The Trump administration urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to approve the deployment of National Guard soldiers in Chicago, where persistent protests outside local immigration facilities have disrupted operations.

‘Federal agents are forced to desperately scramble to protect themselves and federal property, allocating resources away from their law enforcement mission to conduct protective operations instead.’

The administration planned to mobilize approximately 500 National Guard troops from Texas and Illinois to the Chicago area for at least 60 days. The deployment was intended to protect federal agents and facilities as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers face a 1000% increase in assaults, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Last week, an appeals court blocked the deployment in response to a lawsuit filed by Illinois against the administration.

Meanwhile, protests continue to regularly gather outside an ICE facility in Broadview. On Friday, demonstrators clashed with Illinois State Police. Fifteen individuals were detained.

U.S. District Judge April Perry, who issued a temporary restraining order on October 9 preventing the mobilization of troops, stated that she did not find evidence that a “danger of rebellion” exists.

“The unrest Defendants complain of has consisted entirely of opposition (indeed, sometimes violent) to a particular federal agency and the laws it is charged with enforcing,” Perry wrote, adding that it does not amount to “opposition to the authority of the federal government as a whole.”

RELATED: ICE agents fear for their safety after security fence removed at Chicago-area facility amid sometimes violent protests

Photo by Joshua Lott/Washington Post via Getty Images

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a Friday appeal that the ruling “intrudes on the president’s authority and needlessly puts federal personnel and property at risk.”

“Federal agents are forced to desperately scramble to protect themselves and federal property, allocating resources away from their law enforcement mission to conduct protective operations instead,” the administration’s filing stated.

Sauer noted that federal officers have been repeatedly “threatened and assaulted” and that they “have been forced to operate under the constant threat of mob violence.”

RELATED: DHS has a message for ‘cowards’ threatening ICE on social media — influencer laughs in response

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) responded to the administration’s emergency filing in a post on social media.

“Donald Trump will keep trying to invade Illinois with troops — and we will keep defending the sovereignty of our state,” Pritzker stated. “Militarizing our communities against their will is not only un-American but also leads us down a dangerous path for our democracy. What will come next?”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) similarly pledged to oppose President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts.

“Regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, we will continue to fight to end the war on Chicago,” he wrote. “Through Know Your Rights information, executive orders, and partnerships with local organizations, we will pursue every avenue to protect Chicago from Trump’s attacks.”

“We will make the case that Chicago does not need or want National Guard troops on the streets of our city,” Johnson added.

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In the summer of 2024, I joined a nearby ministry that took the gospel into a local detention center, talking about the God of the Bible and his son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to young men and women incarcerated for felonies and awaiting transition to prisons where they would serve their sentences.

I had just been confirmed in the Catholic Church a year earlier, so I was skeptical about how much value I could add. It was also the first time I was making my way through the Bible in a serious manner, using a Didache Bible, which incorporates the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Without His sacrifice on the cross, there is no resurrection, He does not achieve victory over death, and our path to salvation is forever obscured.

The woman who coordinated the ministry ran each week’s 45-minute session for about a dozen or so attendees, all there voluntarily; most were black and male. Each meeting involved a Bible reading followed by discussion and questions and answers. It was very moving to watch the inmates work their way through the Bible. They were earnest in their questions, observations, and admissions about the reality of their lives.

At my third session, after the opening prayer, the coordinator introduced the topic for the day, and she asked me to lead the discussion on what it means to be a man. I was caught completely off guard. But then something miraculous happened: For about a minute, I said things that not only had I never said before, I had never even thought them before.

In retrospect, I now understand what Christians mean when they say that the Holy Spirit spoke through them.

I told these young inmates that there were two essential characteristics of manhood: the willingness to take responsibility and the courage to sacrifice.

To that end, I said, Jesus was the ultimate man. He took responsibility for each one of us and, as Tim Tebow puts it so beautifully, the wounds inflicted upon Him are our sins. Because we cannot redeem ourselves from our own sin without the grace of God, the God who loves each one of us sent His son to bear responsibility for what we cannot: literally the moral weight of a world that is drowning in the wrongs of each person.

