Category: blaze media

A Brazilian state deputy put on blackface during a government proceeding in order to protest another member of the federal government.

Fabiana Bolsonaro, a state rep. of the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly, shocked attendees on Wednesday when she applied brown makeup not only to her face, but to her arms as well.

‘I want precisely to show that it’s useless to put on makeup.’

Now, lawmakers are now calling for the Liberal Party member’s removal and have filed an ethics complaint against her, according to Brazilian outlet Folha de S. Paulo.

However, Bolsonaro made it clear during her speech that her reason for putting the makeup on was to protest another member of government. Bolsonaro was protesting the appointment of Erika Hilton as chair of the Chamber of Deputies’ Women’s Rights Committee because Hilton — born Felipe Santos Silva — is a male who believes he is a woman.

Santos Silva is a federal deputy from Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party, which holds 14/513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, equivalent to the U.S. House of Representatives.

During Bolsonaro’s speech, the politician explained she was protesting the idea that one can become a woman simply by declaring so.

“I, being a white person who has lived everything that I lived as a white person, now at 32 years old, decide to put on makeup, to dress myself up as a black person, applying makeup and making only the outside appear [black]. … Have I become black?” she asked, according to a translation.

RELATED: Alleged forced labor scandal rocks EV industry: ‘This is the price of environmentalism’

“Am I black now?” she continued.

Bolsonaro put emphasis on the fact that she could not possibly have experienced what it is like to be black in Brazil simply by putting on makeup.

“I want precisely to show that it’s useless to put on makeup. It’s useless to pretend something,” Bolsonaro added. “I say to you as a woman: I am a woman. It does no good to dress up as a woman. I am not offending any transsexual. Quite the contrary, I am saying that I am a woman.”

The liberal also called out the accolades that Hilton has acquired since posing as woman, saying, “The Woman of the Year cannot be a transsexual. … Someone took her place to put a transsexual there.”

RELATED: Megyn Kelly reminds America: Jimmy Kimmel wore blackface — yet she was the one canceled

Photo by Mauricio Santana/Getty Images

Hilton has been named as Woman of the Year by Marie Claire Brasil, celebrated as a model for Sao Paulo Fashion Week, and given the label of having won the most votes of any woman in Brazil by British Vogue in 2020.

Bolsonaro remained respectful in her comments, however, saying that “transsexuals must be respected,” and claimed there is “an increase in the murder of transsexual people.”

She concluded, “I don’t want any trans person to go through prejudice, murder, or discrimination for being trans. But I also don’t want any trans to take my place.”

Bolsonaro, who is not related to former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, changed her name in 2022 ahead of elections in support of the president, GB News reported. Her former name was Fabiana Barroso. At the same time, she changed her racial classification from white to mixed-race, the outlet stated.

Since the remarks last week, Hilton has requested electoral authorities to investigate Bolsonaro’s change of racial identification, based on Brazilian regulations introduced in 2021 that increased public funding for candidates who are black or female.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, Brazil, Blackface, Transgender, Transgenderism, Transsexual, Liberal, Socialist, Politics 

Scripture is crystal clear about the dangers of false prophets. In the book of Matthew, they are described as deceptive figures who appear harmless as sheep but are inwardly destructive like ravenous wolves, often leading people astray through lies, false signs, or teachings that contradict God’s word.

But sometimes “false teacher” is a label used to defame and discredit a true teacher.

“It’s a real threat on one end, but then it’s also an accusation that is thrown around very loosely,” Zach Dasher said on a recent episode of “Unashamed with the Robertson Family.”

In this world of truly false teachers and those who have just been wrongly labeled one, how are Christians to know who to avoid and who to trust?

Dasher says there’s a simple “litmus test” we can use to help us navigate this common dilemma.

“The litmus test for me, and I think the litmus test in Scripture,” he says, revolves around how these teachers “treat the body [of Christ].”

He references Ezekiel 34:2-3: “Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.”

In this passage, God rebukes Israel’s leaders (the “shepherds”) for selfishness. Instead of caring for and feeding the people (the “sheep”), they are only feeding themselves — eating the best food, taking the wool for clothing, and slaughtering the fattest animals for their own benefit — while neglecting to provide for or protect the flock.

These same warnings about corrupt leadership echo throughout the Bible — from Isaiah to Jude.

A true shepherd, Dasher says, “eats last.”

“I think that’s the caveat. So when you are looking at ministry leaders and you’re looking at teachers and you’re looking at shepherds, look at their ministry. Look at the fruit of their life. Are they elevating themselves at the expense of the body? Are they using people?” he continues.

He gives the example of the “prosperity gospel” — the belief that tithing and donations result in divine blessings of material wealth, health, and success — as a truly heretical doctrine.

It’s not uncommon to see teachers of the prosperity gospel “go buy an airplane with [their congregations’] money,” he says.

“I mean, that is a shepherd feeding [himself].”

To hear more of the panel’s wisdom, watch the video above.

Want more from the Robertsons?

To enjoy more on God, guns, ducks, and inspiring stories of faith and family, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Unashamed, Unashamed with phil robertson, Jase robertson, Zach dasher, Blazetv, Blaze media, Christianity, False prophets, False teacher 

Last week I made the case for you that Paris Fashion Week, which just wrapped up on March 10, is yet another example of elitist satanic worship — the same brand of wickedness we see festering all throughout Hollywood and among other elite circles.

Now I’m going to prove it to you.

Official descriptions boast that Inferno is ‘not just a party’ but a ‘ritual.’

In my previous article, I awarded the gold medal for the most in-your-face demonic collection to French fashion label Matières Fécales — translation: Fecal Matter. Its Canadian founders, Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, paraded a sequence of grotesque looks down the runway that included models distorted by nightmarish prosthetics and grisly surgical wounds; ensembles one would expect to see in a film about ghouls and grim reapers; and overtly satanic elements, like devil horns, fake blood, and cult-like theatrics.

The nonconforming, alien-esque duo attempted to justify their freak show by slapping a satire label on it. All the nauseating pageantry and horror were nothing more than a critique of elitist power and privilege, they said.

It’s a recycled narrative we have heard countless times from stars and public figures questioned about their dark spectacles. If the staleness of their defense wasn’t cause enough to reject it as a lie, then Matières Fécales’ partnership with Lewis G. Burton — the obese, transgender, intersex “Mother” of London’s queer underworld — certainly is.

He was one of the “models” chosen to don a look from the label’s Fall 2026 “Ready-to-Wear” collection — a hooded black floor-length robe resembling that of a satanic priest.

Victor Virgile/Getty Images

A far cry from the skeletal catwalkers we’re accustomed to seeing on high-fashion runways, Burton’s large figure, which he proudly uses to fight “fatphobia” and push “fat liberation,” is a core piece of his identity.

It is his stated intention not only to normalize but to glorify obesity and objective ugliness. In a 2019 interview with i-D magazine, Burton, a trained performance artist, said, “When I was first on stage being garish and grotesque, I was shoving my ugliness in people’s faces. I was saying: I feel repulsive because you made me feel repulsive, so now you have to look at it. Now I see it differently because I think I’m f**king beautiful! It’s a new extreme now. It’s about showing that beauty to the world.”

Joe Hale/Getty Images

Beyond the body: Burton’s activism and influence

But fatness is the least interesting layer of the onion that is Burton.

As a founding member of London Trans+ Pride — which he helped grow from just 1,500 people in 2019 to over 100,000 in 2025 — he remains one of the most visible faces of London’s trans activism.

He advocates radical positions for a number of LGBTQ+ issues, including faster and fully funded gender-affirming “care” for transgenders, access to puberty blockers for children, mandatory inclusion of trans people in single-sex spaces, and a ban on all nonconsensual surgeries on intersex children.

Like the majority of left-wing activists, however, Burton’s cries of oppression echo throughout multiple grievance movements. He has steered London Trans+ Pride toward aggressive intersectionality, most notably marching in solidarity with Palestine, which predictably (and paradoxically) includes condemnation of Islamophobia.

Marches, “visibility” events, and left-wing activism are almost unremarkable, though, when compared to Burton’s prominent role in London’s underground queer scene.

His traveling queer techno rave and performance art platform “Inferno” — inspired by Dante Alighieri’s epic poem about the nine levels of hell — is described as “seven layers” of “queer heaven,” where each circle explores new depths of perversion, varying in intensity from “gentle” rituals of chosen-family bonding to the darkest, most depraved circles of sweat-soaked techno, body horror performance, and explicit queer pornography.

Devoted to its hell theme, Inferno events are notorious for their red-drenched lighting, thick smoke, dark and shocking costumes, grotesque performances, and hedonistic indulgences.

One Inferno attendee described an event like this: “A dark warehouse illuminated by a sea of red textiles and clouds of smoke. … Inferno is a space where everyone can express themselves, whether it be through extravagant, tentacle-like costumes or full body paint.”

