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I have written for the Spectator for years. I value it. I read it. I defend it. It remains one of the few places where serious argument is still possible. Which is why Luke Lyman’s recent essay on “Christian nihilism” is so frustrating. It mistakes metaphor for diagnosis — and confusion for insight.

Lyman opens with a disturbing scene: a protester in Minneapolis screaming at armed officers to shoot him. From this single episode, he extrapolates a sweeping claim — that America is drifting into a kind of “Christian nihilism,” a pseudo-religion that mimics Christianity’s language of sacrifice while stripping it of meaning.

What we are witnessing is not Christianity curdled into violence, but the consequences of a culture in which Christian moral limits have collapsed.

As Lyman writes:

Violence serves a central role in Christianity: the hinge of history, the Crucifixion, is bloody. Christ endures the Cross to purify mankind, because he knows we crave purity. Revolutionary leaders have stolen this idea, given it a godless twist, and sold it to their followers to encourage them to sacrifice themselves for whatever cause demands it.

That conclusion does not follow.

A cultural template

This is because Lyman treats Christianity as a cultural template — a set of symbols and emotional cues — rather than as a moral and metaphysical system with hard limits. Once you do that, anything that resembles sacrifice or martyrdom can be described as “Christian-adjacent.” But resemblance is not inheritance. Borrowed language does not imply borrowed belief.

What Lyman is describing is not Christianity emptied of content. It is secular despair borrowing familiar moral imagery. There is nothing Christian about begging for death on camera. Christianity teaches endurance, restraint, and perseverance — not theatrical self-annihilation. It demands self-control and humility. The gospel was not written for livestreams.

Lyman gestures toward Christian theology but never quite engages it. He suggests that Christianity centers on violence because the Crucifixion was bloody. That is like saying surgery centers on knives. The cross is not an endorsement of violence; it is a confrontation with it. Rome used crucifixion to terrorize and dominate. Christ faced that machinery of force and answered it with mercy. When Peter reached for the sword, Christ stopped him.

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Interrupting the cycle

Christianity does not command others to die in God’s name. Christ gives Himself. He absorbs hatred rather than unleashing it. He prays for those driving the nails. That distinction matters. It reverses the logic of every revolutionary movement ever devised. One path runs on rage and always demands another victim. The other interrupts the cycle, insisting that no human life is expendable.

Lyman claims that revolutionary violence is Christianity drained of belief — that figures like Mao or Frantz Fanon merely stole the cross and removed God. This misstates the relationship entirely. Revolutionary ideology does not distort Christianity; it rejects it outright. Christianity insists that every person bears the image of God. Revolutionary politics insists that some lives are disposable. These views do not occupy the same moral universe.

Calling this phenomenon “Christian nihilism” only deepens the confusion. Nihilism denies meaning. Christianity proclaims it. What we are witnessing is not Christianity curdled into violence, but the consequences of a culture in which Christian moral limits have collapsed.

Spiritual starvation

Lyman suggests that Americans secretly want Christianity but refuse the church. There is a grain of truth here. Human beings crave meaning, ritual, belonging, and redemption. But that longing does not turn protests into pseudo-liturgy. It indicates spiritual starvation. What Lyman treats as evidence of Christianity’s corruption is better understood as evidence of its absence.

Minneapolis is not a city of warped martyrs. It is a city where public order has broken down and civic leadership has failed. Dressing that disorder in theological language may sound evocative, but it explains very little.

When Lyman points to murals of George Floyd or grotesque memes about a murdered CEO and sees religious iconography, what he is really observing is a loss of proportion. To blame Christianity for that is to confuse the absence of moral limits with their cause.

American Christianity is not driving mobs into the streets begging for bullets. Churches across the country are feeding families, running recovery programs, rebuilding marriages, and teaching repentance, forgiveness, discipline, and duty. Those are not the ingredients of nihilism. They are the antidote to it.

​Christian nihilism, Minneapolis, Minneapolis protests, Ice, Anti-ice, The spectator, The media, Lifestyle, Leftists, Faith 

When Allie Beth Stuckey took on 20 liberal Christians for a recent Jubilee debate, one question stuck with the BlazeTV host of “Relatable.”

“This might seem a little silly, but a lot of people actually have this question: Is our spirit gendered?” Stuckey says.

“No. Nothing in Scripture points to this idea of our soul and spirit possibly having a separate gender from our biological sex,” she explains, recalling her response in the debate.

