In less than two weeks, two deadly shootings — both allegedly by transgender-identifying biological males. One was a school rampage in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, that killed eight people, and the other a targeted family attack during a youth hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where two of the alleged shooter’s family members were left dead.

BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere wonders if we’re dealing with a “trans shooter epidemic.”

“We’ve done this story … over and over and over and over and over and over and over again,” he says.

It’s usually one of two scenarios, he says: “You have some person who’s a crazy sort of leftist that winds up getting into the trans ideology world” and becomes “very defensive of it to a violent extent, like we saw with the Charlie Kirk situation,” or “you have a situation where the person is just a crazy leftist and starts going out and killing people because of their mass confusion in their life.”

But what’s the root cause of this kind of violence?

On this episode of “Stu Does America,” Stu dives into a study that might provide some insight into that question.

“Obviously, all [transgender-identifying] people are not murdering others. We do, though, see a disproportionate amount of people who are involved in this ideology … that are involved in violent acts,” he says, citing trans-identifying biological female Audrey Hale, who killed six children and three adults at an elementary school in Nashville in March 2023, and Tyler Robinson, the alleged assassin of Charlie Kirk, who was romantically involved with a transgender-identifying male.

Stu wonders why of all the “fancy letters” in the LGBTQIA2+ alphabet, it is transgender-identifying individuals who seem more prone to violence.

The answer may lie, at least partially, in how different sexual identities answer the question: “Is disagreement violence?”

Stu cites a study from PsychFORM, which examined how transgender-identifying respondents answered that question compared to gay-identifying respondents.

“About 15% to 18% of gay people say, ‘Yeah, you know, any disagreement, I see as violence.’ … The number for trans people is 100%. 100% of trans people in this poll said that disagreement equals violence,” Stu exclaims.

The study also tested another question: “Is reasoned disagreement permissible?”

According to the chart, roughly 18% of gay-identifying respondents answered no, compared to over 90% of trans-identifying respondents.

“If you’re looking for an explanation to understand what’s going on in that realm when it comes to violence and trans people, look no farther than that chart,” says Stu.

Want more from Stu?

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​Stu does america, Stu burguiere, Trans shooters, Transgenderism, Trans violence, Blazetv, Blaze media 

Rural health care in America faces a host of chronic challenges: high costs, limited access, and aging infrastructure. For millions of families across the heartland, these problems aren’t abstract — they determine whether patients can see a doctor, reach a hospital, or receive timely care close to home.

By expanding flexibility, encouraging innovation, and meeting rural communities where they are, policymakers have begun to confront the unique realities of rural health care.

More than 60 million Americans — nearly one in five — live in rural areas where patients routinely travel long distances only to find fewer doctors, hospitals, and clinics available to serve them.

Under-resourced communities face over-sized health challenges. Nowhere is this more evident than in rural America, where higher rates of chronic disease, premature mortality, and addiction persist compared to the rest of the country.

In recent months, the Trump administration and Congress have advanced a set of reforms — largely overlooked in the national debate — that directly address long-standing disparities and structural weaknesses in rural health care, and they could meaningfully strengthen care delivery in these communities, improve health, and save lives.

The most significant of these efforts is the Rural Health Transformation Program, established last year in President Trump and the Republican Congress’ signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act. This $50 billion program represents the largest investment ever dedicated specifically to rural health, far exceeding the scale of prior grant programs. States that receive awards can use these resources to modernize and stabilize their rural health systems.

The program allows states to invest in innovative care models tailored to rural realities — whether expanding outpatient capacity, strengthening the health care workforce, or upgrading aging facilities. Instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all approach, the program gives states the flexibility to design reforms that reflect local needs and constraints.

Although media attention has shifted elsewhere, the White House and congressional leaders should continue to emphasize the long-term importance of this investment. The program addresses a foundational weakness in America’s health system and delivers tangible support to rural communities that have too often been left behind.

As part of the recently enacted FY 2026 appropriations legislation, Congress also extended Medicare telehealth flexibilities through December 31, 2027, delaying a return to statutory barriers that once limited access to telehealth services. Telehealth allows patients to connect with specialists, receive mental health services, and manage chronic diseases without traveling hours for an appointment.

In communities facing persistent provider shortages, telehealth has become not a convenience but a lifeline — a bridge over miles of empty road, connecting rural patients to care that would otherwise remain out of reach.

The FY 2026 appropriations legislation also reauthorized the Acute Hospital Care at Home initiative, which allows eligible patients to receive hospital-level care in their own homes. This approach reduces costs, eases pressure on rural hospitals with limited capacity, and improves patient satisfaction. For small hospitals struggling to keep beds staffed and doors open, Acute Hospital Care at Home offers a practical way to deliver high-quality care while preserving local access.

