Damon Packard’s movie diary

Damon Packard is the Los Angeles-based filmmaker behind such underground classics as “Reflections of Evil,” “The Untitled Star Wars Mockumentary,” “Foxfur,” and “Fatal Pulse.” His AI-generated work recently appeared as interstitials for the 18th annual American Cinematheque Horrorthon and can be enjoyed on his YouTube channel. After a long day making movies or otherwise making ends meet, he likes to unwind with late-night excursions to the multiplexes and art house cinemas of greater Los Angeles.

May 20, “Obsession” (d. Curry Barker), AMC Century City 15

This movie is exactly the kind of hollow, dystopian misery porn that brainless contemporary culture keeps walloping with praise. I found it tedious, annoying, and dull.

I know this has nothing whatsoever to do with De Palma’s “Obsession,” but at least DePalma’s film (and its inspiration, Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”) knew how to seduce you with mood and atmosphere, mystery and romance. I’ll take a single dreamy close-up of Genevieve Bujold in soft diffusion filters over an hour of a possessed, shrieking, creepy, clingy girlfriend.

At some point in the last act, there was a lot of screaming and noise in the theater, and they shut the film off because someone had a seizure or something. So I was spared suffering through the rest.

As I left, I heard Bernard Herrmann’s music in my head. I watched the paramedics arrive. They all looked jaded and took their time pushing the gurney into the elevator. I walked past the huge “The Mandalorian and Grogu” forest planet display they have out front of the AMC Century City, and Herrmann’s music seemed to keep following me.

And then I saw her. A Geneviève Bujold look-alike drifting silently past the Funko Pop claw machines in a cream-colored coat, soft curls glowing under the multiplex exterior lights. She turned slightly, just enough for me to catch the resemblance, and then vanished onto the escalator like the ending of a forgotten De Palma dream.

May 29, “Backrooms” (d. Kane Parsons), AMC Century City 15

You know you’re in trouble when the first two minutes are instant boredom and the rest doesn’t get any better. Yeesh, what a waste — ultimately an endurance test to get through. Not a single interesting moment or idea.

I like that actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, but what the hell is he doing in this? Not only is he miscast, but he’s above this kind of tripe.

When I hear them praising ‘Disclosure Day,’ I’m like George C. Scott in ‘Hardcore’ when he finds out his daughter has been abducted into the porn industry.

I would have hoped a 20-year-old boy-wonder director would bring the reckless energy to make something at least half watchable, but nope, just as horrible, bland, lifeless, dull, and dumb as every other thing the clueless moron masses who wouldn’t know what a good film was if their life depended on it flock to.

Sam Raimi was 21 when he made “Evil Dead”; Steven Spielberg 24 when he made “Duel”; Orson Welles 25 when he made “Citizen Kane”; Bernardo Bertolucci 22 when he made “Before the Revolution”; Louis Malle 23 when he made “Elevator to the Gallows.” Now THOSE were great films.

Spielberg is now 79, and “Disclosure Day” looks like a bland, generic, insipid pile of direct-to-Tubi junk. But is it really age and vitality, or is it that nobody can write good stories any more? Or that nobody would finance one if it even existed?

RELATED: Mission: Impossible (to sit through); Final Dud-stination; RIP Joe Don Baker

Mike Malloy/Damon Packard/Cinerama/Manuel Velasquez/Getty Images

June 2, “Pressure” (d. Anthony Maras), AMC Century City 15

Just when you thought every WW2 story had been exhausted over the last 80 years, along comes this little $5 million production set within a world of dueling weathermen!

What immediately sounds like mundane, made-for-cable fodder turns out to be a surprisingly terrific and engaging little movie, with an interesting perspective and new take.

Mostly due to the things you rarely see in films these days: good writing, good music, good direction, and interesting characters. Superb performances and casting all around, even for the initially perceived as a terribly miscast Brendan Fraser, who gives it his all and wins you over in the end. Special mention to the lovely Irish actress Kerry Condon, who makes a perfect 40s military babe.

