When a company changes hands, headlines often trumpet the price tag but rarely dig into the motives that shaped the offer. Two familiar—but fundamentally different—drivers dominate the M&A landscape: strategic acquisitions and financial acquisitions. Understanding how they diverge can help founders, executives, and investors set clearer expectations before inking a deal. Intent Behind the Deal […]

Media Madness co-host Natalie Sandoval tries out calorie-counting

Former President John F. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, has announced he is running to succeed longtime Congressman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., in representing New York’s 12th congressional district. “I’m running for Congress because the best part of the greatest city on earth needs to be heard loud and clear in Washington and deserves a representative who won’t back down,” the Kennedy scion’s campaign website reads. “In Ancient Greece there was a phrase: ‘e tàn e epì tâs,‘ or ‘either come with your shield, or leave on it,’” the website continues, explaining Schlossberg will stand strong in Congress. Schlossberg, 32, is the son of Caroline Kennedy, who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Australia during the Biden administration and the U.S. Ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration, and Edwin Schlossberg. He grew up in New York City attending the exclusive Collegiate School in the Upper West Side before heading to Yale and earning degrees from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.  Schlossberg is a first cousin once removed of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., of whom he has not been shy about criticizing.  “I have no idea why anyone thinks he should be president,” Schlossberg said of his cousin’s 2024 bid, eventually campaigning for both then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris as they unsuccessfully sought to take on Donald Trump last year.  When the elder Kennedy ended up endorsing Trump, Schlossberg wrote on X, “Never been less surprised in my life. Been saying it for over a year—RFK Jr. is for sale, works for Trump. Bedfellows and loving it. Kamala Harris is for the people—the easiest decision of all time just got easier.” Despite his illustrious political connections, Schlossberg may face stiff competition from New York assemblyman Micah Lasher, a former aide to Nadler and former director of state legislative affairs for then-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Lasher has been called Nadler’s “heir apparent” by Politico.  “[Lasher] has been the advisor, consigliere, trusted confidant of so many government officials throughout his relatively young life,” Democrat State Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal explained to the digital newspaper.  Another prominent primary opponent would be Liam Elkind, a nonprofit founder and former Rhodes Scholar, who has emphasized his youth (he is in his twenties) in a party known for its aging members. He had announced his primary challenge to Nadler before the 78-year-old congressman declared he would be retiring.  Nadler has served in Congress since 1992 and was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023. His retirement was perhaps foreshadowed when he announced he would no longer seek to be the ranking member of the committee after Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said he would run against him for the top Democrat spot. In total, Ballotpedia has documented an astounding eight candidates who have filed for the Democrat primary election to succeed Nadler. The district is deep blue, encompassing much of Manhattan, meaning the primary will likely decide the victor in the general election. The Daily Signal has reached out to the campaigns of Elkind, Lasher, Schlossberg, and the office of Nadler for comment. The post JFK’s Grandson Jumps Into Race to Succeed Jerry Nadler appeared first on The Daily Signal.