RELATED: Trump’s economic numbers look good so far, but you wouldn’t know from reading the news

Douglas Rissing / Getty Images

Finally, although Congress has not yet enacted it into law, lawmakers are working to reauthorize the Rural Health Care Services Outreach Program. This program supports community-based efforts to expand access to care, strengthen coordination among providers, and address persistent service gaps. Its grants help rural health systems collaborate across institutions and tailor solutions for populations that too often fall through the cracks.

Taken together, these reforms do not promise a quick cure — but they do offer a realistic treatment plan. They don’t strengthen rural health care because it’s easy; they make it easier because rural health care must be strong. While these efforts will not eliminate every challenge rural communities face, they are designed to deliver tangible improvements that deserve recognition.

By expanding flexibility, encouraging innovation, and meeting rural communities where they are, policymakers have begun to confront the unique realities of rural health care. Yet as the news cycle moves on, these achievements risk being overlooked. Policymakers in both Congress and the executive branch should resist the urge to rush to the next challenge and instead highlight the significance of these steps in the right direction.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearHealth and made available via RealClearWire.

​Rural heathcare, One big beautiful bill, Healthcare, Healthcare costs, Rural america, Rural americans, Rural hospitals, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Health and human services 

Americans reportedly send six billion text messages per day, with 81% of U.S. users relying on the built-in messages app on their phones instead of alternatives like Telegram and WhatsApp. If you’re still sending SMS messages, though, you could be leaving yourself open to unwanted threats and security risks. Here’s how and why you should enable RCS messaging on your phone right now.

A brief history of RCS

RCS, short for Rich Communication Services, is the new gold standard text messaging platform that has officially replaced SMS and MMS. It was created all the way back in 2008 by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association, a unified organization consisting of popular cell service providers, including AT&T and T-Mobile, among many others.

RCS didn’t receive broad appeal, however, until Google purchased a company called Jibe Mobile in 2015, which specialized in RCS technology. Google went on to integrate RCS directly into the Google Messages app on Android by 2020, making it the premiere messaging service on Samsung Galaxy phones, Google Pixel devices, and more.

After years of pressure from Google, Apple finally adopted RCS into iPhone in 2023, replacing SMS as the fallback option while maintaining iMessage as its proprietary messaging service.

RCS is meant to unify the text messaging experience across iPhone and Android.

It’s important to note that SMS and MMS are still supported on most devices today, but they’re not nearly as secure, capable, or reliable.

Benefits of RCS

RCS is meant to unify the text messaging experience across iPhone and Android. While iPhone users who text other iPhones will still default to iMessage, Android users who text other Android devices or iPhones will send messages through RCS. These new RCS-style messages come with several benefits that will be very familiar to iMessage users on iPhone while making texts better for Android users overall.

Encryption: For starters, RCS messages between Android phones are end-to-end encrypted, keeping your conversations safe and private from anyone who might want to take a peek, including your carrier or the government. Apple’s version of RCS is currently unencrypted, but a future software update is expected to enable end-to-end encryption later this year.Read receipts: It’s nice to know when someone actually saw the text you sent, right? RCS supports read receipts that indicate when a text message has been delivered and when it was read, along with a nifty date stamp.Group messaging: Group message threads have long been a point of contention for iPhone and Android users. With RCS, users can now name the group, see who’s typing with typing indicators, and even leave emoji reactions for all to see.Media files: Finally, RCS supports high resolution images and videos, making it easier to share photos and other content in their original quality instead of relying on the grainy, compressed MMS images of the past.

An RCS warning

While RCS is safer, more private, and simply better than SMS, the service’s ability to send hi-res imagery makes it easier for scammers to send spam messages to a broader group of people. In fact, the emergence of RCS is partly responsible for the growing degree of spam texts in the U.S.

That shouldn’t deter you from switching to it, though. The benefits of RCS far outweigh its deterrents. It’s also the future of text messaging standards, meaning it will be supported and receive security updates for the long haul, far beyond SMS and MMS.

If you receive too many spam text messages while using RCS, check out our anti-spam text guide. This will banish scammers from your messages app for good.

How to enable RCS on iPhone and Android

It’s fairly easy to enable RCS on both iPhones and Android devices. Before you go looking for these settings, though, note that RCS activation is contingent on your carrier allowing RCS onto its network. Some carriers have been slower than others to enable the service, so if it’s not available on your device yet, it will be in the future. Most carriers are on board, though, so you probably won’t have any trouble.

RELATED: Amazon’s Ring is running a spy ring from your home. Here’s how to turn it off.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

To enable RCS on iPhone, open the Settings app. Scroll to the bottom and tap “Apps.” Then scroll to the middle of the page and tap into “Messages.” Near the lower half of the screen in the “Text Messaging” section, you’ll find “RCS Messaging.” Tap on that, toggle RCS Messaging on, and you’re done!

