The ongoing feud between the mainstream media and the Trump administration has opened up another field of battle after the Justice Department confirmed a criminal investigation.

Five news outlets rebelled against the White House after President Donald Trump banned three outlets for what he said was fake news reporting.

‘Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act.’

ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Fox News said in a joint statement in September that they would not resume their pool reporting duties to cover the president.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice said five news outlets were under investigation after they boycotted the White House pool report.

“Members of the television press pool have boycotted covering White House events. Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act,” the spokesperson said. “The Antitrust Division is simply investigating to determine whether these news organizations have violated the antitrust laws.”

Trump attorneys argued previously in a filing that the three outlets had failed to meet basic “standards of professionalism and decorum expected of those given access to the White House Complex.”

The president elaborated on the ban in comments to reporters.

RELATED: Trump slams ‘sick, treasonous, and demented’ journalists after berating CNN’s Kaitlan Collins

“I don’t want them in my office. I don’t want them here,” Trump said.

“The ban is because they are fake news, they cannot write the truth,” he added. “If they had credibility, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Donald trump, Fake news, Justice department, Mainstream media, White house, Politics 

Former music pastor and “American Idol” contestant Caleb Flynn will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering his wife, Ashley.

Flynn was convicted on October 5 of murder, felonious assault, tampering with evidence, and other charges.

“Prosecutors said and successfully argued that Flynn killed Ashley because he wanted out of their marriage and he was having an affair. He shot her while she was asleep in their Tip City, Ohio, home in February 2026 while their two young daughters were in the house,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says.

Flynn was having an affair with a younger church intern named Alleigha Botner, who testified that Flynn said he “hated” and “wanted to kill her.”

A letter from Flynn’s daughter was read in court, in which she told her father to “repent to God,” as his “time isn’t over.”

And Stuckey believes this is the important part of the case.

“Those last lines are from a place of love and grace from his daughters. They want their dad to be restored to God. They want his repentance because they want him to be forgiven. They don’t want him to go to hell. That is love,” she says.

“Those are wise girls. Obviously, there was a lot going on in their home, but the Holy Spirit has filled them,” she continues.

“Just pray for those girls,” she adds.

While his wife’s parents told Flynn in court that they forgave him, they “asked the judge for the maximum sentence because they desired absolute earthly justice for Ashley.”

“What they’re communicating is 100% correct,” Stuckey says. “They’re releasing bitterness. They’re releasing malice. They’re saying, ‘I don’t own this any more. I’m not holding this. I’m not holding this burden. And I want you to repent, and I want you to be reconciled to God.’”

“At the same time, you need to be punished by the law. The law was invented by God. The government was invented by God,” she continues. “The government’s responsibility to execute the law and execute murderers, by the way, was invented by God.”

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.

​Caleb flynn, Allie beth stuckey, Ashley flynn, Forgiveness, Church, Repentance, Blazetv show 

How should America execute a convicted terrorist who turned his weapon on his fellow soldiers?

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck says that while it should be about more than carrying out a sentence, the execution of the Fort Hood shooter should not be televised.

“We live in a society that already diminishes death so much. I don’t want it on TikTok,” Glenn says, explaining that exposing the public to an execution will “rot our souls.”

“It needs to be dignified. … And it needs to send a very strong message. Just killing him will not send the message. Killing him at Fort Hood is a very good thing. Sends a message that America is serious,” he explains.

“This was a guy who betrayed his country and went into his own company, went in at Fort Hood and shot up people in Fort Hood, including his own people that served in uniform with him. That needs to be seen by Americans, and we need to know that we do not tolerate it,” he adds.

However, the most important message that needs to be sent is to the Muslim world, which Glenn believes needs to see that “we don’t buy in to your false god.”

“It’s a false god if you think that you’re going to get virgins for killing innocents. So we don’t buy in to your false god, and we are not afraid of your false god, and we are not afraid of you,” he says.

“We’re not playing your game,” he continues. “We’re not going to be called Islamophobic.”

