Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley is not sympathetic to the surveillance state.

With evidence that would frighten any American, Hawley made an announcement on Wednesday that will affect thousands of U.S. neighborhoods.

‘The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how.’

As license plate reading cameras spy from seemingly every corner of the United States, with some even hiding in traffic cones and barrels, Senator Hawley stated on Wednesday that Americans’ privacy rights do not stop when they get in their cars.

“Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote on X.

With that, Hawley said he is opening an investigation into Flock, the manufacturer behind over an alleged 120,000 cameras across 49 states, a number consistent with license plate camera tracker DeFlock.

“Americans deserve answers,” Hawley added.

In letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, Hawley demanded answers surrounding Flock’s safeguards for Americans’ data.

Noting that the company conducts “more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month,” Hawley said that “the overwhelming majority of the Americans captured in those records did nothing wrong.”

Then, Hawley listed some recent horrifying examples of abuse using Flock systems.

RELATED: This state’s citizens now oppose Flock cameras — despite agreeing they help police

Just days before Hawley sent the letter, a Missouri man was found to have engaged in “egregious misuse” of Flock’s “data system” by using it for personal reasons.

Two weeks prior, prosecutors charged a police officer in Milwaukee for allegedly searching the Flock system for his girlfriend’s license plate 124 times, along with her former boyfriend’s plate 55 times. He reportedly entered “investigation” as his justification each time.

Other examples cited by Hawley included a Florida woman spending 13 days in jail over eight possible felony counts after she was arrested through a Flock network search.

The charges were eventually dismissed when it was concluded that she was the wrong person.

Moreover, a California police department found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of its issued alerts, leading to the LAPD dropping its contract with the company.

RELATED: What the Flock? Knoxville mayor explains the dark truth about Flock cameras: ‘Not your grandma’s license plate readers’

Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Senator Hawley also said there was “uncertainty” around whether or not Flock can sell or use customer data.

“Flock’s $8.3 billion valuation comes with enormous pressure to find new commercial applications. Americans demand a full accounting for how their driver data is stored or sold.”

Hawley also said, “These camera networks harness artificial intelligence to pool what they capture into a national database that customers can search.”

“The American people want to know who has access to their personal data and how. This investigation will seek those answers,” the letter concluded.

As Blaze Media previously reported, there are also growing concerns about how the license plate readers can be enhanced to to capture any “unique signals” emitted from devices in cars.

The SignalTrace upgrade captures unique identifiers from cell phones, smart watches, Bluetooth devices, earbuds, and Wi-Fi signals and ultimately gives the ability to create a dossier on the driver and all his smart devices.

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​Flock camera, Josh hawley, Tech, Surveillance 

Some people in the public eye simply can’t help themselves.

Such is the case with veteran NFL play-by-play commentator Al Michaels, who took a moment to mock the president on Thursday night.

‘We think it is still called Lake Erie.’

Michaels was commentating for the Cleveland Browns vs. New England Patriots game on “Thursday Night Football,” a preseason broadcast for Amazon Prime, when he made a brief comment that ruffled some feathers.

Less than four minutes into the game, the broadcast was showing off the Cleveland skyline before a kickoff when Michaels commented on President Trump’s recent name change of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

“That is Lake Erie. We think it is still called Lake Erie,” Michaels remarked.

“We’re not quite sure at this point. But we’ll be by Lake ‘Something Like Ontario’ or whatever it’s going to be called by the time we get to Buffalo. Anyway, you know what I’m talking about,” Michaels chuckled.

“Some of us do,” replied co-commentator Kirk Herbstreit.

“Right! Read the news,” Michaels concluded.

RELATED: WNBA team bans Enes Kanter Freedom from arena with yet another insane claim: ‘That changed everything’

Fans seemed split on whether the remarks were necessary, with some getting in on the trolling nature of the name change.

“It’s Lake America, losers. Get it right,” one viewer wrote on X.