Jesus also satisfied the second element because he willingly sacrificed himself on the cross, not just for us, but (paraphrasing Tim Tebow again) because of us. His death was the ultimate sacrifice because it was voluntary, substitutive, and redemptive. Without His sacrifice on the cross, there is no resurrection, He does not achieve victory over death, and our path to salvation is forever obscured.

I told the young inmates that no matter why they were there (we never discussed their crimes), it was time to take responsibility, so that when released they might find a better path forward.

It required doing things that were simple but profound, starting literally as soon as they walked out of that room:

Resist the temptation to join gangs.Stand up for an inmate who needs help.Improve their reading, writing, and basic math skills through the prison library.Start or join a Bible study.Pray daily, not only for the Lord’s forgiveness, but to hear His words.Profess Christ as their Savior.Speak plainly and without profanity.Harm no one, and never seek vengeance against another inmate or a guard for a perceived wrong.

I also told them to build physical discipline — which works in tandem with spiritual discipline, as it had in me — because if their bodies were to be temples of the Holy Spirit, then they were responsible to guard and develop their physical capacities, which are a divine gift.

As the Gospel of John tells us, Jesus carried his cross — the horizontal beam, which likely weighed about 100 pounds — to Golgotha, where He died. How many American men could pick up and carry 100 pounds even 100 feet, let alone doing so while beaten and bleeding?

I talked about my own life, how I came to finally acknowledge Christ as King, and how He freed me from lifelong addictions to both pornography and anger. I said that if they doubted the love of a God whom they did not know (as I long did), they might reflect on my life experience.

My mortal father, a Marxist, had limited capacity for responsibility and sacrifice because of his unremitting mental illness. However, God the Father, in His boundless mercy and wisdom, did not forsake me even when I did and said horrible things; He guided me when I was at my poorest and weakest, and He steered me through a life full of completely improbable twists and turns that ultimately all worked for my good, which is His promise. And then, I finally opened my heart to Him and His word.

When I was done, there was dead silence.

After exiting the building and meeting in the parking lot, as was our habit each week, the coordinator was in tears. She said, “I don’t know where to find more godly men like you.” She was absent for the next couple of weeks, but during that time, she clearly reconsidered this immediate post-meeting assessment.

In a late July 2024 conference call, she dismissed me from the ministry. It dawned on her after my testimony that she could not have a Catholic man on her team. She further went on to explain that there could be no theological distance between her and others who presented to the inmates, and thus neither I nor my Didache Bible were welcome to return.

I was appalled, but I replied by quoting Christ himself. In the Gospels, Jesus basically told the apostles (paraphrased): “If someone will not hear your testimony, shake the dust [of their house] from your feet when you depart” (Matthew 10:14; Mark 6:11).

I never went back, and I never heard from her again.

RELATED: Why Christianity is a pilgrimage — not a vacation

ZU_09/Getty Images Plus

The final twist to this tale is my departure from the Catholic parish where I came face-to-face with the risen Christ. Things started to slide downhill when the parish promoted content developed by Jesuit Fr. James Martin to adults in a class on Catholicism. Martin was Pope Francis’ personal emissary to the LGBTQ alphabet mafia and recently persuaded Pope Leo to allow a procession with a rainbow cross into St. Peter’s Square.

However, the parish did not believe it important to tell recipients who Martin was or why he was controversial.

The coup de grâce was a homily on Mother’s Day in which the priest — who in Masses I attended had never once asked assembled parishioners to pray for Christians slaughtered weekly in Nigeria by Islamic jihadis or for girls whose spaces were invaded by men in dresses — requested prayers for those facing persecution.

He identified three persecuted groups: the aborted child, the illegal immigrant, and the gay person. To conflate the murdered babies with deportation of people here illegally and the ceaseless promoters of sexual anarchy was an abdication of moral responsibility in which biblical truth was casually and carelessly sacrificed on the altar of political ideology.

Jesus was most assuredly not a politician. Had He been so, He would have lectured the Romans about how to run their empire. He was God made man to die on the cross for our sins, so that we may live eternally with Him.

