For many conservatives, Project 2025 represented an actual blueprint. Its supporters argued that America finally had a plan to enforce existing laws, restore accountability, and take a weed-wacker to a bloated federal bureaucracy. It was a genuine road map for restoring sanity after years of government dysfunction. Reasonable people can debate its policy specifics. But at least the conversation centered on shrinking government overreach while strengthening it where the system had genuinely failed.Project 2029, the Democrats' answer to Project 2025, takes America down a far darker path. Its opening sales pitch is practically impossible to oppose: Protect children online. Keep teenagers away from addictive, IQ-draining social media.On paper, it reads like a manifesto every exhausted parent would happily sign in blood. After all, most Americans have looked around and concluded that social media is the digital equivalent of handing a toddler unlimited candy, fireworks, and a triple espresso before bedtime. If TikTok were a real-world babysitter, it would probably encourage your 8-year-old to lick shopping carts for internet fame.Kids will adapt. The surveillance infrastructure will stay forever.Protecting children matters. So too does it matter that good intentions have a funny habit of checking in for the weekend and staying for generations.Inside the trapThe cornerstone of Project 2029 is the "Kids Over Clicks" proposal. It aims to ban social media accounts for anyone under 16 while forcing platforms to strictly verify users' ages. Supporters frame this as simple common sense. Critics see the first pieces of a much larger surveillance system falling into place.That’s because you cannot reliably verify a person's age online without verifying exactly who he is in the physical world. Clicking a box that says "Yes, I am 18" is about as trustworthy as asking a toddler who drew on the walls. Serious age verification requires government identification, facial recognition scans, digital credentials, or another permanent method that ties your online activity to your real-world identity.Every major expansion of government authority arrives carrying an affable, even adorable message. Sometimes it’s national security; sometimes it’s public health. This time, it’s the kids. Nobody wants predators targeting children online, and nobody wants 12-year-olds disappearing into algorithm-driven rabbit holes filled with exploitation. The concern is entirely genuine. The proposed solution, however, deserves equal scrutiny.Think about the children 10 years from now. Imagine growing up in a country where creating an anonymous online account is automatically viewed as a suspicious, near-criminal act. Where every major website explicitly demands your digital papers before allowing you to read or participate. Where speaking freely online increasingly resembles checking in at an airport. Children raised inside that system won't experience it as unusual or oppressive. Fish rarely file complaints about the aquarium.RELATED: New Senate bill punishes chilling of online speech — if it passes Bjorn Bakstad/Getty Images Contrary to conventional wisdom, anonymous speech isn’t just a shield for internet trolls. It has protected whistleblowers exposing corporate corruption, domestic abuse victims seeking safe havens, political dissidents challenging powerful institutions, and ordinary citizens asking uncomfortable questions without fearing professional execution. Replace anonymity with mandatory identification, and many of those crucial voices simply vanish overnight. Not because they are criminals, but because they are human beings who quite like avoiding angry mobs, career-ending screenshots, and awkward conversations with the government.Supporters argue that responsible citizens with nothing to hide have nothing to fear. That argument has aged about as gracefully as New Coke. Databases get hacked with laughable frequency. Governments change, administrations rotate, and policies written for one benevolent purpose always find exciting new careers serving entirely different masters. A child safety database readily becomes a fraud prevention tool, a national security asset, and finally an information enforcement mechanism. Bureaucracies possess an almost supernatural ability to discover fresh, urgent reasons for expanding yesterday’s temporary measures.A glimpse of the futureAmerica has watched this movie before, and the sequel is usually longer and much more exacting. Other countries are already offering a depressing sneak peek. Britain has introduced sweeping online age verification hurdles. Australia is testing hard restrictions on younger users. Across Europe, digital identity systems continue to mutate. Each promised careful limits. Each insisted ordinary citizens had absolutely nothing to worry about.Yet once that tracking infrastructure exists, dismantling it becomes politically impossible. Governments rarely surrender powers they have already collected. Why would they?Perhaps the ultimate irony is that determined teenagers usually find a way around technological barriers anyway. VPNs exist. Shared accounts exist. Older siblings know well that they often can be bribed. Adolescents have been bypassing parental controls since the invention of parents. The kids will adapt. The surveillance infrastructure, however, will stay forever.America absolutely should protect children online. Parents deserve better, more intuitive tools. Platforms should face devastating financial penalties when they deliberately exploit young users. And data collection targeting minors deserves strict, uncompromising limits. Those are debates worth having.But protecting children should never become a convenient political shortcut for building systems that actively erase privacy for everyone else. The children we want to protect today may someday inherit an internet where every single opinion carries a permanent, unremovable digital name tag.That might sound incredibly reassuring to a Democrat. It sounds terrifying to me.

Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Pahira Jr. was conducting a routine inspection of a tractor-trailer on the side of Interstate 81 South near Ashland on July 1 when a second tractor-trailer allegedly helmed by a Haitian illegal alien careened his way.The incoming tractor-trailer sideswiped the 44-year-old trooper's cruiser, careened into the truck that Pahira was inspecting, then struck the trooper. Although nearby construction workers were able to pull Pahira free of the flaming wreckage, he was pronounced dead 90 minutes later.'Because of these reckless policies, a Pennsylvania State Trooper is dead.'In the wake of the horrific crash, the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association and lawmakers demanded answers — especially to the question of how the illegal alien, 33-year-old Michael Bon, managed to obtain a non-domiciled commercial driver's license.While a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles attempted to displace blame for her agency's issuance and renewal of Bon's CDL, the U.S. Department of Transportation has corrected the record, making abundantly clear that Massachusetts helped set the stage for Pahira's untimely demise.According to the Department of Homeland Security, Bon was released into the U.S. by the Biden administration in July 2024. He filed an application for Temporary Protected Status in October 2024, which was never granted.The DHS claimed that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services terminated Bon's parole in June 2025, but the Haitian refused to leave and has remained in the country illegally — living in Massachusetts — ever since, the Boston Herald reported.RELATED: Blue state gave Haitian illegal alien a commercial truck driver's license — 'and now a good man is dead' Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesIn March 2025 — months prior to the termination of his parole — Bon obtained a non-domiciled commercial driver's license from the MRMV. After his transition to illegal alien, Bon had his CDL renewed in February 2026.Amelia Aubourg, a spokeswoman for the MRMV, recently attempted to assign blame for Bon's licensing to the Trump administration, telling the Herald that the "Non-Domiciled Commercial Driver’s Licenses program is a federal program," and that "this individual was ruled eligible based on the Trump administration database and allowed to drive by federal law and Trump administration policies."What Aubourg neglected to mention was that the Trump administration issued a rule in September 2025 barring DACA recipients, asylum-seekers, refugees, TPS holders, and other noncitizens from obtaining, renewing, upgrading, or transferring non-domiciled CDL licenses.This interim final rule, which would have barred Bon from renewing his CDL in February, was understood at the time to be a lifesaving measure.U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a Sept. 26, 2025, statement, "Licenses to operate a massive, 80,000-pound truck are being issued to dangerous foreign drivers — oftentimes illegally. This is a direct threat to the safety of every family on the road, and I won’t stand for it. Today’s actions will prevent unsafe foreign drivers from renewing their license and hold states accountable to immediately invalidate improperly issued licenses."After reviewing emergency legal challenges filed by the American Federation of Teachers and other liberal outfits, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit put the rule on hold in early November.As part of the broader campaign to torpedo the rule, Massachusetts led 18 other states in filing a joint submission characterizing the rule as unnecessary and unlawful.Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell (D) claimed in a November 2025 letter to Duffy that the rule's "dramatic new restrictions on eligibility for non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses and commercial learner's permits are unlawful" and complained that it would "strip nearly all of the country’s 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders of their licenses and their livelihoods."Campbell not only claimed that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration lacked the authority to impose the restrictions but cast doubt on whether "these restrictions provide any additional safety benefits."Campbell was joined in her opposition by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and numerous other radical Democrat officials.A source familiar with the matter told Blaze News that "had those rules been in place during the driver's February 2026 license renewal, [Bon] would have been deemed ineligible for renewal."A U.S. Department of Transportation spokesperson told Blaze News, "Secretary Duffy has spent the last year in office reining in a trucking industry allowed to operate like the Wild West under Biden and