Another compared the 81-year-old broadcaster to President Joe Biden: “Al Michaels is only one step ahead of Joe Biden in the brain department.”

Others supported the veteran NFL voice, writing comments like, “Al Michaels comeback season. Top of his game!” and “Love it! Al Michaels calls it as he sees it.”

Some comments were more in the middle, with one X user quoting a post of the video to claim, “God I love broadcasting. You can say whatever you want!”

While Michaels is known for cracking jokes, he does not have a history of going rogue with political opinions.

RELATED: MAGA-haters mock Giants quarterback for getting laid out by massive hit

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

His most notable foray into such topics was during the kneeling fiasco of 2017 where Michaels, along with broadcasters Cris Collinsworth and Mike Tirico, began NBC’s “Football Night in America” broadcast with a discussion about Trump’s remarks on the subject, which included saying kneeling players should be fired.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired,'” Trump said at the time.

Michaels said that through his remarks, Trump had “galvanized” the league.

“People were beginning to listen to each other. It was calming down a little bit, and then a match got thrown into the gas tank,” Michaels claimed. “It’s inadvertently created a new level of unity.”

The Browns won on Thursday, 37-13.

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​Nfl, Football, Al michaels, President trump, Lake america, Sports 

Comedian Druski has NFL players fuming after a viral sketch portrayed a concussion-riddled football star spiraling.

In the skit, he plays an NFL player named Ray Price who gets a horrific concussion on the field, becomes violent, and even evades the cop in a O.J. Simpson-inspired chase — but this time it’s in a gold Ferrari.

“First off, people try to say Druski is not funny, and I find that ridiculous,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock comments. “Druski is hilarious.”

“I also find it uncomfortable that I find this so funny and I’m laughing at really inappropriate jokes, but the thing is hilarious,” he adds.

“He kind of nailed it,” Steve Kim agrees. “I think a lot of these comedic skits, if you’re really good at it, it’s a commentary on reality. Like parody is a lot to do with reality and you overblow it just to make an overall point.”

However, ex-NFL player T.J. Ward was among those who did not find it funny.

“In that skit … it was a couple funny moments, but overall, I’m going to put my sensitivity cap on like everyone else seems to do when it’s affecting them,” Ward said in response to the skit.

“These are life and death situations. And at the end of the day, it’s a life-taking disease. And I think CTE universally is the only disease that’s allowed to be made fun of, which is crazy. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with cancer. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with dementia. You wouldn’t make fun of somebody with AIDS,” he continued.

“You wouldn’t make fun of anyone with these diseases that are taking lives,” he added.

“I’m going to put my insensitivity cap on and just call that cap,” Whitlock comments.

“It’s a programming that he has accepted and that many people have accepted that everybody’s looking to be a victim,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Cte, Dementia, Nfl, Cancer, Druski, Jason whitlock, Blazetv show 

Flock Safety spent years selling license plate cameras faster than local officials could ask questions. Now cities are shutting them off. On Wednesday, Tempe, Arizona, shut off all 33 of its Flock license plate readers and announced that it would end its contract. The city won’t hire another company to replace them.

That wasn’t always the plan. On March 26, the Tempe City Council approved a trial of Axon’s Outpost plate readers. The free, 60-day pilot included three fixed cameras and was described at the time as a test of an alternative to Flock. Wednesday’s announcement went further. Councilman Bobby Nichols said Tempe needed to “stop looking for other ALPR providers.”

‘These cameras need to be deactivated immediately.’

So Tempe isn’t merely changing the logo on the pole. At least for now, it’s walking away from fixed plate readers altogether.

Tempe Mayor Corey Woods (D) acknowledged that the cameras helped police but said the potential for abuse was too great. “For Tempe, that means taking these cameras down,” Woods said.

That same day, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) launched a Senate investigation into Flock, demanding records from CEO Garrett Langley about data access, camera placement, retention, and sharing. Hawley gave the company until September 8 to respond.

“Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” Hawley wrote.

Hawley wasn’t alone. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said the same day that he would soon introduce legislation to “stop Flock and AI mass surveillance.” Sanders warned that the network was pushing the country toward a surveillance state run for the profit of “AI oligarchs.”

Flock sold local police departments roadside cameras and connected them to a nationwide system capable of reconstructing where ordinary Americans drive. Most of the people entered into that system aren’t suspects. They’re going to work, church, school, the gun store, the doctor, or wherever else free people go without asking the government for permission.

Knox County may be next

In Tennessee, the Knox County Sheriff’s Office has operated Flock cameras since 2020 and now has 143 of them, according to reporting by the Knoxville News Sentinel. The department planned to install another 270 with state grant money.

County officials then started asking basic questions. Is there a valid contract? Who approved it? Where are the cameras? Who can search the data?

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs (R) says the original agreement expired in 2024 and that there’s no valid service contract governing the current cameras. Records reviewed by county officials also showed the sheriff’s office repeatedly purchasing Flock equipment in batches priced just below the threshold that would have triggered mayoral review.

RELATED: When did we agree to be watched?

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

“These cameras need to be deactivated immediately,” Commissioner Kim Frazier said during an August 24 meeting. “You don’t have an active agreement.”

Jacobs has told Flock that the county will not renew the deal even if the company maintains that it is valid. Existing cameras remain active for now, but installation of new ones has stopped. The County Commission is scheduled to vote August 31 on an ordinance regulating the cameras. A proposed amendment would order Flock’s equipment removed within 30 days, though its sponsor says final passage would require a second reading in September.

Knox County hasn’t pulled the plug. Yet. But the county installed 143 cameras before commissioners could get straight answers about whether the contract was valid, where the cameras had been placed, or who inside the sheriff’s office controlled them. That should bother even people who like the cameras.

The cancellations are piling up

By mid-August, the Associated Press reported that more than 50 agencies or jurisdictions had canceled, suspended, rejected, or deactivated a Flock system since the beginning of the year, according to a tracker maintained by the anti-Flock group DeFlock.

The day before Tempe’s announcement, the Asheville City Council voted 5-2 to terminate its Flock contract, remove the hardware, and stop employees from accessing or sharing the data.

In Missouri, the St. Charles County Police Department discontinued Flock and began terminating its contract after an audit found that a civilian employee had searched the system for a personal, non-law-enforcement purpose. The employee resigned after receiving notice of termination.

Arizona has become a particularly bad market for the company:

Chandler ended its Flock partnership after an audit found an unexplained anomaly in how an employee used the system.Cave Creek terminated its contract and removed its cameras after officials concluded that local privacy rules could not control a system designed for data sharing between agencies.Pinal County Sheriff Ross Teeple said the county won’t renew its contract when it expires in September because he has “serious Fourth Amendment concerns” about the technology.

The Josephine County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon canceled its contract and deactivated 10 cameras after residents objected on Fourth Amendment grounds. The sheriff’s office said the technology had helped solve crimes but conceded that much of the county was not willing to accept it.

In Massachusetts, Salem declined to renew its contract, citing insufficient protections for locally generated data. Salem plans to replace Flock with a system that keeps the data under local control, which is an improvement but hardly the end of automated plate tracking.

Stoughton, Wisconsin, shut the whole thing down. Its council unanimously terminated a two-year contract only months after the cameras were installed. The resolution called for shutting down and removing the cameras, deleting collected data, and barring the city from buying a replacement without a new public oversight process.

RELATED: Student accused of destroying Flock cameras — his community comes out to defend him

L-R: Monongalia County Sheriff’s Office press release; Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Redmond, Washington, canceled its contract in a unanimous July vote and ended the city’s plate-reader program after deactivating the cameras months earlier. The LAPD stopped using Flock when its agreement expired, pending stronger terms for data ownership, privacy, security, and sharing. Officials left open the possibility of a new contract. Denver and Colorado’s Douglas County are replacing Flock with Axon.

