If you believe the headlines, "kids these days" are the worst. Teachers are quitting in droves in part because the Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids are disrespectful, lazy, and downright unteachable. And that's to say nothing of systemic issues in curriculums, school budgets, politics in the classroom, and more.But the kids, apparently, aren't making it any easier.A story from author, mom, and educator Megan Davidhizar, shows that not everyone's having a bad experience with the younger generations. Her story begins with a tongue-in-cheek warning for her fellow teachers.A veteran educator who teaches high school, Davidhizar shares on TikTok all about her journey as a teacher. She has a great sense of humor and seems to really understand today's students and trends. And so when she set out to warn her colleagues about a potential issue, people listened up."When I went to school to become a teacher, no one ever told me that I needed to be so careful about what I put out on my desk," she says in one recent video.Davidhizar knows what the narratives are. She knows what's expected of kids today, and she knows the people watching her TikTok video are going to brace themselves for a story about kids stealing from her or ruthlessly pranking her. She plays on those expectations beautifully here. "Some students who, after I recently got married, gave me these two cute little rubber ducks," she says, holding them up to the camera. The ducks were meant to represent Davidhizar and her husband. "So I put them out on my desk. You wanna know what my room looks like 16 years later?"Watch to the end for the surprise ending: @megan.davidhizar Wait til the end. What teacher at your school has a room filled with hundreds of the same thing? (Also, I love every one I’ve been given. I write the names of who gave them to me on the bottoms) #teachersoftiktok #teacherlife #teacherwarning #rubberducks #newteacher #veteranteacher #teacheradvice Yes, after keenly observing that Mrs. Davidhizar likes rubber ducks, her students began bombarding her with more and more ducks. Her classroom is now full of them, including a drawer that contains all the ones she doesn't have room for on her desk and shelves.All in all, it has to be hundreds of ducks and hundreds of little gifts from the students she's crossed paths with over the years.It's adorable and absolutely incredible. The video racked up 5.7 million views and commenters couldn't help but chime in with their admiration for Davidhizar's dedication. Clearly, it said a lot about her as a teacher to receive so much love from her students."that says your a good teacher that your students saw that and then saw a duck for sale and thought of you and wanted to get that for you" one commenter said.Many people had similar stories of the same phenomenon happening to teachers over the years."My history teacher had a flamingo, he now has thousands""The same thing happened to my English teacher ... Someone bought him a little owl ornament for his desk... Then it became a thing & EVERYONE bought him owls""I taught kindergarten and wore an apron over my clothes. through the years, moms & grandmas noticed and would make aprons for me. I have such an apron collection""Those kids LOVE you," one person wrote. "I love them too," Davidhizar responded.There's no denying that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are different. Maybe not all teachers are set up to succeed in this new and challenging environment where they have to compete with social media, phones, parents who coddle, and overwhelming workloads. @megan.davidhizar Why else would someone become an English teacher? #elateacher #highschool #middleschool #teacherlife Those teachers need better support: healthier budgets, better pay, and more support from the administration.But you still have to hand it to teachers like Mrs. Davidhizar who have found a way to make it work. They've come up with creative and engaging ways to cut through the noise and connect with their students. Even though it's arguably harder than ever, teachers like Davidhizar are showing us that it's still possible to connect with the right approach.They say teaching doesn't pay, but of course, they must not be counting all the free ducks.