The attached graphic is the proposed new Virginia congressional districts shared with me by the GOP. It appears daunting to think that Virginia’s Democrat House leadership has figured a way to stretch Old Dominion’s very blue (Democrat majority) areas so far that they encompass all the very red (GOP majority) ones. Tracy Thorne-Begland, the judge in the case brought by the clerks of Henrico, Spotsylvania and Lunenberg Counties against the proposed map, ruled that the clerks had no standing because they had not been forced to violate the law yet because the redistricting amendment had not yet passed. Also, courts under a 1912 Virginia Supreme Court decision are forbidden from ruling on an ongoing legislative process. Basically, the counties were told to “come back later.” The Republican voters of Virginia are understandably dispirited by the visual of the Old Dominion drawn to look more like Illinois or Massachusetts, but a thought occurred to me: To take the four overwhelmingly Democrat majority districts; The 3rd represented by Bobby Scott (where  Democrats usually have a +18 advantage); The 4th, Jennifer McLellan (D+17); The 8th, Don Beyer (D+26); The 11th, James Walkinshaw (D+18) plus the two closer ones; The 10th of Suhas Subramanyam (D+6) and the 7th, Yevgeny Vindman (D+2) and stretch them far enough into the crimson middle and west of Virginia, these districts are all more likely to be D+2 or 3%. That means that each one is more susceptible to a strong GOP candidate with a powerful “get out the vote” campaign to being “Red” as much as it is to being “Blue.” Sure, that’s the ‘glass-half-full’ view, but unless the courts can stop the return of partisan gerrymandering, it will have to be what the midterms in Virginia are focused on. It’s not unthinkable to see a strong Incumbent like Ben Cline winning the new 11th (from the West Virginia border all the way to Alexandria) or Morgan Griffith winning the new 2nd (from Bath County to Richmond) or Rob Whitman winning the new 6th or 7th and John McGuire winning the new 3rd. That leaves the winnable 4th and 5th and the one GOP majority district, the 1st and that’s six of the 11 seats to the GOP. Why? Because the new map trades a few safe districts for many that are in “the margin of error.” Virginia GOP chair Marke Peake told The Daily Signal the GOP is “focused on 2026” and is still planning a “vigorous campaign against the (redistricting) referendum in April.” So, this scenario isn’t in play yet, but it’s a thought. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Counting Chickens in Virginia appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Apple has begun testing a new feature that could eventually turn its Wallet app into a central hub for personal identification. The company introduced Digital ID today, describing it as a way for users to store and present identification directly from their iPhones or Apple Watches. The rollout is limited for now, with the feature available only in the United States and restricted to domestic air travel. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will begin accepting Digital IDs at over 250 airport checkpoints nationwide. The enrollment process involves scanning both the passport’s data page and its embedded chip, followed by simple facial movement checks such as closing or turning one’s head. Beyond airport checkpoints, Apple plans for Digital ID to serve age verification purposes or confirm identity within certain apps and venues. Apple’s new Digital ID feature is arriving just as governments around the world accelerate plans for national digital identity systems and online verification laws. The company’s rollout reflects a major move: identity checks are increasingly becoming called for by governments as a prerequisite for access to both physical spaces and digital platforms. Across Europe, the EU has formalized its plan under the eIDAS 2.0 framework. This initiative mandates every member state to issue a European Digital Identity Wallet that citizens can use across borders for government and private-sector services. The European Commission has already adopted the technical standards to make that system operational within the coming years. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is pressing ahead with its own digital ID agenda. The new framework is expected to become mandatory for Right to Work checks and other identity verification processes before the end of the current Parliament. At the same time, the UK’s Online Safety Act introduces strict age verification rules for online platforms, effectively tying access to some forms of content to verified identity credentials. Australia has already established a national legal structure for digital identification. The Digital ID Act, which took effect in late 2024, created the Australian Government Digital ID System to provide accredited verification services for both public and private entities. Canada, meanwhile, is planting its own foundations. Provinces such as British Columbia already use digital service cards for online government access, and federal planning documents outline an ambition to expand secure login systems nationwide. Apple’s Digital ID builds upon its existing “ID in Wallet” program, which already allows residents of Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Puerto Rico to store driver’s licenses or state IDs in Wallet. At the same time, many states are implementing laws requiring ID-based age checks for websites and social media platforms. Texas, Florida, and Georgia have introduced rules that force adult content providers to verify users’ identities. South Dakota and Wyoming have taken similar steps, expanding verification obligations to social platforms. Some companies have responded by blocking access in those states rather than collecting sensitive ID data, but the direction of travel is unmistakable: the internet is being rebuilt around proof of identity. The societal trend toward mandatory digital ID presentation raises deeper concerns. Digital identity frameworks, whether introduced under the banner of convenience or safety, risk turning everyday interactions into checkpoints where one’s right to move, communicate, or browse depends on credentials issued and monitored by centralized authorities. