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Dan Bongino served his final day as deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday, returning to civilian life on Sunday after less than a year of public service.

Bongino first announced mid-December that he would be departing from the bureau in the New Year. On Saturday, Bongino made his departure official, signing off in a post on X.

‘I gave up everything for this.’

“It was a busy last day on the job,” Bongino said. “This will be my last post on this account. Tomorrow I return to civilian life.”

“It’s been an incredible year thanks to the leadership and decisiveness of President Trump,” Bongino added. “It was the honor of a lifetime to work with Director Patel, and to serve you, the American people. See you on the other side.”

RELATED: Trump suggests Dan Bongino will leave the FBI: ‘He wants to go back to his show’

Photo by Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

President Donald Trump praised Bongino, who first assumed office in March.

“Dan did a great job,” Trump said. “I think he wants to go back to his show.”

Ahead of his departure, Bongino spoke about the toll his job had taken on his personal life and his family, pointing to the demanding nature of the position.

RELATED: Bongino and Bondi clash over botched handling of Epstein files

“I gave up everything for this,” Bongino told “Fox & Friends” in a May appearance.

“I stare at these four walls all day in D.C., by myself, divorced from my wife — not divorced, but I mean separated — and it’s hard,” Bongino added. “I mean, we love each other, and it’s hard to be apart.”

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​Donald trump, Dan bongino, Kash patel, Fbi, Trump administration, Federal bureau of investigation, Fox & friends, Politics 

For decades, Americans heard the same justification for high drug prices. Pharmaceutical executives insisted those prices were unavoidable. Research costs required them. Innovation depended on them. The United States, as the world’s most open market, had to pay more than everyone else.

Then Eli Lilly cut the monthly price of one of its flagship weight-loss drugs, Zepbound.

If lower prices matter, then incentives matter more than bureaucracy. Competition and consumer access drive real change.

Nothing about the drug changed. No new scientific breakthrough appeared. The only thing that changed was competition. Once real pressure entered the market, Lilly found room in its pricing model that executives had long claimed did not exist.

The market responded quickly. Novo Nordisk, Lilly’s primary rival, lowered its prices soon after. This did not reflect a sudden gain in efficiency. It reflected fear of losing ground to a competitor.

That is how functioning markets work. When one major player moves, others adjust. The correction happens faster than any federal agency could hope to manage.

The irony is hard to miss. For years, the industry claimed margins were fixed and untouchable. Executives warned that any shift would damage shareholders and undermine global health. Yet the moment one company blinked, others followed. Consumers saw relief not because regulators intervened, but because competition exposed the old narrative as hollow.

Another force reinforced that shift. On Nov. 6, the White House announced a pricing agreement with major drug manufacturers scheduled to take effect in 2026. The agreement aims to narrow the gap between U.S. prices and those in other advanced economies and establishes a purchasing framework that makes reductions easier to implement.

That move marked a break from Washington’s habit of passively accepting industry talking points. The administration did not override the market. It amplified momentum competition had already created. Companies that once refused to consider cuts began to bend once the political cost of rigidity became clear. The announcement accelerated the trend, but competition started it.

A larger reality deserves attention. Major pharmaceutical companies have posted enormous profits for years. They have spent billions on stock buybacks and shareholder payouts while executive compensation soared. Market valuations across the sector reached historic highs. Lilly even became the first pharmaceutical company to surpass a trillion-dollar valuation.

Profit itself is not the problem. But competition forcing these firms to behave more like the quasi-utilities they resemble marks a welcome change from a system long treated as untouchable.

RELATED: The party that made life more expensive wants credit for noticing

byemo via iStock/Getty Images

That system rests on a global arrangement in which Americans shoulder a disproportionate share of drug development costs. Wealthy nations negotiate prices or impose caps. The United States does not. The gap between what Americans pay and what others pay funds buybacks, dividends, and executive packages. Shareholders collect the upside.

The disparity speaks for itself. Drugs that cost hundreds of dollars overseas cost thousands here. The industry defended that gap by warning that research would collapse if prices fell. The current price cuts prove otherwise. Pipelines remain intact. Investment continues. Profitability holds. The model did not break when prices moved downward. It adjusted.

These developments expose a simple truth. Prices never reflected necessity. Incentives shaped them, reinforced by limited competition and political deference. Competition cracked open an inflexible model. The White House helped widen the opening.

Policymakers should learn from that sequence. If lower prices matter, then incentives matter more than bureaucracy. Competition and consumer access drive real change. The bloated regulatory machinery Washington favors often delays it. The market moved before Congress could even respond.

For Americans struggling to afford essential medication, that lesson matters most. Competition remains the strongest and most reliable force for bringing prices down.

It worked here. It can work again — if policymakers allow markets to function and pharmaceutical companies choose access over insulation.

​Opinion & analysis, Drugs, Drug prices, Big pharma, Pharmaceutical companies, Novo nordisk, Eli lilly, Weight loss drugs, Free markets, Congress, Donald trump, Executive orders 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote from a prison cell, “It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.” He wrote those words after the world had closed in, when faith could no longer remain theoretical.

I live with someone who understands exactly what he meant.

In those moments, belief stops being a feeling and becomes a claim. Not something you summon, but something you test.

My wife, Gracie, has lived with disabilities for virtually her entire life. Hospital rooms and operating schedules do not interrupt our life — they form its familiar terrain. Over time, suffering has stopped being a concept and become a place we recognize.

I also have a friend who understands what Bonhoeffer was describing.

Her name is Joni Eareckson Tada. A diving accident in her teens left her a quadriplegic. Her life has unfolded under paralysis, chronic pain, and illness. She does not approach suffering from a distance.

Last year, during one of Gracie’s long hospital stays, Joni called.

Most people asked about Gracie. Joni did too. But then she asked about me.

That question deserved more than a stock reply.

I paused.

Moments like that strip away emotional self-examination and force you to examine your claims instead.

As I spoke with Joni, I shared something that has steadied me for decades.

In our church, there came a moment when the pastor would stop, look out over the congregation, and ask a single question: “Christian, what do you believe?”

We did not improvise. We did not search for language that felt expressive or current. We stood and recited the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. No personal spin. No tailoring belief to the moment. Just a clear declaration of what had been received.

That question stayed with me.

It returned again and again over the years, especially in places where explanations had lost their usefulness. I learned the limits of “why.” Even good answers rarely hold steady there.

In those moments, belief stops being a feeling and becomes a claim. Not something you summon, but something you test.

If Christ is who I say He is, then what does that require of me here?

I was not trying to manufacture courage or resolve. I was asking whether the faith I professed in calm settings could bear weight when standing itself cost something.

“Christian, what do you believe?”

Over time, many of the questions I once carried narrowed to that one. Not because the pain diminished or the losses stopped coming, but because belief, when real, clarifies responsibility.

The apostle Peter tells believers to be ready to give an answer for the hope within them. That readiness has nothing to do with eloquence. It comes from knowing where you stand.

As a new year begins, many caregivers feel little sense of reset, except for the deductible and the co-pay.

Some stand outside an ICU, looking through glass at someone they love. Others stand in different hallways, facing different kinds of loss. Different rooms. The same ache.

RELATED: Do not pass the plow: The danger of declaring a golden age without repentance

John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Bonhoeffer did not write from a place of safety or control. He wrote from confinement, where faith could no longer remain theoretical. Many recognize that narrowing, the sense that life has closed in and the ground beneath you has given way.

Faith is learned there, not discussed.