Nothing phenomenal, but as far as mainstream theatrical releases, it is one of the best I’ve seen this year so far and a reminder some people still know how to make proper films (even if they are shot on the Arri Alexa 35 and technically shouldn’t be called “films”).

June 6, “The Doors” (1991, d. Oliver Stone), Vista Theater Hollywood

Caught a late show in 70mm last night. Which looked beautiful but seemed to be missing the subwoofer channel or something. The sound was all high and mid frequencies, zero low end. Not sure what the deal was there, a print issue or something not switched on? A projectionist might know the answer.

I really like this film, and it always brings back certain feelings and memories of sneaking onto the set with my friend Chad and joining the background actors at 3 a.m. at the Whiskey back in 1990. The cult worship of Morrison is not dead; there were girls screaming in the theater. The Vista still has a bag-checking policy; therefore I always make it a point to sneak in food and drink just on principle

June 12, “Disclosure Day” (d. Steven Spielberg), AMC Burbank 16

Caught a nice and empty 11:30 p.m. showing of “Disclosure Day” last night. Talk about a moronic, bland snoozefest. The latest major mega-embarrassment from an aging cine-Boomer. So incredibly dumb, dull, and out of touch that you just sit there half awake in a stunned stupor, taking it all in while trying to stay awake.

How anyone can actually defend this is beyond me. It never ceases to amaze: No matter how awful some new mainstream pile of garbage is, there are plenty of defenders — people (clueless, brain-dead walking software programs) who have zero proper film knowledge or education or interest and wouldn’t know one way or the other.

When I hear them praising something like “Disclosure Day,” I’m like George C Scott in “Hardcore” when he finds out his daughter has been abducted into the porn industry. Oh, never mind, that’s another film and actor you’ve probably never heard of.

The John Williams score is good. Spielberg may not have it any more, but Williams still does.

June 17, “The Furious” (d. Kenji Tanigaki), AMC Marina Marketplace 6

Caught a late show of this this mostly pretty darned awesome and entertaining Hong Kong action film.

It feels very much like the kind of creative (and at times goofy and hilarious) Hong Kong martial arts exploitation films we were getting in the 1980s. With a lot more blood and violence.

Top-notch fight scenes, even if they get a little overlong in the third act (which is typical). American action movies that borrow from Hong Kong can never come close to the real deal, and this here is seventh-generation Asian action fight choreography done right.

The AI lip sync is a completely flawless and amazing tool, for those who have never seen it. (I’m pretty sure with all the idiotic knee-jerk AI hatred right now, they don’t want people to know they’re using it, even though it’s impossible to tell.)

Only wish I saw this in a better theater instead one of the few non-upgraded multiplexes in this area, with muddy images and weak sound. It’s stuff like THIS that should be dominating the premium screens.

Still, I’m grateful we get little surprises like this in an otherwise predictable world.

​Damon packard’s movie diary, Lifestyle, Movies, Entertainment, Steven spielberg, Disclosure day, Reviews 

As a philosophy professor at a state university, I am surrounded by activist professors who use their classrooms to push DEI, LGBTQ, and decolonization agendas. They justify this by saying they pursue justice — one of the highest goals of education.

But America can remember chattel slavery as evil only because justice is not invented by activists, courts, or governments. Justice is grounded in the nature of man and the law of God.

Juneteenth reminds us that legal freedom came late to Texas. But the truth about human dignity was not late. It was there from creation.

Because of our founding ideals, Americans could fight to end slavery as an evil and a violation of natural law. And because many nations are governed by different ideas, slavery still persists in parts of the world today.

Juneteenth is not merely a celebration of delayed legal emancipation. It bears witness to a deeper truth: Chattel slavery was wrong before government finally acted against it. Moral law stands above human law. If America is going to remember Juneteenth truthfully, it must recover natural law and the Creator who grounds it.

Freedom did not create dignity

On June 19, 1865, enslaved people in Texas finally heard that they were free. The announcement did not create their dignity. It did not make them human. It did not suddenly endow them with rights. It publicly recognized what had already been true by nature: They were human beings made by God, and no man had the right to own them.