“I said, ‘Oh I don’t think that we see that in Scripture at all. That’s not a Christian belief.’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’ And so, I don’t know if this is a tenet of Mormonism,” she says.

“There is definitely a different belief about the spirit and what it is. Different belief about eternity, different belief about Jesus, different belief about time past, different belief about heaven, all different kinds of things that are so far out of the orthodoxy of any denomination of Christianity,” she continues.

“I thought that that was an interesting assertion that I have not heard other Mormons, by the way, believe,” she adds, noting that those who have New Age beliefs or secular people often make points like this to justify transgenderism.

“We see in Genesis 1 that God made us male and female. Sex is a biological reality,” Stuckey responds.

Stuckey explains that in a book titled “Love Thy Body,” author Nancy Pearcey homes in on the philosophy of dualism and how it’s led many people astray in order to separate the spirit from the body and to say the spirit has authority over the body.

“That’s not true. God cares about the body. It’s a temple of the Holy Spirit,” Stuckey 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.

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In the days following a brutal street beating by Antifa members outside a left-wing event, the incident has taken a tragic turn.

On February 12, a 23-year-old man, identified as Quentin, was involved in a violent clash outside an event connected to the French left-wing party La France Insoumise’s MEP Rima Hassan at Sciences Po Lyon, the European Conservative reported.

‘To the unfathomable pain of losing a child must not follow the unbearable impunity of the barbarians responsible for this lynching.’

The incident occurred between anti-fascist groups and the right-wing feminist group Némésis, according to the collective’s director, Alice Cordier.

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Photo by Henrique Campos / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images

The clash began when members of the Némésis group unfurled a banner criticizing “Islamo-fascists,” after which they were physically confronted by antifascist members.

One 19-year-old woman was reportedly strangled and dragged prior to Quentin’s serious beating.

Quentin, who was serving as an informal security detail for Némésis, attempted to protect the female members of the group during the incident. However, he was subsequently ambushed and beaten unconscious as he and a friend were leaving the scene of the incident.

He was later taken to the local hospital in Lyons.

Quentin remained in a coma with a critical brain hemorrhage until Saturday in a condition his family described as “between life and death.”

The European Conservative reported on Saturday that Quentin succumbed to his injuries.

French president Emmanuel Macron declared Quentin “the victim of an unprecedented outburst of violence,” adding that he was sending his “thoughts,” to his family and loved ones.

“In the Republic, no cause, no ideology will ever justify killing. On the contrary, the very purpose of our institutions is to civilize debates and protect the free expression of arguments. Pursuing, bringing to justice and convicting the perpetrators of this infamy is essential. The hatred that kills has no place among us. I call for calm, restraint and respect,” Macron added.

French conservative leader Marine Le Pen also issued a statement upon news of Quentin’s death: “After clinging to life, Quentin breathed his last. To his family and loved ones shattered by this terrible ordeal, I send my heartfelt thoughts and my deepest compassion. To the unfathomable pain of losing a child must not follow the unbearable impunity of the barbarians responsible for this lynching. It will be for justice to judge and condemn with the utmost severity this criminal act of unprecedented violence.”

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​Politics, Quentin, Lyons, Sciences po lyons, Emmanuel macron, Marine le pen, European conservative, Antifa, Nemesis, France, French, Rima hassan 

One year ago, President Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to develop policy recommendations to protect access to in-vitro fertilization, expand its availability, and lower its cost to patients.

In October, the administration announced additional measures to lower costs for IVF and common fertility drugs and explore pathways like expanded employer benefits or excepted benefit categories for assisted reproductive technologies. While this included joint efforts across federal agencies to make this costly intervention more affordable, the administration stopped short of imposing broad new federal mandates for insurance coverage or direct government funding of IVF.

The more than $20,000 invested in each IVF cycle, only to achieve a 25%-30% success rate, would be better spent on other economic incentives to encourage family formation.

The problem of below-replacement fertility rates in the United States — which poses serious demographic, social, and economic challenges — has gained some political attention since the last election.

As of 2024, the fertility rate in the U.S. stands at a record low of 1.6 births per woman of childbearing age, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. This drop continues a downward trend that began in the early 2000s and accelerated after the 2008 recession.

Trump frames his support for IVF as a way for the government to support couples who desire to start or grow families. While this administration has not yet enacted universal “free” IVF, the policies show clear support for making IVF accessible to more Americans.

