What a difference a year makes. For the first time in half a century, the United States experienced net negative migration, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institute. The reason, the report concluded, was President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies. “The report attributed the shift to a combination of the large drop in entries and an increase in enforcement activity leading to removals and voluntary departures,” ABC reported. This is an important milestone as we reach the end of Trump’s first year in office. The reckless immigration policies of President Joe Biden turned the American people decidedly against immigration, both illegal and legal. Those policies would have almost certainly continued if Vice President Kamala Harris has won in 2024. We’ve really seen an incredible turnaround. Just a few years ago, border towns were completely overrun by illegal aliens. The only defense border states had was to ship the newcomers off to norther sanctuary cities that also became entirely overwhelmed. That’s halted entirely. The New York Times ran a story Sunday about how migrant shelter in McAllen, Texas—which had been packed to the gills under Biden was now practically vacant. “We have not seen a single migrant in months,” Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs the facility, said to the Times in December. “We are completely empty.” That’s an incredible change. Even after their decisive defeat, Democrats have shown no loss of zeal for their open border policies as they do everything in their power to impede enforcement of the law in states and localities they control. Nevertheless, the past year proves—that under the right leadership—America’s immigration laws can be enforced. It’s not impossible. We didn’t need additional legislation that did little more than put a Band-Aid on the problem and give cover to open-borders politicians. We just needed new leadership at the top. This isn’t to say that Trump succeeded in other areas. As I and others have written, his administration has effectively run a counterrevolution against the deep state bureaucracy and the DEI ideology that’s infected practically every corner of American society. It can legitimately be said that no Republican president has done more to curtail the bureaucracy and its surrounding web of parasitic, woke NGO’s than Trump in his second term. But it’s on the border and immigration in which Trump 2.0 has had the most astounding success. Sure, many Trump supporters are disappointed that deportations haven’t happened fast enough. Some Republicans now lament that the ICE raids in blue states are getting too “messy,” and will surely turn the public against the administration. However, given the challenge Trump faced when he returned to office after four years of President Joe Biden, it’s impossible to imagine the 47th president handling the situation without any major complications. In the four years under Biden, Customs and Border Patrol recorded 11 million encounters at the border. Millions of illegal immigrants were simply allowed into the country under bogus asylum claims or were given notices of court appearances years in the future. And as we’ve seen, some of those courts were willing to play fast and loose with the law to ensure that deportations wouldn’t take place. That’s in part what the Trump administration is attempting to untangle, with Democrat-run “sanctuary states” doing everything in their power (and a fair bit outside their official power) to impede that effort. Here’s a brief review of Trump’s impressive record on the border one year into his second term. Early Actions to Undo Biden’s Manufactured Border Crisis When Trump returned to office the first thing he did was to sign an executive order declaring the southern border situation a national emergency, allowing him to deploy additional resources to stem the Biden tide. He also reinstituted the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while they await a decision in their case. The “catch and release” policies of Biden were abandoned. The administration funded detention facilities to house illegal aliens on the way to deportation, including “Alligator Alcatraz,” a massive facility built in the Florida Everglades. The One Big Beautiful Bill, signed into law on July 4, allocated $170 billion for immigration enforcement. It provided funding for a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and ensured that deportations would continue to be fully funded for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. With these moves, the Trump administration showed that it wasn’t just going to halt Biden’s immigration policies, it intended to reverse them. The Way is Shut The effect of Trump’s pivot was immediate. In June of 2024, Border Patrol agents apprehended 83,536 illegal aliens at the southern border. That was the lowest of the entire Biden presidency. Most months, that number was well over 100,000, and reached over 250,000 at its peak in 2023. Under Trump, that number has fallen to a trickle. Center Square reported on the astounding difference in the two presidencies. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, which began in October, Border Patrol “recorded the lowest illegal border crosser encounter/apprehension totals ever reported” at the start of a fiscal year.  “A total of 91,603 encounters/apprehensions were reported nationwide—lower than any prior fiscal year to date, according to the latest CBP data,” wrote Center Square’s Bethany Blankley. “By comparison, record highs were reported under the Biden administration of 392,196 in Q1 of fiscal 2025; 988,512 in Q1 of fiscal 2024; and 865,333 in Q1 fiscal 2023, according to the data.” Noem celebrated this accomplishment on X. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the dedication of DHS law enforcement, America’s borders are safer than any time in our nation’s history. What President Trump and our CBP agents and officers have been able to do in a single year is nothing short of extraordinary.Once…— Secretary Kristi Noem (@Sec_Noem) January 16, 2026 Even more importantly, and this is almost certainly why those numbers fell so dramatically, the Trump administration just recorded its eighth straight month of allowing zero parole releases into the country. The bogus asylum seekers have melted away because they know that they are wasting their time. They can’t just show up at the border and expect to melt away into the U.S. population as they once did. ICE Raids and the Future The Left didn’t sit still while Trump undid one of their foundational policies. Democrat-run sanctuary states have done their best to put up as many roadblocks to deportation as possible. This has created a challenging situation for the Department of Homeland Security. DHS noted in early January that ICE agents “now face a more than 1,300% increase in assaults, a 3,200% increase in vehicular attacks against them, and an 8,000% increase in death threats.” ICE now must conduct frequent raids in blue states rather than pick up illegal immigrants detained by local authorities if it wants to enforce federal law. This has put ICE agents in more danger as leftwing activists and dangerous illegal immigrants have often attempted to impede their operations. This is in part how the tragedy that led to an ICE agent shooting a woman in Minnesota took place. Will this deter the administration? Trump suggested that he may invoke the Insurrection Act in response to local Democrat officials, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacon Frey, continuing to openly defy the federal government. Trump seems to be serious about carrying out his election promise despite whatever resistance Democrats throw at him. Is there more work to be done? Yes. Still, it’s not hard to imagine how different things would have been had Walz and Harris had won. It would have been four more years of Biden’s unimpeded border madness. The post In Trump’s First Year He’s Delivering on His Signature Promise appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Bipartisan funding negotiators in Congress say they have a deal on a trillion-dollar package to cover major priorities such as deportations, health, transportation, and the military. The deal between Republican and Democrat appropriators comes after speculation about whether Democrats would allow funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to advance. The $1.2 trillion funding deal combines four spending bills into one product of almost 800 pages and will come to a vote on the House floor this week.  The package’s passage would be the final step in passing all 12 standard appropriations bills out of the House for 2026. Notably, Republicans have managed to get Democrat buy-in for the homeland security bill, which covers immigration and border enforcement funding. Top Democrat House appropriator Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said of the deal that she understands “many of [her] Democratic colleagues may be dissatisfied with any bill that funds ICE.” She added, “I share their frustration with the out-of-control agency. I encourage my colleagues to review the bill and determine what is best for their constituents and communities.” Democrats had stressed their desire for policy riders exercising congressional control over Immigration Customs Enforcement officers’ operations in the wake of Renee Good’s death in an ICE-involved shooting in Minnesota. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat appropriator in the Senate, also signaled her support for the package Tuesday—a promising sign for efforts to keep the government open after Jan 30. I will repeat myself — I do not support an increase in funding for ICE. https://t.co/QQ22dywctV pic.twitter.com/zyFPYgUNiR— Rosa DeLauro (@rosadelauro) January 13, 2026 “ICE must be reined in, and unfortunately, neither a [continuing resolution] nor a shutdown would do anything to restrain it, because, thanks to Republicans, ICE is now sitting on a massive slush fund it can tap whether or not we pass a funding bill,” Murray said in a statement which appeared to anticipate backlash from the Democrat base to the deal. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has previously acknowledged the difficulty of attracting Democrat support for the homeland security bill, as well as the possibility of having to pass a clean funding extension for homeland security if a deal fell through. In a statement, Murray additionally urged fellow Democrats to “take [their] fight to the ballot box” to counter ICE’s activities. The homeland security bill “provides a total discretionary allocation of $64.4 billion,” per a Republican appropriations release. This includes immigration enforcement-specific funding, such as $10 billion for ICE. The Democrats’ summary of the DHS Approps bill says it reduces funding for CBP and detention. It also directs money to specific programs instead of the slush fund Noem got in the OBBB. pic.twitter.com/n2P6veAOBL— Leigh Ann Caldwell (@LACaldwellDC) January 20, 2026 However, Democrats are boasting of what they are wins in their effort to rein in ICE, with a Murray press release highlighting that the bill’s text prevents “any growth to ICE’s annual budget” and “rejects President Trump’s request for a $840 million increase in funding for ICE.” Beyond Homeland security, the bill funds three other areas: defense; labor, health, and education; as well as transportation and housing. The defense bill would allocate almost $840 billion, with Republican appropriators highlighting funding for new ships, as well as pay raises for troops and the elimination of diversity programs. The labor, health, and education bill provides $221 billion, and Republican appropriators say it assists “Trump’s efforts to safeguard taxpayer dollars, eliminate out-of-touch progressive policies, and end the weaponization of government.” The Republicans on the appropriations committee also say in a press release that the $100 billion transportation and housing bill “prioritizes transportation safety … while maintaining essential housing assistance for our nation’s most vulnerable.” The post Congress Reaches Deal on ICE Funding With Spending Package appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Let me take you on a tour of Britain’s future. It’s 2030, there are more surveillance cameras than people, your toaster is reporting your breakfast habits to the Home Office, and police officers are no longer investigating crimes so much as predicting them. This is Pre-Crime UK, where the weight of the law is used against innocent people that an algorithm suspects may be about to commit a crime. With a proposal that would make Orwell blush, the British police are testing a hundred new AI systems to figure out which ones can best guess who’s going to commit a crime. That’s right: guess. Not catch, not prove. Guess. Based on data, assumptions, and probably your internet search history from 2011. Behind this algorithmic escapade is Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who has apparently spent the last few years reading prison blueprints and dystopian fiction, not as a warning about authoritarian surveillance, but as aspiration. In a jaw-dropping interview with former Prime Minister and Digital ID peddler Tony Blair, she said, with her whole chest: “When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.” Now, for those not fluent in 18th-century authoritarian architecture, the Panopticon is a prison design where a single guard can watch every inmate, but the inmates never know when they’re being watched. It’s not so much “law and order” as it is “paranoia with plumbing.” Enter Andy Marsh, the head of the College of Policing and the man now pitching Britain’s very own Minority Report. According to the Telegraph, he’s proposing a new system that uses predictive analytics to identify and target the top 1,000 most dangerous men in the country. They’re calling it the “V1000 Plan,” which sounds less like a policing strategy and more like a discontinued vacuum cleaner. “We know the data and case histories tell us that, unfortunately, it’s far from uncommon for these individuals to move from one female victim to another,” said Sir Andy, with the tone of a man about to launch an app. “So what we want to do is use these predictive tools to take the battle to those individuals…the police are coming after them, and we’re going to lock them up.” I mean, sure, great headline. Go after predators. But once you start using data models to tell you who might commit a crime, you’re not fighting criminals anymore. You’re fighting probability. The government, always eager to blow millions on a glorified spreadsheet, is chucking £4 million ($5.39M) at a project to build an “interactive AI-driven map” that will pinpoint where crime might happen. Not where it has happened. Where it might. It will reportedly predict knife crimes and spot antisocial behavior before it kicks off. But don’t worry, says the government. This isn’t about watching everyone. A “source” clarified: “This doesn’t mean watching people who are non-criminals—but she [Mahmood] feels like, if you commit a crime, you sacrifice the right to the kind of liberty the rest of us enjoy.” That’s not very comforting coming from a government that locks people up over tweets. Meanwhile, over in Manchester, they’re trying out “AI assistants” for officers dealing with domestic violence. These robo-cop co-pilots can tell officers what to say, how to file reports, and whether or not to pursue an order. It’s less “serve and protect” and more “ask Jeeves.” “If you were to spend 24 hours on the shoulder of a sergeant currently, you would be disappointed at the amount of time that the sergeant spends checking and not patrolling, leading and protecting.” That’s probably true. But is the solution really to strap Siri to their epaulettes and hope for the best? Still, Mahmood remains upbeat: “AI is an incredibly powerful tool that can and should be used by our police forces,” she told MPs, before adding that it needs to be accurate. Tell that to Shaun Thompson, not a criminal but an anti-knife crime campaigner, who found himself on the receiving end of the Metropolitan Police’s