The tyrannical system that allowed slavery began in kidnapping and was propagated by brutal violence. Its laws were no laws at all because they violated the natural moral law given by God to all humanity.

Americans agree today that slavery was wrong. But why?

It was not wrong merely because Congress later acted against it. It was not wrong merely because public opinion changed. It was not wrong merely because the Union won the war. It was not wrong because history moved forward.

Slavery was wrong because human beings are not property.

Human beings have a nature that gives them a moral status no government creates. They are rational, moral, embodied persons made for duties before God and neighbor. Because of what man is, certain things cannot rightly be done to him.

That is Christian natural law reasoning.

Rights come from the Creator

Natural law begins with the insight that the good for a being is grounded in the nature of that being. The good for a horse is grounded in the nature of a horse. The good for a tree is grounded in the nature of a tree. The good for a human being is grounded in human nature.

This is why chattel slavery is not merely inefficient, outdated, or offensive. It is contrary to what a human being is.

A slaveholder may have legal power, social approval, economic incentives, and the capacity for tyrannical violence. But he does not have moral authority, because no human law can erase the nature of man.

RELATED: Why I won’t celebrate Juneteenth as a federal holiday

Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

The Declaration of Independence does not say rights come from government. It says men are “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator” with “unalienable Rights.”

If rights come from government, government can redefine, restrict, or remove them. If rights come from social consensus, the majority can vote them away. If rights come from personal identity, rights become expressions of will and power.

But if rights come from the Creator, government is under judgment. The state does not create justice. It is accountable to justice.

This is why the Declaration was morally stronger than the compromise that tolerated slavery. The American founding contained a principle that condemned America’s own practice. Juneteenth reminds us that the principle had to be applied against the national sin.

The counterfeit of justice

Social justice activists want the emotional power of moral judgment without the metaphysical foundation that makes moral judgment possible.

They want to say slavery was evil. They want to say racism is evil. They want to say oppression is evil. They want to say injustice is evil.

But many of these same activists reject the Creator, reject fixed human nature, reject moral law, and reduce justice to power, identity, or social construction. The same people who say slavery is wrong also tell us that human beings can redefine themselves as animals, objects, or anything else they imagine. They appeal to the Marxist dialectic of oppressor and oppressed while denying the moral order that makes oppression intelligible.

Their view is incoherent.

If justice is socially constructed, then one society constructs slavery and another constructs abolition. If morality is only the preference of the powerful, abolition is not more just than slavery. It is merely the victory of a different power. If human nature is whatever we decide it is, human dignity has no stable foundation.

Juneteenth cannot be explained by moral relativism. It requires moral realism.

DEI as secularized religion

The activist account of justice is a Marxist counterfeit of Christianity. It keeps some outward forms but denies the inner meaning. DEI programs often speak in the language of justice, oppression, liberation, and equality. But they detach those words from the Creator and natural law. Justice becomes group equity. Sin becomes systemic power. Repentance becomes political re-education. Redemption becomes ideological compliance.

That framework cannot explain why slavery was evil in the first place. It can describe power relations, but it cannot give a final account of why oppressors are morally guilty.

The Christian natural law tradition can.

A right observance of Juneteenth should include gratitude for emancipation, repentance for national sin, honor for those who suffered, and moral clarity about the nature of justice. But it should not become a ritual of permanent grievance or ideological manipulation.

RELATED: Stop trying to segregate the American founding

Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images

America is accountable to God

The lesson is not that America is uniquely evil. The lesson is that America, like every nation, is accountable to a law higher than itself. When America violated that law, it was guilty. When America appealed to that law, it had the moral resources to correct itself.

Americans must repent of national sin and turn to Christ for redemption.

That is why Juneteenth should not be surrendered to radicals who despise the moral order that makes the holiday meaningful.

Juneteenth reminds us that legal freedom came late to Texas. But the truth about human dignity was not late. It was there from creation. The offer of redemption did not come late either. It is extended to all sinners.

The enslaved were human before emancipation. They had rights before government recognized them.