RELATED: Satan struts at Paris Fashion Week — here are the 3 most demonic designers

Victor Virgile/Getty Images

From hedonism to ritual: The spiritual dimension

But Inferno’s unmitigated paganism doesn’t stop with carnal pleasures. It embraces the spiritual, too.

Witchcraft language is woven into its DNA. Official descriptions boast that Inferno is “not just a party” but a “ritual.”

Additionally, Burton, who styles himself as the “mother” of the matriarchal “Inferno family,” appears to occupy a spiritual role in which he uses his music to cast what he calls spells.

“MOTHERS MILK is more than a music video — it’s a spell,” reads the YouTube description for his most recent song, which he regularly performs live before the dark, gyrating Inferno masses.

Burton’s spiritualism, however, extends beyond the dance floor. In addition to the grotesque, hellish aesthetics that dominate his Instagram account (view at your own risk), he regularly posts new moon rituals, guiding his followers through candle ceremonies and “cosmic resets” that he frames around themes of divine femininity and personal transformation.

In doing so, he positions himself not merely as a DJ or party host, but as a spiritual guide for the community that gathers under his influence.

This fusion of radical progressivism, New Age spirituality, and unapologetic darkness that Burton embodies is not merely a new pagan religion — it’s proof that evil operates in interconnected webs.

Webs of alignment and influence

I write this not to stir up hatred for Burton. I actually deeply pity him. When I see people this spiritually lost and psychologically ill, my first thought is always to wonder about where the original break occurred — what trauma, indoctrination, or misfortune sent them down such a dark path.

I write this to illustrate that when elites and public figures shove objective evil down our throats — like Matières Fécales’ demonic Paris Fashion Week collection — they are not being ironic or critical. They are showing us what team they play for.

Choosing Burton as a model was no gesture of inclusivity. It is alignment of values. And in fact, in 2019, Matières Fécales directed the music video for Burton’s song “Hermaphrodite.” They are embedded in the same sick circle.

And that alignment of values extends upward: from the governing bodies of Paris Fashion Week, which embrace the grotesqueness of the Matières Fécales label; to high-profile celebrities who attend the shows and wear the designs — Chappell Roan and Lady Gaga among those who have prominently supported the brand — and who publicly align with the broader community Burton represents; and ultimately to the influential figures and institutions that promote radical progressivism, deliberately unraveling society through the erosion of morality and the poisoning of institutions.

Normalizing the dark: An upside-down world

This is a dark web, and at the center is a worship of evil and the intention to normalize it and sell it to the masses as something that is actually good. Fatness is fabulous. Ugliness is beauty. Perversion is uniqueness. Depravity is liberation. Hedonism is self-expression. Darkness is an aesthetic. Witchcraft is misunderstood. Truth is subjective. Opposition is violence.

Satan is symbolic.

I do believe that many of these people, likely Burton himself, genuinely think that Satan is nothing more than a way to anger the cisgender white conservative oppressors — just a red-tinged aura to throw one’s rage behind.

I wish that were true. It would make the stakes a lot lower. But the truth is that the Satan they flirt with is not a symbol, a muse, or a vibe. He’s the very real and active root that feeds every dark idea, movement, and deed. He is also the mastermind behind the careful framing and packaging that makes objective evil palatable for the masses.

But what does it say about society when something as universally revolting as Fecal Matter or “Mother” Lewis G. Burton are hoisted up as trophies of progress on an elite stage? No one who retains control over his own mind can behold these things and genuinely approve.

To me it means that the primordial plan to engulf the world in darkness is reaching later phases. It reminds me of the scene in “The Fellowship of the Ring” where the trolls and other fell creatures have begun leaving their shadowed lands and are encroaching on peaceful borders. This breach is interpreted as a sign that the Enemy is growing strong and foreshadows the great battle to come.

Our great battle is drawing nearer, too. The signs are everywhere. You don’t even have to search for them. Just look to the streets, the classrooms, the halls of power — or the runways.

My hope, however, is that we don’t make the same mistake as Matières Fécales, Burton, and other embracers of darkness and reduce Satan to a symbol by directing our fury at people who are merely pawns in this cosmic game — forgetting that this has never been, and will never be, a battle of flesh and blood.

​Culture, Paris fashion week, Satanism, Satan, Christianity, Trans, Lgbtq, Lgbtq agenda, Faith 

Former Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger has produced a slender, puzzling book. It glides past the central problems facing campuses — weak leadership, weak accountability, and ideological capture — and lingers instead on nostalgia and the “community of scholars.”

It also prompts a blunt question: Why do university presidents publicly dissemble? Not in the chest-thumping manner of a cable-news partisan, but in the lubricated, bureaucratic manner that says almost everything except what matters most.

Bollinger presents a university with virtually no blemishes — blameless, well-run, noble — and then points outward, toward Trump and the federal government, as the true threat.

Bollinger was recruited by W.W. Norton editor in chief Dan Gerstle to adapt lectures delivered in spring 2025 into a book. He aims to remind readers that the American university occupies a critical place in society. In the abstract, he’s right, and parts of the argument work.

As a constitutional law scholar, he also tries to weave the First Amendment into the university’s institutional identity, suggesting the two are inseparable. That claim needs more force than this book provides. The prose reads like speech material polished for print. The ambition outruns the substance.

But the real center of gravity arrives quickly: Bollinger casts the primary threat to higher education as “outsiders,” especially the federal government and, most of all, Donald Trump. Yes, it’s another Trump-as-villain entry in the culture wars, and likely the reason this book was rushed into print. Whatever Bollinger’s hygienic tone, this is hatchet work in a gentleman’s suit.

Bollinger is no detached man of letters offering serene judgment from above the fray. He remains a prominent operator inside elite academic and political networks. His calm posture functions less as neutrality than as insulation.

The book is divided into three parts: “The University,” “The First Amendment,” and “The Fifth Branch.” If the press is the “fourth branch” of government, Bollinger argues the university deserves branch status too.

I write often about the university’s high mythology — the version parents and alumni carry around because universities actively sell it. Bollinger indulges that mythology. His university is a place of serious minds, noble purpose, and largely blameless governance, with only the occasional “organized anarchy,” the predictable messiness of complex institutions.

He offers this earnest passage:

I challenge anyone to spend a day, a week, or more in any university — sitting in on classes, attending lectures, meeting with students, visiting a laboratory, being part of a seminar — and not come away deeply impressed, indeed invigorated, about the human potential to know and to grasp something of our existence.

Many readers will want to believe it. Bollinger counts on that desire.

And here’s where the trouble begins.

RELATED: How America’s universities embraced anti-American ‘blood and soil’

Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images

The book’s best section is its opening chapter, which promises an insider’s look at how universities actually function. Bollinger divides the institution into multiple levels of analysis — individual, university, and system — in a way that will feel familiar to anyone trained in serious political science. The intent looks analytic. The presentation sounds authoritative.

Then he leaves out the single biggest operational reality on most campuses.

Bollinger describes academic affairs — faculty, curriculum, and the traditional governance story — and effectively ignores student affairs, often rebranded as “student success.” That omission is not a minor gap. It’s the whole fight.

Modern universities are not simply faculty-driven institutions with a few administrative appendages. They are sprawling managerial systems in which student affairs bureaucracies routinely outnumber faculty and operate as an ersatz ideological faculty through what they call the co-curriculum: workshops, trainings, mandatory seminars, “wellness” programming, diversity offices, identity centers, residence-life systems, conduct regimes, orientation pipelines, and retention machinery.

This is education by parallel authority.

Student affairs is frequently staffed, trained, and ideologically shaped by external nonprofits such as ACPA, NASPA, NADOHE, and NACADA. These groups do not simply offer best practices. They often function as ideological conduits, pushing “critical pedagogy” and “critical consciousness” as an institutional mission. One of them literally advertises the goal of “boldly transforming higher education.”

That transformation is not a side story. It is the story. It’s how the modern university moved from the “shared governance” myth to a bureaucratic reality where the faculty increasingly serves as a decorative legitimacy layer.

Bollinger never deals with it. Not directly. Not honestly. Not at all.

Contemporary scholarship has already documented how student affairs increasingly designs, delivers, and assesses structured educational experiences parallel to the faculty curriculum. The same bureaucracy often serves as a channel for activism infrastructure that has helped fuel campus chaos since 2020.

Student affairs is wholly under the control of the extremist left. Yet Bollinger presents a university with virtually no blemishes — blameless, well-run, noble — and then points outward, toward Trump and the federal government, as the true threat.

It’s hard not to conclude that the nostalgia is doing work. Bollinger affirms the version of the university that parents and alumni want to believe still exists: the citadel of learning devoted to truth, stewarded by wise leaders, occasionally messy but fundamentally righteous.

