Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., on Sunday unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul the Minnesota state government, pledging a “top-to-bottom audit” of state agencies to root out fraud, waste and abuse as she campaigns for governor — while drawing a clear contrast with Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, whose administration has been mired in controversy over fraud scandals in state-run programs.

“On day one, I will begin a top-to-bottom audit of our state government,” Klobuchar said at a news conference in St. Paul on Sunday. “That audit will look at state agencies to identify waste, fraud and abuse.”

Klobuchar said her proposal is aimed at transforming state government into one that is “innovative, effective and accountable,” as fraud and oversight failures have emerged as a central issue in Minnesota politics.

Her plan includes a series of anti-fraud measures, including the creation of a “Do Not Pay” database to block individuals or contractors convicted of fraud from receiving public funds, expanded oversight of state grants and contracts, and new authority to freeze suspicious payments before money is distributed. It also calls for tougher criminal penalties for organized fraud schemes and more frequent in-person inspections and audits of programs receiving state dollars.

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Fraud in Minnesota’s state-run programs has drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years, including federal investigations and FBI raids targeting more than 20 childcare centers as part of a sweeping probe into alleged misuse of taxpayer funds. The issue has become a central political flash point, with Republicans arguing that oversight failures allowed large-scale fraud to persist under the Walz administration.

Klobuchar also sought to distance herself from the current administration’s record, signaling she would take a different approach to oversight and accountability if elected.

“I don’t like the status quo. I wouldn’t be running for governor if I wanted to have things remain the same. I want to see change,” she said.

MINNESOTA HOUSE SPEAKER WARNS AMERICANS WILL BE ‘SHOCKED’ BY SCOPE OF FRAUD CRISIS

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, blasted Klobuchar’s proposal, arguing it amounted to a continuation of Democratic leadership in the state.

“Plain and simple: four terms of Democrat control of the executive branch have doubled our state budget, raised taxes by billions and enabled a culture of fraud that has stolen billions more,” Demuth said in a statement posted online. “Amy Klobuchar wants to triple down on the Walz Era.”

Demuth added that she is running “to fix the mess Tim Walz has left in his wake and return our state to common sense that’s been missing for far too long.”

Klobuchar, who has spent decades in Washington, is positioning herself as an outsider to the controversies that have dogged the Walz administration, while arguing her plan would bring stronger accountability and more efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

Fox News Digital’s Robert McGreevy contributed to this report.

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger left the door open to imposing taxes on services like gym memberships, digital subscriptions and dog grooming when asked about the possibility during a recent interview.

“I think every idea, as long as it’s reasonable and makes some amount of sense, should be discussed,” Spanberger told a local ABC affiliate.

“I think there are worthy conversations to be had about what revenue generation looks like into the future as our economy changes in so many ways.”

The comment comes as Spanberger tries to leave the door open to exploring new sources of revenue for Virginia while also fending off accusations from the White House that have painted her as a tax-happy Democrat.

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“So sad! She is adding so many taxes: a food and beverage tax, digital services tax, utilities tax and more. People are leaving that would never have even thought of doing so!” Trump said in a post to Truth Social.

“This went from a thriving and powerful place to a commonwealth run by a person who has no concept of low taxes and economic strength.”

Those criticisms stemmed from a handful of bills introduced in the Virginia state legislature that, if implemented, would extend taxes to: storage facilities, counseling, dry cleaning, vehicle repair, website design, data storage and digital subscription storage.

The bills, which were first introduced by lawmakers during the tenure of Spanberger’s predecessor, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, never reached the floor of the General Assembly for a vote before the end of the state’s legislative session on March 14.

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Notably, apart from a bill that will raise the minimum wage incrementally to $15 an hour by 2028, Spanberger has yet to sign off on any new state-based increases — a record she believes Trump is misrepresenting.

“The array of taxes that the president asserts move forward in Virginia is sort of ludicrous,” Spanberger said.

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But Spanberger also noted that she could revisit ways to raise revenue from shifting industries that have changed the tax calculus.

“You used to buy a DVD; there used to be sales tax. Streaming is different. So, I recognize there’s value in having these conversations,” Spanberger said, highlighting one such area of change.

Spanberger said that any decision along those lines would ultimately depend on the specific language of a proposal.

“Whether I would ever sign a bill is wholly dependent on what is actually in the bill and how it is outlined,” Spanberger said.

First lady Melania Trump’s senior adviser Marc Beckman is calling on advertisers of late night host Jimmy Kimmel to boycott the show in the wake of his “expectant widow” joke aimed at the first lady.