Slavery was evil before it was abolished. Justice was real before America obeyed it.

That is the lesson America needs now. We have national sins for which we must repent, and we must be clear that Christ is our redeemer.

Juneteenth only makes sense if natural law is real. And natural law only makes sense if a Creator’s justice stands above every court, legislature, plantation, university, and activist movement.

Marxist advocates can scream, but they cannot give a coherent account of justice.

​Declaration of independence, Natural law, Opinion & analysis, Unalienable rights, Slavery, Juneteenth, Christianity, Justice, Racism, American founding, Diversity equity inclusion 

A man suspected of attempted murder is already back out on the street in the United Kingdom even though he may have caused a toddler to end up in the crocodile enclosure at a zoo.

On Thursday at Johnsons of Old Hurst zoo, located about 80 miles north of London, a 3-year-old boy somehow ended up in the crocodile enclosure. How exactly he got there remains unclear, but it does not appear to have been an accident.

The man ‘was assessed as not being fit for interview.’

A New York Times headline about the incident said a “man forced” the boy into the crocodile enclosure, though the article noted that “it was not immediately clear whether the boy was thrown” into it.

The BBC reported that at least one crocodile attacked the boy during the harrowing incident and that police have said the crocodiles have not been removed or put down.

Zoo staff rescued the boy, who received medical attention on site before he was transported to the hospital. In a news release Friday morning, the Cambridgeshire Constabulary said he suffered “serious injuries” and that he is in “critical but stable condition.”

Within hours of the incident, a “30-year-old man from Norfolk” had been arrested for attempted murder, a news release from the constabulary indicated.

He was not in custody for long.

In the Friday morning news release update, the constabulary confirmed that the “30-year-old man” had been released on bail until September 18. The news release said the man “was assessed as not being fit for interview.”

The BBC said that individuals in Britain can be deemed unfit for interview on account of their “physical or mental state.”

RELATED: UK officials’ worst fear about horrific near-beheading by African suspect: Racist backlash

GB News reported Friday that the suspect has “learning difficulties” and that he was accompanied by a “carer when the boy was thrown into the enclosure.”

The constabulary confirmed that the man and the boy do not know one another.

“Our enquiries are ongoing as we continue to understand the circumstances surrounding this distressing incident,” said a statement from Det. Insp. Verity McCann.

“Our thoughts remain with the boy, and his family and specialist officers continue to support them through this difficult time.”

The constabulary did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

In a statement posted to social media on Thursday, Johnsons of Old Hurst said:

Our thoughts and prayers are with the boy and his family following the incident that occurred today.Out of respect to the family, our Tropical House will remain closed until further notice. … The rest of the site will remain open as normal.

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​United kingdom, London, Bail, Politics 

Supporters of Karmelo Anthony have coined a new dance dubbed the “Austin Bop.” The TikTok trend emerged recently, where participants dance to a rap song by artist 600Notti titled “Austin Bop (stabbing my chest)” by making repeated stabbing/thrusting motions (sometimes using real knives) to mock his 2025 murder by Anthony.

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock calls it “satanic.”

“This feels spiritual. This feels plotted and calculated,” he said on a recent episode of “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

Playing multiple clips of Anthony supporters performing the sadistic dance, Whitlock urges his audience to analyze this trend through a “spiritual warfare” lens.

“There is a crisis, a pandemic of satanic behavior, chaotic behavior,” he says, “and I’m sorry, I have to put a color on it because there is a particular color that’s being brainwashed into thinking that violence against white people is justified and violence and conflict about any and everything is justified and normal.”

These are the same people, he argues, who are claiming that Anthony acted rightfully in self-defense by stabbing Metcalf, who was unarmed, for pushing him.

“They need an exorcism,” he declares.

“This is a brain rot and a lunacy … a mental illness, a sickness, a reprobate mind, and a culture that is producing reprobate minds — a culture that has no respect for life,” he continues, enraged.

This participation in and support for objective evil we’re seeing in the black community, he says, is the result of making race one’s core identity.

“We have an anti-white racism problem in America. No one wants to talk about it,” he says.