Buttigieg. That's why the Department issued a final rule stopping unqualified and unvetted foreign drivers from obtaining licenses to drive commercial trucks and buses.""States that operate recklessly and fail to enforce our common-sense rules will be held accountable," added the spokesperson.Blaze News did not immediately receive a response from Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell's office or the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which oversees the MRMV.The Trump administration successfully issued its final rule preventing unqualified foreign drivers from driving big rigs on March 16.As for Michael Bon, he has been charged with felony vehicular homicide, felony vehicular aggravated assault, misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person and involuntary manslaughter, and various traffic offenses.U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also lodged a detainer asking Pennsylvania officials not to release Bon from jail."This Haitian illegal alien was RELEASED into our country by the Biden administration, and the sanctuary state of Massachusetts gave him a commercial driver’s license," DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in a statement."Now, because of these reckless policies, a Pennsylvania state trooper is dead after a crash that was 100% preventable. Illegal aliens should not be driving trucks on America’s highways," added Bis.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

AI is meant to be the saving grace of the modern age. Proponents say it will unlock new innovations in economic growth, health care, and other industries. On the flip side, it’s also a tool for bad actors to commit digital crimes faster and more efficiently than ever before.It's a tension that is now reaching the law, from the courts to Congress. And not a moment too soon.So far, hundreds of thousands of victims have been affected.Last month, for instance, Google filed a lawsuit against Chinese scammers accused of targeting “hundreds of thousands of Americans” with financial schemes, all distributed broadly with some help from AI.As the group's malicious activities are exposed, you can take some simple actions to start fighting back — while Congress gets moving to ensure we can sweep back the tide of automated scams at scale.Here's the scoop.The lawsuitAccording to the civil lawsuit divulged on the Keyword blog by Google, the Mountain View tech giant is going after a cybercriminal group based in China called “Outsider Enterprise.” The entity uses Telegram, a third-party communications app with optional end-to-end encryption that subverts authorities, to share “phishing kits” that recreate official-looking text messages from major companies, all aimed at unsuspecting users. The goal is to trick users into clicking on a link in the messages, which then takes them to a fake copy of popular websites — including Google, YouTube, and government services — before stealing their personal information.These types of scams are nothing new. Phishing dates back to the 1990s with the advent of AOL. What is new, however, is the breadth and scale of scams that criminals can achieve with AI platforms, like Google Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Claude by Anthropic.Google claims that "Outsider Enterprise" runs a massive AI-fueled cybercriminal network built around 9,000 fake websites, all siphoning data gleaned from 2.5 million messages sent directly to users in two weeks during May alone.RELATED: New Senate bill punishes chilling of online speech — if it passes Bjorn Bakstad/Getty Images So far, “hundreds of thousands of victims” have been affected, with more than $1 million in estimated losses.Google lobbies for legislationTo help curb the onslaught of the AI-enabled scams that are likely to emerge in the coming years, Google demands immediate government regulation, with seven bills called out by name on its blog. Note that most of these bills are bipartisan in nature.National Strategy for Combating Scams Act: This bipartisan bill, proposed by Republican Rep. Derek Schmidt (Kan.), is designed to crack down on financial fraud and improve anti-scam efforts on the state and local levels.Strategic Task Force on Scam Prevention Act: Led by Reps. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.) and Rob Menendez (D-N.J.), this bill empowers the DOJ and FTC to create a comprehensive national scam prevention strategy task force to support scam victims.STOP Scams Against Seniors Act: Proposed by Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), STOP holds criminal organizations accountable for targeting older victims.AI Plan Act: Reps. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) and Jim Himes (D-Conn.). The bill enables the executive branch to devise a plan to protect the U.S.’ financial system and sensitive data from misuse by AI companies and platforms.Stopping Cross-border Attacks and Manipulation Act: This bill by Reps. Jim Baird (R-Ind.) and Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) aims directly at international cybercriminals and foreign scam networks that target American citizens. Artificial Intelligence Public Awareness and Education Campaign Act: Sens. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) proposed a bill that compels the secretary of commerce to educate the public and provide information on the benefits, risks, and prevalence of AI as it applies to the daily lives of everyday Americans.Stop Schemes, Cyber Fraud, Abuse, Manipulation, and Swindles Act: Proposed by Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.), this bill gives the FBI the power to set up an anti-scam task force guided by a standardized system for tracking and investigating criminal groups.Usually, companies prefer less government regulation over the products they create, so it’s strange to watch Google lobby so adamantly for AI laws that could potentially limit Gemini and its competitors. Still, given the broad impacts of AI on modern life — both good and bad — it’s clear that some regulation is necessary.How to protect yourselfMost of these bills have a long way to go before they become law. In the meantime, there are some things you can do to protect yourself from Outsider Enterprise and other AI phishing scams:Approach all texts from unknown senders with suspicion. Major groups, including Google and the government, rarely send official communications via SMS, RCS, or iMessage. Texts claiming otherwise should not be trusted.Flag all potential scam texts as spam within your messaging app. This helps message platform holders tune their algorithms to identify scam texts, alert authorities, and block them from reaching your phone in the first place.Turn on the spam text blocker in your built-in messaging app on iPhone and Android.Phishing is just one way that AI poses a danger to users. Sophisticated AI platforms, like Claude Mythos by Anthropic, can supposedly hack into some of the most secure systems that protect banks, online accounts, and even government infrastructure. Concerns over AI’s growing capabilities have even caused the Trump administration to enact stronger regulations that give the government early access to frontier models before they are made available to the public. Whether or not this new procedure offers any meaningful protection from AI remains to be seen.

For the first time ever, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have jointly rung their bells from the White House.President Trump rang the opening bells of both exchanges from the Oval Office on Monday, marking the official launch of Trump Accounts for children.'Children, at the age of 18 and after, become very wealthy people, come into the world with essentially no money and end up, at a pretty young age, being very rich.'The accounts, created under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, became available for contributions starting July 4 and are open to children who won't turn 18 by year's end.Every eligible child gets a one-time $1,000 seed contribution from the federal government, and family or employers can add more, up to annual limits. The money is invested — by default in an S&P 500 ETF, with more options coming — and grows, tax-advantaged, until the child turns 18. Parents can enroll for free at TrumpAccounts.gov.Attendees included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Michael Dell of Dell Technologies and his wife, and NYSE President Lynn Martin, along with executives from Nasdaq and other major firms. Michael and Susan Dell pledged a $6.25 billion commitment — $250 each to the first 25 million qualifying children signed up for Trump Accounts.At the event, Trump urged attendees to "go out and buy a Dell computer" — and Dell stock jumped more than 7% following his remarks.RELATED: Last summer's teen hiring market was the worst on record. Alarming report shows it's about to get even worse — here's why. Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty ImagesNumerous companies including Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Robinhood also pledged to match the government's initial contribution for employees' children's accounts, while SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said she would give company stock to Trump Accounts for more than 2 million children nationwide.Trump touted the accounts as a way for children to "become very wealthy people ... come into the world with essentially no money and end up, at a pretty young age, being very rich" by adulthood, adding that between individual contributions and seed funding, roughly $800 million in new capital would flow into the stock market for children this week alone.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!