Washington has an old joke: Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government program.

Look past the quip and a pattern emerges. Programs created to address specific problems rarely disappear when those problems recede. They develop constituencies, build bureaucracies, and acquire defenders. Programs meant to die are kept alive through zombie funding long after their original purpose has faded.

Federal grants are not entitlements. Recipients should earn and re-earn them through demonstrated performance.

Milton Friedman spent decades explaining why. In “Free to Choose,” he distilled the point into a simple insight: When you spend your own money on yourself, you care about cost and value. When you spend someone else’s money on someone else — which is precisely what federal grantmaking entails — neither cost nor value receives the same scrutiny it would if the money were your own.

That is the system the Trump administration is now trying to change through a sweeping overhaul of federal grant regulations developed by the Office of Management and Budget. The core idea is simple enough that it should not require federal rulemaking to defend: Public money should produce public results. If it does not, the money should not continue automatically.

Washington has often operated on the opposite assumption. Grants get awarded. Organizations build staffs around them. Those staffs lobby to preserve them. Programs that fail rarely disappear cleanly; they are restructured, rebranded, and refunded. The constituency for any particular line of spending is loud and organized. The constituency for cutting it is diffuse and quiet. That is not a bug. It is a feature that benefits insiders and leaves taxpayers with the bill.

The proposed reforms rest on a simple principle: Federal funding should be earned continuously, not granted automatically. Stronger reporting requirements would force grantees to demonstrate results rather than document activity. Expanded use of the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay system would help prevent improper payments before funds go out — a meaningful safeguard given that the OMB reported roughly $236 billion in improper payments government-wide in the 2023 fiscal year. Enhanced transparency rules would make it easier for taxpayers to see where federal dollars go and what they produce.

The goal is to shift federal grantmaking from routine renewal to ongoing performance review.

The proposal also takes on something Washington rarely discusses honestly: grantee capture. When a nonprofit receives most of its revenue from federal grants, it no longer operates as a purely independent civic institution. It functions as a publicly funded contractor with a development office. Taxpayers deserve to know when groups presenting themselves as independent advocates also depend heavily on federal money.

RELATED: ‘Pigs at the trough’: Spencer Pratt and Bill Maher come together to blast California ‘socialists’

Man_Half-tube/iStock/Getty Images

One provision deserves special support: ensuring that faith-based organizations can compete for grants on equal terms with secular ones. Charitable-choice provisions dating to the 1996 welfare reform law, executive-branch guidance under President Bush, and Executive Order 14332 signed by President Trump in 2025 already prohibit religious discrimination in many grant competitions.

But law on paper and law in practice often diverge. The federal government should judge applicants on their ability to deliver results — not on whether they pray before staff meetings.

Critics will argue that these reforms could be used to disadvantage political opponents. Some of that criticism will land. Implementation will matter enormously, and the effort’s credibility will depend on whether agencies apply performance metrics consistently and transparently across programs.

But the underlying principle should command broad support: Federal grants are not entitlements. Recipients should earn and re-earn them through demonstrated performance. Any serious steward of public resources should embrace that standard.

Friedman understood that bad incentive structures produce bad outcomes regardless of the intentions of the people operating within them. The federal grant system has tolerated weak incentives for too long. Large flows of public money require constant oversight. Without it, mistakes, waste, and fraud become predictable.

After decades of promises to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration’s reforms represent something Washington too rarely attempts: real change.

Every dollar the federal government spends was earned by someone outside Washington. Taxpayers deserve to know it was used well.

​Budget, Donald trump, Entitlements, Federal spending, Grants, Milton friedman, Office of management and budget, Reform, Regulations, Taxpayers, Opinion & analysis 

Liberals in the United Kingdom have worked feverishly in recent years to paint white Britons uniquely as history’s villains, undermine their unique claims to the isles, and erase them from British history.

What’s more, police and some in the justice system have shown that they are willing to hold whites — white men in particular — to a different standard than virtually every other group.

The British public has now been confronted with incontrovertible evidence of this campaign’s influence and impact in the case of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old Englishman who died at the feet of maligning and disbelieving police.