“Everyone wants to pretend like, ‘No, no, we got black racism. Didn’t you hear? Someone said the N-word someplace and that’s racism.’ No, what racism is is when a child murders another child and based on race, one group says, ‘Well, no, that was actually self-defense, and we need to be merciful and graceful with the child that did the murdering, and we need to mock [the victim] and his family,”’ he rails.

While the escalating violence among young black people is a multifaceted issue, Whitlock places much of the blame on music.

“There is a form of music that escalates conflict, promotes satanic energy, promotes nihilism, promotes violence, unrepentant violence — and it’s called hip-hop,” he says.

“We’re programming kids for their own destruction and for the destruction of this country.”

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

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.

​Jason whitlock, Black culture, Jason whitlock harmony, Austin metcalf, Karmelo anthony 

Vice President JD Vance, whose Friday trip to Switzerland for U.S.-Iran peace talks was postponed owing to another bloody exchange between Israel and Hezbollah, paused to reflect and speak with the host of BlazeTV’s “Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey” this week about the current political moment, where he’s coming from, and where America might be headed.

Besides discussing chicken farming, the need to emulate the enduring hope of Christian martyrs, what Catholics and evangelicals can learn from one another, and what messaging changes the pro-life movement should make to win the “persuasion battle,” Stuckey and the vice president broached the correlated topics of the Iran deal and Israeli influence in American politics.

‘Outsized’ Israeli influence? ‘Israel derangement syndrome’?

Stuckey noted that the right has been roiled by a disagreement — especially in the wake of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s assassination — about whether “Israel has an outsized influence in the U.S.”

‘Already, the critics of the deal are being proven wrong.’

Vance, who on Thursday blasted Israeli critics of the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding and insinuated that Israel had previously sabotaged the peace process via escalations in Lebanon, told the BlazeTV host, “I certainly think that Israel, like a lot of other countries, tries to influence American politics. I sort of take that as a given.”

The vice president noted further that “American leaders have to be very careful that when we pursue something, we’re doing it for America’s best interest and not for any other country’s best interest,” adding that “it’s just not true” that America’s interests are always aligned with Israel’s — or with the United Kingdom’s, France’s, or any other partner’s interests, for that matter.

Vance cited the ongoing disagreements between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over how best to bring the Iran war to a close as illustrating the occasional divergence between the two nations’ interests.

RELATED: Trump signs Iran deal, blasts ‘fools’ after meltdowns by Sens. Cruz and Cassidy

Ken Cedeno/AFP/Getty Images

While cognizant that criticism of Israel and Israeli influence sometimes “bleeds into Jew hate” and that “sometimes criticism of the Israeli government can be expressed in a way that’s anti-Semitic,” Vance — who has faced intense criticism by Iran hawks and Israeli officials this week — underscored that it’s just “not the case that every criticism of Bibi Netanyahu’s policy decisions leads to anti-Semitism or is anti-Semitic.”

The vice president identified two “critical mistakes” he perceives advocates for Israel routinely making: first, failing to delineate between American interests and Israeli interests; and second, “always conflating criticism of a particular government with Jew hatred — because if everything is Jew hatred, then nothing is Jew hatred.”

Stuckey generally agreed but highlighted an ideological condition she has observed on the right — which she termed “Israel derangement syndrome” — in which certain critics of Israel attribute all of their problems to the foreign power, its influence, and its people.

Vance affirmed that “both are bad” but suggested he has been “particularly sensitive” in recent days to Israeli influence and criticism of America’s resistance to it because of his defense of Trump’s decision to end the Iran war.

Clarification on the Iran deal

Democrats in Congress, Iran hawks, Israeli officials, and some Republican lawmakers have complained incessantly this week about the Iran deal.

One of the chief concerns raised about the deal is the sixth of the agreement’s 14th points, which states, “The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Vance noted, “It’s not our money.”

A source with direct knowledge of the deal told Reuters that the fund is a private investment vehicle and will not include any government money or grants. Companies around the world have reportedly agreed to commit financing.

