AI company 2wai may have taken its latest commercial a bit too far — as it presents the idea that your loved ones could live forever, as AI avatars, of course.

In the commercial, a pregnant mother speaks to her passed loved one via the phone app, showing the avatar her stomach.

“Oh, honey, that’s wonderful,” the AI responds. “He’s listening. Put your hand on your tummy and hum to him. You used to love that.”

The deceased avatar is 2wai’s core product, a HoloAvatar — which is an AI rendition of a real person, brought to life by a large language model.

“The question on the table, based on what you just saw: ‘Is this idolatry or not?’” BlazeTV host Steve Deace asks BlazeTV contributor Todd Erzen on the “Steve Deace Show.”

“To quote Gandalf, ‘Run, you fools,’” Erzen responds. “This is grotesque idolatry. This is emotional pornography of the highest order.”

“I lost my mother three months before I got married. She never got to meet my four daughters. She was the finest human being I ever met. She was truly good. I would never dishonor her memory with this. I’m utterly disgusted by the perpetual childish neediness of grown-ups who would bow at this altar,” he continues.

“It is profoundly wicked and evil to normalize this in any way, shape, or form. May God have mercy on our souls, quite frankly,” he adds.

“Steve Deace Show” executive producer Aaron McIntire is on the same page as Erzen, telling Deace the product should be burned “with fire.”

“It’s possible that this might not be idolatry if we were all robots, but we’re not robots. Something like this is just not fit for human nature,” he adds.

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Second Amendment rights advocate Kyle Rittenhouse disappeared from the limelight for a bit to make incredible strides in his own life — but he’s back and more motivated than ever to keep up the good fight.

“I was just done with the media. I was done with the hate. I was done with the lies being pushed against me. It was a lot that I was dealing with. And then I moved to Florida. I took that hiatus. I met my beautiful wife, Bella. And we moved to Colorado,” Rittenhouse tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales at AmFest.

However, after the events of September 10, Rittenhouse knew it was time “to get back into the fight.”

“I need to pick up the mic because what happened on September 10 is not okay. We need more conservative voices out here. We need more than ever. And that is why I’m here,” he explains, pointing out that he’s back to “advocating for the Second Amendment.”

But it hasn’t been a warm reception from the left.

“I’ve had countless death threats since I’ve gotten back into the fight. I’ve had people saying they’re going to assassinate me, kill me, they’re going to do terrible, terrible things because that’s the left,” Rittenhouse tells Gonzales.

“We’ve seen an increase in left-wing violence since August 25, 2020, when they tried to kill me in the streets of Kenosha to now. It’s only gotten worse. And our job as conservatives, and our job as Americans and Christians, to be frank, is to stand up and fight,” he continues.

And while Rittenhouse believes in his fellow conservatives’ ability to do this with him, he does worry that too many fear being too “controversial.”

“We need to say, ‘Screw being controversial,’” Rittenhouse says. “We need to stand up for what’s right, because if we’re not, they’re going to take us over and we’re going to lose.”

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An appropriations bill could allocate billions in funding to refugee programs after temporary government funding expires.

Congress passed a clean funding extension in November 2025 that expires on January 30, 2026, when new funding allocation could take place.

‘These programs provide a variety of benefits and services to refugees, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants.’

This possibility has conservatives pointing out issues with legislation like a Senate appropriations bill, first proposed in July, for fiscal year 2026.

The bill, which allocates funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and “related agencies,” has garnered significant attention from online researchers regarding its allocation of funds to refugee programs.

“Hey guys, all those insane ‘refugee assistance’ grants I’m always tweeting? The [GOP] is about to supercharge the funds,” wrote Oilfield Rando, an X account with more than 235,000 followers.

RELATED: Warlord, terror, and taxpayer theft: Somali scheme allegedly bilks millions from Maine Medicaid to fund foreign army

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Particularly, conservatives online have taken issue with the bill’s recommendations for “Refugee and Entrant Assistance,” for which the committee recommends $5.691 billion.

“These programs provide a variety of benefits and services to refugees, asylees, Cuban and Haitian entrants, immigrants arriving on Special Immigrant Visas [SIV], trafficking victims, and torture victims,” the bill reads.

A whopping $564 million of those funds is recommended for “Transitional and Medical Services,” while providing grants to states and “nonprofit organizations to provide cash and medical assistance to arriving refugees, as well as foster care services to unaccompanied minors.”

More than $300 million is recommended for “Refugee Support Services.”

The Senate committee argued in the document that HHS needs to ensure funding for resettlement agencies so that they can maintain their infrastructure and capacity at a level to continue to serve “new refugees, previously arrived refugees,” and others who are eligible for “integration services.”

RELATED: ‘Rents will come down’ — but not in sanctuary cities: Loan agent chronicles homes apparently abandoned by illegal aliens

Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images

According to the Baker Institute, the Trump administration set the refugee cap at 7,500 for fiscal year 2026, the lowest in U.S. history. This is reportedly a 94% reduction from the 125,000 cap that the Biden administration set for FY 2025.

President Trump famously admitted 59 South African refugees into the United States in May; however, there have been no other major intakes by the administration over the course of 2025.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations is majority Republican, with 15 Republicans and 14 Democrats.

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