The average age of a researcher receiving his first major independent grant from the National Institutes of Health has crept into the mid-40s — as the report notes, that is older than the average age of recent Nobel Prize winners when they made their breakthrough contributions.

We are forcing the brightest minds of academic science to spend their most creative decades acting as junior collaborators to insiders. The result is steady incremental progress, at least according to peers, but none of the breakthroughs that define true scientific revolutions.

Indeed, the OSTP is arguably much too kind to Vannevar Bush’s scheme: As the careful reader of the report may realize, the technological and scientific progress that powered the American century was produced almost entirely by alternative models based on missions set by the political leadership and their politically accountable deputies.

I propose a fundamental change in how we cultivate intellectual capital. We should largely zero out the current project-grant system for basic research and replace it with a radically simpler philosophy for supporting unguided curiosity: fund people, not projects.

Although the recent OSTP report accurately identifies the bureaucratic rot and systemic sclerosis within our current grant-making framework, we must extend its logic to its necessary conclusion. The report correctly asserts that federal science funding must be politically accountable; in a democracy, the public’s resources must be directed toward the public’s interests by those the people actually elect.

RELATED: Fauci is yesterday’s fight. Medical freedom is today’s.

Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg/Getty Images

To realize this ambition, Congress should circumvent this ossified establishment with a bold “metascience” pilot: 535 10-year research fellowships — one formally appointed by every member of the House and Senate. This gives lawmakers direct buy-in. It also dismantles the peer-review cartel, replacing the sterile consensus of risk-averse panels with the robust, structural accountability that the OSTP now recognizes as essential.

These fellowships would be awarded sequentially over a five-year rollout period, amounting to 107 new fellowships per year. Each selected fellow would receive a competitive, stable salary alongside modest lab support — say, capped at 100% of the salary — and would be placed with program help at an institution after winning, much the way Rhodes Scholarship winners are placed at an Oxford college.

This funding intentionally excludes substantial infrastructure, which would be funded through mission- or goal-based schemes.

The 10-year horizon of these fellowships is essential. Under the current three-year grant cycle, scientists must immediately begin worrying about their next funding application the moment their current one is approved. A decade of guaranteed support provides the freedom to take on the biggest and most fundamental problems and pursue unexpected insights.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which funds researchers with grants of $10 million over seven years, bets on people rather than projects. It has produced a higher proportion of innovative, high-impact research by a wider margin than the project-based approach. Similarly, the OSTP report notes that the long-running NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which funds students independently of their advisers and institutions, has produced over 40 Nobel laureates.

The selection mechanism must bypass the ossified academic science establishment. Recent Ph.D. graduates (or equivalent independent researchers) would submit their theses and publications, along with a brief vision statement, directly to a joint House-Senate committee. Committee staff, drawing freely on outside experts and advanced analytical tools, would rank the candidates. To guide this process, the committee would set rotating annual priorities.

The actual appointments would be assigned by a randomized lottery tied to congressional seats. When a member’s turn arises, he can either select a qualified applicant he believes in, or he can accept the top staff-recommended name from the staff-ranked list for that year.

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DNY59/Getty Images

While most members would likely defer to the staff ranking, letting them pick fellows if they want avoids inbreeding, gives politicians buy-in, and replicates the highly successful system of congressional nominations to military service academies. For the sake of scope and efficiency, this fellowship scheme centralizes the ranking of candidates at the committee level.

High-capital “big science” fields would continue to be funded directly by their institutional customers, such as mission agencies, the Department of Defense, or private industry. Small goal- or mission-oriented projects would be funded through a wide variety of models, along the many lines proposed in the OSTP report. The congressional fellowships are exclusively for the independent thinkers with the greatest apparent potential — the future Einsteins.

By funding researchers directly with stable, modest support, we can recreate the fertile conditions that historically produced revolutionary advances.