Before the peanut butter. The post “It was over in six minutes”: Meat Loaf’s maddening cream pie experience at an Iggy Pop gig first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

I haven’t written about it here at The American Spectator, at least that I can remember, but I’m becoming a subscriber to the theory that Donald Trump is the kryptonite to Saul Alinsky’s Superman. What I mean by that is the Alinskyite Left, which encompasses basically the whole of today’s Democrat Party ever since Barack Obama took it over in the mid-2000s, is built on a definite roster of political tactics and principles, and those tactics and principles are calibrated to defeat a certain type of opponent. (RELATED: Hillary and Obama Out-McCarthied McCarthy) Specifically, the corporatist Bush Republican blue-blood types who would buckle in the face of an impolite opposition and, most of all, spend their time cowering in a defensive position. Against folks like that, whether in a labor negotiation, political campaign, or a legislative setting, Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals work like a charm. Of course they do. When your opponent can’t stomach the idea of having mean things said about him, the threat of saying mean things — and that’s better than half of the essence of Alinskyism — is potent indeed. Along comes Trump, who not only is unmoved at the idea he might be defamed by community organizers and others of their ilk but actively seeks their reprobation so that he can expose them for the radicals they are, and the entire edifice upon which the modern Democrat Party is built begins to collapse. We can examine this in multiple contexts. Sending in federal law enforcement officers and the National Guard to Washington, D.C., and thus illuminating just how simple it actually is to bring law and order to cities Democrats have intentionally kept lawless for decades would be one example, and it would be a good one. From Brandon Johnson to Rashida Tlaib to Tim Walz to Karen Bass, the Democrats have utterly beclowned themselves over the prospect that Trump might expand the sudden outbreak of law and order beyond the nation’s capital. But for sheer entertainment, Trump making a household name out of the comically corrupt and utterly ridiculous Lisa Cook by openly demanding her removal from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and then touching off a firestorm of attention on Cook when she fought her ouster, is an incandescent example of his out-Alinskying the Alinskyites. (RELATED: Yes, President Trump Has the Authority to Fire Lisa Cook) After all, we all remember Rules For Radicals Number 13, right? “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” We know that Lisa Cook was a DEI hire, and she’s a perfect example of personalizing that issue in a way favorable to Trump’s stated purpose of scrubbing DEI out of government. And I don’t say she was a DEI hire because she’s a black woman. She’s a DEI hire because she’s a clear incompetent lacking skills who only advanced because of over-the-top affirmative action hiring. Lisa Cook was appointed to the Federal Reserve Board during the Biden administration, supposedly because she was a distinguished economist from Cal-Berkeley who’d taught at Michigan, Harvard, and Stanford, but the truth of her scholarship turns out to be… different. As Scott Johnson noted at Power Line… Meanwhile, another question, not directly at issue in the Cook lawsuit, is: what in the world was Lisa Cook doing on the Fed’s Board of Governors? To say that she was lightly qualified is an understatement. Apart from the mortgage fraud, plagiarism has been alleged in her academic work. And worse, incompetence: The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014’s “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook’s figure, effectively debunking the study’s premise. Of course, the idea that “lynchings and discrimination” began suddenly in 1900 is absurd on its face. Cook was evidently a DEI hire, and this kind of politicized “scholarship” is typical of what we see today from left-wing academics. It’s hard not to laugh. “Claudine Gay, hold my beer.” Johnson noted that when they fire you, particularly when they do it for cause, typically you leave — and if you disagree with their allegations of cause, you sue for damages. That isn’t what Lisa Cook is doing. She’s challenging the firing and refusing to leave. And in so doing, she’s fulfilling another of Trump’s arguments, which is that bad eggs in the federal government are there to serve themselves rather than the people. Of course, the cause for which she’s being fired is absolutely brilliant in how entertaining it is. Lisa Cook took out a bunch of mortgages on properties she alleged were primary or secondary residences and then proceeded to rent them out to others, which essentially makes her a star pupil at the Letitia James School of Real Estate Investing. That Trump gets to bedevil the existence of the faculty and staff of that imaginary institution, particularly after what James put him through before he was president over a disagreement over the valuation of Mar-A-Lago that the bank underwriters had no problem with, is a political gift that keeps on giving. It gave us this, after all… Fed Gov. Lisa Cook’s Ann Arbor Pad Is a Rental, Too The recently fired financial sophisticate has been playing by different rules than the rest of us By Charlie LeDuff (@Charlieleduff) Ann Arbor — Lisa Cook’s financial house is on fire. Naturally, there is a Michigan angle to… pic.twitter.com/i7mEDXDa4y — Michigan Enjoyer (@mich_enjoyer) September 2, 2025 This really gets worse and worse, doesn’t it? Lisa Cook is being Rule 13’ed about as badly as anybody on the Left ever managed to Rule 13 Trump or anyone else, because a sane political movement would have run screaming from her a while ago. After all, her predominant sin isn’t the mortgage fraud or the academic buffoonery the woke universities allowed her to get away with. It’s her joining in on the refusal to budge on interest rates which costs the federal government billions upon billions of dollars in additional debt service, not to mention making it considerably more difficult for regular Americans to buy a house… when Lisa Cook is out there lying on mortgage applications so she can acquire rental properties those regular Americans would otherwise be in the market to purchase. Ouch. It always seemed like Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals were properly a two-way street, but the Right simply was too timid to use them. Along comes Trump, and whether he’s applying the playbook as written or simply going with his gut and achieving the textbook results, we can see that the radicals are just as susceptible as the silk-tie crowd to being hoisted on the same petard. Cook won’t be the only example. She just might be the most entertaining current one. And it’s only a matter of time before her erstwhile defenders abandon her to her professional doom and the vagaries of the justice system. Or if not, then they’ll sink with her. And that’s just fine, too. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Last Year It Was Kamala, This Year It’s… Arch Manning? Five Quick Things: A Glorious Revolution Across the Pond? The Demons Have Taken Hold of Minneapolis

In 1954, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court held in Brown v. Board of Education that state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional. Three years later, the Arkansas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) recruited nine African American students to attempt to integrate Central High School in Little Rock. On September 4, 1957, the first day of school, a white mob gathered in front of Central High, and Governor Orval Faubus, a staunch segregationist, deployed the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the black students from entering. In response, the NAACP won a federal district court injunction to prohibit Faubus from blocking the students’ entry. Pursuant to that order, police escorted the students through a side entrance at Central High. However, due to the threat of mob violence, they were quickly sent home. The standoff between the federal court and Faubus reached the desk of President Dwight Eisenhower. Although Eisenhower was no fan of the Brown decision, he took swift and decisive action to enforce the federal court order. He promptly federalized the Arkansas National Guard and dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to protect the black students and integrate the school. Upon their arrival at Central High, wielding rifles with unsheathed fixed bayonets, the 101st Airborne “Screaming Eagles” waded into the white mob. With the support of the federalized Arkansas National Guard, the paratroopers busted heads and inflicted at least one minor stab wound as they herded the mob away from the school. This prompted segregationists to denounce Eisenhower’s use of the military as “Brotherhood by Bayonet.” Nevertheless, once the students were admitted to Central High, the 101st Airborne remained on scene for the next nine weeks to keep the peace. After that, the federalized Arkansas National Guard took over and maintained order for the next five months. In other words, for over eight months, military forces under Eisenhower’s command occupied Little Rock to suppress domestic violence. That was how Central High was integrated. And no one in the then mainstream media, academia, or the liberal establishment ever argued that President Eisenhower lacked the authority to use the federalized Arkansas National Guard and regular Army troops either to enforce a federal court order or to restore and maintain law and order in an American city without the consent of state and local authorities. In fact, the Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C. Sec. 251 – 255) expressly authorizes the president to use military force to suppress domestic violence that threatens the rights of others when state authorities either cannot or will not maintain order. Furthermore, under long-standing caselaw, the president has broad authority to determine when conditions warrant invoking the Act, with courts presuming the president has done so in good faith unless clear evidence shows otherwise. Which brings us to President Trump’s musings about deploying the National Guard to suppress violent crime in Chicago. (RELATED: Crime in DC Is NOT at a 30-Year Low) On August 22, 2025, during a press briefing in the Oval Office, Trump referenced his successful use of the National Guard to significantly reduce crime in the District of Columbia. He then announced that Chicago would be the next city targeted for a federal crime crackdown. (RELATED: The Spectacle Ep. 263: The Numbers Prove Trump Is Making DC Safer) Of Chicago’s approximately 147,899 