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

To enable RCS on Android, you’ll first need the official Google Messages app. At the time this article was published, Google Messages is the only messaging app on Android that fully supports RCS’ full list of features, including end-to-end encryption. Inside Google Messages, tap on your profile picture in the top right corner. Then tap on “Messages settings.” “RCS chats” is right at the top. Dive into that menu, toggle RCS chats on, and you’re ready to go. On this page, you can also customize your RCS experience, by either enabling or disabling some of the features mentioned above.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

Enable RCS now

Text messaging technology has come a long way since the days of flip phones, T9 keypads, and other ancient artifacts of the early 2000s. If you’re not using RCS already, you’re basically inviting your carrier to read your texts, your phone is more vulnerable to cellular network attacks, and your phone number could even be stolen and swapped into another device by a criminal. You can prevent all of this and enjoy a better texting experience by enabling RCS today. There’s really no reason not to.

​Tech, Rcs, Text, Phones 

The pivotal question of what will follow the crack-up of the liberal international order dominated the highest levels of European politics at the recent 2026 Munich Security Conference.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave his own forceful answer, following Vice President JD Vance’s provocative speech last year. Rubio delivered an equally spirited address that issued an ultimatum: Rationalizing collapse and weakness is no longer the policy of the United States — and it should no longer be Europe’s policy either. America has no “interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” he said.

Alliances should be made, renewed, or even disbanded depending on whether they help secure America’s interests in the present.

Instead, Rubio urged a reformation of the “global institutions of the old order” to defend and strengthen the key pillars of Western civilization.

The problem in Rubio’s mind was that the 20th-century web of international alliances, designed to counter the Soviets in the wake of two devastating world wars, took on a life of its own. Its keepers began putting the preservation of their supranational relations “above the vital interests of our people and our nations.”

Institutions such as the United Nations have utterly failed to protect national interests, and they simply have no answers to the most pressing problems in international affairs today. Instead, they actively encourage deindustrialization, mass migration, and shortsighted climate policies, causing a loss of confidence in the very sources that have supplied the West’s vitality for centuries.

To counter this, Rubio proposed that the U.S. partner with Europe to lead a “reinvigorated alliance … that boldly races into the future.” It will focus on “advancing our mutual interests and new frontiers, unshackling our ingenuity, our creativity, and the dynamic spirit to build a new Western century.” If the West wants to safeguard and promote its historic ways of life, then an international realignment is inescapably necessary.

The themes Rubio articulated were also the subject of this year’s “Budapest Global Dialogue,” an annual conference put on by the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation. This year’s gathering focused on what HIIA President Gladden Pappin presented as the choices currently before the world: endless conflict that’s likely to spin out of control or the emergence of a foundation for long-term security, peace, and prosperity.

Keynote speakers and panelists agreed that continuing to prop up a decaying international order was not a viable option. Though necessary for its time, it is clearly inadequate in a world that looks far different from the one that featured creeping death in the form of the USSR. As Rubio recently told a gaggle of reporters before his address in Munich, “The old world is gone.” He noted that nations must re-examine their roles in our “new era in geopolitics.”

RELATED: What’s Greenland to us?

Photo by Alessandro Rampazzo/AFP via Getty Images

The urgency of this project has been amplified by the European Union’s various machinations against popular government. Its censorship machine is attempting to export the EU’s liberty-denying laws to America and other Western nations. Unsurprisingly, the problem of censorship, which has been a chief focus of Vice President Vance, took up much of the conversation of the opening-night panel.

Headlined by Sarah B. Rogers, the U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, and Balázs Orbán, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s political director, panelists discussed the countless issues stemming from the EU’s Digital Services Act. It uses “trusted flaggers” like HateAid — an organization funded by the German government — to censor online speech, including that of Americans.

Pappin and other participants also noted the myriad problems stemming from unchecked globalization. Nations happily traded away the most basic elements of sovereignty for a mess of pottage in the form of lower prices on select goods. This was justified using free-market language, in which attaining the highest GDP possible seemingly became the summum bonum of political life. Former Trump administration official Andrew Peek termed this problem “economics without politics.”

In the United States in particular, key supply chains were mostly shipped out of the country, the folly of which was fully exposed during the COVID debacle. The U.S. essentially followed a systematic deindustrialization plan as we helped build up other countries, especially China.

China’s rise didn’t happen solely due to its sheer geographic size or population. It occurred because the Clinton administration and Western leaders decided the best way to fend it off was by inviting the Chinese into the heart of the world’s economic system. This was a catastrophic choice that helped hasten the collapse of the old order.

Now, China is by far the world leader in many positive economic indicators. The country is also looking to become the world’s first electrostate, adding another gigawatt of capacity to its grid every year.

Meanwhile, the United States is facing mounting problems with our electric grid, which will be further exacerbated by the construction of data centers and older plants going offline. No nuclear power plants were built in the U.S. between 1996 and 2016. Additionally, as noted in a Department of Energy report last year, utopian green energy mandates have helped bring the U.S. closer to the brink of a full-blown energy crisis.