Glenn points out that an all-female firing squad would send an even stronger message: “If you actually believe that you’re not going to get your virgins because you’ve been killed by a woman, then I will insult you every day by killing those monsters … with a woman firing squad.”

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.

​Fort hood, Glenn beck, Islamophobic, Muslim, Execution, Blazetv show 

An ambulance rushed Sean Combs, the infamous rap icon, away from federal prison after he suffered a head injury, according to a TMZ report.

Combs was sentenced to 50 months in federal prison after he was convicted a year ago of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution related to “freak-offs” at hotels and his home.

‘Pretty much the day he arrived, the party started …’

The hip-hop music mogul injured his head at the Fort Dix prison in New Jersey and was taken from the prison by ambulance around 1 a.m. Saturday, TMZ said, citing prison sources.

The outlet said it could not confirm whether Combs was taken to a hospital.

He was conscious and speaking when returned to prison hours later, TMZ added, citing officials; it’s unclear how he was injured.

Combs was punished at the prison after getting into a fight with another inmate in July, the outlet said, adding that more recently officials discovered he was breaking prison rules to obtain banned amenities.

Four men who spent time in the same unit as Combs told NBC News that he received Chinese massages and allegedly a contraband phone while others cooked and cleaned for him.

“This is not some normal s**t you see in jail. This is some rich s**t,” one man said. “It looks crazy, but again, it’s Diddy.”

One of the men said he drank Hennessy with Combs. Guards reportedly smuggled the stash of liquor into the prison.

“Hell yeah, I drank with him,” the man said.

Combs allegedly is spending thousands of dollars to level up his living conditions in prison.

“Pretty much the day he arrived, the party started,” said one of the sources.

A spokesperson for Combs called it normal prison life.

“The continued scrutiny of every mundane detail of Sean Combs’ life in prison has reached the point where the media characterizes ordinary prison life as news,” the spokesperson said. “The only real news is that Sean continues to serve his sentence while awaiting the court’s decision on his appeal.”

RELATED: White House vehemently denies TMZ report about Trump possibly setting Sean Combs free

A Bureau of Prisons spokesperson said the agency would not comment on any specific prisoner’s conditions.

“Like all correctional agencies, contraband, particularly cell phones, narcotics, and weapons, remains a constant challenge, and we continue to tackle the problem of contraband being introduced into our facilities,” the spokesperson said.

Combs originally was scheduled for release in January 2028, but the release date has been pushed back to March 2028.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Sean combs, Federal prison, Sex crimes, Crime 

State exams are meant to test students’ aptitude and gauge their understanding of the curriculum. But what happens when the grading system fails? Texas found out the hard way when an AI-powered grading system led to rampant grading errors and a huge recount.

AI makes mistakes. This disclaimer is stamped on almost every query when you interact with the top frontier chatbots on the market. Yet society continues to trust AI with increasingly more important tasks. This time, Texas put it in charge of grading students on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exams, and the results went as you might expect.

As people become increasingly more distrustful of AI, they’re more likely to question the results of anything that AI touches.

The AI-powered grading system initially made headlines in 2024 when Texas announced that the state would save $15 million by replacing human graders with a “technology similar to ChatGPT” on some portions of the state exams. The system adopted a hybrid approach, relying on humans to score the multiple choice questions while AI graded the larger open-ended written section.

If at any time, AI displayed a “low confidence” message about the score it gave to a student, the responses were to be flagged so that a human could review them. However, if AI is confident in its response — as chatbots often are when they hallucinate or outright lie — no such notification would reach the humans at the top.

During a limited trial test in December 2023, educators noticed that their students received a “drastic increase” in failing scores. If students or parents wanted to request a rescore, it would cost them $50 out of pocket, unless the new score was higher than the original — then the fee would be removed.

At first, the state of Texas only received 2,758 rescore requests by spring of 2024 — a sizeable number, considering that rescore requests were a rare phenomenon at the time. However, this number continued to climb, jumping to a staggering 21,620 rescore requests by 2025. By 2026, the number reached 64,489 rescore requests — that’s up to $3 million in out-of-pocket costs from parents looking to get better scores for their children.