President Donald Trump said this week that the U.S. was “not investing; we’re not putting up 10 cents.”

“The biggest misconception, by far, is this idea that the deal has all these benefits to Iran,” Vance told Stuckey. “The underlying way that it’s structured is that they don’t get any of the benefits — not a single thing — unless they perform a change in behavior.”

With their military destroyed, their ability to threaten their neighbors largely diminished, their nuclear program and ability to enrich uranium “gone,” and their economy in shambles, Vance said the Iranians are in a “tough spot.” They now have the choice between getting “quite literally nothing” besides further turmoil — or behaving like “a normal regime,” developing a positive relationship with the U.S., and securing investment from Qataris, Emiratis, and others in the region.

As for whether the deal will bear fruit, Vance cited the resumption of bloodless, toll-free maritime traffic down the Strait of Hormuz over the past few days as a good sign.

“Yesterday, we got more oil out of the Strait of Hormuz than we have at any point since the beginning of the conflict,” said Vance.

“Already, the critics of the deal are being proven wrong in some of what they’re saying that the Iranians have gotten but also what the United States has gotten.”

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​Allie beth stuckey, Benjamin netanyahu, Influence, Iran, Israel, Israeli, Jd vance, Politics, Relatable, Vice president 

One underreported achievement of President Trump’s first administration was the support the Justice Department provided to religious-liberty litigants.

During those years, the federal government filed statements of interest and friend-of-the-court briefs defending conscience rights at a pace unmatched by either of Trump’s immediate predecessors. Cases involving memorial crosses, conscience protections, ministerial autonomy, and the rights of religious schools all reflected a broader shift in posture from the Obama administration.

Constitutional guarantees are only as durable as the institutions willing to enforce them.

The federal government no longer treated religion merely as a tolerated private exercise. It treated religious liberty as a constitutional good worthy of affirmative protection.

That shift has only strengthened under Trump 47.

At the time, critics dismissed many of the administration’s actions as symbolic or temporary. What looked then like a change in tone now appears to have been the beginning of an institutional realignment.

The Justice Department’s recently released report from the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias suggests that the second Trump administration intends not merely to defend religious liberty episodically, but to embed those protections throughout the administrative state.

The point is not simply the report’s conclusions, significant as they are. The point is the scope of the undertaking.

Drawing participation from 17 federal agencies, the report catalogs hundreds of pages of examples in which religious Americans — Christians in particular — faced adverse treatment from the federal government because of their views on life, sexuality, education, parental rights, and medical conscience. The report and its 1,200 footnotes present reams of evidence to support its central argument: During the Biden years, religious exercise was often treated less as a constitutional guarantee than as an obstacle to the ideological objectives of a political machine.

A major development of Trump’s second administration has therefore been the construction of infrastructure around religious liberty itself. The White House Faith Office, the Religious Liberty Commission, agency faith liaisons, and now the Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias all reflect an effort to institutionalize protections that previously depended too heavily on presidential discretion.

This development is especially visible inside the Justice Department. During the first Trump administration, Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued welcome guidance for federal prosecutors handling religious-liberty matters and established the Place to Worship Initiative to address violence and discrimination directed at houses of worship.

RELATED: Trump’s Justice Department is shining a light on woke universities — finally

Angela Lewis/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The current report builds on that framework. Rather than focusing only on isolated incidents, it argues that anti-Christian bias — and therefore hostility to religious liberty — became embedded in regulatory enforcement itself, especially when religious convictions conflicted with prevailing doctrines on sexuality, gender identity, or pro-life Christian opposition to the progressive sacrament of abortion.

The report points, for example, to enforcement disparities under the FACE Act. Pro-life activists received aggressive federal scrutiny, while attacks against churches and pregnancy resource centers received comparatively limited attention. Even when political pressure left the Biden administration little choice, its enforcement of the FACE Act against actual vandals went only as far as necessary to stem rising public complaint.

The report goes further, identifying conflicts involving military chaplains, foster-care providers, health care workers, religious schools, and federal employees who sought accommodation for sincerely held religious beliefs.