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Apple Rolls Out Digital ID as States Push New Verification Rules appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. A major political confrontation over online privacy is approaching as European governments prepare to decide on “Chat Control 2.0,” the European Commission’s revised proposal for monitoring private digital communications. The plan, which could be endorsed behind closed doors, has drawn urgent warnings from Dr. Patrick Breyer, a jurist and former Member of the European Parliament, who says the draft conceals sweeping new surveillance powers beneath misleading language about “risk mitigation” and “child protection.” In a release sent to Reclaim The Net, Breyer, long a defender of digital freedom, argues that the Commission has quietly reintroduced compulsory scanning of private messages after it was previously rejected. He describes the move as a “deceptive sleight of hand,” insisting that it transforms a supposedly voluntary framework into a system that could compel all chat, email, and messaging providers to monitor users. “This is a political deception of the highest order,” Breyer said. “Following loud public protests, several member states, including Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, and Austria, said ‘No’ to indiscriminate Chat Control. Now it’s coming back through the back door disguised, more dangerous, and more comprehensive than ever. The public is being played for fools.” Under the new text, providers would be obliged to take “all appropriate risk mitigation measures” to prevent abuse on their platforms. While the Commission presents this as a flexible safety requirement, Breyer insists it is a loophole that could justify forcing companies to scan every private message, including those protected by end-to-end encryption. “The loophole renders the much-praised removal of detection orders worthless and negates their supposed voluntary nature,” he said. He warns that it could even lead to the introduction of “client-side scanning,” where users’ devices themselves perform surveillance before messages are sent. Unlike the current temporary exemption known as “Chat Control 1.0,” which allows voluntary scanning of photos and videos, the new draft would open the door to text and metadata analysis. Algorithms and artificial intelligence could be deployed to monitor conversations and flag “suspicious” content. Breyer notes that such automated scrutiny cannot interpret context and risks sweeping up ordinary exchanges. “No AI can reliably distinguish between a flirt, sarcasm, and criminal ‘grooming’,” he said. “Imagine your phone scanning every conversation with your partner, your daughter, your therapist, and leaking it just because the word ‘love’ or ‘meet’ appears somewhere. This is not child protection, this is a digital witch hunt.” According to Breyer, the existing voluntary system has already proven flawed, with German police reporting that roughly half of all flagged cases turn out to be irrelevant. The proposal also carries major implications for identity and anonymity online. A new requirement would force users to verify their age before creating accounts on messaging or email platforms, an obligation that would likely require official ID or biometric checks. Breyer argues that such measures effectively abolish anonymous communication. “This is the de facto end of anonymous communication online, a disaster for whistleblowers, journalists, political activists, and people seeking help who rely on the protection of anonymity,” he said. He also condemned the provision restricting minors under 16 from using messaging and social media platforms with chat functions. “Digital isolation instead of education, protection by exclusion instead of empowerment, this is paternalistic, out of touch with reality, and pedagogical nonsense,” he warned, saying the measure risks cutting young people off from key channels of social and educational interaction. Breyer is calling on EU governments that previously resisted mass surveillance, among them Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Czechia, Luxembourg, Finland, Austria, and Estonia, to block the regulation in its current form. “Now, these governments must show some backbone!” he urged. “Block this sham compromise in the Council and demand immediate corrections to save the fundamental rights of all citizens.” He proposes a series of specific changes before any agreement should move forward: a guarantee that “risk mitigation” cannot be used to mandate scanning, a prohibition on AI-driven monitoring of text conversations, strict judicial oversight for targeted investigations, and the preservation of anonymous access to communication tools. “They are selling us security but delivering a total surveillance machine,” Breyer concluded. “They promise child protection but punish our children and criminalize privacy. This is not a compromise; this is a fraud against the citizen. And no democratic government should make itself an accomplice.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post The Disguised Return of The EU’s Private Message Scanning Plot appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Scott Wiener: 'Trans Women Are Women'