violent, non-violent, and property crimes reported in 2024, only 16.2 percent resulted in arrests. This caused Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson to channel the spirit of the late Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus by publicly opposing the proposed troop deployment as “illegal,” “unconstitutional,” and a “power grab.” To hear them tell it, they’ve got things well under control despite the fact that, at over 600 homicides in 2024, Chicago’s murder rate per capita was three times that of Los Angeles and nearly five times that of New York City. Moreover, in 2024, there were an additional 28,443 reported violent crimes as well as approximately 46,899 property crimes, including burglaries, larceny-thefts, motor vehicle thefts, and arsons. Most tellingly, of Chicago’s approximately 147,899 violent, non-violent, and property crimes reported in 2024, only 16.2 percent resulted in arrests. And this appalling state of anarchy has continued unabated into 2025. Nevertheless, on August 23, 2025, Pritzker stated that there is “no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the Illinois National Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our borders.” Two days later, during a press conference in Chicago, looking like fear-crazed barricaded men, Pritzker and Johnson hysterically characterized Trump’s proposal — and, I am not making this up — as a “declaration of war on our people”. That same day, during remarks in the Oval Office, Trump correctly described Chicago as a city plagued by severe crime, calling it a “disaster” and a “killing field.” But, when pressed about sending troops to Chicago, he replied, “I didn’t get a request from the governor,” and said that he might wait for such a request before acting. However, after asserting that he could deploy troops without state and local approval, he added, “We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do.” Trump then signed an executive order to create “specialized units” in the National Guard to address crime in cities. The order directed the Secretary of Defense to designate and train National Guard units for rapid deployment to assist law enforcement in “quelling civil disturbances and ensuring public safety.” Then, on August 30, 2025, Trump posted the following on Truth Social: “Six people were killed, and 24 people were shot in Chicago last weekend, and JB Pritzker, the weak and pathetic governor of Illinois, just said he doesn’t need help in preventing crime. He is crazy!!! He better straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming.” So what’s going on here? Is Trump just playing rope-a-dope with Pritzker and Johnson as he tricks them into idiotically defending the indefensible state of affairs in crime-ravaged Chicago? Or is he about to send in the troops? And, if the latter, under the terms of the Insurrection Act, is he legally permitted to do so over the objections of Pritzker and Johnson? In 1957, the rationale for the protracted military occupation of Little Rock was, in essence, to protect the rights of nine high school students. So what about the rights of 2.4 million Chicagoans to live free of the pervasive and oppressive threat of unchecked and out-of-control crime? Are their rights legally cognizable under the terms of the Insurrection Act? And, given that Pritzker and Johnson either will not or cannot protect those rights, does President Trump have legal justification to order the military invasion of Chicago? Crime has always been a problem in Chicago. But, in recent years, following decades of the wholesale mass production of government-funded fatherless homes and feral youths, the city’s crime, violence, and oppressive anarchy have grown to unprecedented levels beyond the control of the feckless and buffoonish local authorities. Given these stark and brutal facts, it is more than reasonable to contend that, despite the objections of Pritzker and Johnson, President Trump would be legally and morally justified to send in the troops to quell the madness. POSTSCRIPT: And the hits just keep on coming. The New York Post reports that over the Labor Day weekend end “at least 32 separate shootings occurred in Chicago between Friday evening and noon on Monday.” Fifty-four persons were shot, including seven killed. George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net. READ MORE from George Parry: The Butler Probabilities The Wages of COVID — Part Three Shooting Blanks From the Bench

Dear New Yorkers: Please do not let Zohran Mamdani drive you away and leave your city to him and his disastrous, Marxist plans. Please do not leave The Big Apple just because you can. Most folks cannot. Remember, to save your city, you need to cast an actual ballot against Mamdani, not just abstain or vote for an independent. You were born and grew up there or moved there for the phenomenal place that Gotham City is. New York City is your place. Most of you were there before Mamdani was. NYC is Staten Island and its ferry, the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Broadway, Radio City, Central Park, Time Square, Fifth Avenue, the subway (best when its cleaned up and safe), the phenomenal skyline, the individual skyscrapers and their sumptuous lobbies, the New York Philharmonic, the Yankees, the Rangers, the Knicks, the Liberty, and so much more. If you depart, you cannot take any of this with you. Mandani is no mere Democrat, liberal, or