The truth about land acknowledgments — and why it’s time to end them

Land acknowledgments have become one of the most common political rituals in Canada.

They’re recited in government offices, universities, legislative chambers, police press conferences, and even before the national anthem during children’s school performances.

We’re told they’re harmless. We’re told they’re simply about teaching Indigenous history. 

But as I explore in this report, many Canadians see them very differently.

For starters, the history behind many modern land acknowledgments is often oversimplified. Long before European settlement, Indigenous nations fought wars, displaced rivals, expanded territories, controlled trade routes, and, in some cases, even practiced slavery.

The Iroquois Confederacy displaced rival nations during the Beaver Wars. The Tlingit expanded their influence through warfare. The Haida famously took captives from neighbouring peoples as slaves.

Yet no reasonable person would argue that modern Indigenous Canadians should be burdened with inherited guilt, or that their connection to Canada is weakened because of what their ancestors did centuries ago.

And yet non-Indigenous Canadians are increasingly expected to sit through, repeat, or affirm statements suggesting they occupy “stolen” land and possess a lesser claim to the country they call home. Some are even being punished for speaking out against such compulsion.

Lara Yates, a B.C. mother of four, was banned from her child’s school after speaking out against a land acknowledgment before a school performance. Catherine Kronas, an Ontario parent council member, was suspended from her duties for refusing to participate in one. And four UBC professors have gone so far as to take legal action against the publicly funded university’s sweeping use of land acknowledgments, arguing that the rituals force faculty and students to conform to the institution’s political views.

The concerns don’t end there. Some Canadians oppose land acknowledgments because they believe they promote a form of racism, one that assigns moral guilt, victimhood, legitimacy, or authority based not on individual character, but on ancestry. And with elected officials such as BC NDP MLA Rohini Aroura, using legislature time to label the majority of her constituents “settlers” and “colonizers,” it’s no surprise that many Canadians feel that land acknowledgments have become about racial division rather than reconciliation.

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House Republicans Threaten Democrat Fundraising Machine ActBlue with Contempt amid Foreign Donor Probe

House Republicans are pressuring the CEO of Democrat fundraising machine ActBlue to comply with subpoenas regarding documents important to the investigation into possible foreign donations.

In a press release Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI), and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced they sent a letter to ActBlue’s CEO Regina Wallace-Jones “threatening to hold ActBlue in contempt of Congress for its inadequate compliance with the Committees’ subpoenas.”

The committees have been probing the platform’s “fundamentally unserious approach to fraud prevention, which may allow foreign nationals and bad actors to make large-scale fraudulent donations on Democrats’ top fundraising platform,” the release said, noting the fundraising behemoth was obstructing the inquiry by trying to shield documents important to the lawmakers’ efforts:

The release detailed:

On July 22, 2025, following ActBlue’s suspension of voluntary cooperation with the Committees’ oversight, the Committees issued subpoenas for all documents and communications referring or relating to misconduct at ActBlue, whistleblower retaliation, and mass departures on ActBlue’s legal team. After the Committees raised concerns that ActBlue’s response to the subpoena was insufficient, ActBlue represented on October 27, 2025, that it had produced “all non-privileged documents with responsive, relevant information.

However, on April 2, 2026, the New York Times reported on ActBlue’s alleged acceptance of foreign donations and  Ms. Wallace-Jones’s misstatements to Congress and quoted from documents that ActBlue did not produce to the Committees. The documents, which included former Interim General Counsel Aaron Ting’s resignation letter and an internal message in which former Legal Counsel Zain Ahmad alleged that he was retaliated against for blowing the whistle on internal misconduct at ActBlue, are clearly responsive to the Committees’ subpoenas and unprotected by any reasonable assertion of the attorney-client privilege.

Wallace-Jones agreed in May to testify on June 10 before the House Administration Committee, per Breitbart News.

At the time, Steil said, “Ms. Wallace-Jones allegedly misled our committee at the outset of our investigation into ActBlue’s fraud prevention standards. It’s past time we set the record straight and got answers for the American people. I look forward to hearing her testify.”