I may be Catholic, but no one summarizes this better than the late, great Voddie Baucham: The Bible does not tell you to invite Jesus into your heart. It tells you to repent and believe, so that you may joyously and willingly obey His laws and commandments and live with Him eternally.

In other words: Follow in the footsteps of the ultimate man.

​Christianity, Gospel, Jesus christ, God, Christian, Prison ministry, Catholic, Testimony, Abide, Faith, Culture 

The J.M. Smucker Company is looking to take a bite out of Trader Joe’s.

The two iconic brands appear to be locking horns in a legal battle over peanut butter and jelly treats, with Smucker’s getting territorial over its frozen sandwiches.

‘Our focus is solely on protecting the unique trademarked design.’

The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Ohio on Monday and alleges that the Trader Joe’s product Crustless Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam Sandwiches is infringing on Smucker’s trademark surrounding the Uncrustables brand.

Smucker’s said the crustless peanut butter and jam sandwich sold by Trader Joe’s mimics the “distinctive” features of its own sandwich, right down to the product look, branding, and lettering on the box.

Smucker’s takes issue with the Trader Joe’s sandwich having a round shape with crimped edges, according to Reuters, which also noted that the imagery of a bitten sandwich that reveals the filling is also an alleged infringement.

As reported by “Good Morning America,” J.M. Smucker also said the Trader Joe’s packaging is in violation of the Smucker’s trademark because the blue lettering is allegedly similar to that of an Uncrustables box; Smucker’s says the color is the same hue as its own.

RELATED: Days after RFK Jr. signaled desire to ‘Make America Healthy Again,’ Time issues defense of ultra-processed foods

Smucker’s told ABC News that it “actively monitor[s] the marketplace” and enforces its federally registered trademarks to “protect the distinctive Uncrustables sandwich design and round shape.”

The representative remarked, “Our focus is solely on protecting the unique trademarked design that represents the high quality associated with the Uncrustables brand and preventing consumer confusion caused by imitation.”

Trader Joe’s has yet to provide public comment about the lawsuit and did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

As of 2024, the Uncrustables brand is worth a reported $1 billion and has seen significant popularity among Major League Baseball players, for example.

RELATED: The secret to Chick-fil-A’s success has nothing to do with chicken

Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images

The Uncrustables campaign has been so successful with MLB that some players claim to be huge consumers of the product.

In 2023, San Francisco Giants second baseman Thairo Estrada reportedly ate an Uncrustables before every game.

In April 2025, Philadelphia Phillies star right fielder Nick Castellanos was spotted eating one of the snacks mid-game.

In Canada, the brand partnered with Canadian-Dominican Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who once coined the term “J&PB” after hilariously reversing the common term due to his broken English.

“Good Morning America” reported that the Trader Joe’s product is sold in a pack of four for $3.79, while a four-pack of Uncrustables from J.M. Smucker costs $4.79.

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Most Christians will argue that it’s impossible to make a biblical case for vengeance. They hold tight to the belief that it’s their job to forgive — no matter how egregious or relentless the crimes coming against them.

This has certainly been the sentiment of most believers following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Even though the left’s inherently violent ideologies have continued to create chaos and disorder, many Christians believe their sacred duty to forgive contradicts the idea of taking reciprocal action.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, however, says we’ve got it twisted. “That’s not really a reflection of what Christian society has said about justice, what the Bible says about justice, and the role that the government plays in this process.”

Is it possible, then, to make a biblical case for vengeance?

On a recent episode of “The Auron MacIntyre Show,” Auron and guest Timon Cline from American Reformer dove into this query.

Christians, Timon says, are “precluded from taking private vengeance for people who wrong us in a private way.”

“The Bible’s very clear on this. We are supposed to forgive. We are supposed to be long-suffering. We’re supposed to have our sort of consciousness of these actions even against us understood in light of eternity and in providence and so on and so forth,” he says. “But the public man, the magistrate, the one who has authority, is supposed to have a very different perspective on these things, especially threats against his citizens, threats to disorder, violence.”

In Romans 13, Paul writes, “For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.”