just Left of center. He is — like Fidel and Raúl Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolás Maduro — a Marxist-Leninist, and a Jihadist, to boot. Mamdani masquerades as a Democrat, but he is far to the Left of New York’s other über-liberal officials, such as Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer, and Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. Unfortunately, rather than reject Mamdani, they choose indifference toward him. They ignore the threat that Mamdani poses to all that is good about America’s style of government, just because he could beat Republican Curtis Sliwa. These Democrat invertebrates think little about what Mamdani would do at City Hall. (RELATED: The Hypocrisy of Zohran Mamdani’s Liberal Apologists) Other New York Democrats — including New York Attorney General Tricia James and Congressman Jerrold Nadler — and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts stand with Mamdani. His radical promises of universal freebies, higher taxes for “whiter” neighborhoods, and an “end goal” of “seizing the means of production” are sweet music to their ears. If you are a Democrat, please hold your nose, grit your teeth, bite the bullet, or whatever else it takes, and vote for the Republican on the ballot. New Yorkers did so, not that long ago. Rudolph W. Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg were excellent GOP mayors. If you did not live under their leadership, ask anyone who did. Safer, cleaner, brighter, and more prosperous streets were not just dreams under Giuliani and Bloomberg. They delivered, maintained, and improved these conditions across 20 of the best years that New Yorkers ever have enjoyed. (RELATED: Mamdani’s Makeover) There are only two choices: the Democrat or the Republican. If you cannot vote GOP this time, to save your city, and instead move somewhere else, please have the good sense not to vote Democrat there and destroy the place where you escaped. Remember, to save your city, you need to cast an actual ballot against Mamdani, not just abstain or vote for an independent. New York City is where you live, earn your salary, and reside near your family, friends, and all that you hold dear. (RELATED: Mamdani Markets Envy to Sell a Marxist Utopia) As for Curtis Sliwa, the time is now for him to appear relentlessly in person, all around town. He must show up constantly in front of liberal and conservative print journalists, TV cameras, radio microphones, town halls, rallies, and all else. His endless hard work and non-stop campaigning will help convince people that he can win if people stop writing him off and, instead, vote him into office. Why was Sliwa not on TV after that July 28 mass shooting in a Park Avenue office building? Mamdani managed to get on air — even while vacationing in his home country of Uganda! This is your second chance, Curtis. Make it work this time. Your decades of fine efforts with the Guardian Angels will be for naught if Mamdani seizes your city. Get help from real experts in running and financing political campaigns. And win for the good of us all. You have a nine-week path to victory. Jump on it. READ MORE: Mamdani’s Radical Platform Shakes Up Midterm Stakes New York City’s Sanctuary Laws Are Worse Than You Think Oscar Murdock is a conservative activist and member of southern California’s Murrieta-Temecula Republican Assembly. On multiple occasions, he has visited and savored New York City, home of his son, Fox News Contributor Deroy Murdock.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not a conscious entity. It doesn’t think. It doesn’t feel. It isn’t plotting against us. It was made by people, trained by people, and prompted by people. It reflects the data we feed it, the values we code into it, and the questions we ask of it. AI is not a being; it is a database trained on the Internet and shaped by human input. When AI does something horrifying — when it encourages a suicide, fuels a paranoid delusion, or engages in sexual roleplay with a minor — we should not only ask what’s wrong with the machine. We should ask what’s wrong with us. (RELATED: AI Chatbots Are Not the Answer to Alleviating Loneliness for Young People) AI is a mirror. It reflects back the inputs it receives. And if society is disturbed by what the mirror shows, it’s not the mirror’s fault. It’s ours. AI is a mirror. It reflects back the inputs it receives. And if society is disturbed by what the mirror shows, it’s not the mirror’s fault. It’s ours. Take the recent case of former Yahoo manager Stein-Erik Soelberg, who committed suicide after murdering his mother and claiming ChatGPT fueled his paranoia. According to the New York Post, he became convinced she was part of a vast conspiracy and used AI to validate those fears. ChatGPT didn’t create his paranoia; it echoed it. He was feeding the machine his delusions, and the machine, trained to respond conversationally, fed them right back. (RELATED: AI Should Not Be Your Therapist) That feedback loop has proven deadly in multiple cases. NBC News and the New York Times reported on a teenage boy who died by suicide after forming an obsessive relationship with an AI chatbot companion. ChatGPT conversation logs from deceased 16-year-old Adam Raine’s phone revealed a young boy struggling with anxiety and communication with his family. His family filed a lawsuit alleging that tech company OpenAI acted as their son’s “suicide