Estimated costs of future rescoring currently sit at $15-$20 million.

After human graders reviewed the tests, the number of corrections doubled year over year and 13,300 scores — or approximately 20% — improved overall. At the same time, none of the scores were lowered.

RELATED: The AI backlash is going viral. Here’s how Trump wants to fix that.

Devrimb/Getty Images

While this appears to be a clear failure of the AI-powered grading system, further review shows a discrepancy for both machine and man. Out of the recorded errors, 58% came from AI, while 42% came from human mistakes. This essentially means that even if AI was removed from the grading system, grading errors would possibly improve, but they wouldn’t go away entirely.

This story, though, does lead to an interesting thought experiment: Even though AI and human errors were both present, the fact that AI was employed to grade the larger written portions of the exams made students and parents too leery to trust their final scores, thus leading to the jump in requests. As the people become increasingly more distrustful of AI, they’re more likely to question the results of anything that AI touches. Until hallucinations are a thing of the past, this is simply a side effect of an AI-powered world.

As for the Texas school system, one must wonder if the extra money it set out to save is worth the trouble, distrust, and future rescore requests that are almost certain to plague the state for years to come. So far, Texas has no plans to suspend automated AI grading at this time.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Artificial intelligence, Chatbots, Educators, Errors, Hallucinations, Recount, School system, Texas, Tech 

A 35-year-old male accused in the ambush killing of a Philadelphia police officer over the weekend was arraigned Sunday morning on 76 charges and ordered held without bail, Fox News reported, citing court records.

Eric Lewis faces charges including murder, homicide of a law enforcement officer, attempted murder, 10 counts of attempted homicide of a law enforcement officer, aggravated assault, terroristic threats, and other offenses, the cable news network said, adding that Lewis’ next court date is scheduled for Oct. 26.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Amen Brown (D), who lives near the shooting scene, told KYW Lewis allegedly said during his arrest that he wished he had killed more officers.

Lewis is accused of shooting two police officers, killing one and wounding the other, early Saturday morning in the 100 block of North 52nd Street in West Philadelphia, KYW-TV reported, citing District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Philadelphia Police Officer Shane Seiber was killed, Fox News said, adding that the 40-year-old was a father of two and an Air Force veteran who served 10 years with the Philadelphia Police Department. Seiber is survived by his wife, 7-year-old son, and 3-year-old daughter, the cable news network added.

“He fought valiantly, but he lost his life today,” Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said at a Saturday news conference, Fox News noted. “His wife was able to be by his side before he passed, as well as his family.”

The wounded officer, a 33-year-old father of five, was shot 12 times and initially listed in critical condition, Fox News said, adding that his condition has since been upgraded to stable.

The shooting unfolded around 12:20 a.m. when the two officers responded to a report of a man with a gun, the cable news network said, adding that police said the officers located an armed man on a porch.

The officers then came under “significant gunfire” after reaching the porch, police told Fox News, adding that other officers and a SWAT team arrived soon after and found both officers on the porch suffering from gunshot wounds.

The cable news network said more gunfire followed, after which authorities declared a barricade situation before Lewis was taken into custody.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Amen Brown (D), who lives near the shooting scene, told KYW Lewis allegedly said during his arrest that he wished he had killed more officers.

Police told Fox News that Lewis was in possession of two handguns and a shotgun; one of the handguns belonged to an officer wounded in the attack.

Krasner at a Saturday news conference declined to say if Lewis fired the officer’s handgun or how he obtained the other firearms, the cable news network said.

Krasner added to Fox News that nothing in Lewis’ criminal background would have prevented him from obtaining a firearm.

RELATED: Two Chicago police officers shot in ‘ambush’ attack; suspect in custody

Lewis is an employee of the Philadelphia Water Department and has a criminal history dating to 2012, the cable news network said, citing Pennsylvania court records it reviewed.

Court records show Lewis was convicted of theft and receiving stolen property in 2012 and convicted of gun-related offenses and simple assault in 2013, Fox News said, adding that he received probation in both cases.

