A humble, decades-old folate compound — used not to fight cancer but to ease the side effects of chemotherapy — has become the latest flashpoint in America’s health wars.

On September 10, the Trump administration announced that the FDA would move toward approving leucovorin for children with cerebral folate deficiency, a rare metabolic disorder linked to autism in some cases. Supporters hailed it as long-overdue recognition of promising small studies; critics called it another example of the MAHA agenda politicizing science.

While bureaucrats and scientists bicker, families with real skin in the game tirelessly run their own experiments and share their results, hoping the science will eventually catch up.

The debate since has been fierce, with professional groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics advising against the off-label use of leucovorin for autism, warning that the evidence remains preliminary — while prominent physicians call for larger, biomarker-guided trials to confirm what early studies suggest.

A parent’s love

All parties insist their motives are pure, but this latest skirmish is a reminder of how tangled those motives can be. What drives the people and institutions pushing medical science forward is often a sincere desire to help people, yes — mixed in with ambition, rivalry, financial interest, and the unspoken urge to be the one who’s right.

But there’s another force at work here, deeper and simpler, and it tends to override all the rest: a parent’s love for a child.

This is the same love that kept the parents of children with cystic fibrosis pushing to understand a condition doctors considered hopeless, or that led a Hollywood father to resurrect a forgotten epilepsy therapy to help his son. And now it’s the force animating hundreds of parents who believe a decades-old folate compound has literally given their autistic children a voice.

While bureaucrats and scientists bicker, families with real skin in the game tirelessly run their own experiments and share their results, hoping the science will eventually catch up.

Even before the FDA signaled approval of leucovorin for cerebral folate deficiency — a rare metabolic disorder with links to autism — parents have been sharing reports of progress with the drug on Reddit forums and in Facebook groups to share anecdotal reports of progress. A few families have also told their stories in clinic-produced or news-segment videos.

A treatment’s hope

Leucovorin, also called folinic acid, is a bioactive form of folate. It’s been used for decades to “rescue” patients from high-dose chemotherapy. In autism, it’s being repurposed to bypass what some researchers call a “folate transport blockade.”

Up to 70% of autistic children in certain studies test positive for folate receptor alpha autoantibodies — immune proteins that prevent folate from reaching the brain. The result: cerebral folate deficiency. High-dose folinic acid appears to restore that supply, sometimes with striking behavioral effects.

Dr. Richard Frye, a pediatric neurologist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, led one of the first controlled trials in 2016. His team found improved verbal communication in FRAA-positive children treated with leucovorin. Later case studies described language bursts, better eye contact, and calmer affect.

RELATED: Tylenol fights autism claims, slams proposed FDA warning label as ‘unsupported’ by science

Photo by ISSAM AHMED/AFP via Getty Images

From ‘no words’ to the Pledge of Allegiance

The parents themselves provide more affecting testimony. Carolyn Connor’s son Mason was 1 when she realized something was amiss: “He wasn’t talking. No language. No words.”

When their pediatrician downplayed this lag in development as typical in boys, she and her husband began doing their own research, which led them to Frye. Three days after starting leucovorin, Mason spoke his first words.

Now 6, he continues to take the medication, and continues to thrive.

Beth Ann Kersse’s daughter was diagnosed with autism at age 3. “In her vocabulary she had about three or four words,” Kersse said in a video uploaded by Washington, D.C.-based Potomac Psychiatry.

“But she didn’t call me ‘Mom.’ She kind of would point at me,” she added.

That’s when Kersse and her husband began exploring leucovorin. Two years later, Kersse describes her almost 5-year-old daughter’s transformation as “incredible.”

“The other day she stood up and put her hand over her heart, and she recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and we were just like, OK … I didn’t know we knew that. … She’s able to have a full conversation; she can tell us how she’s feeling.”

Late last month, Nebraska pediatrician Dr. Phil Boucher posted a case study detailing how a 3.5-year-old autistic girl responded to leucovin treatment, citing texts from her mother reporting that she was “blown away” by the changes she observed:

She is starting to consistently look at people when they call her name. … She’s becoming more interested in her little sister. … She also has started taking some of the baby dolls that we have and has been covering them up with a blanket, giving them a kiss, and saying, “Night night.”