all-seeing robo-eye. One minute, he’s walking near London Bridge, probably thinking about lunch or how to fix society, and the next minute he’s being yanked aside because the police’s shiny new facial recognition system decided he looked like a wanted man. He wasn’t. He had done nothing wrong. But the system said otherwise, so naturally, the officers followed orders from their algorithm overlord and detained him. Thompson was only released after proving who he was, presumably with some documents and a great deal of disbelief. Later, he summed it up perfectly: he was treated as “guilty until proven innocent.” Mahmood’s upcoming white paper will apparently include guidelines for AI usage. I’m sure all those future wrongful arrests will be much more palatable when they come with a printed PDF. Here’s the actual problem. Once you normalize the idea that police can monitor everyone, predict crimes, and act preemptively, there’s no clean way back. You’ve turned suspicion into policy. You’ve built a justice system on guesswork. And no amount of shiny dashboards or facial recognition cameras is going to fix the rot at the core. This isn’t about catching criminals. It’s about control. About making everyone feel watched. That was the true intention of the panopticon. And that isn’t safety; it’s turning the country into one big prison. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Britain’s AI Policing Plan Turns Toward Predictive Surveillance and a Pre-Crime Future appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Congress is once again positioning itself as the protector of children online, reviving the Kids Off Social Media Act (KOSMA) in a new round of hearings on technology and youth. We obtained a copy of the bill for you here. Introduced by Senators Ted Cruz and Brian Schatz, the bill surfaced again during a Senate Commerce Committee session examining the effects of screen time and social media on mental health. Cruz warned that a “phone-based childhood” has left many kids “lost in the virtual world,” pointing to studies linking heavy screen use to anxiety, depression, and social isolation. KOSMA’s key provisions would ban social media accounts for anyone under 13 and restrict recommendation algorithms for teens aged 13 to 17. Pushers of the plan say it would “empower parents” and “hold Big Tech accountable,” but in reality, it shifts control away from families and toward corporate compliance systems. The bill’s structure leaves companies legally responsible for determining users’ ages, even though it does not directly require age verification. The legal wording is crucial. KOSMA compels platforms to delete accounts if they have “actual knowledge” or what can be “fairly implied” as knowledge that a user is under 13. That open-ended standard puts enormous pressure on companies to avoid errors. The most predictable outcome is a move toward mandatory age verification systems, where users must confirm their age or identity to access social platforms. In effect, KOSMA would link access to everyday online life to a form of digital ID. That system would not only affect children. It would reach everyone. To prove compliance, companies could require users to submit documents such as driver’s licenses, facial scans, or other biometric data. The infrastructure needed to verify ages at scale looks almost identical to the infrastructure needed for national digital identity systems. Once built, those systems rarely stay limited to a single use. A measure framed as protecting kids could easily become the foundation for a broader identity-based internet. Cruz has said, “KOSMA meets parents where they’re at” and “holds Big Tech accountable to their terms of service.” Yet under this approach, parents would have less say over how their children use technology. A child sharing a parent’s YouTube account for educational videos could trigger account suspension if an algorithm infers the child’s age from a comment or viewing pattern. Instead of supporting family oversight, companies would be legally obligated to override it. The bill also connects to classroom policy. It would tie federal funding to removing phones and social media access in schools. Cruz argued that distributing tablets and laptops to students has made supervision harder and increased screen dependence. But tying device rules to federal funding could expand digital monitoring in education, where children’s data is already collected at unprecedented levels. This debate is less about children sneaking onto apps and more about how far the government should go in reshaping digital identity. The logic behind KOSMA leads directly to a verified, traceable internet where participation depends on proving who you are. KOSMA’s intentions may be framed as safety, but its mechanics point toward surveillance. Once identity checks become a prerequisite for online access, privacy becomes the exception instead of the norm. A society that links childhood safety to digital ID risks erasing the right to anonymity for everyone. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Congress Revives Kids Off Social Media Act, a “Child Safety” Bill Poised to Expand Online Digital ID Checks appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

AG Ellison: Disrupting That Church Was 'First Amendment Activity'

George Wallace, Meet Tim Walz

And three ground-based observatories are being built to work alongside it.