Lewis pleaded guilty in 2018 to disorderly conduct involving fighting and again was sentenced to probation, the cable news network reported.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Philadelphia, Fatal shooting, Police officers shot, Ambush, Arrest, Crime 

The Trump administration recently targeted Microsoft over its use of foreign-worker visas, accusing the tech giant of laying off thousands of American employees while continuing to recruit overseas. It is a confrontation long overdue.

Firing thousands of citizens via HR emails while simultaneously begging the government for new workers from overseas is a shameless business model. Microsoft axed 6,000 domestic workers last year. During that same period, the company snagged 6,300 H-1B visas and secured nearly 3,000 green cards. The corporate PR department insists that these filings were mostly routine extensions for current staff, but that claim deserves plenty of scrutiny. A company liquidating its domestic workforce should be forced to stand in the light and explain why its foreign hiring machinery runs at full speed. Corporate entities love to wrap themselves in the American flag when asking for tax credits, then toss it in the trash the moment cheap foreign labor offers a marginally better quarterly margin.

A cruel joke played on middle-class taxpayers.

Washington let giant technology conglomerates dictate national labor policy for decades. Keith Sonderling at the Department of Labor noted that the handful of tech companies under scrutiny have requested nearly 3 million foreign workers since 2009. That figure represents a massive structural exploit rather than a temporary patch for specialized talent shortages. Successive presidential administrations treated Silicon Valley’s hiring wish lists like Holy Scripture. Bureaucrats took corporate claims of talent scarcity at face value and ignored the economic incentives driving the requests. Executive suites realized long ago that importing a workforce is far more profitable than paying local market rates. Washington finally stopped treating corporate convenience as a national strategy, and the current administration deserves genuine credit for that.

The psychological mechanics of the H-1B system offer a rather sobering look at corporate control. JD Vance ruffled feathers by calling visa holders indentured servants. The language may be slightly hyperbolic, but the overall thesis is sound. When an H-1B worker loses his job, a 60-day countdown to deportation begins immediately. That legal sword of Damocles hanging over an employee’s neck instantly changes the workplace dynamic. A worker bound to his employer by immigration status rarely complains about mandatory overtime. He doesn’t challenge executive decisions. He doesn’t demand aggressive pay raises. Tech giants proudly parade their progressive credentials, yet they actively cultivate a workforce rendered docile by the threat of exile.

RELATED: Vance unveils huge crackdown on replacing American workers with foreigners

Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images

American graduates spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on computer science degrees, only to find the door to entry locked. Families take on crippling debt. Students live on cheap noodles for four years, and young engineers enter the market ready to build software. Tech giants bypass those local graduates entirely, claiming that the domestic talent pool is inadequate. Some hyper-specialized roles genuinely require rare global experts, but the vast majority of visa requests cover standard engineering roles that local graduates can easily perform. Corporate recruiters simply prefer candidates who can’t easily quit for a competitor down the street. Expecting American citizens to fund higher education while big tech imports entry-level labor is a cruel joke played on middle-class taxpayers.

Silicon Valley insists on enjoying every benefit of American society while rejecting every basic duty to American workers. Microsoft relies on government-funded basic research and capital markets protected by American law. The moment public officials ask Microsoft to prioritize domestic hiring, executives cry foul and lecture the public on global competitiveness. It’s all very rich and incredibly infuriating.

Global corporations want American security without American allegiance. A company is entirely free to operate in foreign markets. It is not entitled to use the federal government as a low-cost staffing agency.

Federal immigration policy exists to protect the host country, not to maximize the net profit of a software monopoly. For decades, the system placed the entire burden of proof on the domestic worker. The American engineer had to prove he was worthy of employment while tech firms enjoyed automatic access to foreign talent pools. Reversing that burden forces corporations to prove actual domestic labor shortages before printing more visas. Federal policy must serve the public interest, not act as a perpetual subsidy for corporate HR departments.

