THE CENTER SQUARE—Parents should take precaution this holiday season when it comes to artificial intelligence toys after researchers for the new Trouble in Toyland report found safety concerns.  Illinois Public Interest Research Group Campaign Associate Ellen Hengesbach said some of the toys armed with AI raised red flags ranging from toys that talk in-depth about sexually explicit topics to acting dismayed when the child disengages. “What they look like are basically stuffed animals or toy robots that have a chatbot like Chat GPT embedded in them and can have conversations with children,” Hengesbach told The Center Square. The U.S. PIRG Education Fund report also points out that at least three toys have limited to no parental controls and have the capacity to record your child’s voice and collect other sensitive data via facial recognition.    “All three were willing to tell us where to find potentially dangerous objects in the house, such as plastic bags, matches, or knives,” she said. “It seems like dystopian science fiction decades ago is now reality.” In the face of all the changing landscape and rising concerns, Hengesbach is calling for immediate action. “The two main things that we’d like to see are more oversight in general and more research so we can see exactly how these toys interact with kids, really just identify what the harms might be and have a lot more transparency from companies around how are these toys designed,” she said. “What are they capable of and what the potential risks or harms might be. I just really want us to take this opportunity to really think through what we’re doing instead of rushing a toy to market.” As for the here and now, Hengesbach stressed parents would be wise to be thoughtful about their purchases. “We just have a big open question of what are the long-term impacts of these products on young kids, especially when it comes to their social development,” she said. “The fact is that we just really won’t know what the long-term impacts of AI friends and companion toys might be until the first generation playing with them grows up. For now, I think it’s just really important that parents understand that these AI toys are out there; they’re very new and they’re basically unregulated.” Since the release of the report, Hengesbach said one AI toymaker temporarily suspended sales of all their products to conduct a safety audit.   This year’s 40th Trouble in Toyland report also focuses on toys that contain toxins, counterfeit toys that haven’t been tested for safety, recalled toys and toys that contain button cell batteries or high-powered magnets, both of which can be deadly if swallowed. Originally published in The Center Square. The post ‘Trouble in Toyland’ Sounds Alarm on AI Toys appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The current generation “Z”—those now roughly between 13 and 28 years old—is becoming our 21st-century version of the “Lost Generation.” Members of Gen Z are often nicknamed “Zoomers,” a term used to describe young adults who came of age in the era of smartphones, social media, and rapid cultural upheaval. Males in their teens and 20s are prolonging their adolescence—rarely marrying, not buying a home, not having children, and often not working full-time. The negative stereotype of a Zoomer is a shiftless man, who plays too many video games. He is too coddled by parents and too afraid to strike out on his own.Zoomers rarely date supposedly out of fear that they would have to grow up, take charge, and head a household.Yet the opposite, sympathetic generalization of Gen Z seems more accurate.All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.In college, the majority of students are female. In contrast, white males—9% to 10% of admittees in recent years at elite schools like Stanford and the Ivy League—are of no interest to college admission officers.So they are tagged not as unique individuals but as superfluous losers of the “wrong” race, gender, or sexual orientation. Gen Z men saw themselves scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations—and on the wrong side of the preposterous reductionist binary of oppressors and the oppressed.Traditional pathways to adulthood—affordable homes, upwardly mobile and secure jobs, and safe and secure city and suburban living—had mostly vanished amid overregulation, overtaxation, and underpolicing.Orthodox and loud student advocates on campus—climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Palestinians—had little to do with getting a job, raising a family, or buying a house. During the Joe Biden years, white males mostly stopped enlisting in the military in their accustomed overrepresented numbers.In Iraq and Afghanistan, they had died in frontline combat units at twice their percentages for the demographic. No matter—prior Pentagon DEI commissars still slandered them as suspects likely to form racist cabals.Gen Z males seemed bewildered by women and sex—and often withdrew from dating.Never has popular culture so promoted sexually provocative fashions, semi-nudity, and freewheeling lifestyles, and careers of supposedly empowered single women.And never had the rules of dating and sexuality become more retrograde