As Boucher is careful to point out, anecdotal success stories like these don’t prove the drug works. But to those experiencing the improvement firsthand, they’re a promising sign that a simple, inexpensive vitamin derivative can do what years of therapy can’t.

And if this promise does indeed bear fruit, leucovorin treatment will be the latest of many homegrown revolutions in medical care spearheaded by determined mothers and fathers unwilling to wait for consensus.

​Autism, Leucovorin, Fda, Lifestyle, Mothers, Rfk jr, Tylenol, Medicine, Make america healthy again 

Jamie Dimon has been running JPMorgan Chase for nearly two decades. The business press still hails him as the man who steered the bank through the 2008 financial crisis.

I’m less impressed. It’s easy to look steady at the helm when you’re floating on a $29 trillion sea of taxpayer bailouts.

This is what half a century of bipartisan corruption produces: a crony capitalist system that privatizes profit, socializes loss, and lets the rest of us drown.

Yes, Dimon saw the 2008 crash coming and made some smart adjustments ahead of the collapse. Credit where it’s due — barely. But once the dust settled, JPMorgan rewarded itself handsomely for surviving the storm.

JP Morgan said yesterday that its earnings “fell short” of their potential last year — but it still felt able to hand its investment bankers a 22 per cent increase in their bonuses.

Kicking off what could be a stormy reporting season, America’s second-largest bank paid them $9.3bn, compared with $7.7bn in 2008. Total pay for its 222,315 employees came in at $26.9bn — 18 per cent from $22.7bn the year before — largely because of a sharp increase in bonuses paid throughout the bank. The announced sparked outrage among critics who described the figures as “obscene.”

“Obscene” doesn’t begin to cover it.

So when Dimon made headlines a couple of weeks ago with his “cockroaches” comment, I didn’t rush to celebrate another round of supposed insight.

“When you see one cockroach, there are probably more, and so everyone should be forewarned of this one,” Dimon told analysts, referring to the bankruptcies of subprime auto lender Tricolor and auto-parts maker First Brands.

Dimon’s metaphor was awkward enough — he mentioned two cockroaches while warning about seeing just one. But worse, he got caught by the same kind of subprime rot that tanked the global economy in 2008.

“Dimon said that JPMorgan is reviewing its controls after the Tricolor bankruptcy and said the $170 million loss is ‘not our finest moment.’”

No kidding. His “cockroach detector” still doesn’t work.

Now Dimon is back in the headlines again for another round of supposed “foresight.”

“JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned in an interview that the stock market could be in line for a significant correction within the next few years amid heightened uncertainty. Dimon told the BBC that there is an elevated risk of a stock market correction in the next six months to two years, saying, ‘I am far more worried about that than others.’”

Glad to meet you, Mr. Dimon. Some of us have been worried for decades.

RELATED: America’s debt denial has gone global

Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Back in 1989, when my high-school history teacher asked the class to name America’s biggest problem, I said “the federal debt.” Not just because debt is bad, but because Washington was pretending deficits didn’t matter — and voters let them.

Nearly 40 years later, nothing has changed. The numbers are bigger. The lies are the same. Ignore a problem long enough, and it grows until it devours you.

Our economy isn’t a Mr. Potato Head toy, where government spending sits neatly apart from everything else. It’s one big pile of money — and the federal government keeps shoveling from the productive side to the wasteful side.

Every dollar borrowed for political vanity projects is a dollar you can’t use to start a business or buy a home. As the federal machine consumes more and more of the pool, it’s not the elites who get crowded out. It’s everyone else.

Poor people’s home mortgages are down 46%. Rich people’s art-collection loans are up 30%.

This is what half a century of bipartisan corruption produces: a crony capitalist system that privatizes profit, socializes loss, and lets the rest of us drown.

Look at Walmart. The company pulls tens of billions of taxpayer dollars a year through the SNAP program — the same program many of its employees rely on to eat because Walmart won’t pay them enough to live.

Independent research confirms it: Thousands of Walmart workers depend on Medicaid and food stamps.

Big government lets big business pocket our tax money on both ends — profits in private, losses in public. Even their labor costs get offloaded to us.

So when politicians wail about a “government shutdown” disrupting SNAP payments, remember who they’re really worried about. It’s not the families at the grocery store. It’s the corporations cashing in.