Tuesday’s CBS Mornings served as further proof of what we found earlier this month about their evening counterpart (the CBS Evening News), which is they’ve been the strongest in covering the widespread Somali fraud scandal in Minneapolis. This time, CBS News Minnesota’s Jonah Kaplan interviewed Aimee Bock, the leader of the infamous group Feeding Our Future, as she awaits possibly decades behind bars for her role in a quarter-billion dollar scheme. “Now to a CBS News exclusive interview with the woman who prosecutors say it was the mastermind of the biggest Covid-era fraud scheme. 44-year-old Aimee Bock is her name. She’s not part of the Somali community. Last year, she was convicted of orchestrating a $250 million plot to defraud government program to feed hungry kids,” declared co-host Gayle King in cuing Kaplan. Kaplan began by pointing out “there’s been so much focus on the Somali community here in Minnesota because of the widespread fraud and most of the suspects charged and convicted in the schemes, they are from the Somali community, but...the mastermind, according to prosecutors, federal prosecutors, she is not Somali.” WATCH: ‘CBS Mornings’ and @WCCO’s @JonahPKaplan scored an exclusive, jailhouse interview with Aimee Bock, the woman federal prosecutors have said was the ringleader of Feeding Our Future, one of the so-called charities at the center of the Somali fraud scheme in Minnesota… pic.twitter.com/w4ajvkdOcT — Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 20, 2026 Notice how Kaplan and King did not dispute the fraud took place or sought to downplay its severity. Instead, they let the crimes speak for themselves. Kaplan stated the obvious that “it is rare for someone to speak to us in federal custody, but she expressed some regrets and defended her actions” in the one-hour he was allotted with her. “Until she was arrested in 2022, Bock led Feeding Our Future, the now-infamous nonprofit, signed up restaurants and caterers, many from Minnesota’s large Somali community, to receive taxpayer money for providing meals to children in need,” Kaplan explained, adding “prosecutors said it turned into something else, the nation’s largest Covid-era fraud with Bock as the mastermind.” Kaplan asked her if she’s “the mastermind of the scheme” to which Bock was unrepentant: “Absolutely not. I believe in accountability. If I had done this, I would have pled guilty. I wouldn’t have gone to trial. I wouldn’t have put my children and my family through what we’ve been through. I have lost everything.” Kaplan acknowledged having received from her counsel “video showing stacks of food,” but quickly countered “prosecutors say Bock and the businesses she recruited stole tens of millions of federal dollars, spending it on luxury cars, real estate ventures, and vacations.” The only time Bock expressed regret was a vague statement that she wishes she “could go back and do things differently, stop things, catch things,” but otherwise did “everything...to protect the program.” Then came the part of the tale when investigators were allegedly intimidated from investigating fraud because the race card was played. Despite documents having shown Bock threatened the state with playing the race card against Somalis, Bock told Kaplan it was “preposterous” to think they were scared off. That’s despite the fact that Kaplan found video of her being celebrated by a room of Somalis and said she had been labeled by one as their Robin Hood (click “expand”): KAPLAN: But in 2021, Bock sued the state agency that oversaw the meal program, alleging its scrutiny of Somali applicants was “discriminatory.” [TO BOCK] How do you think the state officials took that? BOCK: Nobody wants to be labeled as being racist. KAPLAN: Minnesota officials told a state watchdog “the threat of legal consequences and negative media attention” intimidated them into easing off. BOCK: The notion that a state government is paralyzed and has to allow this level of fraud because they were afraid of what I might do in a lawsuit is preposterous. SOMALI COMMUNITY LEADER [date N/A]: Welcome, Aimee Bock! KAPLAN: In Minnesota’s large Somali community, one leader called her a modern day robin hood. BOCK [date N/A]: The community deserves this, the children need this. Another remarkable exchanged ensued when Kaplan told viewers Feeding Our Future’s meal claims exploded in just two years from $3.4 million to “nearly $200 million.” When Kaplan asked her “how did you not see that as major red flags,” Bock scoffed: “We relied on the state. We told the state, this site is going to operate at this address, this day, this time, and this number of children. The state would then tell us that’s approved.” Bock also denied being “a mob boss” and downplayed accepting any bribes or gifts meant to pay for meals (click “expand”): KAPLAN: Prosecutors also accuse Bock of collecting bribes and kickbacks from meal