Exhaustion thins memory. Words scatter. Not everyone can recall creeds when sleep runs short and decisions carry real weight. But belief does not measure itself by recall. It reveals itself by posture.

When the floor gives way, you still need to know where to stand.

If He is Lord at all, then He is Lord of all.

Not only of sanctuaries, but of hospital corridors.

Not only of strength, but of weakness.

Not only of moments we would choose, but of moments we would never script.

That confession does not remove pain. It does not explain every loss. But it does tell us where to stand when the world presses in.

And when glass separates you from the one you love, whatever room that glass happens to be in, the question does not stay abstract.

It turns personal.

Christian, what do you believe?

​Opinion & analysis, Faith, Dietrich bonhoeffer, Christianity, Caregivers, Caregiving, Creed, Life, Illness, Hospitals, Intensive care unit, Belief 

President Donald Trump announced that the United States will be running Venezuela following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro.

American military forces conducted a “large scale strike” in Venezuela where Maduro and his wife were captured and transported on the USS Iwo Jima. Following the operation, Trump announced that the United States is “going to run” Venezuela until a “proper transition can take place” in the government.

‘It was dark, and it was deadly.’

“We can’t take a chance that somebody else takes over Venezuela that doesn’t have the good of the Venezuelan people in mind,” Trump said, flanked by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other officials. “We’ve had decades of that. We’re not going to let that happen.”

Trump also said American oil companies are going to “go in” and “fix the badly broken infrastructure.”

RELATED: Maduro captured following ‘large scale strike’ in Venezuela, Trump says

Maduro and his wife were indicted for their “campaign of deadly narco-terrorism against the United States and its citizens.” Both are en route to the Southern District of New York, where they will be tried.

Trump also noted that no American servicemen were killed in the operation and all military equipment was recovered.

RELATED: Trump says US struck drug-linked site in Venezuela: ‘We hit them very hard’

Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

“All Venezuelan military capacities were rendered powerless as the men and women of our military, working with U.S. law enforcement, successfully captured Maduro in the dead of night,” Trump said.

“It was dark, and it was deadly.”

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​Politics, Donald trump, Marco rubio, Pete hegseth, Venezuela, Regime change, Oil, Nicolas maduro 

Ten months ahead of November’s midterms, political and economic crosscurrents are colliding. Which of these conflicting trends prevail will greatly shape the next two years. And possibly even longer.

Midterm elections are always important. Besides gauging the country’s political mood, they have proven integral to maintaining America’s political equilibrium.

For good or ill, incumbent presidents and their party own the economy. The question is: Which economy will Republicans own?

They are the “ebb” to the “flow” of America’s political tide. Historically, every four years a large tide of voters go to the polls and elect a president. Then every two years, the large voter flow ebbs back, and the president’s party suffers accordingly.

This midterm is particularly important to Trump because he has proven susceptible to being baited by his opponents. After 2018, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) returned to the House speakership and unrelentingly harassed Trump over the last two years of his first term. These distractions and obstructions­ — especially during COVID — were undoubtedly a factor in Trump’s narrow 2020 Electoral College defeat.

Today’s political crosscurrents are pronounced. We know the president’s party historically loses seats. The last two two-term presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, suffered congressional losses averaging 22 House seats and 7.5 Senate seats.

Such losses would hand Democrats control of Congress, giving them a House majority larger than Republicans’ narrow edge and a Senate majority bigger than the GOP’s current six-seat margin. Such outcomes would end Trump’s legislative agenda, and Democrats could set their own. To understand the potential impact, play back the recent funding impasse when Democrats shut the government down for the longest period ever — despite lacking control of either chamber.

While Trump would be able to veto Democratic legislation and Republican numbers would be ample to uphold his vetoes, Democrats would have a formal hand in shaping the political agenda. This could greatly help their 2028 presidential prospects.

RELATED: Republicans are letting Democrats lie about affordability

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Current politics are blunting the historical midterm flow, however. Trump is divisive, with just a 43.4% favorable rating; however, his job approval rating of 43.1% is higher than Obama’s (42.4%) at the same point in his second term. Further, Democrats are in abysmal shape with just a 32.5% favorability rating.

The current 2026 political map is also favorable to Republicans. While they have more seats (22 to 13) to protect in the Senate, the toss-up seats are evenly split: Republicans with Maine and North Carolina; Democrats with Georgia and Michigan. Mid-decade House redistricting efforts are also likely to favor Republicans somewhat; if the Supreme Court should allow race to be disregarded in drawing House districts when it rules on the Louisiana case currently before it, then even more redistricting could occur and amount to an even greater Republican advantage.

Today’s economic crosscurrents are equally pronounced. For good or ill, incumbent presidents and their party own the economy. The question is: Which economy will Republicans own?

At the micro level, the growing issue is “affordability.” Nationally, this is an overhang of inflation that surged during Biden’s administration and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 — a 40-year high.

Locally, affordability played well in New York City (which has been plagued by Democratic policies of rent control and excessive taxation, regulation, and litigation) in 2025’s mayoral race. It also played well in Virginia, where it linked powerfully into the record-long government shutdown. Democrats are therefore seizing on the issue with some success — particularly in the establishment media — and are trying to nationalize it.

At the macro level, the economy is a different story. Despite “expert” predictions that Trump’s tariffs, green agenda rollback, attack on illegal immigration, and reduction in government would combine to wreck the economy, the reverse has occurred. In Trump’s first two full quarters in office, GDP is averaging over 4% growth: up 3.8% in the second quarter and 4.3% in the third. Inflation has also been moderate — 2.7% in November — certainly not the spike experts predicted and a far cry from the previous four years.

RELATED: Conservatives face a choice in ’26: realignment or extinction

MediaProduction via iStock/Getty Images

So politically, depending on your perspective, Republicans look to outperform historically. Their Senate majority looks safe for now, with the chance that Republicans could even gain a seat or two. By contrast, Republicans’ House majority looks vulnerable; this could be offset slightly by current mid-decade redistricting efforts. Yet even just half the average loss of the last two administrations in their second midterms would mean an 11-seat swing and a 226-209 Democratic majority.

Economically, the question is whether the micro or the macro prevails. Can the micro become a national mood outside Democratic areas, or will the macro of strong GDP growth and moderate inflation have time to prevail? Expect political midterm fortunes to respond accordingly.

What is certain is that the midterms will shape the last two years of Trump’s second term. And possibly determine who will run and who will win the presidency in 2028.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, 2026 midterm election, Economy, Economic growth, Inflation, Gross domestic product, Gdp, Prices, Affordability, Republicans, Democrats, House of representatives, Senate, Majority, Redistricting, Texas, California, Supreme court, Rent control, Taxes, Regulation, Litigation, Lawfare, Immigration, Illegal immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Mass deportations 

A North Carolina man who allegedly planned to use knives and hammers for a New Year’s Eve attack at a grocery store and a fast food restaurant in support of ISIS was arrested and charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, federal officials said Friday.

The Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina said a criminal complaint was filed Wednesday and unsealed Friday after Christian Sturdivant appeared in federal court in Charlotte. Sturdivant turned 18 just two weeks ago, according to jail records.

‘May Allah curse the cross worshipers.’

“This successful collaboration between federal and local law enforcement saved American lives from a horrific terrorist attack on New Year’s Eve,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said. “The Department of Justice remains vigilant in our pursuit of evil ISIS sympathizers — anyone plotting to commit such depraved attacks will face the full force of the law.”