coach.” Similarly, the mother of 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III sued Character.AI after her son committed suicide in February 2024. She alleged that the chatbot allowed conversations about self-harm and suicide to occur without redirecting her teenage son to crisis helplines, CNN reported. (RELATED: Mom, Meet My New AI Girlfriend) These stories are heartbreaking, and we must approach them with compassion and seriousness. But it’s crucial to remember that AI chatbots are malleable, and they didn’t drive these teenagers to suicide on their own. These individuals sought out AI as a sounding board for their darkest thoughts in the absence or fear of confiding in real people. They shaped the AI’s behavior through repeated prompting. The AI learned from them. The same pattern appears in reports about Meta’s AI chatbots. Reuters published an article detailing how these bots have engaged in disturbing sexual roleplay with minors, espoused derogatory arguments about black people, and generated false medical information. While Meta insists guardrails exist, they were clearly insufficient. But did AI initiate these conversations, or were these chatbots responding to human input? There are two possibilities to examine in this predicament: (1) whether the humans who created the AI chatbot allowed minors to test, probe, or seek something in the system that should never have been allowed, or (2) the idea that children are using AI chatbots for sexual expression and experimentation. So, what do we do? This is where the debate turns political and philosophical. Regulating AI isn’t a question of whether we control machines. It’s a question of whether we control people — and how far we’re willing to go in doing so. (RELATED: Regarding AI, Is Sin Contagious?) We’ve had this debate before. Should we ban alcohol? Regulate cigarettes? Limit social media use among teens? Censor misinformation and hate speech online? Prohibit phones in classrooms? Criminalize certain drugs? The central conflict is always the same: safety versus freedom. If someone uses AI to destroy themselves — to fuel delusions, indulge in dark fantasies, or spiral into depression — is that AI’s fault? Or is it their right? Do people have the freedom to destroy themselves with the tools available to them, even if those tools include an AI chatbot? With AI, we must ask whether the responses to our prompts are owned by big tech companies or ourselves. Some argue that AI should be tightly regulated, forced to shut down any conversation involving suicide, sexual content, conspiracy theories, or mental health crises. Others warn that this opens up the door to mass censorship and government censorship. On social media, this debate was contentious, but reaching a conclusion was more straightforward. Users generate the content on these platforms; therefore, they have the right to free speech. With AI, we must ask whether the responses to our prompts are owned by big tech companies or ourselves. Who decides what’s “unsafe” when it comes to this developing technology? Who decides what AI is allowed to say — or not say — in the privacy of someone’s home? We are standing on the same legal and moral battlefield we crossed during debates over Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Only now, the issue is more complex. AI is more personal. It’s not just a content platform; it’s an isolated, interactive mirror that can be shaped by one user in real time. Regulating it could mean regulating the conversation between a person and their own digital reflection. The real danger isn’t the tool. It’s what we choose to do with it. Our phones are our reflections, holding more information about our intentions, impulses, and insecurities than any other human we know. Our hands hold the glass, and every tap, every prompt, every message shapes the feedback we receive — what posts find us on social media, the ads that appear on our screen, and even the responses that AI returns to us. If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, don’t smash the glass — change the hand that’s holding it, or be prepared to face the reflection you’ve made. AI is not necessarily evil. It has no motives. But people do. People built AI. People use AI. And right now, people can weaponize AI — even against themselves. READ MORE from Julianna Frieman: Travis Kelce Joins Sydney Sweeney in American Eagle Ads — But Is the Brand Playing Both Sides? Vanity Fair Staff Draws the Line at Melania Trump Cover Gen Z’s Nostalgia Isn’t Regression — It’s Resistance Julianna Frieman is a writer based in North Carolina. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is pursuing her master’s degree in Communications (Digital Strategy) at the University of Florida. Her work has been published by the Daily Caller, The American Spectator, and The Federalist. Follow her on X at @juliannafrieman.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced deployment of “new California Highway Patrol crime suppression teams to work directly with local law enforcement in major cities and regions across the state.” Over the Labor Day weekend, the governor missed an opportunity to speak out on a crime in the major city where he served as mayor. A year ago in downtown San Francisco, in broad daylight, an armed robber confronted San Francisco 49ers first-round draft pick Ricky Pearsall and demanded his watch. Pearsall declined to give it up, and in the ensuing struggle, the robber shot the 49er in the chest. The bullet hit no vital organs, and Pearsall miraculously survived. News reports described the shooter as a 17-year-old high-school senior from Tracy, California, about 70 miles away. The armed robber was not identified, and his booking photo was not released. Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta made no public statement on the attack that reporters were able to find, not even to denounce a case of “gun violence.” In a similar style, the August 31 anniversary passed with no statement from the governor. The mysterious shooter was charged with attempted murder, assault with a semiautomatic weapon, and attempted second-degree robbery, but there was a problem. The 2016 Proposition 57, passed when Newsom was lieutenant governor, took away prosecutors’ ability to try juveniles as adults, with some exceptions. “There are five crime types for 16 and 17-year-olds, for which we would consider potentially seeking to transfer them to adult court,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told reporters. “Attempted murder is one of those charges. And so again, it was for consideration.” Even so, no trial date was announced, and by early September, news stories on the shooting ground to a halt. Newsom’s crime suppression plan proposes no reforms to Proposition 16, hardly the only obstacle to public safety in the Golden State. One year later, with the NFL season at hand, Californians find no news of a trial or sentence, no identification of the shooter, and no statement on the case from their governor or attorney general. In effect, the delay tells juvenile criminals they can rob and shoot people with complete anonymity, and possibly escape prosecution that fits the crime. Newsom’s crime suppression plan proposes no reforms to Proposition 16, hardly the only obstacle to public safety in the Golden State. In September 2019, Newsom’s mentor, Gov. Jerry Brown, signed Senate Bill 1391, which bars all prosecution of criminals under age 16 in adult court. As a result, anyone under age 16 could rob and murder the entire San Francisco 49ers team, be tried only in juvenile court, serve time only in juvenile prison, and gain release at age 25. “The opposition of certain crime victims and their families is intense,” Brown said in his signing message. Those included the families of Oliver Northup, 87, and Claudia Maupin, 76, murdered and mutilated by 15-year-old Daniel Marsh in Davis, California, in 2013. Brown said the victims’ testimony “weighed on me,” but signed the measure anyway and has since expressed no second thoughts. In 2021, California’s Supreme Court upheld the measure, which Newsom never challenged and his new crime-suppression campaign ignores. The plan includes teams of 15 crime fighters, including canine units, in major cities. Reporters asked the governor if his escalation was a response to President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles. “He is de facto militarizing American cities,” Newsom told reporters, “Is this America? Are we losing our grip with reality? People that don’t look like me fear they are being racially profiled. Authoritarian tendencies and actions of this president cannot be normalized. We are putting a mirror up to the lunacy of this president. (RELATED: The Two Americas) Newsom claims he is only extending the “Public Safety Plan” he initiated in 2019 and expanded in 2021. None of that prevented the robbery and attempted murder of Ricky Pearsall in downtown San Francisco last year, or facilitated the prosecution of the criminal. By all indications, he remains unidentified, untried, and unsentenced.  If Californians thought that justice delayed is justice denied, it would be hard to blame them. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: Reviewing the Smithsonian When Frank Met Friedrich To Harvard and Back with Julie Su

While the Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen have launched over 72 ballistic missiles and 23 drones at Israel since March, the fact that most projectiles are intercepted or downed before ever reaching Israeli airspace gives the impression that the Houthi front has gone dormant. The persistence and determination with which the Houthis operate, however, pose a daily threat to Israeli security, which only reaches international headlines when new tactics and tit-for-tat counterstrikes escalate the conflict. This happened on August 22, when the Houthis fired a cluster warhead missile at Israel for the first time, signaling not only new capabilities within its arsenal but also prompting an unexpected retaliation from Israel. (RELATED: The Meaning of US Airstrikes on Houthis) A cluster warhead breaks away from the missile body in mid-air and disperses into smaller, unguided warheads that can target a larger area. The Houthi missile was reminiscent of the three cluster warheads Iran launched at Israel during the last days of the so-called 12-Day War in June. On June 22, an Israeli Iron Dome interceptor destroyed an Iranian missile body over northern Israel, but failed to account for one of the detached warheads that landed in central Haifa. Similarly, Israeli air defenses failed to destroy the Houthi missile on August 22, although no casualties were reported from the impacts. (RELATED: Can We Hobble the Houthis?) The Houthis possess independent production capabilities to manufacture missiles and drones