I estimate the cost of this pilot program during its rollout phase at roughly $35 to $40 million per year for the 107 new fellows, with modest administrative overhead. In the context of a federal research budget in the tens of billions, this is a tiny fraction of what we currently spend on the peers’ preferred marginal projects and their administration.

After five years, once all 535 fellowships are awarded, Congress can assess the program, as it should assess all research funding programs, before deciding whether to renew, modify, or expand it.

It is time to move beyond the bureaucratic legacy of the Bush model of peer review and project-based funding. The congressional fellowships would identify the most promising researchers of their generation and give them the freedom and time to think instead of writing grants. To advance Vannevar Bush’s endless frontier, we need simpler, more humane, and more exciting approaches to American innovation.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

​Research, Science grants, Vannevar bush, Ostp, Office and science and technology, Fellowships, Howard hughes medical institute, Nobel prize, Oxford, Rhodes scholars, Opinion & analysis 

Ohio law enforcement officials said that the three suspects in the alleged torture and murder of a 7-year-old boy had planned in advance to kidnap and kill him.

Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney Connie Pillich said in a media briefing Thursday that officials had text message evidence from the Signal encryption app about the alleged plot.

‘They failed miserably as parents. Instead, they committed atrocious acts, causing this child to suffer terribly.’

7-year-old William Evans-Ellis was found dead, bound and wrapped with duct tape in a closet at his mother’s apartment in Oakley that she shared with two other people, as previously reported by Blaze News.

Pillich revealed that the boy had been dead for a day before his body was found. She also said that the three suspects had taken a dog to a veterinarian the day before he was found, which raises suspicion that he was already dead when they left.

Police arrested 38-year-old Kaitlin Evans, the boy’s biological mother, as well as 23-year-old Nessa Keaney and 33-year-old Kirby Rankin. The three were indicted on more than a dozen charges that include aggravated murder, murder, kidnapping, and felonious assault.

Keany and Rankin have been described as women by the media, but police records indicate they are both biological males.

The coroner’s office found the child had died of blunt force trauma to the head and had numerous other injuries indicating prolonged and severe abuse.

“This child was failed by the adults who were supposed to protect him,” said Pillich. “The child was only 7 years old. He was vulnerable, he was dependent on the adults around him, and he deserved to be protected from harm. Instead, he endured horrific abuse and ultimately lost his life.”

Among the injuries listed were a broken bone, bruises too numerous to count, possible burn marks, and water torture.

“This is a horrific, monstrous, unfathomable act,” Pillich added. “They failed miserably as parents. Instead, they committed atrocious acts, causing this child to suffer terribly.”

The charges carry a possible sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

RELATED: Florida woman brutally beat man to death with a hammer — and left a note saying ‘PEDO Touches Children’

“This case has been heartbreaking and deeply disturbing from the beginning,” Pillich said. “Nothing can undo what happened to the child, but we can make sure his death is fully investigated and that those responsible face the consequences in court.”

The three suspects are each being held on a bond of $1.1 million. The attorneys for the two males have formally requested competency evaluations.

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​Child abuse, Child torture, Transgender, Murder, Ohio, Crime 

The modern administrative state has perfected the art of turning basic human relationships into a never-ending nightmare. In modern America, even the simplest family matters can become exercises in paperwork and official permission. But what happened to an Ohio mother crosses into truly disturbing territory.

When Andrea Mauk’s 18-year-old son, Damon, died suddenly, he was not a registered organ donor. Andrea had raised him as his primary custodial parent. His biological father was long estranged, played little role in his upbringing, and, according to Andrea, didn’t even appear in his hospital files.

Federal investigators concluded that at least 28 patients might not have been dead when the procurement process began.

Yet Andrea says that while she was briefly out of cellphone service, hospital and organ procurement organization staff turned to Damon’s biological father. Roughly 30 minutes after attempting to reach her, she says, they obtained a single phone “yes” from him authorizing the recovery of Damon’s eyes and tissue. Some of that tissue would ultimately make its way as far as Argentina.

Who decides?