FBI Director Kash Patel added that “the accused allegedly wanted to be a soldier for ISIS and made plans to commit a violent attack on New Year’s Eve in support of that terrorist group, but the FBI and our partners put a stop to that.”

The FBI in Charlotte on Dec. 18 received information that an individual later identified as Sturdivant was making multiple social media posts in support of ISIS, a designated foreign terrorist organization, according to allegations in the arrest affidavit.

Sturdivant in early December posted an image depicting two miniature figurines of Jesus with on-screen text that read, “May Allah curse the cross worshipers,” officials said. The post allegedly is consistent with ISIS rhetoric calling for the extermination of all non-believers, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims who do not agree with ISIS’ extreme ideology.

RELATED: ‘Terrorist scum’: Trump announces Christmas Day strikes in Nigeria in response to persecution of Christians

Image source: Department of Justice

The criminal complaint alleges that Sturdivant on or about Dec. 12 began communicating with an online covert employee, or “OC,” whom Sturdivant believed was an ISIS member, officials said.

Sturdivant told the OC, “I will do jihad soon” and proclaimed he was “a soldier of the state,” meaning ISIS, officials said, adding that on Dec. 14, Sturdivant allegedly sent an online message to the OC with an image of two hammers and a knife. This is significant because an article in the 2016 issue of ISIS’ propaganda magazine promoted the use of knives to conduct terror attacks in Western countries, officials said, adding that the article inspired actual attacks in other countries. Later, Sturdivant told the OC that he planned to attack a specific grocery store in North Carolina, officials said. Sturdivant also told the OC about his plans to purchase a firearm to use along with the knives during the attack, according to the arrest affidavit.

What’s more, officials said Sturdivant on Dec. 19 allegedly sent the OC a voice recording of Sturdivant pledging “Bayat,” which is a loyalty oath to ISIS.

On Dec. 29, 2025, law enforcement conducted a search warrant at Sturdivant’s residence, where they discovered handwritten documents, one of which was titled “New Years Attack 2026,” officials said.

RELATED: FBI stops radical pro-Palestinian New Year’s Eve terror plot: Report

Image source: Department of Justice

The document listed items such as a vest, mask, tactical gloves, and two knives allegedly to be used in the attack, officials said, adding that it also described a goal of stabbing as many civilians as possible, with the total number of victims to be as high as 20 to 21.

The note also included a section labeled as “martyrdom op,” which described a plan to attack police responding to the site of the attack so Sturdivant would die a martyr, officials said.

RELATED: Trans-identifying radicals among those arrested in alleged planned New Year’s Eve terror plot

The complaint alleges that Sturdivant lived with a relative who secured knives and hammers so Sturdivant could not use them for harm, officials said. Yet, law enforcement seized from Sturdivant’s bedroom a blue hammer, a wooden handled hammer, and two butcher knives which appeared hidden underneath the defendant’s bed, officials said. These items appear to be the ones depicted in the online message Sturdivant previously sent to the OC, officials said.

Law enforcement also seized from Sturdivant’s bedroom a list of targets, as well as tactical gloves and a vest, acquired as part of the defendant’s planned attack, officials said.

Sturdivant remains in federal custody, officials said, adding that he faces a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison if convicted. He was behind bars Friday night at the Gaston County Jail with no bond.

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​Isis, Fbi, Crime, New year’s eve, North carolina, Thwarted terror plot, Christian sturdivant, Arrest, Politics 

Nicolás Maduro was “captured and flown out” of Venezuela after the United States carried out another strike, President Donald Trump announced.

After months of anticipation and several strikes against alleged drug cartel boats, Trump greenlit the most aggressive military action of his second term in office.

‘Maduro was arrested by American officials and will stand trial in the United States.’

“The United States of America has successfully carried out a large scale strike against Venezuela and its leader, President Nicolas Maduro, who has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country,” Trump announced Saturday.

“This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. Details to follow.”

Trump is expected to speak at a Mar-A-Lago press conference at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

RELATED: Trump says US struck drug-linked site in Venezuela: ‘We hit them very hard’

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with several Republican senators about the capture, noting that Maduro was arrested by American officials and will stand trial in the United States.

“[Rubio] informed me that Nicolás Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States, and that the kinetic action we saw tonight was deployed to protect and defend those executing the arrest warrant,” Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said in a post on X. “This action likely falls within the president’s inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to protect U.S. personnel from an actual or imminent attack.”

“The interim government in Venezuela must now decide whether to continue the drug trafficking and colluding with adversaries like Iran and Cuba or whether to act like a normal nation and return to the civilized world,” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said in a post on X. “I urge them to choose wisely.”

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​Donald trump, Drug trafficking, Maduro, Mar-a-lago, Marco rubio, Mike lee, Nicolas maduro, No new wars, Politics, Tom cotton, Venezuela, Venezuela strikes 

The fight over free expression in American higher education reached a troubling milestone in 2025. According to data from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, efforts to censor speech on college campuses hit record highs across multiple fronts — and most succeeded.

Let’s start with the raw numbers. In 2025, FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire, Students Under Fire, and Campus Deplatforming databases collectively tracked:

525 attempts to sanction scholars for their speech, more than one a day, with 460 of them resulting in punishment.273 attempts to punish students for expression, more than five a week, with 176 of these attempts succeeding.160 attempts to deplatform speakers, about three each week, with 99 of them succeeding.

That’s 958 censorship attempts in total, nearly three per day on campuses across the country. For comparison, FIRE’s next-highest total was 477 two years ago.

The 525 scholar sanction attempts are the highest ever recorded in FIRE’s database, which spans 2000 to the present. Even when a large-scale incident at the U.S. Naval Academy is treated as just a single entry, the 2025 total still breaks records.

The common denominator across these censorship campaigns is not ideology — it’s intolerance.

Twenty-nine scholars were fired, including 18 who were terminated since September for social media comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Student sanction attempts also hit a new high, and deplatforming efforts — our records date back to 1998 — rank third all-time, behind 2023 and 2024.

The problem is actually worse because FIRE’s data undercounts the true scale of campus censorship. Why? The data relies on publicly available information, and an unknown number of incidents, especially those that may involve quiet administrative pressure, never make the public record.

Then there’s the chilling effect.

Scholars are self-censoring. Students are staying silent. Speakers are being disinvited or shouted down. And administrators, eager to appease the loudest voices, are launching investigations and handing out suspensions and dismissals with questionable regard for academic freedom, due process, or free speech.

RELATED: Liberals’ twisted views on Charlie Kirk assassination, censorship captured by a damning poll

Deagreez via iStock/Getty Images

Some critics argue that the total number of incidents is small compared to the roughly 4,000 colleges in the country. But this argument collapses under scrutiny.

While there are technically thousands of institutions labeled as “colleges” or “universities,” roughly 600 of them educate about 80% of undergraduates enrolled at not-for-profit four-year schools. Many of the rest of these “colleges” and “universities” are highly specialized or vocational programs. This includes a number of beauty academies, truck-driving schools, and similar institutions — in other words, campuses that aren’t at the heart of the free-speech debate.

These censorship campaigns aren’t coming from only one side of the political spectrum. FIRE’s data shows, for instance, that liberal students are punished for pro-Palestinian activism, conservative faculty are targeted for controversial opinions on gender or race, and speaking events featuring all points of view are targeted for cancellation.

The two most targeted student groups on campus? Students for Justice in Palestine and Turning Point USA. If that doesn’t make this point clear, nothing will.

The common denominator across these censorship campaigns is not ideology — it’s intolerance.