Whether one agrees with every characterization in the report is almost beside the point. The broader constitutional question remains unavoidable: Can government remain neutral toward religion while treating orthodox religious belief as presumptively discriminatory?

Historically, the answer has been no.

Religious liberty in the American tradition has never meant mere freedom of inward belief. The founders protected religious exercise because they understood that belief inevitably shapes action: education, charity, worship, speech, commerce, and public participation. The First Amendment restrains government not because religion is politically useful, but because conscience stands beyond the state’s authority.

That understanding has often been obscured in recent decades by a truncated vision of religious freedom — one that permits worship inside sanctuary walls while treating religious conviction outside those walls as suspect. Many of the conflicts cataloged in the Justice Department report arise from that narrowing impulse. The fight is no longer over whether Americans may privately believe traditional religious teachings, even explicitly Christian ones. The fight is whether they may live according to them publicly.

Judging by this report and other promising signs, the latest version of the Trump administration recognizes this reality more clearly than any administration in modern memory.

Critics argue that these initiatives privilege Christianity or collapse the distinction between church and state. But that has always been their schtick. Trump’s direct confrontation and dismissive rhetoric have exposed many modern assumptions about the “separation of church and state” as political slogans rather than constitutional arguments.

RELATED: 5 countries where Christians face brutal persecution — and how you can help

EMMY IBU/AFP/Getty Images

The more important legal question is whether religious Americans — Christians and all people of faith — may participate fully in public life without surrendering core convictions as the price of admission. This report focuses on bias against a majoritarian religion. But imagine the damage if the state focused its ire on minority faiths. Religious liberty belongs to all Americans.

The administration’s trajectory is unmistakable. The president’s Religious Liberty Commission has been assigned with developing long-term recommendations for protecting religious exercise across education, health care, public funding, parental rights, and federal policy. The Justice Department report, which will continue to expand into 2027, serves as both justification and road map for that effort.

Critics will insist these measures are unnecessary because religious believers already possess constitutional protections. Only a cynic could look at the mountain of evidence in the Justice Department report and claim nothing happened. Those constitutional protections existed during the last administration, too, but we now know that officials chose political ideology over the foundational principles of the First Amendment.

Constitutional guarantees are only as durable as the institutions willing to enforce them.

The most important question, then, is not whether Trump personally embodies religious devotion. He plainly does not fit conventional expectations of religious statesmanship. The more consequential question is whether his administration understands the structural importance of religious liberty within the constitutional order.

Increasingly, the answer appears to be yes.

For religious Americans, Christians in particular, who spent much of the last decade defending themselves against the coercive power of administrative agencies, that distinction matters a great deal.

​Trump, Religious liberty, Federal government, Justice department, White house faith office, Religious liberty commission, First amendment, Christians, Opinion & analysis 

We are halfway into Pride Month, and I have already seen a year’s worth of cringeworthy behavior.

Take the recent viral video from Washington state. A local high school played host to a “drag show,” in which adult men twerked in front of children of all ages in the name of “Pride.”

What we are witnessing in June is no longer about tolerance. It is a full-throated campaign to reach children before they are old enough to think critically.

Not at a bar. Not at an adults-only venue. On a school campus, during a school-sponsored event, in front of kids. Parents who raised concerns were treated like the problem.

From ABC to LGBTQ

Nor is Pride limited to in-person parades or parties. The popular show “Blue’s Clues” — geared toward kids as young as 2 — has aired a Pride “sing-a-long,” featuring anthropomorphic “trans male” beavers with post-op “top surgery” scars. “Sesame Street” also introduces its young viewers to Pride Month, celebrating gay marriage for good measure. Parents who think these programs will help their kids learn to count and spell are in for a rude awakening.

I wish I could say this still surprises me. But it doesn’t — not after decades of watching an ideology inch its way closer and closer to children, first into universities, then high schools, then middle schools, and now into elementary classrooms and summer camps.

I have learned to recognize the pattern. What used to be shocking has become customary. And that normalization is precisely the point.