During the hearing, she dodged questions from Jordan and repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment rights when he asked how many foreign contributions the organization accepted and why its legal team quit.

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Nadella’s Hedge: Microsoft Wants To Make AI Models Cheap – Then Own The Rails They Run On

The entire AI capital cycle – roughly $700 billion in hyperscaler capex this year, an estimated $2 trillion-plus through 2028 – is collateralized by one belief: that intelligence is scarce, and therefore priceable. That belief is already under strain. Per-token inference prices have fallen on the order of 200× in a year, and the only thing holding revenue up is volume; the cost of intelligence is dropping even as the cost of deploying it climbs. Hyperscaler free cash flow is rolling over. The Fed has named AI capital spending a systemic risk. 

And after falling behind in the race to build the best AI, Microsoft is setting up for a massive hedge. The company is on track to spend north of $120 billion this fiscal year – most of it on GPUs and the data centers that house them, $37.5 billion in a single quarter alone, pushing free cash flow negative for the first time in a generation. That is a company betting intelligence is scarce. Yet to the Wall Street Journal last week, Nadella argued the opposite is coming – that intelligence is about to get cheap. The tell isn’t a contradiction. It’s a hedge: if you can’t win the race to build the best model, you make the model worthless and own the road it runs on.

Microsoft is already executing on the hedge. In the weeks surrounding the interview, the company rolled out a new wave of lower-cost models and made Copilot Cowork generally available worldwide – an autonomous agent designed for long-running tasks that lets users (or the system) dynamically route work across multiple models, explicitly including cheaper options. Axios reported that Microsoft is also actively weighing whether to host a version of DeepSeek, the ultralow-cost Chinese model, directly inside Azure for Copilot customers. The model would be optional for users, fully hosted on Microsoft’s infrastructure, and wrapped in the company’s enterprise security, compliance, and data-residency controls.

These aren’t side-quests, they are the product-level proof of the thesis: make intelligence abundant and interchangeable while keeping the customer, the data, and the workflow inside Microsoft’s perimeter.

Nadella believes intelligence is about to become abundant, interchangeable, and cheap, as a wave of agents routes work to the lowest bidder. And as the cost per unit of intelligence plummets, he wants Microsoft to own the rails it runs on.

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REPORT: Trump Admin Threatens to Withhold DHS Grant Funding to States Opposing Election Integrity Measures

The White House is reportedly threatening to withhold federal funding from states that do not comply with proposed election and vote-counting rules.

The new rules that the Trump Administration seeks to implement nationwide include manual audits of election systems, requiring documentary proof of citizenship for voters, and phasing out voting systems that don’t use hand-marked paper ballots, CNN reports, citing unnamed sources and internal documents.

Per CNN:

Under new rules governing several homeland security grant programs, states must take a number of steps, including phasing out certain electronic voting systems and moving to hand-marked paper ballots. They must also run their voter rolls through a controversial Department of Homeland Security citizenship verification database.

If not, states would lose out on some funding from DHS. These grants, expected to total more than $1 billion in the current fiscal year, are one of Washington’s main vehicles for helping state and local governments prevent terrorism, protect infrastructure and prepare for major disasters.

For years, the DHS grants, which states apply for, have required that at least 3% of the funds be spent broadly on election security. But the new guidelines, which CNN obtained and are expected to go out to states later this month, impose a set of mandatory reforms and steep penalties for noncompliance. States that refuse would lose 20% of the grant money — potentially millions of dollars in security funds.

“No changes to grant requirements or funding distributions are official until they are formally announced and published through proper, authorized agency channels,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the administration considers election security to be a core national security priority.

“Any recipient of federal funding should expect accountability for how taxpayer dollars are spent,” the spokesperson said.

In March 2025, Trump signed the “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections” executive order, which directs the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to require proof of citizenship and voter ID on its national mail voter registration form.

The order directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to “review each State’s publicly available voter registration list and available records concerning voter list maintenance activities.”

Further, DHS and the EAC were directed to “review and report on the security of all electronic systems used in the voter registration and voting process,” and “assess the security of all such systems to the extent they are connected to, or integrated into, the Internet and report on the risk of such systems being compromised through malicious software and unauthorized intrusions into the system.”