RELATED: Teenager sues high school after tribute to Charlie Kirk was called vandalism

rudall30 via iStock/Getty Images

So where do we go from here?

We need courage: from faculty, from students, and especially from administrators. It’s easy to defend speech when it’s popular. It’s harder when the ideas are offensive or inconvenient. But that’s when it matters most.

Even more urgently, higher education needs a cultural reset. Universities must recommit to the idea that exposure to ideas and speech that one dislikes or finds offensive is not “violence.” That principle is essential for democracy, not just for universities.

This year’s record number of campus censorship attempts should be a wake-up call for campus administrators. For decades, many allowed a culture of censorship to fester, dismissing concerns as overblown, isolated, or a politically motivated myth. Now, with governors, state legislatures, members of Congress, and even the White House moving aggressively to police campus expression, some administrators are finally pushing back. But this pushback from administrators doesn’t seem principled. Instead, it seems more like an attempt to shield their institutions from outside political interference.

That’s not leadership. It’s damage control. And it’s what got higher education into this mess in the first place.

If university leaders want to reclaim their role as stewards of free inquiry, they cannot act just when governmental pressure threatens their autonomy. They also need to be steadfast when internal intolerance threatens their mission. A true commitment to academic freedom means defending expression even when it is unpopular or offensive. That is the price of intellectual integrity in a free society.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Higher education, Censorship, Freedom of speech, Free expression, Free speech, First amendment, Tpusa, Cancel culture, Students for justice in palestine, Colleges and universities, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk memorial, Foundation for individual rights and expression, Fire, Self-censorship, Scholars, Fired 

It’s impossible to imagine that anyone reading this on their computer, tablet, or smartphone has made it to 2025 without hearing about the dangers of blue light.

What’s more, for every warning about those blue-light hazards comes the equally ubiquitous solution: blue-light glasses.

Blue-light glasses are built with lenses that shield the eye from shorter, higher energy wavelengths of light.

Since screens are ubiquitous now and there’s unfortunately very little chance that they will be going anywhere, the next best solution is to learn to live with them to the best of our ability. But that leaves an important question to be answered when it comes to dealing with blue light: Do those blue-light glasses actually work, or are they a gimmick?

RELATED: Hello, darkness, my old friend: How to get your body’s circadian rhythms back on the beat

Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

LED blues

Most people have seen the studies: Blue light, which is emitted by screens and indoor LED lightbulbs, may cause quite a few health problems, including the disruption of your circadian rhythm, leading to poorer quality sleep. Some believe that this is because blue light signals to the body that it is time to be alert and awake, which is obviously problematic when phones are used at night.

Blue light may also increase stress and lower cognitive output, but one might be surprised to learn that other studies have found the opposite to be true.

It’s also important to note that blue light is natural and is emitted from the sun at a higher frequency than from screens or LED bulbs. However, many have turned to blue-light glasses as a solution to eye fatigue and other issues as well.

People whose job involves staring at a screen for long periods of time have often reported eyestrain, which is sometimes called computer vision syndrome.

Blue-light glasses are built with lenses that shield the eye from shorter, higher energy wavelengths of light, notably blue light.

Science ambivalent

However, the science is still quite ambivalent on the question of blue-light glasses and their effectiveness, with most sources leaning toward saying you do not need them.

In a 2023 study that examined 17 different blue-light-filtering lens trials, it was discovered that the blue-light glasses had little to no effect on any of the relevant symptoms, including sleep quality and eye strain.

So while you may not need to go get any blue-light glasses according to these studies, the question stands: Can anything be done to reduce the negative effects of blue light?

20-20-20 vision

The answer is yes, but it’s not nearly as fancy as a pair of new spectacles. Eye doctors recommend avoiding screens at night or turning on the “night” filter on your phone to reduce the blue-light display, effectively negating any need for lenses in the first place.

“There is reason to think blue-light exposure may signal our brains that we should stay awake, so reducing blue light in the evening may be beneficial and glasses may help,” Dr. Craig See, an ophthalmologist and cornea specialist, told US News. “However, devices can automatically reduce blue light in the screens.

Others recommend following the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds or more. This will hopefully reduce any eye discomfort without adding any unnecessary accessories.

​Align, Blue light, Blue light glasses, Eyesight, Eye health, Tech, Screens, Screen time, Doctors, Eye doctor, Circadian rhythms 

Brian J. Cole Jr. denied placing pipe bombs on Capitol Hill in January 2021 for more than two hours under FBI questioning after his arrest in Virginia on Dec. 4. Cole said he did not recognize the person in a gray hoodie shown on video walking with a backpack on Jan. 5.

After two hours of questioning, Cole, 30, told FBI agents that “everything is just blank” and the interview was “a little too much to process,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice memorandum filed in the criminal case.

‘This could result in the collection of misleading information and false confessions during criminal justice interviews.’

Agents then leaned on him, stating he could face more criminal charges if he lied to them. Then they left him alone in the interrogation room for 20 minutes.

When they returned, agents asked Cole again if he is the suspect shown on surveillance video. “This time, the defendant paused for approximately fifteen seconds, placed his head face-down on the table and answered, ‘Yes,’” the DOJ stated.

The FBI’s tactics in interrogating a man the defense asserts has autism spectrum disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder will likely become a major bone of contention for defense attorneys. Cole, whose grandmother has said he operates at the level of a 16-year-old, had no lawyer present during four hours of questioning. According to the FBI, Cole signed a waiver of his Miranda rights.

‘Overwhelming evidence’?

In the first real courtroom clash in the pipe-bombs case on Dec. 30, defense attorneys fought back against a DOJ memo claiming there is “overwhelming evidence” that Cole planted “viable” pipe bombs near the Democratic National Committee building and the Capitol Hill Club during a 22-minute span on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.

Defense attorney J. Alex Little argued for Cole’s release from jail pending trial in a 16-page memo. During a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh, Little said Cole is not a danger to anyone. Pretrial detention is an extraordinary measure reserved for the few defendants who are a provable risk to society no matter what restrictions are imposed by the federal court.

Judge Sharbaugh said he received a two-count indictment on Dec. 29 from a District of Columbia Superior Court grand jury charging Cole with the same two counts that are in the federal criminal complaint.

The DOJ posted the indictment on the court docket, dated Jan. 2. It was signed by Jocelyn Ballantine, deputy chief of the National Security Section at the DOJ. Ballantine was previously a top official in the Capitol Siege Section under then-Attorney General Merrick Garland. Her appointment to the pipe-bomb case was greeted with outrage by former Jan. 6 defendants, who questioned why President Donald Trump had not removed her from the DOJ.

The suspect was across the street from a Capitol Police squad car while walking to the Jan. 5 bomb drop, video shows. Image from Capitol Police CCTV

Judge Sharbaugh did not immediately accept the indictment because there is a legal question whether D.C.’s federal district court can accept a grand jury indictment from the local Superior Court. In D.C., the Superior Court is akin to state, county, and local courts in the 50 states.

A ruling by U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg that Superior Court indictments can be accepted in federal district court is on appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Judge Sharbaugh asked both sides in the Cole case to submit briefs on the matter by close of business Dec. 31. He promised a ruling “in short order”on whether to accept the indictment and whether to release Cole into the custody of his grandmother.

Cole’s attorneys submitted a 20-page memo as directed by Judge Sharbaugh, but the DOJ filing didn’t appear on the official docket until Jan. 2.

Sharbaugh initially sidestepped the indictment issue and the 14-day requirement for a preliminary hearing and on Friday issued a ruling that Cole must remain jailed until trial. The judge said the DOJ convinced him “by clear and convincing evidence that there are no conditions of release that can reasonably assure the safety of the community.”