RELATED: Trump admin blames Senate Democrats for SNAP debacle: ‘The well has run dry’

Photo by Mel Musto/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A system this warped can’t last. You can call America the greatest nation in history if you like, but greatness doesn’t square with more than $38 trillion in government debt and record levels of personal debt.

Household debt, credit-card debt, mortgage debt — all at historic highs. Nearly a quarter of Americans are buying food on layaway. And 42% have zero emergency savings.

Meanwhile, Washington keeps inflating Wall Street’s floaties.

Main Street drowns while Big Government keeps Big Business comfortably above the surface.

Jamie Dimon thinks he’s just spotted the first cockroach. But the infestation started long ago — right inside the marble halls of Washington, D.C.

And if no one finally fumigates the place, the rot will force-condemn the entire country.

​Opinion & analysis, Jamie dimon, Jpmorgan chase, Bailouts, 2008 banking crisis, Great recession, Cockroach infestation, Global economy, Wall street, Main street, Free markets, Capitalism, Crony capitalism, National debt, Mortgages, Credit card debt, Grocery prices, Inflation, Affordability crisis 

An Oklahoma teenager was facing 78 years in prison for 10 charges related to rape, but he was allowed to walk free after being granted youthful offender status.

Jesse Butler, 18, was instead sentenced to community service as well as counseling. He also will not have to register as a sex offender.

‘The laws are there, but what do you do when they don’t follow them? Does this sound like justice?’

Butler was charged with rape, attempted rape, sexual battery, forcible oral sodomy, and assault in relation to rapes committed against two fellow students that he was dating, according to court documents.

At the time of his arrest, he was 17 years old.

Police said they found video on his phone of him choking one of the victims. The other victim was reportedly choked unconscious and nearly died.

He initially pleaded not guilty but agreed to plead no contest in a deal with the district attorney that changed his status to a youthful offender.

Members of the Stillwater community who were shocked by the sentencing protested on Wednesday at the Payne County Courthouse.

“The justice system here in Stillwater has allowed a violent sex offender to walk free. Not only is he currently free and loose on the streets. He’s a virtual student at Stillwater Public Schools as a senior, and after he finishes having the slap on the wrist, he doesn’t even have to register as a sex offender,” Tori Grey said at the protest.

“I want him to get what he deserves. He needs to be prosecuted,” said Stillwater High School student Tristan Turner.

RELATED: Man who raped his 2 stepdaughters on prison visits was accidentally released twice, then murdered by another victim’s brother

Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey (R) said on News Nation’s “Banfield” that the development was “corrupt.”

“How in the world did this judge get to this?” he asked.

“The laws are there, but what do you do when they don’t follow them? Does this sound like justice?” he continued.

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​Jesse butler, Rape charges, Youthful offender status, Crime, Stillwater oklahoma 

America needs more farmers, ranchers, and private landholders — not more data centers and chatbots. Yet the federal government is now prioritizing artificial intelligence over agriculture, offering vast tracts of public land to Big Tech while family farms and ranches vanish and grocery bills soar.

Conservatives have long warned that excessive federal land ownership, especially in the West, threatens liberty and prosperity. The Trump administration shares that concern but has taken a wrong turn by fast-tracking AI infrastructure on government property.

If the nation needs a new Manhattan Project, it should be for food security, not AI slop.

Instead of devolving control to the states or private citizens, it’s empowering an industry that already consumes massive resources and delivers little tangible value to ordinary Americans. And this is on top of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s execrable plan to build 15-minute cities and “affordable housing.”

In July, President Trump signed an executive order titled Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure as part of its AI Action Plan. The order streamlines permits, grants financial incentives, and opens federal properties — from Superfund sites to military bases — to AI-related development. The Department of Energy quickly identified four initial sites: Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, Idaho National Laboratory, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Last month, the list expanded to include five Air Force bases — Arnold (Tennessee), Davis-Monthan (Arizona), Edwards (California), Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (New Jersey), and Robins (Georgia) — totaling over 3,000 acres for lease to private developers at fair market value.

Locating AI facilities on military property is preferable to disrupting residential or agricultural communities, but the favoritism shown to Big Tech raises an obvious question: Is this the best use of public land? And will anchoring these bubble companies on federal property make them “too big to fail,” just like the banks and mortgage lenders before the 2008 crash?