RELATED: America won’t beat China without Alaska

Photo by Simon Bruty/Anychance/Getty Images

Though the conference featured discussions on other pivotal topics — especially the promise and peril of artificial general intelligence — there wasn’t a dedicated panel on immigration. But that didn’t stop speakers from addressing the topic. Alexandre del Valle, a professor at France’s IPAG, called mass Islamic immigration to Europe a long-term bomb. And in a keynote address that served as a campaign speech of sorts, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó celebrated the fact that illegal migration to Hungary is nonexistent.

Szijjártó also devoted time to underscoring the stakes of the upcoming Hungarian parliamentary elections. The April 12 contest will feature a rather personal battle between current Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Péter Magyar, who resigned from Fidesz in 2024 and then joined TISZA, the Respect and Freedom Party. The campaign billboards and posters I saw plastered around Budapest, which were nearly all pro-Orbán, showed Magyar gladly acquiescing to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s insistence to send Hungarian armaments to Ukraine.

Fidesz is asking voters if they want to keep Orbán’s government in power or elect those who would sacrifice the country’s blood and treasure in war. President Trump clearly wants the former. During Rubio’s trip to Budapest after his Munich speech, he said that the American president is “deeply committed” to Orbán’s victory in April.

As the Trump administration sees it, the path forward is clear: maintaining alliances when political goals and traditions are shared, as is the case between Hungary and the United States. And as Rubio was careful to point out in Munich, when alliances become strained, renewal through strategic thinking that connects means and ends is essential. One such example is Elbridge Colby’s recent discussion of the creation of NATO 3.0, in which U.S. allies bear more of the financial burden.

What won’t work, however, is elevating prudential considerations to the level of principle, as world leaders and bureaucrats have done far too often in recent decades. They have frozen in amber the specific circumstances of the second half of the 20th century, thinking that those paradigms must forever dictate how nations should act. But as Dhruva Jaishankar, the executive director of the Observer Research Foundation America, pointed out, the ballroom in which the 2026 Budapest Global Dialogue was held was built in 1896. Five international orders have come and gone in that time.

Contrary to the Anne Applebaums of our foreign policy elite class, who have helped drive the West into a ditch, the Nazis aren’t marching just over the horizon, and Vladimir Putin isn’t the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Alliances should be made, renewed, or even disbanded depending on whether they help secure America’s interests in the present. As Daniel J. Mahoney is fond of saying, it isn’t always Munich 1938. Serious leaders acknowledge current realities and marry their rhetoric to actions that will lead to peace, prosperity, and the good of the West — and the good of America above all.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Marco rubio, Munich security conference, New world order, Old order, Ussr, China, Usa, Foreign policy, Eu, Nato, Russia, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

The United States and its allies are facing a defining moment in history — one Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck believes most people don’t yet fully recognize.

However, one man who does recognize this moment is Marco Rubio, who laid out Glenn’s feelings precisely in a recent speech at the Munich Security Conference.

“What Rubio was talking about this weekend was this system has failed, and Donald Trump is going a completely different direction, and we will lead the way … but you have to restore common sense,” Glenn explains.

“You cannot keep doing the same thing over and over again. This system doesn’t work, and we all know it. Just we’re the first ones to admit it,” he adds.

And in order to make a change going forward, Glenn believes we need to look at the real history of Western civilization instead of the “woke” version.

“I like history. I know what history means. And when it comes to Western civilization, how could you make the case that it’s worth letting go? You could only make a case if you’ve been carefully taught that Western civilization means nothing except bad things,” he says. “And you’re misinformed on that.”

This is why Glenn says that “we’re already in World War III.”

“We’re fighting World War III. You just don’t know it yet. Islam is on the move. And what is their target? Western civilization. … And they occupy those countries, which they’ve been trying to do for a thousand-plus years. They occupy those countries. They now have nuclear weapons. And if they occupy those countries, you no longer have what built us,” Glenn explains.

“May I suggest that we understand that times have changed, and we want our country to survive, and we want the Western civilization to survive. … We see the world is changing and has changed, and we adapt so we don’t lose who we are. We do it in a different way. We do it in a better way,” he continues.

And that better way, Glenn says, is to “hold our values and what made us a country in the first place.”

“Let’s remember those things. Let’s restore those things, and then let’s adapt those to today’s issues and problems. I think that’s what Rubio was saying. And he was challenging Europe, and at the same time, he was reminding America: This is what Donald Trump is challenging America to do as well,” he explains.

“We’re going to do it. Join us,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Sharing, Upload, Video, Video phone, Free, Camera phone, Youtube.com, The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Marco rubio speech, President trump, Western civilization, Save the west, Real history, History, Conservative