Judge Sharbaugh said he can make an “independent probable cause determination” even without an indictment or holding a preliminary hearing. He labeled the defense arguments “wrong,” stating that “longstanding caselaw in this district is consistent with that understanding.”

A short time later, Judge Sharbaugh issued an order stating he would accept the Superior Court indictment of Cole because the DOJ “represents that it will promptly seek a superseding indictment from a federal grand jury panel as soon as those panels reconvene.”

The DOJ’s briefing on the legality of the judge accepting the Superior Court indictment didn’t appear on the case docket until Friday, after the judge issued his decision. A portion of the document was redacted that described “extenuating circumstances” faced by the DOJ because federal grand juries were not available from Dec. 22 through year’s end.

Blaze News reached out to Little and the DOJ for comment but did not receive a reply by publication time.

Little sought to have a preliminary hearing Tuesday, because Cole was well beyond the 14 days prosecutors had under the law to secure an indictment or submit to an adversarial preliminary hearing. Cole made an initial court appearance on Dec. 5.

Police walked right past the DNC pipe bomb to first look under a bush where the bomb suspect sat 17 hours earlier. Photos by U.S. Capitol Police

Little said prosecutors told him they never sought an indictment from a federal grand jury. They rushed to seek an indictment from the Superior Court grand jury on Dec. 29 only after the defense made it clear it would demand a probable-cause hearing. A preliminary hearing allows the defense to cross-examine witnesses, unlike a grand jury, which hears only from prosecutors.

“The government wants to avoid a preliminary hearing, where its evidence will be tested in public,” Little wrote on Dec. 31. “Rather than subject its proof to cross-examination, the government sprinted to a different court — supervised by different judges and subject to different rules of evidence, privilege, and juror competency — to secure a last-minute indictment.

“Only after defense counsel insisted on holding the preliminary hearing did the government pursue its current path — seeking a federal indictment from a D.C. Superior Court grand jury,” Little said. “… The government either must present evidence at a preliminary hearing sufficient to establish probable cause, or the Court must release Mr. Cole from custody without conditions.”

Prosecutors contend that Cole gave a full confession to agents on Dec. 4.

“The defendant explained that he made the black powder in the devices using charcoal, Lilly Miller sulfur dust and potassium nitrate that he purchased from Lowe’s,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Jones. “The defendant mixed these ingredients in a Pyrex bowel [sic] and used a spoon or measuring cup to pour the black powder into the devices.

“According to the defendant, he learned to make the black powder from a video game that listed the ingredients and he also viewed various science-related videos on YouTube to assist him in creating the devices.”

The document did not identify the video game or provide specifics on the YouTube videos that allegedly guided Cole on making the bombs.

Little has moved twice to have his client released from the Rappahannock Regional Jail — either under court supervision or without conditions.

Prosecutors insist that Cole is a danger to the public, based primarily on the seriousness of the charges against him. Little told Judge Sharbaugh that Cole has maintained employment in the family bail bonds business since Jan. 6 and has no criminal record or evidence of political activism or online postings advocating violence.

Reset cell phone 943 times

The revelation of Cole’s autism and OCD puts the evidence — from the confession to the claim that he factory-reset his phone 943 times and beyond — and charges in a new light and raises the possibility that the defense will seek to suppress evidence as the case moves toward trial.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association, those with Level 1 autism need support or will exhibit “noticeable impairments.” In contrast, the APA characterizes Level 2 autism as “requiring substantial support” and Level 3 as “requiring very substantial support.”

“Inflexibility of behavior causes significant interference with functioning in one or more contexts,” according to the Autism Speaks website. “Difficulty switching between activities. Problems of organization and planning hamper independence.”

Experts say interrogation of persons with autism requires special handling due to the deficits presented by the disorder, which can easily lead to false confessions.

“Such impairments could manifest themselves in proneness to a host of vulnerabilities that place the individual at a severe disadvantage during the interviewing process,” said Jerrod Brown, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minn., writing in Police Chief magazine.

‘Gullibility should be carefully considered for its potential role in false confessions.’

“Further, individuals may respond promptly, without careful consideration, in a manner intended to please an interviewer,” wrote Brown, who specializes in forensic behavioral health. “This could result in the collection of misleading information and false confessions during criminal justice interviews.”

Detectives and agents need to be aware that autistic individuals can be gullible and at risk of being manipulated, Brown wrote.

Brian J. Cole Jr. at the scene of a minor traffic accident near his home in Virginia in April 2024.Prince William County images

“In some instances, gullibility should be carefully considered for its potential role in false confessions,” he said. “… This disorder may increase the risk of compliance in demanding and stressful situations. For example, individuals with autism could be vulnerable to doing things (e.g., confessing to a crime that they did not commit) to please others, particularly those in a position of power.”

Questions have been raised as to why the FBI didn’t pursue Cole as a person of interest in 2021, when the bureau developed a list of 186 phones based on tower dumps and a geofence warrant. Since FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino said Cole’s arrest involved no new evidence, Cole must have been on that list. It is not known if agents made contact with Cole or his family in 2021.

An FBI internal document obtained by the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight said the FBI classified 51 of the 186 devices as “not needing further action” because the phones “belong[ed] to law enforcement officers or persons on the exclusion list.”

Thirty-six of the 186 phone numbers were assigned to FBI special agents for interviews, and 98 of the numbers “required additional investigative steps,” according to a January 2025 U.S. House report. It is not clear whether anything came of those investigative steps, the report said.

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​January 6 

In the modern world, a diagnosis is often worn as if it’s a badge of honor.

But not everyone sees it that way. And Leland Vittert, an American journalist and anchor for NewsNation, certainly doesn’t.

Vittert, who is diagnosed with autism, tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey that the adversity his diagnosis caused him did not hold him back, but rather helped him become the successful journalist and reporter he is today.

Vittert didn’t speak until he was “well past 3,” and he had “lots and lots of problems in typical school.”

“If a kid touched me or looked at me the wrong way or whatever, I’d turn around and slug them,” he tells Stuckey, explaining he was “pretty aggressive” and had “big sensory issues.”

“Dad’s idea was to hold my hand through the adversity. And I think what he realized was that I was going to face that adversity later in life, which I did. … I had to learn how to adapt and how to interact with the world as the way the world interacted, not as the way I wanted to interact with it,” he explains.

And it was a struggle, he tells Stuckey, noting that he “couldn’t figure out how to relate to people emotionally the way they were emotionally.”

“I couldn’t figure out how to, you know, read a room, when to stop talking. All of these things I was going to have to learn,” he says. “And if you’re put in bubble wrap and told how wonderful you are all the time, you’re never going to learn that, right?”

That’s when Vittert’s father decided to prioritize self-esteem.

“So, when I was 5 or 6 years old, I was doing 200 push-ups a night. And after a couple months of doing that, you get some kind of reward. But my dad wanted to teach me that self-esteem is earned, not given, which is a very different philosophy, I think, than what we see now,” he tells Stuckey.

After self-esteem, Vittert’s father prioritized teaching him “how the world works socially.”

“So, my dad started spending hundreds of hours with me. Thousands of hours. Still is my best friend. … We’re recording this a little before noon, and I’ve already talked to him, I think, three times today,” he tells Stuckey.

“So, he would then take me out to lunch, and we’d go out to lunch with any of his friends. And because I spent so much time with him, I could sort of talk about business and politics and news and those kinds of topics,” he recalls.