President Trump has acknowledged the shortage of affordable meat as a national crisis. If any industry deserves federal support, it’s America’s independent farmers and ranchers. Yet while Washington clears land for billion-dollar data centers, small producers are disappearing. In the past five years, the U.S. has lost roughly 141,000 family farms and 150,000 cattle operations. The national cattle herd is at its lowest level since 1951. Since 1982, America has lost more than half a million farms — nearly a quarter of its total.

Multiple pressures — rising input costs, droughts, and inflation — have crippled family farms that can’t compete with corporate conglomerates. But federal land policy also plays a role. The government’s stranglehold on Western lands limits grazing rights, water access, and expansion opportunities. If Washington suddenly wants to sell or lease public land, why not prioritize ranchers who need it for feed and forage?

The Conservation Reserve Program compounds the problem. The 2018 Farm Bill extension locked up to 30 million acres of land — five million in Wyoming and Montana alone — under the guise of conservation. Wealthy absentee owners exploit the program by briefly “farming” land to qualify it as cropland, then retiring it into CRP to collect taxpayer payments. More than half of CRP acreage is owned by non-farmers, some earning over $200 per acre while the land sits idle.

RELATED: AI isn’t feeding you

Photo by Brian Kaiser/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Those acres could support hundreds of cattle per section or produce millions of tons of hay. Instead, they create artificial shortages that drive up feed costs. During the post-COVID inflation spike, hay prices spiked 40%, hitting $250 per ton this year. Even now, inflated prices cost ranchers six figures a year in extra expenses in a business that operates on thin margins.

If the nation needs a new Manhattan Project, it should be for food security, not AI slop. Free up federal lands and idle CRP acreage for productive use. Help ranchers grow herds and lower food prices instead of subsidizing a speculative industry already bloated with venture capital and hype.

At present, every dollar of revenue at OpenAI costs roughly $7.77 to generate — a debt spiral that invites the next taxpayer bailout. By granting these firms privileged access to public land, the government risks creating another class of untouchable corporate wards, as it did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two decades ago.

AI won’t feed Americans. It won’t fix supply chains. It won’t lower grocery bills. Until these companies can put real food on real tables, federal land should serve the purpose God intended — to sustain the people who live and work upon it.

​Opinion & analysis, Big tech, Artificial intelligence, Ai slop, Federal land, Donald trump, Data centers, Farmland, Family farms, Ranchers, Cattle, Property rights, Trump administration, Ai action plan, Executive order, Arnold air force base, Davis-monthan air force base, Edwards air force base, Robins air force base, Idaho national laboratory, Oak ridge reservation, Paducah kentucky, Joint base mcguire-dix-lakehurst, Private developers, Conservation reserve program, Grocery prices, Inflation, Farm bill, Taxpayer money 

New NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s celebratory speech raised alarm bells not just for Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck and BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere, but shockingly for liberals like Van Jones of CNN as well.

“I think the Mamdani that we saw on the campaign trail, who was a lot more calm, who was a lot warmer, who was a lot more embracing, was not present in that speech,” Jones said on CNN.

“And I think that Mamdani is the one you need to hear from tonight. There are a lot of people trying to figure out, can I get on this train with him or not? Is he going to include me? Or is he going to be more of a class warrior even in office?” Jones continued.

“I think he missed a chance tonight to open up and bring more people into the tent. I think his tone was sharp. I think he was using the microphone in a way that he was almost yelling. … I felt like there’s a little bit of a character switch here, where the warm, open, embracing guy that’s close to working people was not on stage tonight, and there was some other voice on stage,” he added.

“Huh, it’s almost like a mask has come off,” Glenn comments, unsurprised, before playing clips of Mamdani’s mask-off speech.

“So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani yelled at the cheering crowd.

“We will hold bad landlords to account, because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of their tenants. We will put an end to the culture of corruption that has allowed billionaires like Trump to evade taxation and exploit tax breaks,” he continued.

“We will stand alongside unions and expand labor protections because we know, just as Donald Trump does, that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed. New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” he added.

“A very angry immigrant whose own mother says he doesn’t identify as an American,” Glenn comments, before playing more of Mamdani’s speech.

“As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour. They want the people to fight amongst ourselves so that we remain distracted from the work of remaking a long-broken system. We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us,” he continued, still yelling.