‘Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times.’

Walking home from a night out with his soccer team on Dec. 3, Nowak encountered a 23-year-old Sikh named Vickrum Digwa, who, on account of a religious exemption to the general ban on carrying knives in Britain, was armed.

In an unprovoked attack, Digwa stabbed the University of Southampton finance student repeatedly with an eight-inch blade — a blade that Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, later hid in an effort to aid her killer kin.

Digwa and his family members also proceeded to falsely tell police not only that Nowak was the real aggressor — a supposed racist who had attacked Digwa and knocked off his turban — but that Nowak hadn’t been stabbed and was just exaggerating about his injuries.

Even as Nowak lay dying, officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary reflexively entertained the Digwa family’s lies and handcuffed the white teen. Nowak’s handcuffs were removed only after the “severity of his condition was becoming clear,” police claimed.

After much public clamor, the damning police body camera footage of Nowak’s arrest was finally released on Monday, showing the nightmarish scene, including:

Digwa and his kin standing over the dying Englishman, then lying about what happened;police dismissing Nowak’s claims about being stabbed;Nowak begging repeatedly for help while being handcuffed; anda female officer suggesting they should confirm he was not stabbed, then aborting the effort after seeing one of Digwa’s slash marks on the victim’s face.

RELATED: ‘No such thing as a defensive weapon’: Judge warns Scottish axe girl she shouldn’t have carried blades

William Mousley, the Southampton judge who oversaw the murder trial, noted in his sentencing remarks on Monday that after stabbing his “defenseless” victim, Digwa — accompanied by his brother, Gurpreet — abused the teen and made “films of Henry suffering” and trying to escape before the arrival of police.

“You lied to him that you had been attacked, picking up on his question about whether it had been accompanied by racism by falsely claiming that Henry had called you a ‘Paki,'” said Mousley. “I am sure that Henry had said nothing racist.”

Mousley sentenced Digwa to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years and 190 days before any consideration can be given to possible parole.

According to the BBC, the attorney general’s office is reconsidering the prison sentence after being deluged by requests to review it under the unduly lenient sentence scheme.

Digwa’s mother, Kiran Kaur, is set to be sentenced for attempting to help her son cover up his crime. Digwa’s father, Moga Singh, and his brother, Gurpreet Digwa, have reportedly been slapped with multiple weapons charges and are expected to appear in court on Tuesday.

After Digwa’s sentencing, Mark Nowak, Henry’s father, publicly addressed his dead son’s egregious treatment by the Southampton police as evidenced in the video footage.

“When police arrived, Henry was lying on the floor, barely able to sit up and plainly in severe medical distress,” said the bereaved father. “With his final words, he told officers that he could not breathe. He told them he had been stabbed. In fact, Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times. He told them he had been stabbed four times.”

“The response from one officer was ‘I don’t think you have, mate,'” continued Mark Nowak. “The police have said they were misled by the murderer and that the scene when they arrived was complex. Unfortunately, it seems to us the truth is much simpler.”

Mark Nowak emphasized that police chose not to believe his son or the member of the public who called and reported someone claiming to have been stabbed. Instead, they dragged his bloody son across the gravel, wrenched his hands behind his back, handcuffed him, formally arrested him for assault, and read him his rights.

“Henry did not die with dignity. He did not die with the care he deserved. He lost consciousness before anyone believed him,” said Mark Nowak.

‘Look back in anger.’

While assigning to Digwa all blame for his son’s death, Mark Nowak noted that his son should not have died in police custody and that “the way he was treated was inhumane and degrading.”

The father noted further that, unlike his son, the Sikh murderer was curiously “afforded decency. He was believed. He was not handcuffed when arrested. He was not handcuffed when transported to the police station. As far as we understand, he was never handcuffed at all.”

“The contrast is unbearable,” said Mark Nowak.

Others around the U.K. and around the globe have reacted similarly to the police video.

Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK Party, said, “This is the most shocking footage of discrimination that you will ever see. A white boy being handcuffed by police officers more concerned by an accusation of racism than an act of murder. This must be a turning point. White lives matter too.”