What we are witnessing in June is no longer about tolerance. It is a full-throated campaign to reach children before they are old enough to think critically about what they’re being told.

‘The girl experience’

Consider what is happening in Girl Scout camps this summer. The organization’s latest Camp Culture Code defines a child’s biological sex as “sex assigned at birth.” Not a gift from God. An assignment. As if the Creator made an error and a stranger in a lab coat had to correct it on his clipboard. This is how they’re talking to 9-year-olds at summer camp.

The code further states that this sex may differ from “how a person understands themselves to be.” Does this mean boys will be at Girl Scout camp? The answer may confuse you:

Our camps serve cisgender girls, gender-expansive youth, non-binary youth, and trans-girls and trans-boys. … We have expanded our understanding of who belongs at Girl Scouts, as well as our commitment to serving all youth who identify with the girl experience.

This is indoctrination, pure and simple — and it has been going on for a long time.

RELATED: ‘Even Elmo has fallen victim’: Sara Gonzales blasts ‘Sesame Street’ for ‘demonic’ Pride propaganda

Blaze Media

Defending God’s design

I know this firsthand, because it was watching exactly this kind of ideological drift that led me and a group of Cincinnati moms to found an alternative to Girl Scouts in 1995. Not because we wanted to shelter our girls from the world, but because we refused to let an organization entrusted with their formation use that trust to push an ideology that contradicted everything we believed to be true about womanhood, biology, and God’s design. We knew our daughters deserved better.

We started with just 10 troops; today, American Heritage Girls has over 70,000 members in all 50 states. That growth reflects tens of thousands of outraged parents who have voted with their feet, choosing an organization that tells girls the truth: that they are created female on purpose, that their femininity is a gift worth celebrating, and that God does not make mistakes.

This summer, we will continue to equip parents, Troop leaders, and faith communities with our Raising Godly Girls Guide to Gender and Identity, specifically to give parents language and tools to help their daughters navigate what has become a relentless ideological assault.

Biblical or bust

Because the hard truth is that if parents don’t arm their kids with a biblical worldview, other adults will be happy to step in with their own way of seeing things.

They will try to pass it off as “education” and label anyone who pushes back as bigoted. But parents speaking out to shield their impressionable young children from half-baked, politically motivated theories about sex deserve support, not scorn.

The moms I talk to across this country are not hateful. They are not afraid of people who are different from themselves. They are simply unwilling to hand their daughters over to a worldview that treats biology as a mistake and childhood as an opportunity for ideological recruitment. The good news is that they are not alone. I will keep speaking up. I hope every parent will, too.

​Lifestyle, Lgbtq, Pride month, Girl scouts, American heritage girls, Drag queens, Culture, Countering ‘pride’ 

Residents of Burlington are demanding answers from police after a gruesome discovery at a foreclosed home purchased at auction.

Connecticut state troopers said in a press release that they were called to the home on Stanwich Lane on Sunday at 4:46 p.m. for a report of human remains found in the home.

‘I’ve never heard of anything like that happening anywhere.’

The homeowner had recently purchased the home “as is” in an auction, according to police.

The remains of three people were found and described to be in a “skeletal” condition. Police said there was no indication of criminal conduct and that an investigation was being conducted by the State Police Western District Major Crime unit.

“This appears to be an isolated incident, and there is no danger to the public at this time,” they added.

Police said they would release updates after the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the manner of death of the trio and their identities.

Neighbors in the area told WKYC-TV they were terrified by the discovery.

“It sounds very scary to see skeletons in a house,” said Vicky Havey, who bikes nearby. “It’s sad. Very sad.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that happening anywhere that I knew about personally,” Mark Chowaniec said.

RELATED: Suspect in ‘horrific, gruesome’ murder of family in Alabama is Salvadoran gang member and had been deported, police say

A profile of the home on Zillow indicated that the 2,800-square-foot home had been sold in 2019 for $535K and was currently estimated to be worth about $846K.

Video of the home in the WKYC report showed that the front lawn was neglected and overgrown with weeds.

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​Human remains, Police investigation, Skeletal remains, Foreclosed home, Crime