Flock’s loss may be Axon’s gain

Axon has noticed the opportunity. CEO Rick Smith told investors that the company was seeing “a significant number of agencies” switch from other plate-reader systems to Axon. While Knox County is debating getting rid of its 143 Flock cameras, in January, the Knoxville City Council approved a $9.4 million expansion of the police department’s Axon contract. The package included plate readers along with additional body cameras, in-car cameras, and drones. The Knoxville Police Department now says it operates 19 fixed Axon plate readers and 30 mobile readers built into police dashcams. It keeps plate data for 30 days. Searches must be tied to an incident report number and are logged for auditing.

Those controls are better than a free-for-all. They don’t make the cameras stop recording innocent drivers.

Axon’s fixed Outpost cameras combine plate reading, vehicle identification, and live video. In July, the company also began rolling out cross-agency ALPR sharing. Axon’s version isn’t identical to Flock’s national network. Sharing is off by default, initiated by the agency that owns the data, and subject to offense categories and audit logs. But an agency can still let another department search its plate records.

Flock built the network first and the guardrails later

Flock now says it operates more than 120,000 cameras across roughly 6,000 communities. Together, they produce about 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

A Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers who had been charged with or accused of misusing automated plate-reader systems, often to track current or former romantic partners.

One former Georgia police chief allegedly searched for his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times. In Wisconsin, an officer allegedly searched plates connected to his ex-girlfriend and her partner 179 times, including checking whether she had visited an abortion clinic.

Flock’s CEO has said human misuse is inevitable and that the company’s job is to provide tools that catch it. In August, the company announced new safeguards that will make several previously optional controls mandatory by January 1. Law-enforcement customers will have to tie searches to case numbers, use software intended to flag abnormal search behavior, and review emergency overrides. Flock also shortened its standard retention period from 30 days to seven, though customers may configure it differently under their own laws and policies. The Associated Press has a useful summary of the changes.

Any check on abuse is better than none. But Flock added these rules only after its network was recording billions of vehicle movements every month. Local officials were sold a crime-fighting tool. What they got was access to a national location-search system. Its limits depended on company policy and department rules, plus the honesty of every employee handed a login.

There isn’t a clean partisan story here. Hawley and Sanders agree on very little, but both are now calling for federal action against Flock. Asheville, Tempe, and county sheriffs in Arizona and Oregon have reached similar conclusions for different reasons. A government camera network that records everyone by default and sorts out abuse afterward has the presumption backward.

Most of these towns never had a real debate until the cameras were already watching them. They should have.

​Tech, Flock, Surveillance, Privacy 

A massive shipment of methamphetamine allegedly being smuggled into the U.S. was seized by federal authorities, according to a statement to Blaze News.

The contraband was seized from a shipment of leeks being transported across the Pharr International Bridge cargo facility on Saturday, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Department.

‘The efforts of our CBP officers continue to be illustrated with massive disruptions of smuggling attempts at our international crossings.’

CBP officers had referred a tractor-trailer traveling from Reynosa in Mexico to secondary inspection on the bridge.

The inspection with nonintrusive equipment found anomalies in the shipment, and a canine indicated the odor of narcotics.

That led to a physical inspection that discovered 95 packages of alleged methamphetamine with a combined weight of 1,204.82 lbs. concealed inside the shipment.

The CBP estimated the value of the alleged methamphetamine to be $10,750,000.

“Our officers continue to be on a streak of success,” said Carlos Rodriguez, the port director of the Hidalgo/Pharr/Anzalduas Port of Entry. “The efforts of our CBP officers continue to be illustrated with massive disruptions of smuggling attempts at our international crossings.”

Homeland Security Investigation special agents initiated a criminal investigation into the leeked meth, and the Office of Field Operations seized the narcotics as well as the vehicle.

Earlier in August, $634,000 worth of cocaine was seized at the same port, CBP told Blaze News.