Whereas Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered a weak response coupled with a condemnation of “knife crime,” British Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe, formerly of the Reform UK Party and now the leader of Restore Britain, offered a forceful series of condemnations and demanded “prosecutions for what happened to Henry Nowak.”

‘Now this is the moment for real f**king change.’

“Young white British men are bleeding to death in the street as a direct result of our racist establishment. I will never forget, and I will never forgive,” Lowe said on Tuesday.

Lowe vowed to “look back in anger” and suggested that were his party in power, Digwa would be put to death, “the police officers on the scene who allowed Henry to die [would] face criminal charges for gross negligence manslaughter,” and “Digwa’s foreign family [would] be deported.”

“Sara Sharif. The Nottingham killer. The Manchester bomber. The grooming gangs. Now Henry Nowak,” wrote Conservative Party MP Claire Coutinho, the shadow minister for equalities. “We have to unpick the mentality across our public services that says accusations of racism are more important than protecting the public from harm.”

“If we stay the hand of those who are meant to protect the public, if we tie them up in knots with unconscious bias training and Islamophobia definitions, then we are making their jobs even more impossible and we can see from case after case that we are failing to protect the public from serious harm,” added Coutinho.

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badnoch similarly criticized the “training that the police have been given” and the “race action plans” implemented in the wake of the Black Lives Matter mania earlier this decade.

“Now this is the moment for real f**king change, not George Floyd, a dead crackhead in America,” said activist Tommy Robinson.

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Robert France, the temporary deputy chief constable, apologized on Thursday for the police’s grievous mistreatment of Nowak, stating, “I am sorry that in the moments before he lost consciousness, [Nowak] had been handcuffed and arrested.”

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

​Henry nowak, Murder trial, Nigel farage, United kingdom, Vickrum digwa, White lives matter, Leftism, Racism, Anti-white, White, Murder, Police, Dei, Politics 

Vice President JD Vance revealed just how much taxpayer money is lost to fraud across America — and it’s more than you think.

“We’ve referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection. We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California,” Vance explained.

The Trump administration has also “put a six-month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers” due to a large amount of fraud uncovered in hospices all over the country.

“We’ve recovered taxpayer funds from the $135 billion stolen after the floodgates were opened in the immediate aftermath of COVID. We have found $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts which were mostly awarded during the last administration, and that has stopped,” Vance continued.

“And finally, we’ve blocked $60 million in student aid fraud that should have gone to young people trying to get an education, but instead were going to fraudsters,” he added.

“JD Vance is doing his darndest to try to clean up the fraud situation in America,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray comments. “We’ve got all the Somali fraud. We’ve got fraud in California. We’ve got fraud, I’m sure, in every state, but it’s really really rampant in some more than others.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also commented on the huge amount of fraud, explaining that American systems were “set up based on the honor system.”

“They’re set up based on the idea that you could trust the average person, through their own morality, to abide by the rules and comply with the law,” he said, before championing Vance’s efforts to tackle fraud.

“Because of the vice president’s leadership, you are seeing the most muscular, robust, aggressive, dedicated, determined, and speedy effort to shut down criminal fraud that has not only ever occurred in the history of this country, but in any developed nation,” he said.

“Thank you,” Gray comments.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Pat gray, Jd vance, Fraud, Student aid, Hospice care, Taxpayer, Trump, Stephen miller, Pat gray unleashed 

A rare defect that can be devastating to children is getting a first-of-its-kind medicine from Japanese researchers.

A new treatment is now five years in the making, and after being used for medical applications, it’s likely the product will be available for use by the general population as well.

‘We feel that people’s expectations … are high.’

Since 2021, Japanese researchers have been hoping to find a solution for anodontia, the medical term for the complete absence of teeth, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

The initial study for this project states that anodontia and congenital tooth agenesis are common tooth anomalies affecting 1% of the worldwide population, resulting in a high rate of missing teeth.

The solution, according to lead researcher Katsu Takahashi, is to counteract a protein called USAG-1, which inhibits the growth of teeth.