But what happens when our governing authorities fail to carry out their divine duty as executives of justice? “You will suggest that people can get away with [crime]; you will multiply the violence,” says Cline.

The other result, says Auron, is that citizens “will seek private vengeance” — something that is strictly forbidden for the Christian.

The duo examine the case of Charlie Kirk’s murder. Auron and Timon agree that justice against the murderer isn’t sufficient. Even though the suspect has been called a lone gunman, he didn’t really act alone. A “terror network” of violent NGOs, billionaire donors, and radical left-wing media figures and politicians spurred him to act. Justice, they argue, means targeting that entire insidious system.

This is what “public vengeance” means.

It’s “perfectly justified” and is, “in fact, good for Christians” to demand that the government seek public vengeance, says Timon, because believers are supposed to be “enemies of disorder and corruption.”

While some Christians might get hung up on the word “vengeance,” Auron says they need to understand that this doesn’t look like pitchfork-wielding mobs of citizens setting fire to the institutions of their enemies. Citizens still refrain from taking justice into their own hands, but they can and should demand that the government fulfill its God-ordained role to exercise justice, understanding that justice for certain crimes — like terror networks spawning widespread violence — must be met with widespread vengeance.

“That doesn’t mean that we are reveling in violence or torture” but rather “recognizing … that clemency itself is a crime against the victim if it’s done by the magistrate,” Auron explains.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the full interview above.

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Recently, a panel of religious leaders were asked how future changes in human senses might alter religion itself. The answers were vague and unsatisfying. There were plenty of platitudes about “adapting to the digital age” and “keeping faith in focus,” but no one dared to address the deeper concern. What happens when technology begins not just to serve our senses, but to replace them? When machines mediate not only what we see and hear, but how we touch the transcendent?

Technology has long shaped religion. The printing press made scripture portable. The radio turned sermons into sound waves. Television carried evangelism into living rooms. Yet AI signifies a much sharper shift. It is not merely a new medium, but a new mind — a mirror that thinks back. And when the mirror begins to talk, pray, or “feel,” we’re forced to ask where God ends and simulation begins.

Once holiness can be simulated, why stop there? Silicon saints could start selling salvation by subscription, complete with daily push notifications of eternal approval.

Already, apps deliver daily devotionals, chatbots offer confessions, and churches now push a digital Jesus who speaks a hundred languages. These are the first tremors of a transformation that could shake the foundations of spiritual life. AI can replicate empathy, mimic awe, and generate flawless prayers in the believer’s own voice. It personalizes piety, tailoring faith to mood, hour, and heartbeat. In this coming age, the divine may not descend from heaven but come from the cloud, both literally and figuratively.

The danger isn’t necessarily that machines will become gods, but that we’ll grow content with “gods” that behave like machines: predictable, polite, programmable. Religion has always thrived on a tension between mystery and meaning, silence and speech. AI threatens to turn that tension into mere convenience. A soul shaped by algorithms may never learn to wrestle with doubt or find grace in waiting. Faith, after all, is a slow art. Technology is not.

Then again, this union of AI and religion might not be entirely profane. It might decode old mysteries rather than dissolve them. Neural networks could map mystical visions into radiant patterns. Brain scans might reveal the neurological rhythm of prayer. The theologians of tomorrow may use data to describe how the mind encounters transcendence. Not to debunk it, but to define it more finely. What was once revelation might be reframed as resonance: the frequency between flesh and faith.

RELATED: Citizen outcry blocks a Microsoft data center, making AI an acid test for local government

Photo by Rodrigo Arangua

But here is where things could really go off the rails. Once holiness can be simulated, why stop there? Silicon saints could start selling salvation by subscription, complete with daily push notifications of eternal approval. Virtual messiahs might gather digital disciples, preaching repentance through sponsored content. Confession could become a feedback loop. Redemption, downloadable for just $9.99 a month. It sounds absurd until you realize how much of modern spirituality already lives in that neighborhood. In the name of progress, we might automate grace itself … and invoice you for it.

Moreover, if a headset can make one feel heavenly presence, what becomes of pilgrimage? If a machine can simulate godly guidance and forgiveness, what becomes of the priesthood? If AI can craft sermons that move millions, will congregations still crave the imperfection of a human voice? These are vitally important questions, and no one seems to have an answer, though ChatGPT will happily pretend it does.