“Why would ABC stand behind that? That’s the question. Furthermore, not just for the ABC brand, but why do the advertisers for Kimmel’s show stick with him,” said Marc Beckman. “It’s kind of strange.”

The first lady called out Kimmel for “hateful and violent rhetoric” after he made a White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner parody, calling her “an expectant widow” days prior to the assassination attempt. Kimmel has defended his skit, saying it was a joke about age difference and not a call for an assassination.

Beckman said while the first lady was selective with her words, “Kimmel should be fired. ABC should terminate his employment.”

KAROLINE LEAVITT SAYS OBAMA ‘HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE’S TALKING ABOUT’ AFTER KIMMEL COMMENTS

The first lady slammed Kimmel in an X post on Monday, including calling him a “coward” and calling on “ABC to take a stand.”

“His monologue about my family isn’t comedy- his words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America. People like Kimmel shouldn’t have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate,” she wrote. 

Beckman, CEO of advertising agency DMA United, said that, from his perspective, “it’s not about freedom of speech. It’s about branding.”

“Why would ABC and the parent company, Disney, want to be affiliated with an individual that’s entering all of our homes, America’s homes, night after night [in] our living rooms, our bedrooms, and spewing such divisive, vile political rhetoric?” he asked. “It leads to nowhere good.”

Beckman cited reporting from The Wall Street Journal that analyzed terrorism incidents compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, data showing that, in 2025, left-wing terrorist attacks and plots outnumbered right-wing ones for the first time in more than 30 years.

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“The amount of political violence, physical political violence from the left to the right is at a higher level,” said Beckman. “The trend is that from left to right, political violence is greater than that from right to left.”

He says the first lady is always paying attention, watching everything while continuing to be one of the hardest working people.

WHITE HOUSE SLAMS ‘NO-TALENT LOSER’ JIMMY KIMMEL AFTER OFFERING TRUMP HIS EMMY TO PULL ICE FROM MINNESOTA

“She pays attention to what people are saying in the media, but she doesn’t care so much. I think what she’s focused on is how could she continue to create great achievements for the country,” said Beckman.

Kimmel drew backlash last year over remarks about Charlie Kirk’s killing that critics said mischaracterized the suspect and politicized the case. The ABC host was then briefly suspended from the airwaves before returning and apologizing.

The first lady has recently used her position to expand children’s access to technology and education while inviting 45 countries for the inaugural “Fostering the Future Together” global summit in March.

“So what is she focused on? She’s focused on American children, American families, taking care of the nation as first lady. She’s not going to really care about all the gossip, lies and innuendo,” added Beckman.

Fox News Digital reached out to ABC and representatives for Kimmel but did not immediately receive responses. 

Senators can no longer use insider information to profit on emerging prediction market platforms.

The Senate, before leaving Washington, D.C., for a weeklong recess, quietly passed legislation that would prevent senators and their staff from betting on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket.

On those platforms, users can bet on nearly anything, from world events and political races to the outcome of a war or whether a notable figure will get a divorce.

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The move, pushed by Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, passed the upper chamber unanimously and immediately changed the Senate’s rules.

Moreno said his legislation was meant to erase concerns of “side hustles” by lawmakers and increase faith in the institution. It comes as lawmakers have tried and failed to police themselves with bans on stock trading while in office.

“I don’t believe we should trade stocks at all. It’s completely insane,” Moreno said. “I think we should focus on our jobs and have our voters go, ‘Hey, this guy’s voting this way, because this is the right thing for the state.’”

DEMOCRATS FAIL TO SHATTER REPUBLICANS’ RESOLVE ON EVE OF CRUCIAL IRAN DEADLINE

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., lauded the move on the Senate floor and called for similar guardrails to be installed in the House.

“Speaker Johnson should immediately do the same thing in the House,” Schumer said.

There is an effort bubbling in the House to do the same, led by Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, who is running to replace retiring Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

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The most popular prediction market companies are backing the move, too. Polymarket said in a statement on X, “We’re in full support of this.”

“Our Rulebook & Terms of Service already prohibit such conduct, but codifying this into law is a step forward for the industry,” the company said. “Happy to help move this forward however we can.”

Tarek Mansour, the co-founder of Kalshi, similarly pushed for the House to do the same.

“Kalshi already proactively blocks members of Congress and enforces against insider trading,” Mansour said on X. “This is a great step to increase trust in our markets by making it an industry standard.”