RELATED: Woman caught trying to smuggle live animals through US-Mexico border, CBP claims

“Fulfilling President Donald J. Trump’s mandate,” said the CBP in a statement to Blaze News, “the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, under the leadership of DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, have delivered the most secure border in history, stopping dangerous criminal aliens, weapons, and illicit narcotics from entering our communities, which will keep America safe for generations to come.”

An estimated $50 billion worth of trade is transported across the massive international corridor.

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​Customs and border protection, Tractor trailer, Pharr international bridge, Methamphetamine, Politics 

American independent journalist Tayler Hansen has created an internet stir with videos documenting a side of America’s illegal immigration problem that received comparatively little attention during the Biden years.

Illegal immigrants are crossing into the United States from Canada.

‘We spoke to multiple Indian nationals out there, and they all said the same thing: that they literally only view Canada as a stepping stone to the United States of America.’

What, you weren’t aware of it?

The other border

Most people aren’t. The southern border understandably dominated the immigration debate, with Americans accustomed to seeing images of migrants pouring across crossings in Texas and California. But while attention was focused south, illegal crossings along America’s enormous northern border were soaring too.

U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions along the Canadian border rose from 6,618 in fiscal 2019 to 24,968 in fiscal 2024 — a 277% increase, according to the Government Accountability Office. The Swanton Sector, covering parts of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, alone recorded more than 19,000 apprehensions in 2024, up from just 1,563 five years earlier.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials told the GAO that many foreign nationals without valid documents to enter the United States were first traveling to Canada and then attempting to cross illegally into America.

Hansen has set out to show how it happens.

Major export

He jokingly calls illegal immigrants Canada’s newest major export to the U.S.

“Canada’s largest export is no longer oil because that’s kind of been getting tamped down for us over the years due to them being treated like a Crown colony. … The only business that Canada is actually doing with us — and you can’t even call it business at this point — is they’re sending all of their illegal immigrants here because they realize they screwed up with their visa system.”

Hansen previously reported extensively on the southern border during the Biden administration. This time he traveled through Canada, investigated smuggling networks, and eventually gained the trust of people offering to move migrants illegally across the border.

The geography makes enforcement extraordinarily difficult. The United States and Canada share nearly 4,000 miles of land and maritime border, much of it far removed from official ports of entry.

“There is no such thing as real border infrastructure in Canada,” Hansen told me. “It is literally you walk across and now you’re you’re American basically.”

Hansen said he spoke with multiple Indian nationals who regarded Canada not as their final destination but as a route to the United States.

“We spoke to multiple Indian nationals out there, and they all said the same thing: that they literally only view Canada as a stepping stone to the United States of America.”

Goin’ south

That phenomenon isn’t merely anecdotal. CBP officials told federal investigators that the dramatic increase in northern-border apprehensions in 2023 and 2024 was partly driven by foreign nationals who could legally travel to Canada but lacked the necessary documents to enter the United States.

Hansen argues that the human-smuggling networks operating along the northern border have borrowed techniques from the cartels he observed while reporting in the south.

“They basically just copy and paste the cartels’ tactics that they use on the southern border,” Hansen said. “And now they’re using it on our northern border.”

Border Patrol apprehensions fell substantially after their 2024 peak and remained at reduced levels through April 2026, according to the GAO.

That doesn’t make what Hansen documented any less disturbing.

In his documentary, Hansen made contact with a human smuggler and eventually learned how the operation worked. He describes a decentralized, three-country network involving fixers in India, smugglers in Canada, and accomplices in the United States who receive migrants after they cross.

“It’s a three-step operation,” Hansen said. “You have a guy in India, and then you have multiple smugglers on the ground in Canada, and then you have smugglers in the United States of America that then take you to the safe house or take you to the place that you’re going to live temporarily and provide the vehicles, provide everything.”

Hansen said one smuggler quoted him $10,000 for the crossing.