RELATED: How to muzzle the three-headed diversity monster

Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

That image now functions as cover.

It shields what many universities have become: money-making and idea-laundering operations that give lip service to the people paying the bills — parents, students, donors — while empowering internal bureaucracies that answer to their own ideological class.

Bollinger’s personal position makes this posture easier to spot. He belongs to the wealthy mandarin class that runs elite higher education. His Columbia compensation reportedly topped $5 million annually. Columbia’s assets were roughly $23.5 billion at the end of 2022.

He also guards his own record with careful selection.

While he was president of the University of Michigan, the school was involved in two affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court in 2003. Bollinger highlights the win (Grutter v. Bollinger) but gives scant attention to the loss (Gratz v. Bollinger). In places, his wording blurs them together in a way that can leave casual readers thinking Michigan prevailed across the board.

It didn’t. In Gratz, Michigan’s admissions policy violated the Equal Protection Clause. That case foreshadowed the eventual collapse of the broader regime in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard two decades later.

At Columbia, Bollinger helped lay the groundwork for the institution’s later disorder by expanding and empowering DEI bureaucracies in response to the 2020 “racial reckoning.” Many presidents issued pro forma statements they now quietly regret. Bollinger went further: He built and strengthened the permanent infrastructure.

My view is straightforward: Bollinger represents the ascent of the new mandarins — administrators who guard prerogatives, expand PR machinery, and grow their internal empires against faculty authority, all while presenting themselves as the guardians of scholarly life. He is the living, breathing antithesis of what the university and its presidents should be in the 21st century.

In “University: A Reckoning,” Bollinger wants readers to see a university that largely no longer exists. His lack of candor ensures that readers learn little about how universities actually function — and even less about why so many are failing.

​College campus, University: a reckoning, Columbia, Higher education, American universities, Lee bollinger, Radical left, Opinion & analysis, University of michigan, Diversity equity inclusion 

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey credits not only her parents but her faith-based education — from kindergarten through high school — with shaping her worldview and skill set.

“My dad always said that he would do whatever it took, however many hours he had to work, however many shifts he had to work, to make sure my brothers and I attended a Christian school,” Stuckey says.

“I went to the same Christian school from kindergarten through 12th grade. Was it perfect? No. I had some not so great teachers. The culture wasn’t always the best. The community wasn’t always the best,” she continues.

“I would not trade my education for anything. In addition to the Holy Spirit and my parents, my kindergarten through 12th grade education is responsible for instilling in me the word of God, the ability to memorize it, to defend it, to think logically, to reason, to read, to write, to argue,” she explains.

“That just goes to show how crucial it is to disciple your kids from an early age because what they learn now, they will keep with them as adults, even more than the things they learn as adults,” she adds.

Stuckey points out that after her viral Jubilee debate, she was asked by several people how she prepared herself to take on such a large number of liberals.

“Yes, it took a lot of practice and preparation and skill, experience. Yes, my parents in so many ways prepared me for that just by how they raised me. But also, 13 years of Christian education, a decade of Awana, eight years of youth group, decades of Sunday school,” she explains.

“You just can’t beat the evangelical upbringing when it comes to knowing the Bible. And I am so thankful for it. I use it every single day,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Christianity, Jubilee debate, Allie beth stuckey debate, Christian education, Awana, The holy spirit, The bible, Parenting tips 

Researchers from the nation that likely unleashed COVID-19 unto the world have transformed mosquitoes into flying syringes.

Some researchers, including a group at the Bill Gates Foundation-backed Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, have already attempted in recent years to fashion mosquitoes into flying vaccine delivery systems with human targets in mind.

‘Mosquitoes bite many things other than bats.’

Now, scientists at the state-controlled Chinese Academy of Sciences — an institution that has a strategic partnership with the People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences — have targeted bats, purportedly designing mosquitoes to instead deliver recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-based rabies and Nipah vaccines to the flying mammals.

Like rabies, Nipah virus is a potentially deadly virus found in animals. Whereas rabies has nearly a 100% fatality rate in humans once symptoms manifest, the estimated case fatality rate for Nipah virus ranges from 40% to 75%.

The Chinese scientists’ study, published on March 11 in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, noted that bats, “representing ~22% of all mammalian species, are natural reservoirs for a wide range of zoonotic viruses, including coronaviruses, rhabdoviruses, and paramyxoviruses. Their unique physiological and immunological traits enable them to harbor pathogens without showing clinical symptoms, making them critical players in the emergence of infectious diseases.”

The scientists claimed that immunizing bats, especially in the wild, could possibly prevent transmission of the rabies and Nipah viruses to humans and other animals but acknowledged that “achieving this goal presents substantial challenges due to the wide geographic distribution, diverse diets, and large colony sizes of bat populations.”

RELATED: Damning study of over a million kids finds myocarditis only in the vaccinated

Photo by Zabed Hasnain Chowdhury/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Recognizing the impracticality of individually jabbing multitudes of bats and ruling out bat-culling as “counterproductive,” the Chinese scientists instead created vaccines using a weakened form of the vesicular stomatitis virus that can infect insects and mammals alike.

They fed vaccine-laden blood to lab-adapted Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and subsequently detected the vaccine both in the whole mosquitoes and in their salivary glands for over two weeks. The vaccine-laden mosquitoes reportedly delivered the vaccines as intended and provided test bats and rodents with immune protection.

The study claimed that “this innovative approach offers a scalable and efficient solution for immunizing wild bats, addressing critical challenges in disease control and bat conservation.”

Through this experiment, researchers hope that there will be reduced spillover of the Nipah and rabies viruses from bats to humans or livestock.

Aihua Zheng, a Chinese virologist who worked on the study, told NPR, “The advantage is if we immunize the population, the transmission of the virus will be decreased or eventually eliminated.”

However, that outcome is by no means certain. Plus, there are other problems associated with such vaccine-infused mosquitoes.

Daniel Streicker, a professor of viral ecology at the University of Glasgow who was not involved in the study, expressed concern to Chemical and Engineering News over possible risks of such proposed vaccination initiatives.

“Mosquitoes bite many things other than bats, including humans,” Streicker said, adding, “There’s still an issue that you’re removing individual consent.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Mosquito, Mosquitoes, Insect, Virus, Pathogen, Science, Bats, Vaccination, Vaccine, Flying vaccines, China, Covid-19, Politics, Biowarfare 

At the Munich Security Conference in February, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) suggested that once Donald Trump leaves office, things can return to normal — back to whatever existed before Trump.

While other Democrats eyeing the White House struggled to distinguish themselves, Newsom revealed a different problem. They looked unready to lead. He looked unwilling to lead at all.

The question isn’t whether Donald Trump disrupted a prior equilibrium. It’s whether those who seek to lead are prepared to lead amid friction, scarcity, and opposition.

Munich isn’t a campaign stop. It’s a security summit. Leaders gather there to talk about cyber warfare, artificial intelligence in military systems, energy instability, supply chain fragility, and the security posture of the West.

Threats don’t wait for electoral cycles.

Newsom’s implication was simple: Wait this out. Wait for a different administration. Wait for political alignment. Wait for conditions to improve.

But what, exactly, are we waiting for?

Are adversaries pausing their ambitions until our politics settle? Are supply chains stabilizing on their own? Does instability take a sabbatical while we sort out elections?

California sits on enormous capacity that intersects directly with these challenges — from artificial intelligence to aerospace to energy systems. If it were its own nation, its economy would rank among the largest in the world.

In that room, Newsom had a chance to say something simple: We can help today.

He could have said: We have political frictions, yes — but here’s what California can put on the table right now. Here’s what’s on the showroom floor and what’s in the stockroom.

Leadership doesn’t wait for better conditions. It works with the conditions at hand. That isn’t political. It’s true.

Trump has faced headwinds since re-entering politics in 2015: media opposition, legal battles, congressional resistance, impeachments, cultural hostility — even a bullet. Whatever one thinks of his tone or policies, he didn’t suspend action until the pressure eased.

Resistance didn’t become an excuse.

George Washington didn’t wait for favorable conditions before leading a fragile Continental Army. He faced shortages, division, and superior opposition. Conditions were rarely ideal. Resources were rarely sufficient. He acted anyway.

Entrepreneurs launch in recessions. Athletes train in bad weather. Reformers work when opposition is loudest.

Adversity doesn’t excuse stagnation so much as it reveals character.

Years ago, I knew a pastor who believed his preaching would rise once he moved into a larger sanctuary. His pitch to the building committee was brazen and simple: “Frame me better, and my sermons will improve.”

They didn’t. His messages were weak before the new building, and they stayed weak afterward. The platform changed. The man did not.

Conditions don’t create conviction. They reveal it.