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX IPO Spurs Momentum for Orbital AI Data Centers

The concept of building AI data centers in orbit has gained renewed momentum following SpaceX’s record-breaking IPO that raised over $85 billion and valued the company in the trillions. Elon Musk’s success and the massive pushback against AI data centers in rural and suburban communities has spurred competitors including Jeff Bezos to develop their own plans for space-based data centers

CNBC reports that the successful public debut of SpaceX, which raised $85 billion and made Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, has brought the once far-fetched idea of space-based AI data centers into the realm of plausibility. While significant skepticism remains about the economic viability of the concept, industry experts and investors suggest the massive capital infusion could accelerate development of orbital computing infrastructure.

SpaceX now possesses several key components necessary for space-based data centers, including reliable reusable Falcon rockets, plans for more powerful launch vehicles, its xAI division with substantial computing needs, and the upgradeable Starlink satellite network. The company’s interconnected operations now have billions in new capital to potentially integrate these elements and serve both internal AI operations and commercial customers such as Anthropic.

Breitbart News previously reported that Musk unveiled his plans for orbital AI data centers shortly before the SpaceX IPO:

The AI data center satellite, which Musk characterized as a preliminary version of the final design, will stand 20 meters tall with an expansive wingspan of 70 meters. These dimensions make it the largest satellite SpaceX has ever attempted to launch. The structure features a rack of AI chips flanked by extensive solar panels and liquid radiators for thermal management.

Musk described the current design as a draft iteration of what will become the operational version. He noted that the satellite is considerably less complex than SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which the company has been deploying since 2019. Much of the technology draws from systems already developed for the satellite internet service.

“We don’t think this is a super hard problem, compared to things we already do,” said Musk.

Duncan Davidson, a partner at Bullpen Capital, stated on CNBC’s The Exchange that “The company comes down to data centers in space. That is the big, long-term play.” Davidson noted that while engineering and technical challenges are being addressed, the economics remain marginal at present. However, he expressed optimism about the long-term business case as launch costs decrease while terrestrial data center expenses continue rising.

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Meta pauses an AI training program that tracks employees’ keystrokes after an internal leak

Meta is pausing an internal AI training program after sensitive data was accessible across the entire company, according to screenshots obtained by Business Insider.

A screenshot showed that the leak exposed employees’ private conversations, performance data, and transcriptions. The incident was classified as a SEV 2 on a scale of 0 to 5, with 0 being the most severe.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed the incident and said the company is investigating.

“We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards, and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we’re pausing it while we investigate,” the spokesperson said.

In April, Meta announced the AI training program, called the Model Capability Initiative (MCI), which was intended to improve the company’s AI models by using its staff’s keystrokes and mouse movements as training data. The program, which is mandatory for most staff, sparked a backlash from employees who felt uncomfortable with their data being recorded, Business Insider previously reported.

This leak is causing frustration within Meta, according to screenshots seen by Business Insider, with employees critical that data wasn’t locked down from the start.

“I am incensed,” one employee wrote on Monday about the recent leak in an internal group, according to a screenshot obtained by Business Insider.

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Feds: Operative with ‘Direct Ties to IRGC’ Tried to Enter US Posing as Iranian World Cup Soccer Team Prez

The Iranian government was caught trying to sneak a terrorist into the U.S.A. as a fake member of its World Cup national men’s soccer team, American officials say.

U.S. officials refused entry to an Iranian who they say has direct ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and who was claiming to be the president of Iran’s soccer federation, the New York Post reported.

Department of Homeland Security chief Markwayne Mullin told the media that the Iranian was prevented from entering the U.S. with the Iranian team when they tried to prepare to fly to the U.S. from Mexico.

“When we started doing the research on him, he had only been put in place since 2022, and we didn’t allow him to board the plane, ” Mullin told the host of Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures.

The IRGC is the paramilitary arm of the Iranian military that answers directly to the mullahs and has been responsible for terrorist attacks all across the world.