When he later confronted people involved in the operation, one offered an extraordinary defense.

“We are not smuggling,” the man told Hansen. “We are helping persons who want to, like, go over there and, like, who have problems here in Canada. So we are just only helping them.”

Hansen wasn’t convinced.

“They know exactly what they’re doing,” he said.

RELATED: Trump is right about the Smithsonian. Canada shows what happens when woke history wins.

Anadolu/Getty Images

Operating with impunity

He says that even after members of one smuggling network became aware someone was leaking their routes, one of its administrators assured him that the routes remained active.

“They are operating with impunity,” Hansen said.

Hansen says Sikhs predominate among the smugglers he encountered, although the migrants being moved include both Sikhs and Hindus.

“They really don’t discriminate. As long as you’re Indian, they want to bring you across. So you have Hindus, you have Sikhs.”

Canada’s enormous temporary-resident population creates another potential problem.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada says more than 2.1 million temporary visas and permits expired in 2025 and almost 1.9 million more are due to expire in 2026. Those figures cover temporary residents of all nationalities, not only Indians, although Indian nationals compose a large share of Canada’s temporary workers and students.

An expired permit does not automatically mean its holder is illegally remaining in Canada; temporary residents can extend or change their status, obtain permanent residency or leave the country. But Ottawa is actively trying to reduce Canada’s temporary-resident population after years of explosive growth.

Stop the madness

Hansen believes tougher Canadian enforcement could give those without legal status another incentive to head south rather than return home.

“What do you think is going to happen if Canada actually starts to enforce expired visas and do deportations?” he asked. “These people aren’t going to want to go back to India.”

Northern-border apprehensions have fallen dramatically from their Biden-era peak. But the smuggling infrastructure Hansen documented — fixers openly advertising routes, drivers moving migrants to the border, and accomplices waiting on the American side — raises an obvious question.

If Washington succeeded in making illegal entry across the southern border much harder, how much attention is being paid to the much longer border to the north?

Hansen thinks not nearly enough.

“It’s madness that’s taking place.”

​Canada, Expired visas, Government accountability office, Human smuggler, Illegal immigrants, Illegal immigration problem, Northern border, Southern border, Tayler hansen, Joe biden, Border security, Human smuggling, Indian nationals, Letter from canada 

On July 30, the FBI released its annual report on active-shooter incidents, and the coverage went where you would expect: 34 attacks in 2025, a 42% increase over the year before, with 51 people killed and 115 wounded. All true. All worth knowing. Less noticed: 34 attacks were 21% below the five-year average of 43, and the five-year trend is downward.

Then there was the statistic almost nobody saw. Civilians intervened in seven attacks last year. In more than one in five incidents, people in the line of fire confronted the shooter. In 2024, civilians intervened in one out of 24 incidents. In a single year, the intervention rate rose roughly fivefold.

When seconds count, police are minutes away. You are your own first responder.

At a New Hampshire country club, a civilian hit the shooter with a chair and took his gun. At an Indiana public library, civilians overpowered a man when his shotgun malfunctioned and held him until police arrived. At an Army complex in Georgia, unarmed soldiers disarmed and restrained an attacker. At an Ohio warehouse, civilians took the weapon and forced the would-be shooter off the property. In two incidents, civilians used their own firearms. In another, a vehicle.

That is not a nation of victims waiting for instructions. It is a reminder that when violence begins, the people already there may be the only people in position to stop it. Self-defense isn’t just a right; it’s a duty.

Look at the FBI’s own clock. At Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, where a gunman fired through the windows into a back-to-school Mass, killing two and wounding 28, the attack lasted roughly two minutes. The average police response in that category, from dispatch to arrival, was two minutes and 59 seconds.

I learned that arithmetic from a man who lived it. Stephen Willeford was at home in Sutherland Springs, Texas, when he heard shooting at the First Baptist Church down the road. He grabbed a rifle, loaded as he moved, ran barefoot toward the gunfire, and engaged a man who had just murdered 26 people at worship. The killer fired back. Willeford forced him to flee.

