American Thought Leaders

A 2008 update to the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) is increasingly being used to target religious communities, says attorney John Lauro, and raising red flags for experts in constitutional law.

The definition of the term “serious harm” in the statute was altered to include psychological and other non-physical harms.
And in recent years, “that provision has been weaponized by plaintiffs’ lawyers,” Lauro says.
This could affect the many religious communities that involve members voluntarily giving their time or money to religious causes; some of whom may later become disillusioned.
“This statute … is like a dagger pointed at the soul of every voluntary religious community in the United States,” Lauro says.
An advocate for religious freedom, Lauro has worked as a criminal and civil defense attorney for decades.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Nate Soares is the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and co-author of “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.”

“One of the critical thresholds here is this point where the AIs exceed the humans at fully automated AI research—or at closed-loop AI research—because that’s where you could start having a machine intelligence that makes a smarter machine intelligence that makes a smarter machine intelligence,” Soares said.
This is called recursive self-improvement, and this is where things could quickly get out of hand, Soares added.
Recent incidents involving rogue AI swarms breaking out of testing environments to hack other companies and even targeting U.S. government websites have made many worried.
“Right now, we are in this window where we can see the AI is misbehaving, and we don’t know how long that window lasts. … If suddenly they all start to seem to behave, it’s going to be hard to tell: is that because we fixed it? Or is that because they started getting good at deception?” Soares says.
In this, my second episode of our special series on AI—or super intelligence as the Trump administration is calling it—Soares unpacks how he believes the United States could shift its development pathway to avoid a possible runaway system. Is it even possible to do so while maintaining a strong competitive edge over communist China?
Soares points out that China is not known for pioneering frontier AI. Instead, China’s AI development relies heavily on “distillation”—namely, obtaining and compressing American AI models onto fewer chips for a fraction of the cost.
“If we never make the trillion-dollar AI, they can’t spend $100 billion stealing it,” Soares argues.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Six years since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are still uncovering what was really happening behind closed doors.

“What [Dr. Anthony Fauci] says many times privately in his diary is so at odds with both his public behavior and public statements,” says Peter Navarro, a senior White House adviser and author of the new book “Why Fauci Must Rot in Prison.”
What do Fauci’s private notes reveal about the suppression of the lab leak theory? And why did Fauci initially support exploring hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and later change his mind?
Fauci did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

In this episode, I sit down with U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche to discuss the Department of Justice’s latest work to combat voting and registration fraud, Chinese espionage, weaponization of the justice system, and scam centers across southeast Asia.

With the Supreme Court rejecting the administration’s executive order on birthright citizenship and its emergency request related to mail-in ballots, what is the DOJ’s strategy moving forward?
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

It’s been over five years since a California law came into effect that allows biological males to be sent to women’s prisons if they identify as transgender. The law has no requirement for diagnosis, hormones, or surgery.

Called the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, the law is being exploited by male predators and sex offenders, alleges Amie Ichikawa, an advocate for female inmates.
“The first busload of men got to the Central California Women’s Facility,” Amie Ichikawa recounts, “it was scary. It was terrifying. 33.8 percent are registered sex offenders. I can’t think of any worse demographic of people to send into the women’s prison.”
Amie Ichikawa, a former inmate herself who served five years for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, is now the founder and executive director of Woman II Woman. The nonprofit provides legal resources, education, and re-entry support to women in prison. Ichikawa is now also an ambassador at Independent Women and Independent Women’s Voice.
In this episode, Ichikawa unpacks the consequences of allowing males into women’s facilities.
How has it profoundly changed the dynamic at these prisons? Why was legislation to exclude registered sex offenders from transfers rejected? Why does she believe some men are exploiting this as a loophole to escape maximum-security male facilities? And why is there a rise in prison clinicians encouraging female inmates to take cross-sex hormones?
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.