“We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,” he told the Mainichi in 2024. “While there has been no treatment to date providing a permanent cure, we feel that people’s expectations for tooth growth are high.”

The goal of the project is to give young children who have no teeth the joy of a real smile.

RELATED: Japan’s beautiful love affair with America

EyesWideOpen/Getty Images

The research was moved into human trials in October 2024 and lasted until October 2025. The controlled trial involved 30 males between 30 and 65 who were missing one or more molars, and the medicine was administered through one single intravenous dose.

The study has since been marked as completed, but little public information has been released. However, the Economic Times reported that as of April, preliminary analyses showed positive results with no significant side effects.

The next phase of the research is reportedly to test the medicine on children between 2 and 7 who suffer from congenital anodontia.

RELATED: That customer service rep with the American accent might still be an Indian guy — here’s how

– YouTube

The teams at Kitano Hospital and Kyoto University Hospital believe that it may be soon possible to grow teeth not only in people with the aforementioned conditions, but also for common conditions like tooth loss from cavities or injuries.

According to Popular Mechanics, if the latest trials are successful, the researchers believe the medicine will become available to the public for all forms of tooth loss around 2030.

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

​Return, Teeth, Tooth loss, Rare disorder, Children, Japan, Tech 

The government watchdog White Coat Waste Project pulled back the curtain in 2021 on federally funded gruesome beagle experiments under the leadership of then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci. The scandal sparked a national outcry to end animal experimentation.

President Donald Trump’s administration set a goal to stop all mammalian animal testing by 2035, and on Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency announced significant steps to reach that objective, according to a press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News.

‘The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!’

The EPA declared that it is expanding its approved list of “cutting-edge” alternatives to animal studies by adding 13 more new approach methods. The agency describes NAMs as “high-quality alternatives” intended to reduce animal testing, particularly on vertebrate mammals such as rabbits, mice, rats, and dogs.

The Toxic Substances Control Act “directs EPA to use NAMs whenever scientifically appropriate when evaluating chemicals, and to reduce, refine, or replace vertebrate mammal testing,” the EPA’s press release read. “Modern NAMs, including human cell models and advanced computer-based methods, help EPA identify hazards and exposures faster and often with results that are more relevant to people, not laboratory animals.”

The EPA contended that these alternative methods can reduce time and costs, as well as provide more applicable insight into how chemicals interact with the human body. The move “opens the door for innovators to bring the next generation of tools to the table,” according to the EPA.

The agency highlighted a few of those new replacement methods, including a way to evaluate eye hazards using reconstructed human cells; a process to evaluate phototoxicity using a 3D human cell-based tissue model, and combining in-chemico and in-vitro test data to “identify potential dermal sensitization hazard, dermal sensitization potency, and a quantitative point-of-departure.”

RELATED: Trump’s NIH closes Fauci’s apparent puppy-torture lab after 40 years of sadistic experiments

Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time the EPA has expanded its NAMs list since 2021.

The EPA also announced a streamlined process for industry stakeholders to nominate additional NAMs for consideration in pesticide and chemical assessments.

While the goal to end animal testing was initially announced during the first Trump administration, under former President Joe Biden, the phase-out deadlines were canceled, the EPA stated.

“Today’s actions get that progress back on track,” the agency declared.

The EPA stated that the Trump administration has already made measurable progress toward meeting its goal to phase out mammalian animal testing, including implementing the agency’s first lab animal adoption program in April 2025 and using alternative methods in cancer evaluations for dibutyl phthalate and di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, which prevented an estimated 1,600 mice and rats from undergoing experiments.

“When the Trump administration makes a commitment, we deliver. With today’s announcement, we’re accelerating the shift to modern, gold-standard science — without the use of animal testing — by using new, innovative methods to review chemicals,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stated. “By broadening high-quality alternatives and inviting strong new candidates, we can deliver faster, more protective decisions while reducing animal testing.”

RELATED: Republicans should take the easy win and stop medical testing on animals

Katherine Frey/Washington Post/Getty Images

Anthony Bellotti, founder and president of White Coat Waste, commended Zeldin and the EPA for honoring their commitment to reduce animal testing.