Ubiquitous PBS presence, documentary director, and dogmatic liberal Ken Burns is making the media rounds for his latest upcoming 12-hour, six episode epic The American Revolution, debuting on most PBS affiliate stations Sunday night. Burns spoke to Newsweek late last month about the project, codirected by Sarah Botstein and David Schmidt. If Burns' interviews reflect the doc’s content, we may in for less a celebration of the Revolution and more of a lecture on America’s past sins. Burns' thesis is that the Revolution--both the six-plus years of actual fighting and what arose from the "conversations in Philadelphia" around it--is best understood as a messy and even hypocritical battle of ideas about the natural rights of man that were bubbling up during the Enlightenment, and grafted onto a fledgling country where slavery was still the modus operandi in all 13 colonies. How the stakeholders juggled those diametrically opposed ideas--liberty and self-governance but also slavery and their horrific treatment of the Native American population--is the part of the human experience that Burns is most interested in exploring…. Burns makes a determined effort to address the many contradictions of the war. How could a revolution be fought for "the rights of man" when the very people promoting such an ideal were slave owners?” Newsweek noted that American Indians and enslaved blacks will have their stories told alongside Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Burns painted himself as liberating the masses from their poorly formed patriotism:  He said the way Americans learn about their war of independence, by way of textbooks and museum exhibits, had become “sentimentalized” over the years, “encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia that had been constantly used or misused as a cudgel against political enemies.” But focusing in on the Indians and the blacks isn't that W word:  "It's not woke," Burns said, perhaps anticipating the backlash. "It's just a good story. And a good story requires that you call balls and strikes." Burns has always considered himself an optimist, though he says he's never been as pessimistic as he is at this moment. A longtime supporter of Democratic causes, he doesn't mention Trump's name but suggests that the president's theory of nearly unlimited executive power is precisely the thing the founders and patriots were trying to build a bulwark against…. Burns doesn't have to point out anti-Trump messages in his docs; liberal journalists will happily do it for him. In a Boston Globe interview Sunday, Burns was lauded by writer Mark Arsenault for highlighting “a spine-tingling quote from Thomas Paine, about how the American Revolution proved that the ‘powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it.’ It's a sentiment that would be at home on a handmade poster at a No Kings political rally.” Even Burns’ actor-narrators had political points to make, like veteran actor Peter Coyote: Things were once so bad it makes today look like a dispute at a picnic, and we came from that period of the Revolutionary War and somehow forged a nation with a Bill of Rights and a Constitution, and pushed this experiment and held the forces of autocracy at bay, basically until the present moment.

Artificial intelligence and Christianity were never meant to share a pew. One was built on the mystery of divine creation; the other on the arrogance of re-creation. One asks for faith; the other for feedback. Christ said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Silicon Valley says, “We’re still in beta.” The two are about as compatible as the Garden of Eden and a Google campus.Without swift changes, the trajectory is clear: AI becomes man’s latest Tower of Babel — a cathedral without God, where the worshippers speak in code and measure divinity in data points. It promises omniscience without morality, communion without confession, salvation without sin. If AI seeks to simulate humanity rather than serve it, when imitation becomes indistinguishable from incarnation, the heresy is complete.We're reluctant to realize until it's too late that we built a golden calf with customer support.There’s something absurd about watching tech CEOs quote Scripture as they roll out neural networks. Patrick Gelsinger’s “Christian AI” through his company Gloo is a fine example — an attempt to digitize devotion, automate the altar, and outsource the soul. He speaks of hastening “the coming of Christ’s return,” as if the Second Coming might now depend on cloud storage and quarterly funding rounds. The Reformation had Luther and the printing press; Silicon Valley has sermon slides and subscription tiers.To say AI and Christianity neatly align is to confuse omniscience with omnipotence, a mix-up Gelsinger seems to find profitable.Christianity begins with the admission of imperfection — that man is fallen and must be redeemed. The nascent church of AI begins with the belief that perfection is achievable, just one dataset and funding round away. One kneels before mystery; the other dissects it. To the Christian, knowledge without humility is literally the oldest sin in the book. To the eschaton-immanentizing technologist, it’s the business model.What sermon can stop the theological train wreck? AI is coming for everything — art, law, love, and, inevitably, faith. It will write psalms, confess