As the tensions between the United States and Iran persist, including an ongoing U.S. blockade against the Islamic Republic, President Donald Trump declared in a Truth Social post that the U.S. would launch “Project Freedom” to help ships from other nations escape the Strait of Hormuz.

“Countries from all over the World, almost all of which are not involved in the Middle Eastern dispute going on so visibly, and violently, for all to see, have asked the United States if we could help free up their Ships, which are locked up in the Strait of Hormuz, on something which they have absolutely nothing to do with — They are merely neutral and innocent bystanders!” the president declared in a Sunday Truth Social post.

“This process, Project Freedom, will begin Monday morning, Middle East time,” he noted.

But Iran has threatened to attack.

“We have repeatedly said the security of the Strait of Hormuz is in our hands and that the safe passage of vessels needs to be coordinated with the armed forces,” Iran’s Ali Abdollahi declared in a statement, according to Reuters. “We warn that any foreign armed forces, especially the aggressive U.S. Army, will be attacked if they intend to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz.”

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U.S. Central Command noted that 15,000 service members will be involved in the effort.

“U.S. military support to Project Freedom will include guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members,” CENTCOM noted in a press release on Sunday.

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An Iranian-flagged ship seized last month by the U.S. will be returned to its owners, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Monday.

“As a confidence-building measure by the United States of America, twenty-two crew members held aboard the seized Iranian container ship, ‘MV Touska’, have been evacuated to Pakistan. The individuals, who were flown to Pakistan last night, will be handed over to the Iranian authorities today. The Iranian ship will also be backloaded to Pakistani territorial waters for return to its original owners after necessary repairs,” the statement noted.

CARGO SHIP ATTACKED BY SMALL CRAFT NEAR STRAIT OF HORMUZ, UK MARITIME AGENCY SAYS

“These returns are being coordinated in tandem with the support of both the Iranian and U.S. sides. Pakistan welcomes such confidence-building measures and will continue to facilitate dialogue and diplomacy while pursuing ongoing mediation efforts for regional peace and security,” Pakistan’s statement added.

Fox News’ Bryan Llenas contributed to this report.

California taxpayers may be on the hook for a roughly $1 billion detour project as part of the state’s new high-speed rail construction meant to prevent disruption of a monument honoring the disgraced labor leader Cesar Chavez.

Despite tearing down and vacating memorials for Chavez, top California lawmakers did not immediately respond when asked if taxpayers in their state should still be on the hook for a roughly billion-dollar detour project meant to prevent the state’s new high-speed rail from coming near the monument nestled in the mountains. The detour, according to 2020 estimates from the California High Speed Rail Authority, would cost taxpayers close to $1 billion when accounting for inflation.

California leaders, universities and beyond immediately began stripping honors they had bestowed on the late labor leader after news of him sexually abusing and grooming minors and adults, including one girl who was as young as 13 at the time of the abuse and another who became pregnant twice following their encounters.

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The Chavez-founded labor union, United Farm Workers, called the allegations “profoundly shocking” and decided earlier this year to cancel its upcoming annual celebrations honoring him. Meanwhile, the César Chavez Foundation opted to do the same, describing the allegations as “disturbing” and noting they were “deeply shocked and saddened.”

The Chavez Foundation, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, successfully lobbied for the roughly $1 billion detour known as the “Refined César E. Chávez National Monument Design Option,” which moved the high-speed rail track roughly three-quarters of a mile from the Chavez monument’s boundary. The monument, part of the National Park Service, is a sprawling 187 acres and includes Chavez’s and his wife’s burial spots. It is also reportedly the location where Chavez founded his labor movement.

The monument already sits along a key transportation corridor with a single track looping around the site that carries dozens of freight trains a day. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the train creates a constant rumble for those walking around the site.

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“I have been to the monument,” Adriana Rizzo, a member of Californians for Electric Rail, told the San Francisco Chronicle. She noted it “is right next to a freight corridor” leading her to question “why this quieter, less-polluting train would have to be invisible.”

“This is a billion dollars we don’t have. There are a lot of other things we need. If there is a better route, we’re always open,” California High Speed Rail Authority board director, Ernest Camacho, said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Martha Escutia, another board director, reportedly said she is “always willing to reopen current commitments to ensure we get the best savings for taxpayers.”

Estimates for the high-speed rail project have been north of $200 billion, but the rail authority has challenged those estimates, telling CBS47 and KSEE24 the estimate is closer to $125 billion.

Fox News Digital reached out to top California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office, to inquire whether there should even be a debate over whether to get rid of the detour plans, particularly when many of them have taken actions to strip honors and memorials to the disgraced labor leader. However, none of them replied in time for publication.