Victorian.Casual consensual sex was flashed as cool everywhere on social media. And when it naturally proved in the real world to be selfish, callous, and empty, males were almost always exclusively blamed as if they were not proper Edwardian gentlemen.Soon, young men feared sexual hookups and promiscuity as avenues to post facto and one-sided charges of harassment—or worse.For the half of Generation Z who went to college, tuition had soared, rising faster than the rate of inflation. Administrators were often more numerous than faculty. Obsessive fixations with race determined everything from dorm selections to graduation ceremonies.Zoomers were mired in enormous student debt. Yet they soon learned that their gut social science and “studies” degrees proved nearly worthless. Employers saw such certificates as neither proof of traditional knowledge nor of any needed specialized skill set.Unemployed or half-employed Zoomers then ended up with unsustainable five-figure student loans, and the insidious interest on them. Their affluent, left-wing tenured profs, who had once demonized them as oppressors, could have cared less about their dismal fates.Add it all up, and Zoomers puzzled their parents. And they found scant guidance from the campus.Instead, they sought needed spiritual inspiration from a Jordan Peterson, entertainment and pragmatic advice from a Joe Rogan, but sometimes toxic venting from a demagogic, antisemitic Nick Fuentes.What would shock the lost generation back into the mainstream, barring a war, depression, or natural catastrophe?One, an end to DEI hectoring and blame-gaming, and a return to class rather than race determining “privilege.”Two, some sanity in the war between the sexes. When women represent nearly 60% of undergraduates, why does gender still assure an advantage in admissions and hiring?Three, the federal government needs to stop funding $1.7 trillion in student debt, often for worthless degrees, and wasting away one’s prime 20s and 30s. Let universities pledge their endowments to guarantee their own loans. They should graduate students in four years. And they must slash the parasitical class of toxic administrative busybodies who cannot teach but can hector and bully.Four, society needs to stop granting status on the basis of increasingly meaningless letters and titles after a name.Skilled tradesmen like electricians and mechanics are noble professionals. And their status and compensation should reflect their value to society—far more so than a bachelor’s degree in a- studies major or years vaporized in off-and-on college.Finally, incentivize building homes, rather than overregulating and zoning them into unaffordability.If the lost Gen Z is not found soon, the result for everyone will not be pretty. (C)2025 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Victor Davis Hanson: Can the ‘Lost Generation’ Be Found? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Climate alarmists don’t just get the science wrong but also demonize the engine of wealth that has brought billions out of grinding poverty; and this “climate colonialism” is “morally unconscionable,” a Christian leader says. “What I believe we’re seeing in the demand from wealthy Western nations that we fight climate change by reducing our use of fossil fuels is that they are demanding that the poorest nations of the world forego the use of the most abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources that can lift them out of poverty and keep them out of poverty,” E. Calvin Beisner, president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, told The Daily Signal. “It is the West saying to the rest, ‘We made it out, you have to stay,'” he noted. “That is just morally unconscionable.” Beisner recalled growing up in Calcutta, India. “We were stepping over the bodies of people who had died overnight of starvation and disease.” “When I see people saying, ‘It’s more important to fight climate change than to see poor parts of the world rise and stay out of poverty,’ I say, ‘You’ve never seen poverty, and that upsets me,'” he said. The Engine of Wealth Beisner’s Cornwall Alliance calls for biblical stewardship of creation, for the glory of God and for human flourishing. The organization does not believe that preserving a healthy environment requires giving up the use of fossil fuels, which have improved our lives in ways Westerners often take for granted. “When we look at the enormous contribution that coal, oil, and natural gas—hydrocarbon fuels—have made to lifting billions of people out of abject poverty, into prosperity, into longer, healthier life and life with far more abundant options as to what we can do, and then I hear people condemning these as somehow evil, I say’ Where have you been for the last two centuries?'” he asked. Beisner noted that too few Americans viscerally understand just how rough prior generations had it. “For the entire history of mankind, average life expectancy at birth was around 27 or 28 years,” he noted. “Roughly half of all people born would die before their fifth birthday.” This applied to the wealthy as well as the poor, he added. Queen Anne of England, for example, had 19 children, and not one survived to adulthood. “It’s