RELATED: I walked away from California Democrats to keep my sanity

Photo by Julia Beverly/WireImage

I see the same instinct in family caregivers walking through chronic impairment: “We just have to hold on.” “Once this season passes.”

The assumption stays the same: When hardship lifts, life begins.

But for many, this is the life.

Waiting for better conditions is surrender, not strategy.

The apostle Paul wrote large portions of the New Testament from prison. Confinement didn’t suspend his calling. Chains weren’t an excuse. He didn’t wait for a “new Caesar.” He wrote anyway.

That’s the dividing line.

One posture says: Once the obstacle is removed, I’ll begin.

The other says: I’ll begin here. Now.

Newsom’s remarks reveal more than a political calculation. They expose a familiar instinct: the belief that productivity begins once hardship fades. But adversity rarely fades on schedule.

History doesn’t pause. Adversaries don’t pause. Life doesn’t pause.

The question isn’t whether Trump disrupted a prior equilibrium. It’s whether those who seek to lead are prepared to lead amid friction, scarcity, and opposition — or whether they are waiting for a version of normal that isn’t coming back.

Leadership shows up in the arena — or on the battlefield — but rarely in the green room.

​Gavin newsom, Donald trump, Foreign policy, Democrats, Leadership, Iran war, 2028 election, Opinion & analysis, Munich security conference 

Netflix’s five-part sci-fi series “Stranger Things” — a twisted tale of undercover government experiments, evil supernatural creatures, and a sinister parallel dimension — is one of the streaming service’s most successful and profitable shows in its history.

Despite its heavy supernatural horror elements, occult-adjacent references, and gory violence, “Stranger Things” has been popular among some Christian audiences that appreciate its spiritual warfare parallels, good vs. evil themes, and subtle nods to biblical concepts like sacrifice and resurrection.

But are these Christians just inventing a loophole to participate in sinful entertainment?

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” BlazeTV host Rick Burgess addresses this controversial subject.

The answer to whether Christians should watch “Stranger Things” is a complicated one.

“Is the show satanic or demonic? Not really, because the separation of good and evil seems to be there pretty clear,” Rick says, “but it can be troubling because there are some scary things in it.”

Additionally, the show includes profanity and language that takes the Lord’s name in vain.

“But do they mock Jesus? Not really,” Rick says. “There’s actually an episode when they discuss getting the church involved against this evil force that they’re fighting against.”

But even if the show leans more into sci-fi than true paranormal horror and uses secular language without overtly blaspheming Christ, does that mean Christians should watch it?

For younger kids, Rick’s answer is no.

“If the kid is younger than 15, probably not,” he states.

For one, the show features characters and concepts that could be deeply unsettling and terrifying to a younger audience — “monsters … that could cause nightmares,” he warns.

Second, there are LGBTQ+ themes, as two of the main characters are homosexual and embraced for their lifestyles.

Third, “astral projection” — the occult belief that a person’s consciousness or spirit can intentionally separate from their physical body and travel through an astral plane or other dimensions — is part of the “Stranger Things” plot line.

For these reasons, younger audiences are better off keeping their distance from the show, according to Rick.

But what about older kids and adults? Can they watch this popular series without opening themselves up to demonic forces?

“I would say it should be under a yellow flag caution more than a red flag,” Rick says, suggesting that participation or avoidance should be determined by personal conviction.

Citing Brent Crowe’s book “Chasing Elephants,” he says, “When dealing with what entertainment we allow in our lives from a spiritual standpoint, there’s questions to ask,” the most important being: “Does it have any redeeming quality?”

“You have to be careful being really legalistic about, ‘If it’s R, I’m not watching it.’ Well, then you wouldn’t have watched ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ Why is it rated R would be kind of the road you would go down,” he advises.

To hear more of Rick’s biblical wisdom regarding what kinds of entertainment Christians should and should not partake in, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Strange encounters, Strange encounters with rick burgess, Rick burgess, Stranger things, Netflix, Spiritual warfare, Entertainment, Blazetv, Blaze media, Demonic oppression 

For millennia, we have all more or less understood one thing about forgiveness: You cannot demand it.

You can ask for it. You can plead for it. You can try to earn it. But the moment you insist that someone owes it to you, you have misunderstood the thing itself.

You can command a Christian to forgive because he has been given a new heart. You cannot litigate him into loving his enemy.

Sam Ridge, a philosopher at the University of California San Diego, thinks that conventional wisdom is wrong. In a recent paper, he argues that there are cases in which a wrongdoer has “a right to be forgiven by their victim.”

In other words, forgiveness can be understood as a claimable moral asset — not just something one hopes for, but something one may, under certain conditions, press for. That may sound tidy in a philosophy seminar. It sounds far less plausible beside a bloodstained cross and wounds that still bear a name.

Promise ring

Ridge’s argument begins with promises. “Promises generate rights,” he writes. And since “we can promise to forgive,” it follows that “we can have a right to be forgiven.”

He then pushes beyond explicit promises. Long habits of forbearance, he argues, can create expectations and implicit commitments inside relationships. Over time, those too may harden into something like a right. Philosophers, he says, have been wrong to treat forgiveness as if it were always the victim’s exclusive property.

From a Christian standpoint, there is something here to appreciate. Ridge is at least pushing back against the modern cult of grievance, where outrage becomes a vocation and to forgive is to cede power. He is right to insist that resentment cannot simply be nursed forever. He is also right to note that relationships impose real obligations and that promises are not decorative sounds. In a culture that treats every vow as provisional, the suggestion that words bind has the ring of sanity.

But having glimpsed the truth that forgiveness cannot be purely discretionary, Ridge reaches for the bluntest tool in the secular toolbox: rights language.

RELATED: Mary Clarke: Beverly Hills socialite who traded haute couture for a habit

Eudist Servants of the 11th Hour

Forgiveness fix

The move also fits a broader cultural drift. In recent years, forgiveness has steadily been reframed in therapeutic terms. Harvard researchers now explain that “forgiveness is good for us,” meaning it lowers stress, improves mental health, and stabilizes relationships.

In popular self-help language, the advice is even simpler: Forgive so you can heal; forgive so you can move on.

Once forgiveness is treated primarily as a psychological good, it becomes easy to assume that people ought to supply that good to one another. Ridge’s argument may simply be the next step in that progression: If forgiveness benefits everyone, why shouldn’t the offender have some claim to it?

The result is philosophically clever and spiritually tone-deaf.

Debt relief

The trouble with Ridge’s proposal appears in at least three places.

The New Testament does not picture forgiveness as a debtor’s legal claim against the heart of his neighbor. It presents forgiveness as an act flowing from divine mercy: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Christian forgiveness is commanded, yes, but it is not coerced. It grows out of a heart that knows it has been forgiven more than it will ever be asked to forgive.

That is the first problem with Ridge’s view. He treats forgiveness as a morally chargeable transaction. I promised; therefore you can bill me. We have a pattern; therefore you can invoice me again. But Scripture treats forgiveness not as a payable debt but as the fruit of regeneration. You can command a Christian to forgive because he has been given a new heart. You cannot litigate him into loving his enemy. You can wring out an apology. You cannot compel the release of a grudge.

Your word and God’s word

The second problem is more basic. Ridge blurs the line between keeping one’s word and performing a spiritual act. If a father tells his daughter, “I promise to forgive you,” then yes, he has taken on a real obligation. He ought to master his anger, repent of bitterness, and restore goodwill where he can.

But it does not follow that the daughter acquires a standing right to demand what only grace can genuinely produce. Ridge’s own formula — “We can promise to forgive. Therefore, we can have a right to be forgiven” — slides too quickly past that distinction. The pressure falls first on the father’s conscience before God, not on the daughter’s ability to cash a promissory note.

His friendship examples make the same mistake in softer form. Old friends do owe one another patience, mercy, and readiness to reconcile. If a man refuses forgiveness after decades of mutual forbearance, then yes, something real has broken down. But what has broken down is not best described as a hidden contract. It is a failure of charity, of character, of fidelity to the shape of friendship itself. Friendship is sustained by habits of mercy, not by enforceable claims.

Crucifying pride

The third problem is where Ridge’s framework leads, once applied to what he calls “moderate wrongdoing,” the ordinary failures “we have all committed and, regrettably, will commit again.” Those are precisely the daily arenas in which Christ calls people to crucify pride and extend mercy before they feel like it. Once those moments are reframed in the language of rights, forgiveness begins to sound less like grace and more like entitlement: I repented; I made amends — now you owe me.

That posture may satisfy a theorist. It corrodes the virtue itself.