FIRST ON FOX: The State Department’s account of its evacuation efforts is at odds with on-the-ground reports from private rescue teams who helped extract U.S. citizens from conflict zones during the opening days of the U.S.-Iran conflict.

Bryan Stern, founder and CEO of Grey Bull Rescue, a nonprofit evacuation service, is contesting claims that the State Department offered assistance to every American who asked for it, asserting instead that thousands of U.S. citizens were left trapped by missiles, bombs and security threats crowding airspace in the region.

“It’s not for lack of effort. Our State Department colleagues are tremendous. But their process doesn’t work. There is also no one — there’s no job specialty,” Stern told Fox News Digital, noting a lack of a dedicated government position for handling evacuations.

The contrasting assertions raise questions about the logistical efficiency of American rescue efforts while prompting calls from lawmakers for more specialization to get U.S. citizens out of conflict zones in the future.

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Stern believes slow-moving bureaucracy is preventing the government from fully utilizing its rescue options.

As one data point, Stern pointed to a video sent to Fox News Digital depicting a mostly empty flight from Israel to Florida near the start of the conflict.

A source, who recorded the video, confirmed they had been evacuated by the State Department from Israel on flight LY1017 from Tel Aviv to Miami, Florida, on March 8 — a point at which Stern said Grey Bull Rescue was being flooded with hundreds of evacuation requests.

In response to inquiries about the video, State Department officials did not address why they had only booked a handful of seats. While the government sometimes purchases individual tickets on a commercial flight for evacuations, they rarely buy the entire aircraft’s capacity, sources familiar with the Department’s evacuation practices told Fox News Digital.

Beyond that particular instance, Department officials said their offers of assistance exceeded the demand on the ground.

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“The State Department has reached out to every American who has registered interest in our support,” a State Department official said. “Most Americans who requested assistance have declined seats when offered, opting either to remain in country or book commercial flight options which offer greater flexibility in terms of destination and luggage.”

Stern believes the answer is misleading.

“That answer is inaccurate in totality,” Stern said.

“There’s a difference between a State Department-contracted aircraft that is filled with Americans to come out and getting them to safety. That’s an evacuation. That’s different from: ‘Hey, go book a commercial ticket. Good luck to you,’” Stern said.

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Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., who joined Grey Bull Rescue’s operations in Israel last month, applauded government efforts but believes there is room for reform.

“It really opened my eyes to some of the challenges that we have, the bureaucracy that we have,” Mace said.

“I’m going to come back to Washington with some ideas on how to streamline what we currently have and how to ensure that we’re allocating resources to the State Department, to [the Department of Homeland Security].”

Like Stern, Mace suggested that part of the problem stems from a lack of a single position in the State Department that deals with rescue efforts.

Stern, whose group has worked on over 800 missions to evacuate Americans from Afghanistan, Israel and Venezuela, believes current operations have too many moving pieces.

He said his team’s efforts allow him to communicate more directly with Americans requesting assistance.

“We know them, we talk to them 10 times a day. The current manifest we’re working right now has 338 people on it. We do a Zoom call once a day with all the families. Because of that kind of thing, the chain between the person and the airplane is zero, because it’s us,” Stern said.

“With [the Department of State] you’re calling a center in West Virginia, talking to somebody reading a script who doesn’t know anything; they refer you to a website that goes to a data processing thing somewhere which gets [put] onto an Excel spreadsheet.”

Over 43,000 Americans have safely returned to the United States since late February, according to the Department of State. Of those, government operations directly assisted 30,000 Americans.

Federal prosecutors’ stunning indictment of a left-wing activist group for alleged financial crimes is reverberating in Georgia’s 2026 Senate race, with Republicans targeting Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., for his past ties to the organization. 

The Department of Justice brought criminal charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center in April for allegedly defrauding its donors by secretly transferring money to extremist groups with the goal of infiltrating and monitoring their activities. 

Ossoff, the most vulnerable Senate Democrat running for re-election in 2026, is endorsed by the law center’s 501(c)(4) arm. The group contributed more than $700,000 to his campaign account in 2020, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings.

The Georgia Democrat has also praised the group’s purported efforts to combat racism.

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“Thank you for decades of work defending civil rights in the United States,” Ossoff said in a video celebrating the nonprofit group’s 50th anniversary in November 2021.