Mullin added that the U.S. had taken pains to hold “multiple” conversations with representatives of Iran’s soccer team to ensure they understood their travel restrictions and entry criteria.

Iran head coach Amir Ghalenoei has bemoaned the treatment his team has received from his own government. He has also said that the harsh treatment has hurt his players’ performance.

The denial of entry to the Iranian IRGC member comes as the Trump administration continues to negotiate the end of the current military actions between the U.S. and Iran.

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Corrupt Obama Judge Amy Berman Jackson Shuts Down Trump Administration’s SNAP Junk Food Restrictions

A federal judge on Monday shut down the Trump Administration’s pilot program restricting the purchase of soda and junk food with SNAP benefits.

US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, said Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins applied the wrong law in approving a pilot program for states that wanted to restrict junk food purchases.

23 states applied for the pilot program in an effort to limit the purchase of soda, candy and other junk food.

Plaintiffs in five states filed the lawsuit against Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.

Judge Berman Jackson’s ruling applies to five states: West Virginia, Tennessee, Colorado, Iowa and Nebraska.

Politico reported:

A federal judge on Monday scrapped a set of state pilot programs intended to restrict the use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program money to purchase unhealthy foods.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, wrote in her decision that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who oversees the SNAP program, misapplied federal law in approving requests from states to allow them to impose limits on what participants can buy with funds from the nation’s largest food aid program. Her ruling applies to Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.

“With her solicitation and approval of the pilot projects in this case, the Secretary purports to waive not just a mere administrative or technical obstacle, but the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress,” Berman wrote. “Neither the USDA nor the states can force this square peg into a round hole to avoid the plain language of the statute and the requirements of 2026(k),” referencing the part of the statute that addresses projects to help improve SNAP households’ health status.

Jackson’s ruling could jeopardize one of the biggest policy achievements of the Make America Healthy Again agenda. Rollins and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have urged states to submit food restriction plans, arguing that they will improve health outcomes and that federal dollars shouldn’t be funding junk food.

Kennedy also incentivized the states to apply by tying some federal rural health care funding to whether states had applied for a waiver to limit foods like soda in SNAP.

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Manifesto Reveals Alleged Montreal Gunman’s Antisemitic, Far-Left and ‘Incel’ Ideology

The man accused of killing a Montreal police officer in the city’s heavily Jewish Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood before being shot dead by police left behind a 104-page manifesto filled with explicit antisemitism, anti-Zionist rhetoric, communist ideology, and grievances commonly associated with the online “incel” movement.

Police say that they have not yet determined a motive for the attack.

The shooting erupted Monday after police responded to reports of an armed man near the Hilton Garden Inn in Côte-des-Neiges. Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane was killed, and another officer was seriously injured. He was the first Montreal police officer killed in the line of duty in 24 years. 

A civilian, Michael Mizrahi, also died during the incident, though reports indicate he may have been shot by a police officer. Rabbi Mendel Raskin said Mizrahi had originally come from Lebanon before moving to Israel and later settling in Montreal.

The manifesto repeatedly attacks Jews and Zionists, claiming there are “many Jews” within the Western ruling class and stating that the author sometimes refers to it as the “Judaeo-bourgeois class.” 

A copy of the document obtained by Rebel News further alleges that “the influence of Zionist Jews upon the western bourgeoisie is in fact so strong” that it has shaped Western society itself, and goes on to assert that “Jewish interests dominate the levers of finance, media, and politics,” describing this alleged influence as “pervasive and corrosive.”

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LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho resigns amid ongoing investigation

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Superintendent Alberto Carvalho resigned on Sunday, bringing a abrupt end to his tenure leading the nation’s second-largest school system.

The resignation came nearly four months after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed early-morning search warrants at his San Pedro home and district headquarters, an ordeal that led the Board of Education to place him on paid administrative leave just days later.

Authorities have not publicly disclosed the exact nature of the federal investigation, though sources indicate it is tied at least in part to the district’s contract with AllHere, an educational technology firm that provided a short-lived artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot before collapsing into bankruptcy amid fraud charges against its founder.

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