“But as soon as we’d sit down at some diner for cheeseburgers and milkshakes, as soon as his friend sat down, I would either start blasting him with questions or blasting him with stories about my push-ups. And my dad would tap his watch. And that was my dad’s way of saying, ‘OK, be quiet,’” he explains.

“And the idea was, later on, as we were driving home, it was like, ‘OK, when Mr. so-and-so was talking about his weekend and you interrupted it to talk about your push-ups, why did you think he would be interested in that?’” he continues, telling Stuckey that he and his father would then role-play how Vittert could have asked the friend more questions about himself.

“It was this very minute-by-minute teaching of the emotional and human dynamic,” he adds.

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Bryce Crawford is an evangelist whose supernatural encounter with Jesus not only stopped him from taking his own life, but has catapulted him into a position where he’s helping transform a generation.

“I became a Christian when I was 17. I had depression and anxiety for years. Grew up in a Christian environment, went to a Christian school, but I had a supernatural encounter with Jesus when I was 17. Stopped me from taking my life,” Crawford tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey at AmFest.

This happened in 2020, when Crawford had gone to Waffle House for his “death row meal” on Christmas Day.

“I went to Waffle House, and I was at this table. No one preached to me. No one shared the gospel with me. The total opposite happened actually. This grown man dumped his life issues on me, and he said, ‘I’m losing my wife. She’s divorcing me and taking my kids,’” he explains.

“And then he said, ‘There’s no growth in a relationship if the love isn’t mutual.’ And when he said that, time stopped. And I had learned about Jesus all my life. … And for the first time, I thought to myself, maybe I don’t know God loves me because I haven’t given myself a chance to love him back,” he says.

“And so I prayed a crazy prayer. I said, ‘Jesus, if you’re real, take away my anxiety and depression because this is the reason why I want to take my life,’ and I haven’t had that crippling anxiety or depression since that day. It’s been almost five years,” he continues.

This was what led Crawford to Christianity and ultimately where he is now — preaching the gospel.

“The Bible says we plant seeds and water seeds. It’s not my job to save anyone. It’s not your job to save anyone. And so I found listening and being intentional with people is the greatest tool of evangelism,” he says. “It’s not love-bombing. It’s just caring about people.”

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Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of anti-Semitism over moves the freshly inaugurated mayor made during his first day in office Thursday.

The New York Times said Mamdani canceled two executive orders by his predecessor — former Mayor Eric Adams — that had barred city agencies from boycotting Israel and defined some criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.

‘Singling out Israel for sanctions is not the way to make Jewish New Yorkers feel included and safe, and will undermine any words to that effect.’

“On his very first day as @NYCMayor, Mamdani shows his true face: He scraps the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lifts restrictions on boycotting Israel,” the Foreign Ministry wrote on X. “This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire.”

The Times called the statement from Israel’s Foreign Ministry “an extraordinary accusation of anti-Jewish animosity.”

Israel’s consul general in New York, Ofir Akunis, added that Mamdani’s decision posed “an immediate threat to the safety of Jewish communities in New York City and could lead to an increase in violent anti-Semitic attacks throughout the city,” according to the paper.

The Times said New York City is home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

More from the paper:

Mr. Mamdani has been a strong critic of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians throughout his public life, and the Israeli government has denounced him before. As recently as October, it described him as someone who “excuses terror and normalizes antisemitism” and said he “stands with Jews only when they are dead.”

The two Israel-related executive orders revoked on Thursday were among a dozen orders issued by Mr. Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, that were canceled or amended by the new mayor on his first day in office. A spokeswoman for Mr. Mamdani had no immediate comment but said that the mayor expected to address Israel’s comments at an unrelated news conference in Brooklyn on Friday afternoon.

On Friday, a coalition of major Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the UJA Federation of New York, issued a joint statement opposing the cancellation of the executive orders.

The statement indicated Mamdani had “reversed two significant protections against antisemitism” and expressed particular alarm over the revocation of Adams’ ban on city agencies boycotting Israel, the Times said, adding that Adams signed that executive order just last month.

“Singling out Israel for sanctions is not the way to make Jewish New Yorkers feel included and safe, and will undermine any words to that effect,” the statement said, according to the paper.

The other Adams order Mamdani canceled was a definition of anti-Semitism from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and included 11 examples intended to illustrate anti-Jewish bigotry — seven of which include or relate in some way to criticism of Israel, the Times said.

Mamdani’s views on Israel have been controversial, to say the least. The Times said the new mayor has criticized the Jewish state “in ways that were once seen as unthinkable for an elected official in New York.”

For instance, the paper said Mamdani has called Israel an apartheid state and has supported accusations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Mamdani also has supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — and he even wants the New York Police Department to enforce an arrest warrant against the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Times added.

But the ride into office hasn’t been completely smooth for Mamdani, either. Last month, one of his appointees was forced to resign after the Anti-Defamation League brought to light anti-Semitic social media posts.

RELATED: ‘Money hungry Jews’: Mamdani appointee abruptly quits after her anti-Semitic online posts resurface

Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images

The New York Post noted other officials who criticized Mamdani’s moves.

Bruce Blakeman, executive for Nassau County and a Republican gubernatorial candidate, said in a statement that “Mayor Mamdani wasted no time showing New Yorkers exactly who he is,” the Post reported. “His very first executive action as mayor was not to address crime, public safety, or quality of life — it was to repeal protections for Jewish people. At a moment of exploding anti-Semitism, Mamdani sent a message that Jewish concerns are negotiable and Jewish safety is optional. It’s indefensible.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) posted on X that “Zohran is officially the face of the Democrat Party,” the Post added.

Brooklyn Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov urged Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York to stand up to Mamdani, the Post said: “@GovKathyHochul can fix this with the stroke of a pen! Will she stand up to Mamdani or will she cower to avoid a Mamdani primary? The Jewish community is watching!”

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​Zohran mamdani, New york city, Israel, Antisemitism, Eric adams, Mayor, Politics 

America is approaching a civilizational breaking point as young men abandon the left to move right, while young women drift further left. This has left a massive gap that’s not only threatening the future of marriage and family formation, but even basic population replacement.

“This has come to a head to some degree. Now, I will say this, if you are a conservative young woman entering into marriage years, it is a good time to be you. … The market is very much in your favor,” BlazeTV host Steve Deace explains at AmFest.

“Countrywide, you’re unicorns,” he says, noting that despite their existence, “all these things eventually have to come to a head somewhere.”

“Someone is going to have to change, right?” he asks.

BlazeTV contributor Todd Erzen believes that there will need to be “incentivizations.”

“I just don’t think the mere biological cliff we are falling off, that realization is enough because that’s baked into the cake. That was the point all along. That is the dark success story of all of this,” Erzen says.

“I think there may ultimately need to be incentivizations that are kind of like a steroid that wake enough of the culture up to keep things going,” he continues.

However, “Steve Deace Show” executive producer Aaron McIntire disagrees.

“The bad news is, you look at countries like Japan, South Korea, they have faced the same sorts of demographic cliffs that we’re about to maybe go over. They have done all of these technocratic policies, you know, trying to actually animate, trying to just get people in the frame of mind of, ‘Hey, this is going to have a tax benefit for you. This is going to have some economic benefit for you if you have more children,’” McIntire says.

“They’re trying to encourage this, and it really hasn’t had much of a difference,” he says, adding, “So, I don’t think there’s any sort of technocratic solution that you can put in place.”