site operators. At trial, they revealed text messages where she compared Feeding Our Future to the mob. [TO BOCK] Are you a mob boss? BOCK: Absolutely not, no. KAPLAN [TO BOCK]: Were you personally benefiting from any of it? BOCK: I collected my salary and that is all that was collected. KAPLAN [TO BOCK]: Didn’t federal agents find gold jewelry, cash in your closet? BOCK: They found minimal jewelry. I believe it was, like, two pair of earrings, a bracelet, a watch. There was some cash there. KAPLAN: At trial, Bock took the stand, but the jury didn’t buy her story. Within hours, they convicted her on all counts. Last month, a judge ordered her to forfeit $5 million from the fraud. Minnesota officials have defended their actions, noting that it was state employees who first contacted the FBI about implications in the fraud scheme. Kaplan wrapped by noting how, just among those connected to Feeding Our Future, “78 defendants...have been charged, and more than 60 pleaded guilty or convicted at trial” with Bock “awaiting sentencing and she faces decades in prison.” Explanatory, substantive, straight-forward, and not produced anywhere else in network TV news. These are the kinds of stories that, if Bari Weiss is to turn CBS News around and appeal to all Americans, she’s going to need more of in the future. To see the relevant CBS transcript from January 20, click here.

To invoke the “Manhattan Project” is to summon a particular ghost: one of total mobilization, of scientists sequestered in secret rooms, of a national destiny forged in the heat of a singular, technological breakthrough by a threatened country. In the 1940s, the location was Los Alamos; in 2026, it is a secure laboratory in Shenzhen. Here, the objective is not a nuclear chain reaction, but the etching of light onto silicon at a scale so small it defies the physical properties of the air we breathe.The technology is extreme ultraviolet lithography. To the uninitiated, it is a manufacturing process; to the Chinese state, it is the choke point that must be cleared if the nation is to thrive. For years, Washington operated under the assumption that the complexity of these machines — monstrous contraptions the size of city buses, requiring the synchronization of molten tin droplets ionized by lasers 50,000 times a second — would remain a Western monopoly, a “Silicon Shield” guarded by the Dutch firm ASML. That assumption, like so many others in this decade, has proved precarious.If China succeeds, it will have neutralized the West’s major lever.The machinery of this mobilization is vast. At the top sits the Central Science and Technology Commission, directed by Ding Xuexiang, a man whose proximity to President Xi Jinping signals that the semiconductor is no longer a matter of commerce, but of national interest. The strategy is one of “brute-force innovation.” In this world, the tech giant Huawei coordinates a web of institutes and thousands of engineers, a private entity acting as a limb of the state.There is an urgency in the way the talent was gathered. Since 2019, Beijing has been luring Chinese-born engineers back from foreign firms with signing bonuses of $700,000 and the promise of a place in history. When they arrive, they disappear. To protect the project’s secrecy, these returnees work under false identities, wearing fake ID badges and using aliases even among their colleagues. They operate with military-like discipline; scientists sleep on-site at laboratories, barred from returning home during the work week, their phone access restricted as if they were handling the codes to a nuclear missile silo.One thinks of the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” program of the 1960s, the earlier state-directed campaign that yielded China’s first atomic and hydrogen bombs. The rhetoric is the same: the patriotic return of the diaspora, the vanquishing of foreign embargoes through indigenous innovation. The narrative is of national rejuvenation, of overcoming “past humiliations” by proving that the mind cannot be embargoed. In early 2025, the prototype emerged. It is, by all accounts, crude and enormous, filling nearly an entire factory floor in Shenzhen, a stark contrast to the refined, bus-sized machines of the West. However, it is operational, generating the 13.5 nm ultraviolet light beam necessary to etch circuits at the 5 nm scale and below.RELATED: Chinese elites paying American surrogates to breed 'mega-families' Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty ImagesThe technical challenge of EUV is a kind of high-stakes alchemy. Because 13.5 nm light is absorbed by glass and even air, it must travel in a vacuum and be focused by specialized multilayered mirrors with atomic-level precision. To achieve this without the help of Western suppliers such as Germany’s Zeiss, the Chinese relied on obsessive, focused resourcefulness. They scoured secondary markets