For conservatives who still believe the family is the primary unit of society, the story raises disturbing questions about parental authority and consent. Under Ohio’s version of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, both parents of an adult child occupy the same level of priority for authorizing donation.

If one parent gives permission, the gift can proceed unless that parent or the procurement organization knows the other parent objects. The law requires officials to consider which relatives are “reasonably available,” but that determination depends partly on whether they can be contacted in time to act within existing medical constraints.

That leaves enormous weight resting on a deceptively simple question: How long is reasonable when a mother doesn’t even know someone is seeking permission to recover parts of her child’s body?

“In my son’s entire medical record, his father was never listed. He was not an emergency contact, HIPAA release, and we have no idea how he was even contacted,” Andrea explains.

Her parents showed up at the hospital after community members tipped them off, but nobody mentioned donation. Even when Andrea called the hospital directly, she says, staff kept her in the dark. As part of the process, Andrea says the OPO had Damon’s father complete a detailed medical history questionnaire about a son he barely knew. If accurate, that raises an obvious question about how reliable such a medical history could possibly have been.

Organ trade

Follow the money, and the picture becomes far more disturbing. Americans are accustomed to seeing organ donation as an act of pure altruism. But the system also has a powerful commercial dimension.

When someone dies without registering as an organ donor, the UAGA allows certain family members to authorize donation on the person’s behalf. At the same time, federal regulators measure OPOs partly by their donation and transplantation rates, creating an obvious institutional incentive to secure authorizations. OPO performance can ultimately determine whether an organization retains its certification and service area. Critics fear those incentives can turn a grieving family’s decision into another performance metric — all within a system where some OPO executives collect compensation exceeding half a million dollars a year.

The loophole lies in the world of “anatomical gifts” — the industry’s clinical term for donated skin, bone, ligaments, eyes, and other tissue. Federal law prohibits the outright sale of human tissue for transplantation, but permits organizations to charge for its recovery, processing, storage, transportation, and distribution. In other words, the tissue itself cannot legally carry a price tag, but nearly everything done to it after donation can. The result is a peculiar system in which the donor receives nothing, yet donated tissue can generate substantial revenue as it moves through nonprofit and commercial organizations.

“My son’s eyes were sold to an international hospital in Argentina and his skin and ligaments to a biologics research company,” Andrea notes. “This has become a multibillion-dollar industry.”

Legally, the industry distinguishes between selling human tissue and charging for the services required to recover, process, and distribute it. For a grieving mother who never authorized the donation in the first place, that distinction may understandably seem rather academic.

RELATED: RFK Jr. decertifies Kentucky organ harvesting outfit accused of ignoring signs of life in ‘donors’

L-R: BSIP/Universal Images Group/Getty Images; SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

‘Questionable consent’

Nor are concerns about the procurement system confined to Andrea’s case.

Last year, the Department of Health and Human Services examined 351 cases in which organ donation had been authorized but ultimately not completed. Federal investigators found concerning features in 103 of them, including what HHS described as “questionable consent practices.” Seventy-three patients showed neurological signs inconsistent with organ donation, and federal investigators concluded that at least 28 patients might not have been dead when the procurement process began. HHS ordered corrective measures and broader changes intended to strengthen safeguards throughout the system.

The concerns have persisted. In March, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued new guidance explicitly requiring that families be given appropriate time to make informed donation decisions without coercion. CMS said the action followed reports of OPOs rushing parts of the process and pressuring grieving families.

Andrea’s own search for answers eventually took her all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. The public records litigation concerned records surrounding Damon’s death and the handling of his personal property, including $1,500 in cash and an iPhone reportedly given to a man identifying himself as Damon’s father — not the legality of his father’s authorization of the donation. Andrea ultimately won a partial victory and $2,000 in statutory damages over improperly withheld or redacted records.

She says she also had to go through probate proceedings simply to obtain access to some of her son’s files. Two years and thousands of dollars later, Andrea says she is still trying to reconstruct exactly what happened to her son and why.