“I’m deeply concerned, like many of you, by the rising level of polarization, hatred and mistrust in our society,” he added. “We must recommit to the path of love, tolerance and peaceful coexistence if we are to flourish as a nation and as a world.”

During that time, federal prosecutors allege that instead of combating extremism, the SPLC was providing financial support to organizations that spread it.

Between 2014 and 2023, the Alabama-based organization paid more than $3 million to informants belonging to the United Klans of America, the Aryan Nation and other neo-Nazi groups, according to the 11-count indictment, which included charges of bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. The group allegedly concealed the payments by setting up bank accounts under fictitious names and did not inform federal law enforcement about their activities.

One informant, who the law center paid more than $270,000, was a member of an online group that helped plan the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, according to the indictment. Federal prosecutors said the informant attended the rally at the direction of the SPLC and “made racist postings” on behalf of the left-wing nonprofit.

Thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer died after a man drove his vehicle through a crowd of counter-protesters while injuring nearly 20 others.

“The SPLC was not dismantling these groups,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference in April. The group, he added, “was instead allegedly manufacturing the extremism it purports to oppose by paying sources to stoke racial hatred.” 

SPLC interim CEO Bryan Fair slammed the charges as politically motivated and has argued the since-defunct program “saved lives.” 

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The Republican National Committee (RNC) hammered Ossoff’s ties to the law center.

“If Jon Ossoff is too spineless to reject the Southern Poverty Law Center’s endorsement and return their money, he’s complicit in funneling millions to violent extremist groups like the KKK,” RNC spokeswoman Emma Hall said. “Anyone who doesn’t condemn these indicted fraudsters is wrong for Georgia — plain and simple.” 

Ossoff has not commented on the grand jury indictment. His campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Ossoff is facing a crowded field of GOP challengers ahead of November.

Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter, R-Ga., and former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley are vying for the Republican nomination in an increasingly bitter three-way contest. President Donald Trump has yet to intervene and a significant chunk of the state’s Republican voters are undecided, according to recent polling.

The GOP candidates have raised just a fraction of the Ossoff campaign’s $31.7 million war chest.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its race rating to “lean Democrat” in Ossoff’s favor earlier in April, citing an “increasingly sour national environment” for Republicans.

A trucking industry insider is warning about a deadly danger rampant on U.S. highways: unqualified, under-trained commercial truckers, many of whom are illegal immigrants and cannot read basic road signage.

In an interview with Fox News Digital, Mike Kucharski, co-owner and vice president of Illinois-based JKC Trucking, issued an impassioned appeal for more investigations into the problem, saying, “This is just madness.”

“You wouldn’t put someone in a cockpit of a Boeing 737 flying from New York to California if they weren’t properly trained or couldn’t communicate clearly or speak English. The same standard should apply to our highways,” said Kucharski.

“Every day, truck drivers are driving alongside school buses, families and commuters just trying to get to work and back home safely,” he continued. “When unqualified drivers slip through the cracks, that creates risk for our motoring public, and you can see that there’s accidents all the time.”

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This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into several commercial driving schools in the state for allegedly “endangering Texans by providing inadequate commercial driver training, including to non-English speakers.”

A statement by Paxton’s office said these practices violate federal law requiring basic English comprehension and Texas law mandating adequate training to operate a commercial vehicle.

Paxton’s investigation comes just months after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced his department had issued more than 550 notices of removal — decertification — to “sham CDL training schools” across the country. A statement by the DOT said the schools were found in violation of federal safety standards.

Speaking from inside the industry, Kucharski said that Duffy and Paxton are exactly right to crack down on the rampant CDL school abuse. He pointed to the ongoing spate of fatalities allegedly caused by individuals holding improperly issued CDLs.

In one recent case, Ohio officials revealed last week that Modou Ngom, a semi-truck driver charged in a fiery interstate crash that killed a young family of three, fraudulently obtained an Ohio driver’s license, a commercial driver’s license and later U.S. citizenship under an alternate identity.

Several months ago, in February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Indiana arrested Bekzhan Beishekeev, an illegal alien semi-truck driver issued a commercial driver’s license by Pennsylvania. The Department of Homeland Security said that Beishekeev allegedly killed four people on Feb. 3, when he swerved into oncoming traffic and struck a van in a head-on collision.

In Oregon, ICE also recently arrested Indian illegal immigrant Rajinder Kumar, who is accused of jackknifing his semi-truck and trailer, blocking both lanes of traffic, causing a crash that killed a newlywed couple.

There have been several other high-profile traffic fatalities involving illegal immigrants and improperly issued CDLs that have rocked the nation in recent months.