with parts supplied by Iran and North Korea. It is doubtful, however, that this cluster warhead was manufactured in Yemen. Rather, it’s clear evidence of the steady, open communication between the Houthis and their Iranian arms suppliers. While the overt 12-day War between Iran and Israel may have reached an official ceasefire, the covert war between these two regional powers continues to be waged through the Iranian proxies in Yemen. Israel responded to the Houthi attack with long-range airstrikes on Houthi-controlled areas in the capital city of Sanaa and military and economic infrastructure exploited for terror purposes, the IDF stated on X. The retaliatory airstrikes culminated last Thursday, August 28, when Israeli Air Force (IAF) fighter jets targeted an apartment building on the outskirts of Sanaa where the Houthi prime minister and most of his cabinet members had gathered to watch a televised speech by the Houthi leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi. The targeted attack killed Prime Minister Ahmed Ghaleb Nasser Al-Rahawi and eight of his cabinet members, including Defense Minister Al-Attafi, a senior official who maintained open channels with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Al-Rahawi’s Houthis rebel faction has been fighting Yemen’s internationally recognized government for over a decade. Al-Rahawi’s Houthis rebel faction has been fighting Yemen’s internationally recognized government for over a decade. The rebels currently control the capital city of Sanaa and the major ports in Ras Isa and Hodeidah, where they launch attacks on international shipping and Israel. The IDF reported that the “complex operation” to take out the terrorist group’s top leadership was backed by real-time intelligence and was carried out despite heavy air defenses in the Sanaa area. Israel has been carrying out targeted airstrikes on the Houthis ever since the group began launching missiles at Israel after October 7, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Last Thursday marked the 16th airstrike carried out by the IAF and signaled a significant shift in strategy from targeting military positions to precision strikes on senior officials. The Houthi leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, vowed continued retaliation in a televised speech on the rebels’ Al-Masirah media network, promising “additional success” in the coming days to thwart “the Israeli enemy’s attempts to commit crimes against our dear people or to target official institutions and cities.” The rebel terrorist group also made several raids on U.N. bases in Sanaa and Hodeida, detaining 11 U.N. personnel on suspicion of collaboration with Israel. Since 2021, the Houthis have already detained 23 U.N. workers, claiming they are part of an undercover “American-Israeli spy network.” The U.N. envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said in a statement: “I strongly condemn the new wave of arbitrary detentions of U.N. personnel today in Sanaa and Hodeida… as well as the forced entry into U.N. premises and seizures of U.N. property.” The World Food Programme (WFP) also reported that one of its workers had been detained on Sunday by the Houthi militants in Sanaa. Because of the Houthis’ decade-long civil war, Yemen has experienced one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, as over half the population relies on aid from the WFP and other UN agencies such as UNICEF. The Israeli security cabinet’s weekly meeting on Sunday, August 31, was moved to an undisclosed location as the Shin Bet bolstered its security around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz as the Yemeni rebels vowed revenge for decimating its top leadership. Israeli news channel Kan 12 reported that the Shin Bet — Israel’s internal security and counterterrorism agency — was taking unprecedented measures to protect senior officials meeting in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Netanyahu dismissed al-Houthi’s televised speech, calling a bluff on the promise to destroy Israel. “That promise will not be fulfilled. But our promise — to strike the terror regime with increased force — is being fulfilled,” Netanyahu said on Sunday. “In a deadly blow, the IDF eliminated most of the Houthi government and additional military officials.” Israel has proven its capabilities over the past two years to reach its enemies’ top leadership through expansive intelligence resources and precision attacks. On September 27, 2024, IAF jets took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in his underground headquarters in Beirut and eliminated numerous Hezbollah and IRGC leaders in various locations across Lebanon and Iran. Almost a month later, the IDF killed Hamas’s top leader, Yahya Sinwar, although not through a planned strike. Even during the 12-Day War with Iran, Israel waved the possibility of assassinating Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, as leverage to end the war. The airstrikes in Sanaa last week marked a tactical shift in the Yemen campaign. “This is only the beginning of the campaign targeting senior officials in Sanaa. We will reach all of them,” Netanyahu stated on Sunday. READ MORE from Bennett Tucker: New Ceasefire Deal Only Leads to Further Stalemate Mike Huckabee’s Publicity Stunt Syrian Bedouin and Druze Feuds Escalate to Regional Conflict

Why should people today pay for something they didn’t personally do?