“And if we embrace this brave new course rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it’s the city that gave rise to him. If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power,” he added.

Glenn points out that capitalism is what allowed Trump to accumulate power, which means that Mamdani is saying they must dismantle capitalism.

“What he’s saying here is we have to now dismantle that system of capitalism because that’s what gave him power,” Glenn says.

“It’s going to be interesting to watch New York City over the next four years. Very, very interesting,” he adds.

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.

​Video, Video phone, Upload, Free, Camera phone, Sharing, Youtube.com, The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Zohran mamdani, Cnn, Van jones cnn, Socialism, Communism, Nyc new mayor, Nyc mayoral election 

For most of human history, people could only dream of having ready access to all the world’s knowledge. Books were highly prized rarities, literacy was uncommon, and news could take weeks or months to arrive. The idea that the sum of human experience could fit into a little box in everyone’s pocket once sounded utopian — a paradise of informed, free citizens.

Instead, when handed access to everything, most people went looking for someone to tell them what to think.

The information age isn’t a utopia or a nightmare — it’s a permanent revolution. And it’s only getting wilder from here.

Humans are social creatures, political animals, as Aristotle observed. We crave belonging more than truth. We need a story about our place in the social order, status to pursue, and a circle to protect. Our minds aren’t wired to handle thousands of relationships. Dunbar’s number — about 150 — marks the natural limit of our social world. Online, we can connect with millions, but our capacity to process that much humanity collapses. We stop seeing people as people.

The same is true of information. In theory, access to all knowledge should make us wiser. In practice, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. Facts alone don’t illuminate anything without context, and the flood is too vast for anyone to master.

So people specialize. Like workers on an assembly line, each focuses on one task and trusts others to handle the rest. Expertise becomes a kind of currency, and every expert becomes a gatekeeper, a choke point through which understanding must pass.

Manufacturing consent

Control over that flow of information is control over perception itself. From the birth of mass media, political actors understood this. In “Public Opinion” (1922), journalist Walter Lippmann argued that elites must guide the public toward the “right” decisions because ordinary citizens couldn’t process the flood of modern information. Governments — including our own — and corporations eagerly agreed, building propaganda systems to shape consent.

Mass communication democratized information but kept control in a few hands. Printing presses, radio networks, television studios, and movie production required massive capital. The means of communication were concentrated in a small elite that decided what counted as “truth.” These media barons and their favored experts built a system in which opinion was managed from the top down. The gatekeepers defined what the public got to see, hear, and believe.

For decades, political and media elites relied on this system to shape public sentiment. Academics, think-tank analysts, and professional commentators framed policy for the masses. People felt informed while repeating narratives crafted by others. The monopoly on expert opinion kept both left- and right-wing elites secure.

RELATED: Conservatives turn their fire on each other after Charlie Kirk’s assassination

Blaze Media Illustration

Then came the internet, which shattered the old paradigm and plunged our system into chaos. Anyone with a microphone and a laptop could broadcast to the world. Legacy media cut costs, and now its anchors sit in home offices on the same streaming platforms as the amateurs they used to mock. The line between credentialed gatekeeper and average guy with an opinion has all but disappeared.

The result? Panic.

Mutating information war

Liberal elites were horrified to see Donald Trump, JD Vance, and countless populists bypass their filters and speak directly to millions of people. Podcasts hosted by comedians or outsiders broke through censorship walls. Conservative leaders cheered — until their own control started slipping. As legacy conservative networks fractured and independent creators rose, the movement’s “approved experts” lost their monopoly too.

Now both sides are scrambling to rebuild the gates. The establishment insists that chaos proves we need “trustworthy experts.” But the expert class discredited itself, and the internet made gatekeeping technologically impossible. The average citizen may not always discern truth from falsehood, but the public no longer trust those who claim to decide it for them.

The information war isn’t ending. It’s mutating. Every collapse of authority spawns a new order, and every new order fights to become the next gatekeeper. Unless governments impose hard censorship, as Europe has begun to do, the chaos will continue. The information age isn’t a utopia or a nightmare — it’s a permanent revolution. And it’s only getting wilder from here.

​Opinion & analysis, Gatekeeping, Public opinion, Walter lippmann, Manufacturing consent, Dunbar’s number, Books, Information, Information warfare, Experts, Media bias, Control, Propaganda, Internet censorship