When I interviewed him, I expected to hear about courage. He wanted to talk about timing. Police were five to seven minutes behind him, he said. When seconds count, police are minutes away. You are your own first responder.

The FBI report contains the same lesson. At CrossPointe Community Church in Michigan, for example, a parishioner struck a shooter with his truck while armed church security engaged and killed him before he got inside.

Two days after the FBI published its report, the country got another demonstration. I was in Des Moines at Gun Owners of America’s 50th-anniversary summit, in a hall where the case for armed self-defense was being made in every aisle. That same Saturday, it was being made in a drive-thru lane in Southern Idaho by a man who had not planned on making it.

RELATED: Jordan Salinas: Another ‘good guy with a gun’ ruins the gun control lobby’s narrative

Jason Armond/Getty Images; Facebook/JordanSalinas

On August 1, a gunman opened fire at an In-N-Out Burger in Twin Falls, killing three people and wounding seven. A customer in the drive-thru drew a handgun. An off-duty Idaho State Police trooper drew his. Police said the two men helped drive the suspect from the scene and prevented further casualties. The gunman fled and took his own life.

None of this is a complaint about police. Officers run toward gunfire to stop further harm, and three were killed doing it in 2025. But no department in America can station an officer inside every restaurant, sanctuary, classroom, or workplace at the instant evil walks in.

The FBI has documented what an ordinary person with a chair, a truck, or a lawfully carried pistol can sometimes do before police arrive. That is what the one-in-five figure means.

Anyone asking for votes this November should sit with that number. Voters should ask a simple question in return: When the shooting starts and help is three minutes away, do your laws make it easier or harder for a law-abiding person already on the scene to defend himself and others?

The Second Amendment protects a right the founding generation understood as essential to a free people: the right to keep and bear arms. That constitutional protection does not guarantee that every armed civilian will act wisely or successfully. The FBI data does show that civilians sometimes stop attackers before police can get there.

That is worth reporting.

​Active shooter incidents, Fbi report, First responder, Second amendment protection, Active shooters, Mass shootings, Fbi, Stephen willeford, Crosspointe community church, Annunciation church and catholic school, Twin falls, Armed citizen, Opinion & analysis 

The war on data centers has intensified to the point that localities across the country are banning them outright or stopping them through targeted zoning and regulation. The concerns are understandable. The political response is not.

Public opposition has jumped 12 percentage points in four months, with 61% now saying they oppose building new data centers, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Opponents held 142 protests in 42 states on July 18, citing water use, noise, electricity demand, outages, pollution, and property values.

There is an obvious alternative for people who do not want a data center built on a particular parcel: Buy the land.

Predictably, politicians are turning against the industry.

On August 18, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) signed an executive order restricting data center construction and boasted that he was imposing “the strictest guardrails in the nation.” He denounced a history of industry “running roughshod over our communities to make a buck” and vowed that Pennsylvania would not be “bullied” or “bulldozed” by developers and their lawyers.

Critics noted that Shapiro, who faces re-election this year, had strongly supported data center construction and even placed projects in a fast-track approval program before the recent grassroots backlash.

The turn is broader than Pennsylvania. Some 210 counties and local governments now have active moratoriums on data center construction. More than 3,000 centers are operating in the United States, with another 1,500 under construction, Pew Research reports. Two-thirds of planned facilities are headed to rural areas, while 87% of existing data centers are urban.

It is reasonable to worry about harm from any large enterprise. Citizens have every right to warn property owners and neighbors about potential costs. They often have a moral responsibility to do so.

But concern does not create a general right to control someone else’s property.

No one can foresee all the consequences, positive or negative, of a novel enterprise. That is one reason we have courts: to hear claims of actual harm, determine responsibility, and order compensation or punishment where warranted. A functioning civil justice system reduces the need for sprawling systems of preemptive command and control.