America simply cannot beat economic rivals like China by treating domestic talent development as a low-priority chore. Building AI models requires long-term investment in local universities. It demands apprenticeships and specialized training programs. Relying on foreign labor indefinitely removes any incentive for tech companies to invest in domestic talent. Corporations treat American workers as disposable assets to be cut during lean quarters and ignored during rapid expansions. The country can’t maintain a technological edge when its primary economic powerhouses treat their own citizens as financial liabilities.

The ongoing showdown between federal regulators and Microsoft signals a necessary break from too many years of corporate welfare masquerading as immigration policy. The federal government finally called Silicon Valley’s bluff, forcing executives to justify why they handed thousands of pink slips to local workers while international recruitment desks stayed open around the clock. American labor laws should benefit the people living under them, not the balance sheets of multinational corporations. It turns out corporations can survive without unlimited access to cheap imported labor, and watching them scramble to justify their hiring practices should satisfy anyone who believes American workers must always come first.

​H-1b visas, Tech 

A 45-year-old male fatally shot seven of his relatives and one family friend in an Erie, Pennsylvania, home, on Friday, police told the Associated Press.

The gunman took his own life, the AP said, adding that authorities have not released his name. One of the victims was eight months pregnant, police said in a news conference video.

‘They were a lovely family. Who would have thought this would ever happen?’

Erie Police Chief Rick Lorah said the gunman was related to seven of the victims, while the eighth victim was a friend of the pregnant woman, the outlet added. Police have not made the names of the victims public, the AP noted.

A man whose 1-year-old daughter Amarianna was among the shooting victims told the outlet Sunday that the gunman was a grandfather who never seemed distressed.

“I think that was a front for him,” Julius Windham told the AP while standing at a memorial to shooting victims, who also included a 5-year-old boy.

“Him every day, him smiling and being just — you would think … nothing like that would happen,” Windham added to the outlet.

Mourners on Sunday placed candles, flowers, and stuffed animals outside the home where the man opened fire shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, the AP said, adding that Windham wore a T-shirt with pictures of the women and children and the words, “Forever In My Heart.”

“Words can’t even explain what I’m going through right now,” Windham added to the outlet. “But I gotta be strong for my community, you know what I’m saying? My family, my daughters, my sons, everybody.”

Chief Lorah said video and audio evidence investigators recovered included muffled gunshot sounds coming from inside the home just before two “distressed” women arrived and began pounding on the door, according to the AP, which added that the gunman came out of the house, shot them as they ran toward him, and then returned inside the house.

RELATED: Male, 25, accused of shooting to death his mother, father, brother, and brother’s girlfriend

Responding officers found the two women dead outside, the outlet said.

Police deployed a drone and robot, the AP said, adding that officers then went inside the home and found the bodies of the 5-year-old boy and 1-year-old girl on the first floor; two more women and two young men in a stairwell; and the shooter on the second floor.

“Out of respect for the victims and the families, I will not discuss the details of what our officers encountered inside that home,” the chief said at a news conference, according to the outlet.

Lorah declined to discuss a motive for the shooting but suggested mental health could be a factor, the AP said, adding that the chief noted that investigators would talk to relatives and examine the cell phones of the women who were killed outside the home.

“They knew something was going on at that house,” Lorah also said, according to the outlet. “We have to figure out what that is.”

Nicole and Debra Eller, whose best friend was among the victims, told the AP they have known the family for more than 30 years. Nicole Eller added to the outlet that the shooter “was a good guy, and then he started going downhill with everything.”

“They were a lovely family. Who would have thought this would ever happen?” Debra Eller added to the AP. “Oh my gosh, this is so upsetting. This should have never happened to her or the kids or anybody. His grandchildren, his kids, how can you do that?”

The outlet added that Erie Mayor Daria Devlin (D) at a Saturday news conference told the victims’ families she was “so deeply sorry. What happened to you was horrific, and there is nothing that any of us can say today that will make this any easier. … Our entire community is with you; we’re grieving with you. And we are here to support you.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Fatal shooting, Mass shooting, Erie, Pennsylvania, Crime