The philosophers Ridge is pushing against — figures like Lucy Allais, Cheshire Calhoun, and Charles Griswold — were right to sense the danger. Many of them describe forgiveness as supererogatory: admirable, fitting, sometimes morally beautiful, but not something the offender may demand as a matter of right. As Ridge himself notes, there is “near universal agreement” on this point. They understood something Ridge does not fully reckon with: Forgiveness can be morally urgent without becoming something the offender may properly claim. The instant it hardens into entitlement, something essential has already been lost.

More demanding, more humane

To be fair, Ridge does try to hedge the claim. He confines it to a certain band of offenses. He concedes that some acts may be unforgivable in practice. He also insists that victims retain “leeway” and cannot be pushed into immediate or shallow reconciliation. Those are sensible guardrails. But his own framework undermines them. Once forgiveness is grounded in rights talk, the victim’s conscience becomes one more obstacle to be managed, pressured, and eventually treated as suspect for failing to deliver on schedule.

The Christian alternative is both more demanding and more humane.

It says to the wrongdoer: You are not entitled to your neighbor’s forgiveness; you are entitled only to throw yourself on the mercy of Christ.

It says to the victim: You are not entitled to nurse hatred forever; you are commanded to forgive as you have been forgiven.

But that command comes from God, not from the person who hurt you.

And it reminds both parties that a wounded relationship is not a contract to be litigated, but a place where grace, repentance, truth, and sometimes hard boundaries must coexist — not a ledger of claims and entitlements.

​Forgiveness, Christianity, Philosophy, Sam ridge, Lifestyle, Sin, Faith 

Pierre Poilievre may be taking a page from Donald Trump’s playbook. For American audiences, Poilievre is Canada’s Conservative leader and top challenger for prime minister — a sharp-tongued critic of liberal governance who has fused free-market economics with a populist political style.

Trump’s appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast was widely credited — fairly or not — with helping him connect with voters outside the traditional media bubble. Now, with his own poll numbers tightening, Poilievre has stepped onto the same stage, betting that a long-form, unfiltered conversation can do what scripted interviews often cannot.

Poilievre didn’t just avoid the risks his critics predicted; he made the format work for him. Like Trump before him, he used Rogan’s show not as a gauntlet, but as a platform.

If that was the strategy, it worked.

Worth the risk

It’s hard to pinpoint the high point of Poilievre’s appearance on Rogan’s show. There were several.

Before the interview — recorded, not live — Canada’s media class warned that it was a risk. Two-plus hours with Rogan, they suggested, could expose Poilievre to awkward questions or even embarrassment on the world’s most popular podcast, which also commands a massive Canadian audience.

There was little reason for concern.

Rogan opened by praising Poilievre as “a very reasonable, intelligent person” — a rarity in politics, he added — before launching into a broad critique of Canada’s recent direction. It set the tone: friendly, expansive, and largely unhostile.

They quickly turned to the now-famous “apple video,” a viral exchange between Poilievre and a British Columbia reporter that has become political folklore. What began as a would-be “gotcha” ended with Poilievre — casually eating an apple — deflecting accusations of populism and comparisons to Donald Trump. The clip circulated widely, hailed by supporters as a small master class in message discipline.

Poilievre told Rogan he hadn’t thought much of the moment at the time and didn’t even realize he was being recorded, assuming it was a routine print interview. The footage, captured by his own staff, was initially posted online without much notice before suddenly going viral weeks later, turning the exchange into an unlikely political talking point.

Mind your own business

Over two and a half hours, the conversation ranged widely — from martial arts to Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying program.

On euthanasia, Poilievre struck a more serious tone, arguing that public policy should emphasize helping people endure hardship rather than steering them toward death. He suggested the system should be oriented toward preserving life and ensuring that vulnerable people are not nudged toward assisted suicide as a default outcome.

He also revived a theme he has largely shelved since 2023: the idea of a “mind your own business” approach to government.

Poilievre framed the role of Parliament as limiting state power while expanding individual freedom — focusing government on core responsibilities like infrastructure, defense, and public safety while otherwise leaving people alone to live their lives. He added that if he were to build a party from scratch, it would embody that philosophy.

RELATED: ‘I couldn’t believe it’: BC tribunal orders ex-school trustee to pay $750K over trans ‘hate’

David Krayden | NurPhoto/Getty Images

Fight club

At one point, the dynamic flipped. During a discussion of the UFC and martial arts, Poilievre began quizzing Rogan on his own background, demonstrating an unexpected fluency in the subject — and even offering details about Bruce Lee that appeared to catch Rogan off guard.

The performance was confident, relaxed, and at times surprisingly deft.

Poilievre didn’t just avoid the risks his critics predicted; he made the format work for him. Like Trump before him, he used Rogan’s show not as a gauntlet, but as a platform.

It’s the kind of appearance he may wish he had done sooner — and one he’ll likely repeat as he continues his bid to become Canada’s next prime minister.

​Culture, Pierre poilievre, Joe rogan, The joe rogan experience, Donald trump, Letter from canada 

Frank Meyer’s fusionism combined free-market libertarianism and religion-friendly traditionalism to create the modern conservative movement. As a political alliance against the threat of communism, the movement served its purpose. But the principles that undergirded Meyer’s synthesis were not an adequate basis for attaining and sustaining national power.

The difference between the defeated Barry Goldwater faction and the victorious Ronald Reagan coalition was the vote of white Catholic Democrats alienated from their former party by its anti-anti-Communism and embrace of the three A’s: amnesty (for draft evaders), acid, and abortion.

We need a clearer, more uncompromising articulation of a pure MAGA doctrine that distinguishes our agenda from the libertarians and so-called principled conservatives.

Those former Democrats did not want smaller government, so Reagan preserved, for them and the country, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, along with generating ever-larger deficits.

Meyer’s synthesis, however, was not as new as is often claimed: In important respects, it represented 19th-century Bourbon Democracy spruced up for the post-World War II era. What distinguished the Bourbons from the Republicans (and from the populist Democrats) was their commitment to smaller government, free trade, and cheap labor. That meant unfree labor in the 1850s and more-or-less free labor once the South was successfully “redeemed” from Republican rule and black civil rights enforcement after the Civil War.

What America needs today instead is fissionism. We need a clearer, more uncompromising articulation of a pure MAGA doctrine that distinguishes our agenda from the libertarians and so-called principled conservatives.

MAGA in foreign and security matters means using American power to secure American interests. Foreign policy is not the application of abstract principles, which are worse than useless in international relations. What were Franklin Roosevelt’s principles or Andrew Jackson’s or Teddy Roosevelt’s? Their guiding star in foreign policy was not principle but the ruthless pursuit of results.

As for draining the swamp, the trench warfare over DOGE and U.S. attorney appointments proves that deconstructing the administrative state requires a pro-Trump Senate. But the current Senate remains beholden to the uniparty. If you are happy with your “principled conservative” senator obstructing the president, then you are on the other side.

Against those screaming for lower taxes and less government at all costs, protective tariffs are core to MAGA — and for that matter, core to the Republican Party before it was taken over by Reagan, a former Democrat and fusionist. MAGA demands an economic policy geared toward national greatness. It means an end to regulations engineered to cripple the U.S. economy in the name of DEI, apocalyptic climate alarmism, or the latest elite neurosis.

Targeted regulations and tariffs to onshore our supply chains and rebuild the American industrial base? Absolutely. That has been Donald Trump’s consistent agenda since he first started commenting on public affairs in the 1980s. If the “principled conservatives” fail to recognize this, that exposes their own ideological blindness, not a flaw in the MAGA platform.

RELATED: Will Republicans fight for the SAVE Act — or fold again?

Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images

Fundamentally, “principled conservatives” don’t want America to be stronger and freer if it means traditional Republican governance. They prefer Bourbon Democracy: small government, cheap goods, cheap labor (citizens and noncitizens alike), and dependence on others — once Britain or the North, now China — for industry, including vital defense-related manufacturing. As for the world, China can do what it wants. Anything else would require the old guard conservatives to compromise their precious “principles.”

People who don’t want the United States to be reliant on China, as Mississippi was on Manchester in 1850, or Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1890, should see “principled conservatives” as political opponents — allies of the Democrats. They are helping to destroy Trump and everything the president stands for.

Does drawing clearer partisan lines mean shedding potential support required for electoral victory? That is a very real risk. The compensating benefit is that once we know what we want, we can accurately identify our allies and band together to address the crises of our time.

A “principled conservative” administration would have preferred Big Pharma to RFK Jr. and MAHA. A “principled conservative” administration would make no room for a Tulsi Gabbard, an Elon Musk, or any other heterodox defector who wants to restore American foreign and security policy and advance American power, national honor, and national freedom.

Fissionism means drawing clear battle lines, dividing what was once the “conservative movement.” The “principled conservatives” can keep their pristine — and currently useless — “principles.” I am on the side of America, which means the side of Trump.