“This is just madness what’s happening,” he said, adding, “It has to stop because the longer this continues, there’s going to be more accidents, more people that are going to perish.”

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Besides the danger posed to U.S. citizens on the roads, Kucharski said the abuse has been crushing the commercial trucking industry, and by extension, causing disruptions to the U.S. supply chain and impacting prices.

“This is an economic issue, not just a safety issue,” he emphasized. “When unqualified drivers get on the road, it doesn’t just increase risk, it drives up the insurance costs, which has already risen for all of us; our insurance keeps going up, lawsuits, ultimately prices for the consumers.”

Kucharski has previously blown the whistle on illegal immigrants carrying sanctuary state licenses, sending a “shockwave” through the industry by edging out qualified, legitimate American drivers who require higher salaries.

He explained that illegal immigrant truck drivers can exploit a “loophole” in the system by obtaining non-domiciled commercial drivers’ licenses from states such as California and New York. They are then able to outcompete legitimate trucking businesses by charging lower prices, leading to the demise of many American small businesses in the industry.

“All our truckers are fighting for the same load, and it goes to the lowest bidder,” he went on. “If you have these drivers coming in that are non-domiciled, they have no family here, they have no home, they live in their truck… They’re saying, ‘OK, look, all the market’s doing for $2,000, we’ll do it for $1,700.’ So, it’s putting small trucking businesses out of business every day.”

Regarding the CDL schools certifying unqualified drivers, Kucharski confirmed, saying, “They’re putting bad actors in there, and they’re causing chaos in the trucking industry.”

“It’s just a huge black eye to the trucking industry,” he said.

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“This investigation is absolutely necessary,” he continued. “It’s about protecting the American public and restoring trust in the industry.”

He encouraged other trucking owners to “jump in and join the fight” against the abuse, which he referred to as an “abomination.”

“This driving school nightmare keeps me up at night,” he admitted. “Our job as owners is to educate everyone else that is not familiar, so we can come up with solutions together that keep the wheels rolling and the U.S. Economy roaring.“

China is developing AI-enabled robotic “wolf packs” designed to scout, supply and potentially support combat operations alongside troops in a future war — including a possible invasion of Taiwan — according to a new report.

The analysis from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) says Beijing is reshaping how wars can be fought by integrating artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous systems directly into frontline operations.

At the center of that effort are quadruped robots — often referred to in Chinese reporting as “robotic wolves” — that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is testing as part of its push toward what it calls “intelligentized warfare.”

While China has showcased robotic dogs in recent years, the report argues the People’s Liberation Army is moving beyond demonstrations and beginning to integrate these systems into coordinated battlefield units designed to operate at scale — particularly in high-risk scenarios such as the opening phase of a Taiwan invasion.

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The report warns that a force built around expendable, networked machines could allow Chinese commanders to sustain offensive operations while reducing risks to personnel, potentially lowering the political and military costs of conflict for Beijing.

“China is not just modernizing its military,” the report states. “It is reimagining how future wars will be fought.” 

The U.S. military is also developing robotic and autonomous systems, though analysts say China’s ability to leverage its commercial technology sector could give it advantages in scaling production.

In testing and demonstrations cited in the report, the robotic systems are used primarily for reconnaissance and support roles, moving ahead of troops to map terrain, detect threats and carry supplies through hazardous areas. The quadrupeds can navigate difficult terrain, including stairs and debris-filled urban environments, and operate in coordinated groups to extend a unit’s reach.

Some Chinese reporting also depicts armed variants operating alongside troops and drones during simulated assaults, though many of these capabilities have not been independently verified.

The report identifies a potential conflict over Taiwan as the most likely scenario for deploying the systems. 

An amphibious invasion would force Chinese forces to operate in dense urban terrain, contested coastal zones and degraded communications environments — conditions where unmanned systems could be used to clear routes, absorb initial losses and maintain momentum as troops push inland.

Despite the rapid development, the systems face limitations. They rely on communications links and battery power, making them vulnerable to jamming, cyber interference and logistical disruptions.

They are also susceptible to small arms fire and environmental conditions such as smoke or debris that can degrade sensors. The report notes that human operators remain in the loop for lethal decisions, limiting the systems’ autonomy in combat.

The report calls on U.S. policymakers to prioritize countering China’s autonomous systems, including developing strategies to disrupt robotic platforms and strengthening domestic technology capabilities. Analysts warn that as unmanned systems become more integrated into combat operations, they could shape the pace, risk and outcome of future conflicts.