for old equipment; they salvaged components from older ASML machines; they acquired restricted parts from Japanese firms Nikon and Canon via intermediaries.Perhaps most revealing is the “SWAT team” of 100 young engineers assigned to take these machines apart and put them back together. Each desk is monitored by a camera as they meticulously reverse-engineer components, a process of “training through deconstruction.” The scene is of Ph.D.s poring over discarded machinery like puzzle pieces, striving to unlock the nuances of a technology they were never meant to have. The result is a proof of concept that observers had believed was a great many years away.We are witnessing the early phase of a race for AI chips. If the 20th century was defined by oil reserves and nuclear arsenals, the 21st will be defined by computing power and silicon fabs. The U.S. has responded with the CHIPS and Science Act, investing over $50 billion to reshore production, while simultaneously attempting to choke off China’s access to the most advanced tools.Yet there is a quandary in this decoupling. The semiconductor supply chain is global and interdependent. An ASML machine is a mosaic of components from Japan, Germany, and the U.S. By forcing China toward self-sufficiency, the West may be inadvertently creating the very monster it fears: a China capable of producing advanced chips on entirely China-made machines, “kicking the United States 100% out of its supply chains.” The goal is a “digital Iron Curtain,” where two separate technological stacks, one Chinese-led, one Western-led, operate in parallel, neither reliant on the other’s hardware or software.For now, the project remains a work in progress. Mass-producing 2-5 nm chips in China is likely still years away, perhaps 2030 or beyond. The machines must be refined; the optical mirrors remain a weak point. Yet the significance of the prototype is not its current efficiency, but its existence, which demonstrates an irreversible commitment to Chinese technological independence.The air in Shenzhen is thick with techno-optimism and a quiet, state-sanctioned fervor. When a Chinese chip startup recently went public, its stock soared 693%, a sign of a public that views each new milestone as a victory against a foreign blockade. This is the intersection of technology and national pride. If China succeeds, it will have neutralized the West’s major lever. If it fails, the U.S. may extend its lead. The breakthroughs, however, feel inevitable to those inside the project. They are playing a long game, one where the cost — in billions of dollars, in the isolation of their brightest minds, in the fracturing of the global order — is simply the price of admission.

Women’s basketball is not doing great, and BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock believes it has a lot to do with the feminist attitude of the players — which has led to the failure of making their new Unrivaled basketball league a must-watch.This new league is a three-versus-three women’s basketball league that WNBA players started last year to play in their off season.“This is year two. The ratings have absolutely collapsed. There’s 50, 60 thousand people watching these Unrivaled basketball games. Last year, I think 2, 300, 400 thousand people were watching. It is a horrendous product, ... and it’s not surprising to me that it would collapse,” Whitlock explains on “Fearless.”“Players in the WNBA are causing the collapse of the WNBA, causing the collapse of women’s sports. This is an inside job by the actual players in women’s athletics. They are destroying themselves and their own league. They are destroying women’s sports,” he adds.Whitlock believes this is a reflection of “matriarchal leadership.”“They’re not leaders; they’re chaos agents. ... They are actually destroying themselves,” he says.Whitlock also points out that almost all of the famous women in sports — save Caitlin Clark — have adopted the gender-fluid, race-worshipping, lesbian lifestyle — making them horrific role models for young girls.“Because Caitlin Clark didn’t fit the lesbian stereotype, she hadn’t adopted the lesbian lifestyle, and because she’s white, the lesbians and the jealous, angry black women have ganged up on her, pushed her out, and made all sports fans deal with, like, ‘Who are these people we’re supporting?’” Whitlock explains.And this phenomenon is not central to just basketball, but also women’s soccer players like Megan Rapinoe.“Do I really want Megan Rapinoe as a role model for young girls? These women are insane,” Whitlock says. “And so, I’m sitting here applauding the collapse of the WNBA.”“This Unrivaled league and the ratings are an embarrassment,” he says. “They’re a statement about how little interest there actually is in women’s basketball beyond Caitlin Clark.”Want more from Jason Whitlock?To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.