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

​Frank meyers, Fusionism, Democrats, Ronald reagan, Donald trump, Nevertrump, Maga, Doge, Principled conservatives, Big pharma, Rfk jr, Opinion & analysis, Principles, The right, Republicans, Gop 

Millions recently read about normal-guy Paul Conyngham’s resourcefulness when it was revealed he did what doctors couldn’t in creating an effective, customized vaccine for his dog stricken with terminal illness, but far fewer caught the later-revealed fact that while ChatGPT was credited as the AI model Conyngham used to navigate the labyrinth of mRNA vaccine creation, it was actually Grok that produced the final, winning design.

Perhaps “normal guy” is an understatement. Conyngham is an Australian tech entrepreneur. When his adopted dog Rosie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he paid a lab $3,000 to perform DNA sequencing analysis on both Rosie and the precise cancer Rosie was fighting. Then, he used AI tools such as AlphaFold to process the sequencing analysis. Finally, he deployed Grok to design the bespoke mRNA vaccine, which was ultimately produced by university partners (evidently available for consult or perhaps inspired by Conyngham’s devotion to his dog).

What are the odds that this is all just going to spontaneously work out?

Despite his unusual skills and network, however, Conyngham didn’t go viral for those. Rather, his story resonated because his can-do sense of initiative is something anyone can tap into, with potentially lifesaving results. At the time of this writing, despite doctors’ predictions, Rosie the dog is alive and thriving. Her illness has not entirely abated, but her owner’s ingenuity and persistence, combined with his layman’s agility around LLMs, has reduced the most life-threatening tumors by 75%.

How then, from this straightforward set of events, did ChatGPT wind up taking the credit until the record was corrected weeks later? When I asked Grok (which, being made up of timelines, is pretty reliable in accessing and reassessing events), I got the rather noncommittal suggestion that the misattribution was due to institutional inertia.

Perhaps.

Hungry for more, I dug into a much deeper human analysis of the man-saves-dog episode. Jordan Hall, another tech entrepreneur-turned-philosopher, posted a series of viral X articles addressing the economic shift to a total, global AI underlayer to the economy (and thus, every aspect of human life). In his second installment, “The Great Transition: The Divine Economy,” Hall sketches his vision for a coherent implementation of AI into this overarching position of importance.

RELATED: Use an anonymous account online? AI can now reveal your identity.

Photo Credit Olga Novikova/Getty Images

Readers are strongly encouraged to read Hall’s series of articles in its entirety. It’s fascinating and endlessly ponderable. All told, in anticipation of a global upheaval of biblical proportions — yes, we’ve heard this for years; despite the wait, it’s coming — Hall suggests we’ll turn the wheel over to the Church.

“The Church has always been an economic institution,” he argues, “whether it acknowledged it or not. Mutual aid, vocational, formation, capital pooling, trust networks — these are ancient practices. What changes now is that AI collapses the constraints that made those practices uncompetitive against industrial-scale consolidation. On Earth as it is in Heaven.”

In the case of Rosie and her owner, just a few questions illustrate the complexity and potential for malfeasance in our AI age. Who owns the Grok-derived vaccine recipe? Who owns Rosie’s DNA? Can it be sold? Who should benefit? If DNA data is “scraped” in some manner similar to how novels, television shows, and musical recordings are more or less pilfered, what are the limits of DNA and data ownership, if any? Can it be simply destroyed, in the same way the owner of a patch of grass can burn it should he so desire?

Hall’s analysis implies that, in the end, these are spiritual questions that can only be answered spiritually — and people hungry for fast answers they can trust will turn to the place where such answers have been on offer for thousands of years.

For now, Rosie’s owner was able to slip through the cracks of institutional, veterinary, and judicial red tape using wit and, let’s face it, the collective human affection for dogs. Hall predicts a situation where the collective, decentralized power of human faculties — made hyper-potent via leveraging AI and functioning on the timeless spiritual foundation of the Church — robustly addresses the AI age’s vast issues of greed, misallocation, misuse, and abuse of resources. Restricted to the secular level, discussions about these problems almost always find themselves mired in the dialectic between Marx and Smith, communism versus capitalism. Unable to innovate our way out of the impasse, will our eyes turn at last to the divine economy?

If a few years pass, the AI compactor consolidating everything into data will likely squeeze out new, perhaps unimaginable forms of computational power. The fight to capture and control that power is raging right now. Looking at the brokers, politicians, and players, accounting for history and human nature, what are the odds that this is all just going to spontaneously work out — such that good-willed efforts like those of Conyngham continue freely, without surveillance or exploitation? We’ll soon see if we’re willing to adopt the forms of social organization it takes to keep cyberspace so free, open, and fruitful.

​Tech, Ai, Grok, Chatgpt, Artificial intelligence, Paul conyngham 

President Donald Trump has his own solution to solve the stalemate in Congress that is causing a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Democrats sparked the partial shutdown on February 14, refusing to pass the FY2026 DHS appropriations bill while calling for reform at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

‘They will do Security like no one has ever seen before.’

The reform demands are a protest of the deaths of anti-ICE activists Alex Pretti and Renee Good, but they ignore the fact that ICE is already funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in 2025.

Still, Democrats have rejected a DHS funding bill (for the fifth time on Friday), withholding funds from TSA and FEMA.

With many TSA workers not being paid during the partial shutdown, the lack of staffing has had a trickle-down effect to travelers. For example, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, passengers faced screening wait times of up to two hours this week, according to CNN.

All the turmoil has President Trump brainstorming possible solutions, and on Saturday afternoon he suggested throwing ICE into the mix.

“If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

RELATED: ‘Moral failure’: Pressure mounts as Congress prepares to leave town despite urgent DHS stalemate

Trump said placing ICE agents at airports will also mean that they will conduct “the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” pinpointing one nationality in particular.

There would be “heavy emphasis on those from Somalia,” the president wrote. He added that Somalians have “totally destroyed, with the approval of a corrupt Governor, Attorney General, and Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, the once Great State of Minnesota.”

“I look forward to seeing ICE in action at our Airports,” Trump concluded.

RELATED: White House offers concessions to end DHS shutdown — but Dems still choose illegal aliens over unpaid American TSA agents

Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images

According to Politico, lawmakers will remain in D.C. with a district work week looming from March 30 until April 10. This means DHS personnel could go unpaid for another three weeks if Congress does not quickly come to an agreement.

With over 61,000 TSA employees affected by the partial shutdown, at least 366 officers have quit, with many working unpaid. This has led to a record high 10.22% absentee rate set on Monday, according to CNN.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, Trump, Ice, Tsa, Airports, Dhs, Congress, Democrats, Politics 

After years of a media-driven pressure campaign over pay and treatment, WNBA players have secured a significant salary increase. On March 18, the league and its players’ union (WNBPA) announced their verbal/tentative agreement on a new collective bargaining deal that will dramatically increase player salaries by tying pay to revenue shares.

But given that the WNBA has long been financially propped up by the NBA and has only recently started generating enough revenue to trigger player revenue sharing (and potentially turn profitable), Jason Whitlock sees the league’s new deal as undeserved welfare disguised as earned success.

“Nothing that happened with the WNBA and their CBA agreement had anything to do with proper business or these women getting what they’re owed or what they’ve earned or what they deserve. This is being given to them to execute an agenda,” he says.

On this episode of “Fearless,” Whitlock exposes the corruption behind this new WNBA agreement and calls out ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith for pandering to the “alphabet agenda.”

“They want the next group of leaders to all be in support of the alphabet movement, the disruption of the nuclear family, the destruction of the nuclear family, the destruction of a Christian culture, and so they are making alphabet mafia soldiers the heroes and leaders for your kids,” says Whitlock. “That’s what this is all about.”

He pokes fun at ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith for enthusiastically celebrating the landmark deal on a recent episode of “First Take,” during which he praised Nneka Ogwumike (Seattle Storm forward and president of the players’ union) for her leadership, telling her sister Chiney Ogwumike that Nneka “has set a standard,” “deserves to be applauded,” and that the agreement is “a damn good deal.”

But the truth, says Whitlock, is that this deal had nothing to do with Nneka Ogwumike or any genuine achievement.

“Two things are responsible for them getting overpaid: Caitlin Clark and the alphabet agenda,” he says.

“We just gave the welfare sport more welfare money. The WNBA is a welfare sport. It’s no different than women’s soccer. That was a welfare sport for 40 or 50 years,” Whitlock continues, exposing the pattern of “take money away from men, give it to women” to create “more lesbian feminist leadership.”

He accuses Smith of pandering to the WNBA: “He’s applauding it out of arrogance, foolishness, the desire to remain in power, the desire to remain in the good graces of the feminist and the alphabet mafia people that actually control his salary, control his platform.”

“This is what selling out looks like.”

To hear more of Whitlock’s commentary, watch the video 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.