precisely the parts of the world that have made the least use of hydrocarbons that have the highest rates, still, of extreme poverty,” he noted. Fossil fuels account for roughly 84% of the energy that human beings use in the world today—energy humans use to produce food, clothing, shelter, education, transportation, communication, medical care, and so much more. “If you are objecting to 84% of the energy that we get, then you are objecting to 84% of all the wealth,” he argued. “You want 84% of the world that eats well to now eat poorly or starve.” Not only are many of the foods Americans eat inspired by cuisines across the world, but the ingredients often cross seas and oceans—transported by “ships or trucks or planes running on fuel made by petroleum.” Americans “wouldn’t have most of their dietary choices were it not for petroleum.” The Alleged Climate Threat But don’t fossil fuels pose an existential threat not just to prosperity but to our very lives? Not exactly. Beisner noted that, even though natural disasters have not decreased in the last 100 years, the number of people who die from them has decreased by about 99%. Beisner noted that “wealth enables us to protect ourselves from anything related to climate and weather disasters,” so increasing wealth is more important than decreasing carbon emissions. When it comes to preserving the environment, he noted that “a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good, and—news flash!—wealthier people can afford more costly goods than poorer people can.” As for the truth of the climate threat, he noted that “there are so many different factors in the climate system” that it is nearly impossible to accurately predict global climate changes, much less attribute a specific change to the burning of fossil fuels. Many alarmist models fail to predict actual weather patterns because they fail to consider many factors. The Biblical Image of Stewardship So, how should Christians care for the earth? Beisner noted how God created the world in Genesis, and said human beings should echo his creation. “We should be making more and more out of less and less, bringing greater order out of lesser order,… and we should be enhancing the abundance of life,” he noted. “Our calling as human beings made in God’s image is to enhance the fruitfulness, and the beauty, and the safety of the earth to the glory of God and to the benefit of our neighbors,” Beisner explained. At the root of that is the gospel of Jesus, which he and the Cornwall Alliance preach. The post ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’: Christian Leader Condemns the ‘Climate Colonialism’ That Would Doom the Global South to Grinding Poverty appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety”, but gave no further details as Washington ramps up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro’s government. “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. Venezuela‘s communications ministry, which handles all press inquiries for the government, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s post. The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean have been underway for months, along with a U.S. military buildup in the region, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela. The President told military service members this week that the U.S. would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers. Last week, the U.S. aviation regulator warned major airlines of a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela due to a “worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around” the South American country. Venezuela revoked operating rights for six major international airlines that had suspended flights to the country after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warning. The Trump administration has accused Maduro of involvement in drug trafficking, a charge he has denied. Maduro, in power since 2013, has said that Trump is seeking to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt. U.S. forces in the region have so far focused on counter-narcotics operations, although the assembled firepower far outweighs anything needed for them. They have carried out at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since September, killing at least 83 people. The post Trump Says Airspace Above and Around Venezuela Should Be Closed appeared first on The Daily Signal.

“Affordability” has become the word of the month as American economic anxieties become a major point of political contention between Democrats and Republicans. Socialist Democrat Zohran Mamdani rode to victory in the New York City mayor’s race in part due to his promise to address the issue. Of course, he offered what socialists have been selling to the public for more than a century: free stuff, all paid for by the “rich,” the “billionaires,” or in Mamdani’s case, white neighborhoods in the city. But talk is one thing, reality is another. Will the kind of government intervention Mamdani and others are promising deliver positive results for the American people? So far, it hasn’t. President Donald Trump and those who seek to stem this socialist tide have a serious rebuttal to the idea that the Left can deliver. At the highest level, it’s Trump’s work on foreign policy, on trade, and the implementation of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that may determine how much the U.S. economy revs up next year. Many Americans are nevertheless discontented with the way things are going. And that is a huge red flag for Trump and Republicans. A lot depends on what happens to the economy on the macro, national scale, but it’s still awfully rich to hear Democrats suddenly embrace affordability as an issue given their abysmal record on it. In fact, the huge gap between red states and blue states on affordability highlights the reality of the parties’ policies. Even some figures on the Left acknowledge that Democrats have a huge problem on the issue. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria noted this problem for the Left on a recent episode of his show while commenting on the government shutdown that accomplished about as much as Sen. Cory Booker’s record-breaking phony “filibuster.” He said the shutdown revealed that Democrats have promised big on so many programs, like Obamacare, but the results have been costly and ineffective. “If America has an affordability crisis, it tends to be in places Democrats govern, like New York, Illinois, and California, which all feature high taxes, soaring housing costs, and stagnant outcomes in basic areas like education and infrastructure,” he said. Zakaria pointed to New York City, where the incoming mayor-elect has promised a whole host of “free” programs at the public expense. The CNN anchor asked rhetorically, “What happened to the money already raised?” In 2012, he said, “the city’s budget was about $65 billion. Today it is about $116 billion, an increase of more than 75% in just over a decade. Spending has soared while the subway deteriorates. Housing costs rise and public schools remain mediocre despite spending more than $36,000 per pupil last year, the highest in the nation among major school districts.” For all the talk of an “abundance” agenda that’s going nowhere, the reality is that Democrat-run cities and states are where abundance is squandered and “affordability” is a slogan to sooth the conscience of the rich as the middle class shrinks and seeks greener pastures. A study at UC Berkeley released in April noted that the significant gap in affordability between red and blue states has been consistent over the last 15 years. According to the study, “the average blue state was 13% more expensive, overall, than the average red state.” The study pointed to the cost of housing being the biggest factor, but it’s clear that on a whole host of issues Democrat policies drive up prices. There’s typically a wide gap on energy policies, with Democrats focusing on various green and “renewable” energy sources. While these government-subsidized industries have often enriched a few, for the most part they have been both cost prohibitive and insufficient for America’s growing energy needs. “Over the past two decades, the divergence in electricity rates among U.S. states has grown increasingly stark,” noted a paper on electricity costs published by The Heritage Foundation in 2024. The cost gap was mostly between red and blue states. “A key factor driving these divergences is the adoption of renewable energy mandates, carbon emission–reduction goals, and cap-and-trade schemes, primarily in states with Democratic leadership. States that have required renewables, particularly wind and solar energy, to be used in electricity production often experience higher electricity costs due to the regulatory burdens placed on traditional energy sources, such as natural gas and coal.” Even discounting the economic data, the evidence of the divide on affordability can be seen quite clearly on how Americans have been voting with their feet. An analysis of IRS and census data by the organization Unleash Prosperity found that a “massive shift” in internal migration has been happening in America the last few decades. “New York and California top the list of exodus states, having lost 1.7 million and 1.6 million people, respectively, over this decade,” read a Daily Signal report on this study. “Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Louisiana, Virginia, and Connecticut round out the top 10 for negative migration.” Americans are fleeing, mostly to lower-cost states like Texas and Florida according to the study. What the Mamdanis of the world are promising is a doubling down on the policies that made so many blue states unaffordable for the average American. All they offer is a more aggressive platform of redistribution. But the underlying costs won’t go away. Those policies won’t make energy cheaper, they won’t drop prices at the gas pump, they won’t make homes Americans want to live in any more affordable. So, if Trump and Republicans want to win over Americans, they need to demonstrate how they can make life more affordable for everyone, in part by doubling down on policies that already work. If they can’t make that case then we may in fact get the socialist wave we fear in the near-term future. The post Blue States vs. Red States on ‘Affordability’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.