“Earlier this year, White Coat Waste proudly joined EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to restore the historic Trump-era plan to phase out animal testing by 2035 after we exposed how the Biden administration quietly scrapped it behind closed doors,” Bellotti said in a statement provided to Blaze News.

He stated that WCW is leading the charge alongside Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) to “eliminate outdated EPA red tape that forces companies to poison puppies in expensive, ineffective, government-mandated pesticide and chemical tests.” Bellotti was referring to the Fiscal Year 27 Interior-EPA Appropriations bill, which includes WCW-backed language to defund dog testing mandates for pesticides and chemicals. The House is scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to bankroll big-government bureaucrats who mandate beagle torture, butcher bunnies, force animals to inhale firearm emissions in bizarre gun-control experiments, or make animals eat lard and breathe smog,” Bellotti continued. “The solution is simple: Stop the money. Stop the madness!”

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

​News, Anthony fauci, White coat waste, Lee zeldin, Donald trump, Trump administration, Michael cloud, Animal testing, Politics 

A troubled Democratic congressional candidate in Hawaii has been arrested after allegedly brandishing a firearm at county employees.

At around 9:30 a.m. on Friday, a suspect later identified as 40-year-old Kirill Basin marched into a county building in Wailuku and began “brandishing a firearm and engaged in a verbal altercation with County employees,” prompting a call to dispatch at approximately 10:57 a.m., according to a press release from the Maui Police Department.

The alleged gun incident on Friday is but the latest in a series of apparently bizarre events involving increasingly aggressive behavior from Basin.

The county has not explained the 90-minute gap between when the suspect first arrived and when police were finally called, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.

Basin was arrested in Kihei around 12:30 p.m. and taken into custody without incident, police said. He was later charged with felony first-degree terroristic threatening.

“The Maui Police Department will not compromise public safety, and incidents of this nature are taken extremely seriously in Maui County,” said a statement from Chief John Pelletier. “I am extremely proud of the quick response and professionalism displayed by our personnel, which helped ensure a peaceful resolution.”

Jail records indicate Basin has since bonded out of custody.

Basin’s campaign told Blaze News:

Kirill Basin denies that he brandished a firearm or threatened anyone. According to Mr. Basin, the item being referenced was an unloaded pellet gun inside his backpack, with no pellet magazine in it. He states that it was never removed from the backpack, and that the individual making the accusation only saw it inside the bag.

The campaign is deeply concerned that the public description of this matter omits critical facts and presents a one-sided version of events before the evidence has been reviewed. Mr. Basin is presumed innocent. He intends to fight the charge and expects the facts, including available video, witness accounts, police records, body camera footage, booking records, and medical documentation of his injuries, to be reviewed through the proper legal process.

RELATED: Hawaii tells Supreme Court our rights should exist only with permission

Handcuffs and fingerprint card; Daniel Tamas Mehes/Getty Images

The alleged gun incident on Friday is but the latest in a series of apparently bizarre events involving increasingly aggressive behavior from Basin.

On Wednesday, Basin had to be forcibly removed from a South Maui town hall meeting, police said, after he engaged in “a verbal altercation with Council Member Tom Cook and staff members.”

As a result of some continuing alleged interactions in the parking lot outside the town hall, Jared Agtunong, Cook’s executive assistant, successfully petitioned for a temporary restraining order against Basin on Friday, the Civil Beat reported.

The petition alleged that Basin has also badgered Agtunong with threatening texts and phone calls, the Civil Beat added.

“I did not answer Basin’s phone call, but he left a message telling me that I’m a piece of trash, said I should think of my family, and insisted I call him back,” the filing said, according to the outlet. “In additional texts sent on the same day, Basin wished me luck with prison, then at 9:00 p.m., Basin’s text said ‘you’re f**ked.'”

Then on Thursday, the day after the outburst at the town hall but a day before his arrest for alleged terroristic threatening, Basin filed a lawsuit alleging he has been the victim of police brutality, including “prolonged and deliberate infliction of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse,” the Civil Beat reported.