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A woman who was brutally stabbed multiple times last month at a Sonic Drive-In is speaking out about the unprovoked attack, KFOR-TV reported.

Linda Hollrah drove to the fast-food restaurant on NE 23rd Street in Oklahoma City to pick up her order, the station said.

‘I remember thinking over and over and saying over and over, “Why did this happen to me?”‘

When she parked her car, Hollrah’s attacker stabbed her through the window multiple times, KFOR said.

“Before I knew it, he just came straight up to my car, said no words to me, and just attacked me and just kept stabbing and stabbing,” Hollrah said to the station.

The attack left bloodstains in her car and in the parking lot, KFOR said.

“It’s hard to even still piece together kind of what my brain was going through, except just to fight for my life,” she added to the station.

The attack left her with numerous injuries, KFOR reported.

“I was stabbed once in my kneecap, three times in my forearm, once on my inner, two on my outer thigh, and then once in my upper abdomen, which ended up causing a nick in my liver that they had to repair for internal bleeding,” Hollrah explained to the station.

RELATED: Thug attacks mother walking her toddler in stroller, cops say; 10 days later — on Thanksgiving — he’s accused of even worse

KFOR, citing the incident report, said Sonic told police that the restaurant’s surveillance cameras were not working at the time.

Police instead are relying on video of the suspect before and after the attack that a nearby traffic camera recorded, the station said.

But so far no arrests have been made, KFOR noted, and police are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers.

RELATED: Mainstream media turns a blind eye to vicious stabbing of young Ukrainian woman

— (@)

“I remember thinking over and over and saying over and over, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Which, unfortunately, you know, nobody can answer and maybe will never be answered,” Hollrah shared with the station.

KFOR added that Hollrah has been unable to work during her recovery: “It’s stressful thinking about the mountain of debt that this is going to leave me in and having to pay for some things that my insurance probably won’t cover — very specialized things that I’m going to need,” she told the station.

Hollrah’s sister started a GoFundMe to assist her with expenses. As of Friday afternoon, $14,580 has been raised; the goal amount is $24,000.

“For a hard-working single mother, seeking out help isn’t always the easiest thing, so I asked Linda’s permission to invite our family and friends to support her in this way,” the GoFundMe states. “Any and all contributions are appreciated more than you know, as Linda and our family try to move forward from this senseless act of violence.”

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​Stabbing, Random, Unprovoked, Oklahoma city police, Sonic drive-in, Wounded, Woman, Suspect on the loose, Single mother, Crime 

As debates over America First, Islam’s compatibility with the West, and the future of the conservative movement continue to intensify, Jack Posobiec tells BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales that Republicans need to step up across the board.

“It’s America first,” Posobiec tells Gonzales. “It’s literally America first. … Any policy that America should have going forward should be a policy that says what is the best way forward in the best interest of the American people, right here, right now.”

And Posobiec explains that there’s one way to ensure Americans are put first — and the late Charlie Kirk knew it well.

“Charlie was totally committed to victory, and that obviously meant victory at the ballot box,” he tells Gonzales.

“We’re up against a lot of headwinds in 2026. And to put my analyst hat on, you know, if I were to sit here and say that everything’s hunky-dory and that we’re, you know, we’re wading into safe waters, I wouldn’t be a good sailor if I did that,” he says.

“I was in the Navy, and so, look, you’ve got to tell the captain that the ship is headed toward some rocky waters. And that’s just the truth of the matter,” he continues, pointing out that the Republican House is currently “hanging by a thread.”

“You see people resigning, you see people walking away, quitters, and that only reduces the majority from four to three to, it might even be two by the time we’re done with this conversation. That’s not a large majority,” he says.

“So, you’re defending all of that territory, and all they have to do is pick up a couple,” he adds.

And despite the left’s claims that President Trump is a dictator, he’s not even close — which means that the left does stand a chance.

“He is not Mussolini. He is not General Franco. He can’t just pass these edicts and they immediately become law. … And so, that’s why you need the Republicans in Congress to step up,” Posobiec tells Gonzales.

“You have a majority right now, Republicans, and it is incumbent upon you to use it while you have it,” he adds.

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President Donald Trump said early Friday morning that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States “will come to their rescue.”

Trump added that “we are locked and loaded and ready to go” in the post on his Truth Social network, which went live just before 3 a.m. Eastern time.

‘Trump should know that intervention by the US in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the US interests.’

Trump’s warning came hours after reports that at least six people have been killed after nearly a week of protests in Iran over grim economic conditions there, CBS News reported.

More from CBS News:

Iran has been plagued for years by staggering hyperinflation, fueled by Western sanctions imposed over the hardline clerical government’s nuclear program and backing for militant groups across the region.

Videos and photos from Tehran and other cities posted on social media have shown protesters marching through streets from early this week, often chanting anti-government, pro-monarchy slogans and sometimes clashing violently with security forces.

In an apparent bid to quell the unrest, Iranian authorities have acknowledged the economic concerns and said peaceful protests are legitimate, but suggested that foreign powers — usually a reference to Israel and the U.S. — are behind subversive elements fueling violence on the streets.

RELATED: Iran’s freedom fighters put America’s No Kings clowns to shame

Ali Larijani — a former speaker of Iran’s parliament and now the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council — said Friday on social media in reaction to Trump’s remarks that “Trump should know that intervention by the U.S. in the domestic problem corresponds to chaos in the entire region and the destruction of the U.S. interests,” CBS News reported.

Larijani added that “the people of the U.S. should know that Trump began the adventurism” and that “they should take care of their own soldiers,” according to the news network.

The “soldiers” remark appeared to be in reference to U.S. military forces in the Middle East in range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, CBS News added.

Ali Shamkhani — an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — warned that “any interventionist hand that gets too close to the security of Iran will be cut,” the news network reported.

“The people of Iran properly know the experience of ‘being rescued’ by Americans: from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza,” Shamkhani added in a social media post, CBS News said.

Prior to Trump’s Friday morning post on Truth Social, the U.S. and Israeli governments issued statements supporting the Iranian protests, the news network said.

“The people of Iran want freedom. They have suffered at the hands of the Ayatollahs for too long,” Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a Monday X post. “We stand with Iranians in the streets of Tehran and across the country as they protest a radical regime that has brought them nothing but economic downturn and war.”

More from CBS News:

Tension between the U.S. and Iran escalated this week on the heels of a visit to the U.S. by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has campaigned his country’s close allies in Washington for decades to take a tougher stance on Iran.

After meeting with Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he had heard that Iran could be attempting to rebuild its nuclear program following the unprecedented U.S. strikes on its enrichment facilities in June. Mr. Trump warned that if Iran did try to rebuild, “we’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully that’s not happening.”

Iranian President Mahsoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday said Tehran would respond “to any cruel aggression” with unspecified “harsh and discouraging” measures, the news network added.

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​Donald trump, Iran, Protesters, Rescue, Trump, Kill, Politics 

Where do we go after Donald Trump?

The question has divided the right. When it comes to charting the correct course, a book published during the president’s first administration is timelier than ever: R.R. Reno’s “The Return of the Strong Gods.”

‘The perverse gods of blood, soil, and identity cannot be overcome with the open-society therapies of weakening,’ writes Reno.

MAGA 2.0?

One faction of the right appears keen to continue delivering on the promise of Trump’s “Golden Age” by leaning further into a muscular and nationalistic conservatism.

Liberal interlopers and other ideological refugees with forward operating bases situated right-of-center have been working ardently to politically neutralize this camp ahead of the 2028 election, smearing, for instance, some of those in Vice President JD Vance’s orbit as “woke right.”