​Fearless, Fearless with jason whitlock, Wnba, Nba, Stephen a smith, Wnbpa, Cba, Wnba cba, Blazetv, Blaze media, Whitlock, Jason whitlock, Espn, First take, Espn first take, Feminist agenda, Lgbtq, Alphabet mafia, Caitlin clark, Nneka ogwumike 

Everything you think you know about the function of the human brain is wrong — and Dr. Iain McGilchrist, author of “The Master and His Emissary,” is sitting down with BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre to explain why.

According to McGilchrist, the modern belief that the left hemisphere is “verbal and rational and dependable” while the right hemisphere is “air fairy,” “emotional,” and “not very dependable” is a farce.

“All of that is completely wrong. In fact, it’s almost the inverse of the truth,” he tells MacIntyre on “The Auron MacIntyre Show.” “The right hemisphere, as I will explain, is far more dependable, far more stable, and the left hemisphere is prone to emotional outbursts of a very narcissistic kind.”

“It is prone actually to anger and to disgust and self-righteousness and emotions of that kind,” he explains.

And because of how important the brain is to each and every living being, the science surrounding it deserves to be challenged — which is exactly what McGilchrist is doing.

“In the left hemisphere, you see things that you already know what they are and you know you want to get them. They’re fixed, they’re isolated, they’re in a way fragmentary, they’re decontextualized, and they’re examples of a kind,” McGilchrist tells MacIntyre.

“Meanwhile, the right hemisphere is seeing a completely different world. It’s seeing a world in which nothing is ever fully certain,” he says, adding, “It always might be something different.”

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The auron macintyre show, Auron macintyre, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Neuroscience, Iain mcgilchrist, Right hemisphere, Left hemisphere, Brain, Neurology, Neurologist 

Something revealing — and increasingly dangerous — shows up in the people who still react to Donald Trump as if he were mainly an offense against etiquette rather than a political fact. They study him the way Victorian naturalists might study a rhinoceros loose in the drawing room: with alarm, fascination, and deep concern for the upholstery.

The Iranian strike has brought it out again. After 47 years, Israel and the United States struck back. Trump moved hard, moved fast, and moved before the foreign-policy clergy finished the first round of throat-clearing. Then, after he acted, he turned and pressed allies and other beneficiaries of Persian Gulf oil to help manage the consequences.

Trump derangement syndrome now imposes a cost beyond mere foolishness. It has become a strategic liability.

To the establishment mind, that looks like barbarism. First you convene. Then you posture. Then you circulate papers. Then you hold a conference where several men with rimless glasses say “regional framework” and “off-ramp.” Only then — after adequate procedural embalming — may anything actually happen.

Trump has never shown much interest in being embalmed.

To the establishment, Trump isn’t merely wrong. His vulgar method offends them. He violates process. He makes the priesthood sweat through its linen.

But the plain truth cuts the other way: Many of the traits that make him unbearable to refined opinion make him effective in world affairs. In Iran, effectiveness isn’t a lifestyle preference. It decides whether we end a threat or let it metastasize from theoretical to fatal.

This moment changes the argument. It no longer turns on whether Trump’s style offends the salons of Washington, New York, Brussels, and Aspen. It turns on whether the United States will stop a fanatical regime from acquiring nuclear weapons and blackmailing the world through oil, terror, and fear. The Wall Street Journal editorial board, often critical of Trump, supports his actions against Iran because the alternative looks worse: Iran survives the confrontation with its nuclear ambitions intact and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz strengthened.

So what should we understand about Donald Trump?

He accepts risk. He will do things that may blow up in his face. Most public people spend their careers dodging blame and pinning it on rivals. Trump cares less about pleasing the people who write essays about “norm erosion.”

He’s a developer with a better feel for leverage than for liturgy. A man doesn’t conquer the Manhattan real estate jungle, build a brand out of his own name, or survive bankruptcies, tabloid wars, casino collapses, and the mockery of half the respectable class by worshipping tidy sequencing. His route to wealth didn’t resemble a ballet. It looked like a demolition derby with gold trim.

That history matters. Men shaped by bureaucracies tend to treat legitimacy as a product of process. Men shaped by dealmaking tend to treat legitimacy as a product of outcomes. One group asks, “Was this properly staffed?” The other asks, “Did we get it done?” Washington fills up with the first type and recoils from the second.

Trump also improvises. Washington treats improvisation like a vice. But improvisation belongs to people operating in the realm of consequence rather than memo circulation. Trump rarely arrives with a doctrine polished for a Brussels seminar. He arrives with an instinct, a pressure point, a threat, a phone call, and a willingness to revise in public. That horrifies people who would rather run a failed plan with perfect footnotes than run a messy plan that changes the landscape.

RELATED: While America fights, Europe loses its spirit

Andy Barton/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Trump’s critics call this incoherence. Sometimes it is. He can be erratic. He can be excessive. He can mistake motion for strategy. But his critics often commit the opposite error. They confuse caution with wisdom, process with seriousness, and rhetorical tidiness with strength.

And the stakes outrun Trump. Iran has pursued the bomb for years. It lied, concealed, dispersed, negotiated, cheated, and waited. The fairy tale that this menace sat safely contained until Trump disturbed the peace has worn thin. Tehran didn’t become dangerous because Trump acted. Trump acted because Tehran already posed a danger.

That’s why Trump derangement syndrome now imposes a cost beyond mere foolishness. It has become a strategic liability. When a domestic class hates one man so much that it prefers his failure to the country’s safety, it stops functioning as a normal political opposition. It becomes a hindrance to national self-preservation.

If Iran emerges from this conflict still able to terrorize the Gulf, still able to menace the Strait of Hormuz, still dreaming its nuclear dreams, America won’t merely have fought badly. America will have invited the next crisis on a higher rung of danger. A short war that leaves the central threat intact doesn’t qualify as prudence. It amounts to cowardice on an installment plan.

That’s why he makes them crazy. He walks around as a rebuke to the managerial fantasy that calibrated people with soft hands and impeccable credentials can safely “manage” history. Trump reminds them — rudely, constantly, and in public — that moments arrive when nerve beats nuance and the man willing to absorb disorder defeats the man who can only describe it.

And now the insult cuts deeper. He doesn’t just break their rules. In a moment when America can’t afford illusion, he may be right about what winning requires.

​Iran war, Donald trump, Never trumpers, Establishment, Operation epic fury, Operation midnight hammer, Nuclear weapons, Opinion & analysis 

As you can see by the image next to the headline of this story, about a week ago, a vehicle was stopped at a red light on a busy Florida road — facing backward in the left-hand turn lane — and then seconds later proceeded to make the turn while continuing to drive in reverse.

Indeed, multiple callers reported the silver sedan driving in reverse eastbound on SR 100 on March 13, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said.

‘I didn’t think that I was that bad … you know what I’m sayin’ … I wasn’t even swerving or anything like that or driving fast …’

The sheriff’s office said its Time Crime Center tracked the vehicle to a Panda Express parking lot, and deputies stopped the vehicle near SR 100 and Airport Road after it had turned around and finally was facing in the correct direction.

The driver — William Murphy III, 47, of Palm Coast — said the car had a mechanical issue, and he “thought the best option” was to drive it backward to AutoZone, officials said.

“Except his mechanical issues evaporated when deputies got behind him … or was it in front of him?” the sheriff’s office quipped.

Let’s jump into the play-by-play.

Deputy (on loudspeaker, following Murphy): “Pull over! Pull over right here! Stop!”

Deputy: “We got multiple people calling [about] you driving in reverse!”

Driver: “The car was stuck in reverse.”

RELATED: Thug on parole accused of breaking into woman’s home, raping her at gunpoint, robbing her is quickly caught because he’s dumb

Image source: Flagler County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office video screenshot

Driver (stuttering): “I didn’t think that I was that bad … you know what I’m saying … I wasn’t even swerving or anything like that or driving fast …”

Deputy (interrupting): “You were driving backward on the road!”

Driver: “Yeah, it’s the same thing as if you were …”

Deputy (interrupting and chuckling): “No, it’s not, dude!”

RELATED: Dumb shoplifter tries stealing $727.86 in items while 75 police officers are in store for ‘Shop with a Cop’ charity event

Image source: Flagler County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office video screenshot

With that, the deputies put handcuffs on Murphy, and it’s all over.

RELATED: ‘Brazen’ and brainless: Teen rips off $18,000 in Louis Vuitton merchandise, runs to store exit, knocks himself unconscious after slamming into glass window

Image source: Flagler County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office video screenshot

Deputies arrested Murphy for habitual driving while license suspended/revoked, officials said, adding that he had more than 10 prior convictions for driving while license suspended/revoked.

Murphy was transported to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility, where he later was released on a $1,000 bond, officials said.

Below, you can watch video of the entire ordeal.