The lawsuit “basically outlines how 3 police officers tortured me for 14 hours,” Basin wrote in an Instagram post on Saturday. “That’s the gist. It’ll never happen to anyone again.”

Basin was also arrested for disorderly conduct on May 2.

As the press release from Maui PD states, Basin is running for Congress. He has filed to run as a Democrat in the 2nd Congressional District of Hawaii.

Records with the Hawaii Office of Elections revealed that Basin was just issued an official 2026 candidate report last Tuesday.

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

​Democrat, Hawaii, Terroristic threatening, Politics 

Every year around mid-spring, Google hosts its annual IO event where it shows off the latest and greatest features coming to its products, services, and platforms. While the keynote address is now mostly reserved for AI and Gemini, we still got a sneak peek at the cool new things coming to Android 17. Here’s what you can expect when the update lands later this summer.

Gemini Intelligence

AI is everything these days, with Google even admitting it’s become an “AI-first” company under CEO Sundar Pichai, so it only makes sense that Android would receive a fresh new AI-powered update.

Those who despise it may do the unthinkable: consider switching to iPhone.

Perhaps as a cheeky nod to the flailing Apple Intelligence, Google introduced Gemini Intelligence, the first native AI agent for Android. Its main mission is to automate tasks on your device to free up your time to do other things. Just like you, Gemini Intelligence can interact with the apps installed on your device. If you don’t have an app required to complete a task, it can shift its workflow to the web via Chrome to navigate webpages.

It’s literally like having a personal assistant inside your phone. Tell it what to do, and it will go out and do it on your behalf. Theoretically, that means Gemini Intelligence can do your online shopping, reserve tickets to an upcoming concert, and even book your vacation, complete with airplane tickets and a hotel stay.

In many ways, Gemini Intelligence is the ultimate personal assistant that Google Assistant was always meant to be when it launched more than a decade ago, and with generative AI, we might finally be at the cusp of having useful AI agents in our mobile devices. That may excite some users who are bullish on the AI rush, while those who despise it may do the unthinkable: consider switching to iPhone.

While the Gemini Intelligence demo looked promising, we’ll have to test Google’s new AI agent firsthand to see if it lives up to the hype, which we’ll get to do soon. Gemini Intelligence is coming to Google Pixel 10 phones and Samsung Galaxy S26 devices later this summer.

Gemini Intelligence/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Pause Point

Phones are addictive, and even with the Digital Wellbeing settings baked into Android that let you set app timers and silence notifications, sometimes your favorite app still pulls you in and wastes hours of your time before you realize what’s happened. If you’re trying to kick certain addictive apps to the curb and setting time limits isn’t enough, Pause Point might be what you need.

This new feature acts as a check point between you and your apps. When activated, a pause screen will show up on your device the next time you open an addictive app. The screen stays up for 10 seconds, giving you time to consider if you really want to click through and waste hours of time doomscrolling on social media or watching cascades of short-form videos. During the waiting period, you’ll be prompted to take a couple of meditative breaths or browse photos of people you should spend time with instead of scrolling. You can even tell it to suggest different apps to open instead of that one addictive thorn in your side.

RELATED: Sick of Microsoft’s preinstalled propaganda on your PC? Block it now.

DigitalVision/Getty Images

Either let the time go by and open the app anyway, or tap “Don’t Open” to close the addictive app and reclaim the free time you almost lost.

The idea of Pause Point is to get you to think twice before you spend too much time looking at a screen, and even though it might sound a little silly for some, it’s a great tool for other users who want to break their app addiction without completely throwing out their smartphone.

Pause Point/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Other interesting announcements

Google had a few more interesting updates before the close of the event. Here are the highlights:

Expanded Quick Share support: It’s easy to share a photo from one iPhone to another with AirDrop, or between Android phones with Quick Share, but it’s nearly impossible to do the same across OS platforms. That’s changing now that Android 17 includes interoperability with AirDrop, letting iPhone owners and Android users exchange photos, videos, and other files over the air with just a tap. The list of supported devices is small right now, but it’s a step in the right direction to knocking down the walled garden that historically made it harder for Apple and Google devices to communicate with each other.