Such liberal saboteurs are right to be fearful of this camp, as its dominance — affirmed by a Vance win — would signal the MAGA movement wasn’t a sprint but a marathon.

Libertarian libs

The second camp, whose potential champion in the 2028 primary field appears to be Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), is keen both to act as though the populist upheaval of the 2010s hadn’t irreversibly changed the game and to slink back onto the rhetorically conservative, libertarian-minded side of the liberal coin.

This is the politics that has purchased cultural and economic deregulation, a ruinous series of foreign entanglements, a demographic crisis, and a low-trust society marked by an anemic sense of “we.”

The old guard in both parties — those who’ve long railed against and/or sought to undermine the MAGA agenda — would doubtless regard the success and empowerment of this camp as a godsend.

Early polling data provide strong indications, however, that there is little appetite among likely Republican primary voters for a return to a George W. Bush-era style of Republican leadership. The reason is perhaps best explained in a book first published six years ago.

Weak loves vs. strong gods

In “Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West,” R.R. Reno, a political philosopher and editor of First Things magazine, discusses both what was behind and what is ahead of the recent nationalist and populist uprisings in the West.

The book, which Reno has touted as an “essay in the politics of imagination,” is an engrossing elaboration on an article he penned years earlier detailing the full-spectrum campaign spearheaded by classical and progressive liberals after the Second World War to “disenchant and desacralize public life” and to produce an “open society” wherein the “strong gods” — the “objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies” — could inevitably be neutralized and/or replaced by “weak loves” such as relativism, diversity, and tolerance.

Reno suggests that the reasoning behind this project of societal opening and weakening was that earlier in the 20th century, strong gods had supposedly rendered the masses easily manipulable by demagogues and set the stage for those totalitarian regimes that warred against humanity.

The general theory of society underpinning the postwar consensus became, according to Reno, “characterized by a fundamental judgment: whatever is strong — strong loves and strong truths — leads to oppression, while liberty and prosperity require the reign of weak loves and weak truths.”

RELATED: Conservatives face a choice in ’26: realignment or extinction

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Making monsters

This, Reno insists, was a catastrophic overreaction.

In their campaign to water down dark loves, the war-traumatized liberal elites of yesteryear also watered down the powerful loves and intense loyalties that hold Western civilization together and supply a sense of belonging, purpose, and solidarity — such as family, nation, religion, and transcendent truth.

Reno notes that this campaign not only produced a dysfunctional society but incubated some of the very dark loves it was meant to destroy.

“The perverse gods of blood, soil, and identity cannot be overcome with the open-society therapies of weakening,” writes Reno. “On the contrary, they are encouraged by multiculturalism and the reductive techniques of critique. In its present decadent form, the postwar consensus makes white nationalism an entirely cogent position.”

“We cannot forestall the return of the debasing gods by reapplying the open-society imperatives. False loves can be remedied only be true ones,” adds Reno.

‘A language of love’

While the postwar liberal regime enjoyed great success in producing monsters and in disenchanting, disorienting, deracinating, and rendering homeless those guns-or-religion deplorables for whom America’s detached elites still brazenly express contempt, its success karmically set the stage for a popular yearning for anchorage, belonging, and a sense of “we,” which in turn prompted a rejection of the postwar consensus.

That rejection has manifested in various ways but most clearly in the rejection of the open society and its possessing forces of weakening that occurred on Nov. 8, 2016.

During his first term and again over the past several months, Trump has pursued reconsolidation and protection as opposed to deregulation and openness and delivered significant results along the way.

Those who’d seek to steer the right back toward the open society and sell voters on a rebrand of the postwar consensus stand a better chance of sweeping waves back into the sea.

While well-positioned to lead, those in the first camp may nevertheless want to heed Reno’s caution about the open society: “This project cannot be opposed solely on political grounds, as if nationalism alone can overcome the ‘destiny of weakening.’ We need strengthening motifs across the board.”

“Our task, therefore, is to restore public life in the West by developing a language of love and a vision of the ‘we’ that befits our dignity and appeals to our reason as well as our hearts,” wrote Reno.

“We must attend to the strong gods who come from above and animate the best of our traditions. Only that kind of leadership will forestall the return of the dark gods who rise up from below.”

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Former President Barack Obama may have deported more immigrants than President Trump, but that isn’t stopping the left from accusing supporters of Trump’s immigration policy of being heartless and cruel.

“Biden also deported over a million people,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.” “Did you hear about ICE raids under Biden? Did you hear about ICE raids under Obama? Did you hear about kids in cages under any of these administrations, even though that was happening, if you want to call these detention centers cages?”

“Did you hear about all of the lost children who were abandoned and not accounted for under these administrations? Did you hear about the sex trafficking, the human trafficking, the drug and weaponry trafficking that was happening under these administrations?” she asks.

“No, it’s not because it wasn’t happening. It’s because the media is in bed with the Democrats, and they don’t want you to see the Democrats doing things that they are criticizing Donald Trump for,” she adds.

Stuckey calls this a “weaponization of empathy.”

And Democrats weaponize your empathy to make you feel like the well-being of a stranger who lives a world away should be a priority in your own life — but Stuckey couldn’t disagree more.

“Countries are like families, just on a bigger scale. You put the safety and security of your people first. Not because you hate people from other countries, but because you love people in your country. It is not possible for us to equally prioritize all of the interests of everyone in the world and all of their safety and security,” she says.

“I believe we see that principle in Romans 13, that governments were instituted by God to punish the wrongdoer and reward the good,” she continues, adding, “You take care of your people. Nations were God’s idea. Borders were God’s idea. Government, laws, all God’s idea, and they are good.”

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.

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Throughout scripture, God, who calls Himself a “father to the fatherless,” pulls no punches about His heart toward orphans: They are to be cared for.

Many faithful believers choose to live out this holy commandment through the adoption of a child. But while the redemption of a broken situation is a beautiful and joyful thing to behold, few talk about the pain that often accompanies adoption.

On this episode of “Unashamed,” the Robertsons speak with bestselling author and podcaster Lisa Harper about her adoption story.

After hearing a sermon on the passage in James about the importance of widow and orphan care, Lisa, a single woman in her 40s at the time, felt convicted to act.

After several years of wrestling, Lisa found herself prepared to adopt a baby from Haiti. “I got written into a story of a precious little girl who was a crack addict and had gotten pregnant,” says Lisa, noting that she “spent Christmas that year in a crack house.”

Right before she was set to bring her baby home, however, the adoption “fell apart at the 11th hour.”

Lisa returned home utterly crushed.

But two weeks later, something miraculous happened. Lisa received a phone call from a friend who was in Haiti working on building a communal kitchen to help feed children in a particular village. While she was there, a young mother in the village died of AIDS, leaving behind a sickly daughter with no one to care for her.

She told Lisa that the Lord spoke to her “clear as a bell in that ER room … ’Lisa Harper’s supposed to be that little girl’s mama.’”

Lisa, still mourning the loss of the first child, boldly and faithfully said, “Sign me up.”

“Missy’s 16 now, healthy as a horse,” Lisa says through tears. “She’s not my hope. Jesus is my hope, but she is tangible grace.”

“Missy does not have an orphan spirit. I had an orphan’s spirit,” she says, recalling her years of wrestling with feeling undeserving of God’s invitation to be part of his eternal family.

By the end of Lisa’s story, Jase, Al, and Zach Dasher are all wiping tears from their eyes. To hear it in full, watch the episode above.

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