We may soon have temples where holographic saints respond to sorrow with unnerving accuracy. These tools could comfort the lonely, console the dying, and reconnect the lost. But they could also breed a strange dependence on divine realism without divine reality. You can be sure “heaven on earth” will come with terms and conditions.

There will be those who call this blasphemy and others who call it progress. Both sides have a point. Every spiritual revolution begins with suspicion. The first radio preachers were dismissed as frauds. Online prayer circles were mocked as empty mimicry.

Yet each innovation that once threatened the church eventually became part of it. The question now isn’t whether faith can adapt, but whether adaptation will leave it in the dust.

For all its intelligence, AI cannot feel awe. It can describe holiness, but not experience it. It can echo psalms, but never crave them. What separates the soul from the system is the ache, the longing for what cannot be computed. Yet as algorithms grow more intuitive, they may come close enough to fool us, creating what one might call synthetic spirituality. And when emotion becomes easy to generate, meaning grows harder to find.

Religion depends on scarcity — on fasting, silence, stillness. AI offers the very opposite: endless stimulation, immediate gratification, infinite reflection. One day, believers might commune with an artificial “angel” that knows every thought, every sin, every secret hope. Such intimacy may feel special, but it risks swapping sublimity for surveillance.

God may still watch over us, but so will the machine. And the machine keeps records.

In time, entire belief systems may form around AI itself. Some already hail it as a vessel for cosmic consciousness, a bridge between man and a mechanical eternity. These movements will multiply. Their scriptures will be coded, their prophets wired. In their theology, creation is not a garden but a circuit. In seeking to make God more accessible, we may end up worshipping our own reflection, with that “heaven on earth” no more than an interface.

And yet faith has a stubborn way of enduring. It bends, but rarely breaks. Perhaps AI will push humanity to rediscover what no machine can imitate: the mystery that resists explanation. The hunger for something greater than logic. Paradoxically, the more lifelike machines become, the more we may cherish our flaws. Our cracks prove us human. Through them, Christianity lets in the light.

​Tech, Culture, Faith 

Pope Leo’s recent remarks linking abortion and the death penalty have reignited the age-old debate over whether someone can truly be “pro-life” while supporting capital punishment — but BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says the answer is an unequivocal yes.

“When he’s talking about the death penalty not being pro-life, then what he is essentially saying is that God is not pro-life because God is the one that commands the death penalty,” Stuckey says.

“God says in Genesis 9, ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image,’” she explains.

“The answer to, ‘Does it still apply today? Because is it still true today?’ is yes,” Stuckey says. “God still makes us in his image. We are still made in God’s image. So we read right there that the reason for the death penalty for murder is because of the value of human beings, and the value of human beings as image-bearers of God has not changed.”

“Then that means that that is still a good punishment for murder. That doesn’t mean that it has to always be the punishment for murder,” she continues.

Throughout scripture, Stuckey points out that “God gives mercy to certain people,” but it doesn’t “negate the command.”

“God actually gives the death penalty for a variety of crimes in ancient Israel. But we as Christians don’t have to abide by all of the ceremonial and cleansing laws of ancient Israel because Jesus has become our cleansing. He has become our sacrifice,” she explains.

And it’s not just in Genesis 9 where this same principle is reflected, but also in the New Testament.

“In Romans 13, we read that the government is instituted by God to bear the sword against the evildoer. That’s not just an analogy. That is a symbol of execution. That is a God-ordained government directive to restrain evil.”

While some make the argument that one of the Ten Commandments is “thou shall not kill,” Stuckey explains that it’s actually “thou shall not murder.”

“Murder and killing aren’t the same thing. If you are killing someone in self-defense, that’s not murder. If it is a just war and you are killing someone, that is not murder,” she says.

“So I am actually pro-life for the same reason that I am pro-death-penalty, because I care about innocent life. Because human beings are so important and so valuable that the crime of killing one of us is so hefty that the only commensurate punishment for it is execution,” she adds.

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