Governments should not single out data centers with punitive taxes or regulations, nor should they subsidize them. Let them pay for the energy they use, comply with laws that apply generally, receive no privileged access to water or other resources, and answer in court if they injure others.

RELATED: The data center backlash is getting spiritual

Imaginima/Getty Images

That is a better rule than trying to calculate every hypothetical “social cost” in advance and empowering regulators to decide which enterprises may proceed. Markets reveal costs and benefits imperfectly, but government regulation does too — usually with fewer incentives to admit mistakes.

In a free society, you do not get to decide what other people do with their property merely because you dislike the proposed use. That remains true when “you” becomes “we.” A majority does not acquire a moral right to coerce simply by counting heads.

There is an obvious alternative for people who do not want a data center built on a particular parcel: Buy the land.

If you cannot afford it alone, put together a consortium. If you can afford it but would rather force the owner to accept your preferred use without paying him, then the problem is no longer the data center. It is your claim to control property you do not own.

Buy it, and you may use it as you wish — subject, of course, to the same rule protecting your neighbors from actual harm. Mission accomplished.

The developer will go somewhere else, taking the jobs, local tax revenue, and other economic benefits to a community that wants them more.

That process is not perfect. Nothing involving human beings is. But voluntary exchange does a better job of matching scarce resources with people willing to bear their costs than political systems in which the loudest coalition simply vetoes uses it dislikes.

Unfortunately, that is no longer good enough for a growing number of Americans. The backlash against data centers parallels the rise of democratic socialism in one important respect: Both elevate collective control over individual property rights.

People who want to build data centers should listen seriously to objections. They should pay their own way and answer for the harm they cause. But the reflexive demand to control other people’s property because a project is unpopular reflects a much older political decay.

Restoring property rights is essential to renewing American prosperity and human flourishing. Data centers would be a good place to start.

​Data centers, Regulations, Taxes, Water, Zoning, Energy, Josh shapiro, Pennsylvania, Polling, Property rights, Opinion & analysis 

The death of Dolly Parton sparked an outpouring of grief from fans across the political spectrum, including President Donald Trump, who ordered flags lowered nationwide in her honor.

“Very sad to report that Dolly Parton, one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER, has just passed away. This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her, and never will,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

“In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a one week period beginning tonight at 6:00PM. Rest in Peace, Dolly! The World loves you,” he added.

“This was the loss of an icon for America,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments.

But it didn’t take long for some commentators to transform a tribute to the beloved singer into yet another political battleground.

“Not even an hour after she died, s**t-libs were trying to politicize her death and turn it into an attack on Trump because orange man bad, I guess,” Gonzales comments.

“I wish I could tell you that I was joking, but an hour after Dolly Parton’s family posted a video announcing her death, you had soy boy low-T Harry Sisson, who posted this,” she adds.

“After Dolly Parton’s passing, Trump and the Republicans are trying to make it seem like they were aligned with her on the issues. But I would remind everybody that the Republicans consistently cut the programs that she cared most about,” Sisson said in a reel on Instagram.

“For example, Missouri Republicans cut $4 million in funding for Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Literacy Program, which sends monthly free books to kids 5 and under. What about funding research for kids? In 2022, Dolly Parton donated a million dollars of her own money to fund pediatric infectious disease research,” he continued.

“But in 2025, Donald Trump cut $12 million in grants for pediatric medical research. And of course, we cannot forget that Dolly Parton was a huge supporter of the LGBTQ+ community. And, well, we know how Republicans have targeted that community,” he added.

“Libs live in this world where you’re not allowed to co-exist, which is so crazy because they’re the ones who have the co-exist bumper stickers on the backs of their cars, but you’re not allowed to co-exist if you have different political opinions,” Gonzales says.

“Literally everything has to be about politics and being diametrically opposed to Donald Trump,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Dolly parton, Donald trump, Harry sisson, Imagination library, Liberals, Republicans, Sara gonzales, Blazetv show