Quick Share + AirDrop supported devices/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

New iOS transfer tools: Again, it’s easy to upgrade from an iPhone to an iPhone and Android to an Android, but it’s historically been difficult to switch platforms entirely. With Google’s new iOS transfer tools, more of your personal data can be pulled from an old iPhone to a new Android phone, including apps, app data, home screen layout, calls, contacts, and more.

New iOS transfer tools/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Android Auto optimizations: Widgets you can easily glance at are coming to Android Auto to provide more contextual information about your apps while on the road. Immersive navigation offers a new 3D view of Google Maps when driving, complete with lanes, stop signs, stop lights, and other markers. You can also watch videos on the internal display when your car is stopped or listen to the audio of the video only when in drive.

Android Auto updates/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Googlebooks

Serving as its “one more thing” moment, Google had a final surprise to tease before the end of the event. It’s called Googlebook.

Not to be confused with Google Books, the books archival service established in 2004, or Google Play Books, the company’s little-known competitor to Amazon Kindle and Apple Books, Googlebooks are a new breed of laptop that run on a combined version of Android and ChromeOS.

Just like mobile Android, this laptop-ready version of Android is centered on AI. Gemini lives in the cursor. Simply wiggle the mouse to summon it to the forefront to read your screen and complete different tasks based on what it sees — schedule a calendar event it spotted in your email, automatically write a reply, or prompt Gemini with your own queries. The goal is to make laptops more useful with AI, though I’m not sold on the initial demo. It feels like Googlebooks are still searching for a problem in need of a solution to make them stick.

Nevertheless, Googlebooks are meant to replace Chromebooks as Google’s flagship laptop platform, though Google claims that Chromebooks are also sticking around, at least for schools and other institutions.

Googlebooks/The Android Show/I/O Edition 2026

Android 17 is coming

All the features covered today are expected to roll out in Android 17 to Google Pixel phones first this summer. After that, it will make its way to other Android phones as OEMs like Samsung, Motorola, and OnePlus integrate their user interfaces into the final Android codebase for their own devices.

​Tech, Google, Android 17, Artificial intelligence 

Texas police officers said a home “smelled like death” when they were called to investigate after being alerted about the foul odor.

Inside they found two young children sitting in a bathtub halfway filled with dirty water and the home buried with feces, garbage, and maggots, according to an affidavit.

Police said the children smelled like ‘urine, feces, body odor, and stagnant water.’ The children said they didn’t know how to read or write and had never been to school.

Officers from the Temple Police Department said they were called to the home on Young Avenue on May 20 after a caller reported the odor and no sign of the residents.

They knocked on the doors and windows, but no one responded. Then they noted flies at the windows, which led them to believe someone had died inside.

Police made entry into the home and found 34-year-old Michael Robbins and 68-year-old John Robbins coming to the door.

They inspected the home and said every surface was filled with garbage, rodent and mouse droppings, rotting food, and maggots.

Then they found the two children.

The 8- and 10-year-old children had matted hair that was apparently infested with bugs. When they were told to get dressed, they returned in foul-smelling clothing with food stains.

Police said the children smelled like “urine, feces, body odor, and stagnant water.” The children said they didn’t know how to read or write and had never been to school.

One of the children had their adult teeth growing rotten in their mouth, an affidavit said.

Police determined that the men were not providing food for the children and that they were forced to fend for themselves.

The children were transported to McClane’s Children’s Hospital for treatment.

RELATED: Police rescue 2 children from freezing home with ‘overwhelming’ smell of dog feces and urine: ‘Like a punch to the face’

Neighbors told police they had not seen the children in years.

Both men were booked into the Bell County Jail on charges of abandoning or endangering a child with intent. They each have a bond of $60,000.

Temple is a city of about 82,000 residents located 80 miles north of Austin in central Texas.

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

​Child endangerment, Child abuse, Child neglect, Filthy home, Crime