sins, and deliver homilies with the warmth of a toaster. It will perform digital miracles that leave priests wondering if they should have learned Python. Already, chatbots soothe the lonely and counsel the broken. Tomorrow they’ll offer absolution, complete with a “forgive me” button and instant feedback on spiritual progress. The modern confessional booth will be equipped with terms of service.The danger, I suggest, isn’t that AI will destroy religion but, in our convenience-hungry culture, out-market it.RELATED: Google’s AI called Robby Starbuck a predator. Now he’s suing. Photo by Bloomberg/Getty ImagesHope with a progress bar, delivered quietly, efficiently, and with better UX. People won’t pray but prompt. They won’t seek God’s voice; they’ll fine-tune a model until it tells them exactly what they wish He’d say. That’s the tragedy of this new gospel: It offers comfort without conviction, certainty without sacrifice. It gives you grace without God.Still, mere mockery of Gelsinger’s “Christian AI” misses a deeper truth. The age of AI isn’t waiting for our theological approval. A machine doesn’t care whether you call it sacred or satanic. Regardless, it can learn your hymns, mirror your morality, and sell you an app that scores your sanctity. The church can ignore it, or it can prepare for the reckoning. Because whether you like it or not, the algorithm is coming for Sunday service.So what would a respectable Christian AI look like? Not Gloo’s chipper chatbot that mistakes engagement metrics for evangelism. Not another “faith tech” product designed to “optimize ministry engagement” or “gamify discipleship.” A respectable Christian AI would reflect restraint, not reach for reverence. It would refuse to pretend it knows God’s will, and it would never charge a fee to interpret it. It would encourage silence over speech and contemplation over computation.In short, it would imitate the virtues of the church, not the vanity of its donors.Imagine an AI that didn’t flatter human desire but challenged it. An AI that told uncomfortable truths instead of personalized platitudes. One that said, “No, you’re not special,” and meant it lovingly. It would not track your prayers like Fitbits track your steps; it would remind you that prayer is more intimate than an input ever can be. It wouldn’t replace your priest or pastor. It would remind you to see him in person.But will we build that AI? Silence and modesty don’t tend to attract venture capital. Silicon Valley prefers small-g gods it can measure and monetize. The market has little use for mystery. And so we march, like digital Israelites, toward a promised land of perfect prediction, reluctant to realize until it's too late that we built a golden calf with customer support.If Christianity survives the algorithmic age, it won’t be because it out-coded Google. It will be because it remembered what no machine can: that conscience cannot be coded, wonder cannot be wired, and the divine resists human design. Faith was never meant to be efficient, and salvation is not a software update.AI will teach us many things about ourselves: our hunger for control, dread of solitude, and addiction to ease. But perhaps, in its cold imitation of creation, it will also remind us why we need the real thing. When the screen insists, “I am always here,” the believer should reply, “So is God, and you’re not Him.”In the end, maybe that’s the only way to keep faith alive. Not by competing with the machine, but by refusing to become one.

Many Americans view Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City as harmless, but BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler and host of “Ideas Have Consequences” Larry Taunton are well aware that couldn’t be farther from the truth.“Do you believe that Zohran Mamdani is engaging in taqiyya ... this Islamic belief that essentially allows you to lie and hide your true beliefs in order to infiltrate Western society to advance Islam?” Wheeler asks.“Of course he is, and he’s very clever at it,” Taunton says. “You know, he has this charming smile, and he seems like such an outgoing, pleasant, likeable fellow. But at the end of the day, he’s a jihadist.”“Islam is a religion of conquest. ... That’s what it’s all about. It’s about conquering, you know, the entire world until there’s nothing but that which is for Allah, is the way the Quran puts it.""This is the Muslim strategy, the Islamic strategy for millennia,” he explains.Taunton notes that the Islamic strategy isn’t carried out by dropping busloads of Islamic children off and giving them AK-47s. Rather, it’s through the “radicalizing of youth” and of “turning a blind eye to violence.”“Roughly a quarter of a million British white girls, according to the Times of London, trafficked on an industrial scale, and almost no one has been punished,” he continues. “Now, why is that? Well, it’s because the violence, the rape gangs, the knifings, all of this is part of the plan. It’s not something that the politicians are going, ‘Gosh, I wish this hadn’t happened again.’”“It’s because in [Sadiq] Khan’s London, he wants it,” Taunton tells Wheeler.“There will be an exodus of people out of those cities. So you eventually surrender a whole, you know, metropolis, Britain’s most important city, the United States' most important city, surrendered to jihadists,” he continues.“And I know that there are some people who are listening to this and going, ‘Oh, this is, you know, this is just so wild. I just don’t believe this.’ I’m telling you, I’ve seen it. It’s the way it works,” he adds.Want more from Liz Wheeler?To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.