The traumatized and understandably furious mother says she has repeatedly called and emailed Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, but has received no substantive response in 18 months.

‘Damon’s Law’

But all is not lost. Andrea is now campaigning for a package of reforms she calls “Damon’s Law,” aimed at strengthening informed consent and family protections in the organ- and tissue-donation system. As I write, more than 16,000 citizens have signed a Change.org petition calling on Congress to enact those reforms. That pressure must grow until lawmakers have no option but to act.

Andrea’s proposed reforms demand basic transparency and accountability across the board. She wants states to require DMVs to tell drivers more clearly what organ and tissue donation actually entails, rather than allowing a one-time registration to remain in force indefinitely without requiring the donor to reaffirm it.

That’s not a hypothetical concern. Under Ohio law, once someone registers as a donor through a driver’s license, identification card, or vehicle registration, the authorization remains effective until affirmatively withdrawn. The donor doesn’t have to reaffirm the decision at renewal, and even expiration or cancellation of the license itself doesn’t invalidate the gift.

And even withdrawing that gift may not mean what an ordinary person assumes it means. Ohio law expressly distinguishes between revoking an anatomical gift and refusing to make one. A donor’s revocation “is not a refusal” and therefore does not necessarily prevent an authorized relative from approving a donation after death. By contrast, a formal, unrevoked refusal generally bars other people from making the gift.

The distinction may make sense to a lawyer; whether the average Ohioan understands it when checking — or unchecking — a box at the DMV is another question entirely.

Andrea also wants lawmakers to establish clearer rules for family authorization, so that an estranged biological parent cannot make such an irreversible decision without the parent who actually raised the deceased even being given a meaningful chance to object. Andrea Mauk wants a system she believes failed her family to be reformed.

Any decent, sane American should want families to know what they are consenting to — and to have a meaningful say before the decision becomes irreversible. Without serious legislative fixes, the system that failed Andrea and Damon will remain perfectly capable of doing the same thing to another family.

​Organ donation, Organ donor, Organ procurement organization, Parental authority, Body parts, Lifestyle, Health, Parental rights, Medicine, Make america healthy again 

Glenn Beck believes that President Trump has the power to reset the world order — but his success all depends on one critical thing.

“What do you think that that success hinges on? Like, what’s the if?” BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler asked him on “The Liz Wheeler Show.”

“God,” he replied tearfully.

Change can only happen, Glenn says, if people adopt the humble heart posture of “Your will, not mine.”

To illustrate his point, he shares a heartfelt story from his son’s childhood.

“My son was … probably 8 or 9, and he was afraid to do something, and I brought him into my office,” Glenn recounts, describing how the walls were filled with pictures of his personal heroes.

“I said, ‘Son, I know you’re afraid to do something, but why do I have all of these pictures of these people on my walls?’ And he said, ‘Because they were all heroes, and they did the hard things, and they weren’t afraid,”’ he continues.

Glenn then gently corrected his son: “I’ve read the diaries of these people. I’ve studied these people. … All of them were afraid. … They were risking everything they loved — every single one of them. But they did it anyway because there’s something bigger than them.”

That bigger something was “truth.”

“If we can humble ourselves enough to get to the point to where it’s more important for me to fight this now, to fight for the truth, so my children don’t have to do it, and I’ll take on the consequences … we save the world — not just the nation. We save the world,” says Glenn.

But this selfless mission requires something: “a deep abiding faith in God.”

And the world is depending on America to have that faith so that it can stand for truth.

“After talking to all of these leaders over in Europe, it’s clear to me, and they said it to me, ‘America is the only hope. Without America, we are all lost,’” Glenn tells Liz, reflecting on his recent trip to the U.K. where he attended a Tommy Robinson rally.

“We’re the only hope. Will we remember that? Be grateful for what we do have, and stand to protect it so our children have a chance at a more peaceful world tomorrow,” he says.

To hear more of Glenn’s powerful take, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​America, Donald trump, Glenn beck, God, Liz wheeler, Truth, Blazetv show