RELATED: Dumb twerking teens caught on video vandalizing business. Dumber still? Gang symbols carved into cars lead to arrest.

So far more that 200 commenters have let their thoughts be known about the incident under the sheriff’s office Facebook post, and amusement seems to be the prevailing emotion.

“I mean…old boy drove better than 90% [of the] drivers out here,” one commenter opined.”Florida Man never fails to amaze me,” another user joked.”But he was driving forward before he was pulled over, so his car was not stuck in reverse lol,” another commenter added, stating the obvious.”I mean, it honestly looks like he really is the World’s Best Backward Drive[r],” another user noted.”The cigarette at the end is the kicker…dude’s like, ‘I know how this ends, lemme get a drag real quick,'” another commenter observed.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Florida, Flagler county sheriff’s office, Traffic stop, Arrest, Driving backward, Crime 

Most Americans believe a simple thing about their retirement accounts: If you buy a stock, you own it. Your statement shows the shares. The value rises and falls. And if you don’t panic-sell, the asset is yours.

That’s the commonsense view of investing.

If Americans believe they directly own the assets in their retirement accounts, the law should reflect that expectation — before the next crisis tests it.

But the law doesn’t treat your “ownership” the way most people think. In the modern system, most investors are not the direct registered owners of most securities. They hold contractual rights tied to the investment — not the security itself.

In calm markets, that sounds like a technicality. In a severe financial crisis, it could determine whether your assets stay yours.

How we got here

Decades ago, investors could hold securities in their own names. Physical certificates were common, and ownership was straightforward.

As we explain in our new book, “The Next Big Crash: Conspiracy, Collapse, and the Men Behind History’s Biggest Heist,” that changed as powerful financial interests pushed to redesign the securities system. Big banks and Wall Street institutions worked to centralize ownership and reduce investor rights — changes that received little public attention and limited scrutiny.

Today most securities sit inside the Depository Trust Company system. DTC — through its nominee legal entity, Cede & Co. — appears as the direct registered owner of those securities, not you.

DTC is a subsidiary of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, which is owned by the financial institutions that use it. DTCC is not publicly traded, so ordinary investors can’t own its shares.

RELATED: Bidenflation? Trumpflation? Try unipartyflation

DNY59 via iStock/Getty Images

The ‘security entitlement’ system

The DTC structure was only the beginning. In the 1990s, lawmakers revised Article 8 of the Uniform Commercial Code — the state-law framework that governs securities ownership nationwide. Those changes formalized what we now have: an indirect holding system built around “security entitlements,” not direct title.

In plain terms: When you hold most securities through a brokerage account, you hold a legal claim against the broker. You typically do not hold specific, segregated property registered in your name.

That distinction matters because Article 8 also sets priority rules when an intermediary fails. If a brokerage pledges securities credited to customers as collateral for financing, the lender can obtain priority over other claimants. When multiple parties assert rights to the same pool of assets, the law decides who stands first in line — and customers are not always first, even when they paid for the investments and believed they owned them.

In the next major crash, if a Wall Street firm uses customer assets to prop itself up, ordinary investors could take heavy losses. And that can be true even if the firm wasn’t allowed to use customer assets that way. Article 8 was written to protect large institutions first and investors second.

Why ‘protections’ may not protect you

Brokerage firms operate under customer-protection and segregation rules. The Securities Investor Protection Corporation offers limited coverage in certain failures.

But those safeguards don’t erase Article 8’s priority structure. SIPC coverage is also too limited to address widespread losses in a broad crisis. And even when a broker violates rules, a secured creditor’s priority claim can survive unless the creditor itself acted in bad faith or colluded.

In a cascading crisis — multiple failures, margin calls, forced liquidations, and liquidity freezes — these limitations stop looking academic. Article 8 determines whether customer assets remain with customers or flow to institutional creditors.

RELATED: Washington printed promises. Gold called the bluff.

Damian Lemanski/Bloomberg via Getty Images

What investors should understand now

For decades, policymakers sold this transformation as technical modernization. Trading volumes rose. Paperwork bottlenecks appeared. Those problems were real.

But the “solution” did more than speed settlement. It changed who holds legal title and who gets paid first when stress hits.

In ordinary times, the structure runs quietly. Investors see statements, dividends, and confirmations, and few ask how the system records ownership.

The difference becomes decisive when an intermediary fails. At that point, priority rules — not your assumptions — govern what happens next.

What must change

There’s still a path forward.

Because the Uniform Commercial Code is state law, state legislatures can strengthen investor protections and clarify priority rules. Reform doesn’t require blowing up modern markets. It requires aligning the legal structure with what ordinary Americans reasonably believe they own.

The next financial crisis will arrive sooner or later. What’s already set is the legal framework that will govern when it does.

If Americans believe they directly own the assets in their retirement accounts, the law should reflect that expectation — before the next crisis tests it.

​Stock market, Market crash, Savings, Retirement accounts, Uniform commercial code, Financial crisis, Opinion & analysis, Ownership 

When BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey first publicly questioned the narrative surrounding dinosaurs, she was called “dangerous” and “disgusting” for attempting to poke holes in paleontology.

But that response only made her “more resolved” in her skepticism.

“It is not that I don’t think that giant animals existed a long time ago. It is just that I don’t think we know what they looked like and that we don’t know what they sounded like. I know we’ve got fossils and different things like that. We actually don’t have any complete fossil of a T-Rex, for example,” she explains.

“We’re just kind of going a little bit on deductive reasoning and vibes. We definitely don’t know that they had scales. We definitely don’t know what a pterodactyl sounded like, and we’re all just supposed to believe it because ‘the science,’” she continues.

And the latest Netflix docuseries “The Dinosaurs” isn’t putting Stuckey’s beliefs to rest either.

“Earth, 66 million years ago during the great reign of the dinosaurs. Majestic creatures, giants and monsters, that can often seem more imagined than real,” Morgan Freeman says in a clip from the docuseries.

“That was an Easter egg right there from Morgan Freedom, that they seem more imagined than real, because they are,” Stuckey comments.

As Morgan Freeman continues to narrate, he also continues to make grand claims about breeds of dinosaurs, which Stuckey points out may as well have the same bone structures as chickens.

“This is a fantasy they have. This is the paleontologist version of ‘Lord of the Rings,’” Stuckey says.

“They Darwined a little too hard, and they came up with this world, and we’re all supposed to trust these people,” she says.

“I saw someone on Instagram say, ‘You’ll believe in the Ankylosaurus, but you won’t believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord?’” she continues.

“You have faith, atheist. You do. You might have more faith than me, because you watch this documentary, and you’re like, ‘This for sure happened,’” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Netflix, Dinosaur skepticism, Dinosaurs, Trust the science, Netflix documentary, Conspiracy theory, Conspiracy 

A high school student is accused of a massive sextortion scheme that allegedly involved coercing underage victims to film themselves having sex.

Investigators say that 18-year-old Zachariah Abraham Meyers posed as an attractive adult film star from the Netherlands on social media platforms that included Snapchat and TikTok.

One of the victims told police they were coerced to film themselves having sex with two separate men. Ten males were filmed on school grounds.

Meyers is a senior at Peters Township High School in Pennsylvania.

After luring the underage victims to communicate with him online, Meyers then tricked them into sharing sexually explicit videos and photos with him, according to investigators.

In two cases, he demanded $500 from the victims after threatening to release the embarrassing material, according to a criminal complaint. One of those victims refused the extortion threat, and Meyers allegedly responded by sending a naked photo of the victim to the victim’s sister on Instagram.

Thirty underage boys were questioned in the investigation, and police said they identified at least 21 victims, of whom 14 sent pornographic images to Meyers. The victims range in age from 14 years old to 17 years old.

He is also alleged to have posed as a man from Arizona and an unidentified woman.

One of the victims told police they were coerced to film themselves having sex with two separate men. Ten males were filmed on school grounds.

Meyers was arrested and booked into the Washington County Jail in February and was charged with 304 felony counts that included:

Trafficking in minors;Sexual extortion;Unlawful contact with a minor;Distribution of child sexual abuse material; andCriminal use of communication facility.

Investigators said there could be additional charges as they continued to analyze the suspect’s devices.

RELATED: Two Nigerian brothers admit to sextortion scam with more than 100 victims, including Michigan teen who committed suicide

“I’m shocked!” said Jason Broveck, a parent of a student at the same high school. “I mean, it’s a lot of information to take in at once. It’s overwhelming.”

Police warned parents that they should keep their children off devices with access to online strangers or carefully monitor any online access children have.

Peters Township has about 23K residents and is located near the southwestern border of Pennsylvania.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Sextortion scheme adult film star, Zachariah meyers sextortion scheme, Massive pennsylvania hs sextortion scheme, Social media sextortion, Crime