Why IVF won’t fix the birth dearth

The notion that expanding access to IVF will measurably alleviate our fertility crisis is pure fantasy.

First, the goal of achieving a significant number of additional births using government-supported IVF will prove cost-prohibitive. The procedure typically runs $15,000 per cycle plus $5,000 for medications.

Second, the success rates tend to be low. A typical IVF cycle achieves pregnancy in about 20%-35% of cases for women under 35, and that number drops further with age.

IVF is usually employed for infertile women who have been unable to conceive naturally. But infertility, while far from a trivial issue, is not a significant driver of our low birth rates.

A 2013 Gallup poll found that, on average, American adults want to have between two and three children, a statistic that has remained unchanged since the 1970s. The 5% of adults who do not want to have children has not changed much since 1990.

RELATED: Who really controls behavioral health care — and why it matters now

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For the most part, medical problems do not explain why so many Americans are not realizing their desire for children. The main source of our birth dearth is not biological but economic. More than three-quarters of those who want more children but do not have them cite financial considerations as the main reason.

If that’s the problem, then the more than $20,000 invested in each IVF cycle, only to achieve a 25%-30% success rate, would be better spent on other economic incentives to encourage family formation for those who believe they cannot afford children.

We can and should argue over the details of specific proposals — whether child tax credits, support for stay-at-home moms, or other measures — but these approaches promise to deliver far more per dollar than IVF.

If you want more babies, simply creating them in a petri dish will not do. We need to make it more affordable for Americans to raise these children after they are born.

The ethical costs IVF can’t escape

Even when it helps couples to have a child, IVF comes with serious ethical costs.

Clinics compete in the market based on success rates. Because egg harvesting is an invasive and sometimes risky procedure, IVF cycles typically aim to create as many embryos as possible — usually more than the couple intends to bring to birth.

Unused embryos go into frozen storage but can later be thawed and implanted. In one 2022 experiment, run by its very nature without consent, twins were born after 30 years in cold storage. Their adoptive father was five years old when they were first conceived.

No one knows precisely how many embryos now sit in cryopreservation, because clinics are not required to report these numbers. Estimates range from 500,000 to millions.

Research supports the common-sense notion that, whenever possible, it would be preferable to make babies in the bedroom rather than the laboratory.

Many end up abandoned by parents who stop paying the $500-$1,000 yearly storage fees and fail to respond to repeated outreach from clinics. Most parents remain reluctant to allow clinics to destroy their spare embryos, suggesting at least moral ambivalence.

Other options exist, but they rarely satisfy. Parents can adopt out embryos to another infertile couple or donate them to embryo-destructive research. Parents rarely consent to either, likely out of similar moral reticence.

These parents know well what happens when those “clumps of cells” are placed in a mother’s womb.

Thus, parents who do not want to raise additional children are stuck in an insoluble ethical conundrum; their embryos are left in a cryogenic nursery limbo.

It’s hard to entirely blame IVF clients for this when all available choices seem morally problematic. Even when informed of these options before starting IVF, most couples admit they were singularly focused on achieving a pregnancy and rarely considered what would happen to excess embryos until later.

In creating countless human embryos that will never be placed in a uterus — the only conducive environment for embryonic life — we have created a problem for which there is no morally just solution. This should invite us to re-evaluate the practice that created this insoluble quandary in the first place.

RELATED: Women’s infertility is Big Pharma’s cash cow

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Better answers for infertility

We need to acknowledge the anguish of infertility for couples trying unsuccessfully to conceive. There are better solutions than IVF to offer them, however.

The egg-harvesting phase of IVF introduces nontrivial medical risks. Although we need more longitudinal data, current evidence suggests significant risks also for the child conceived by this procedure.

Those risks include elevated risks for birth defects and chronic illness later in life, such as cardiovascular problems and metabolic dysregulation, cognitive impairment, and perhaps even cancer, possibly due to epigenetic changes introduced by the procedure.

This research supports the common-sense notion that, whenever possible, it would be preferable to make babies in the bedroom rather than the laboratory.

Nevertheless, the focus on IVF as the solution to infertility — and often the first solution offered to infertile couples — has dampened research and clinical efforts aimed at treating the underlying causes of infertility.

Instead of focusing on IVF, the Trump administration should support medical interventions that help previously infertile couples to conceive a child in the womb.

As in many other areas of contemporary medicine, we reach immediately for medically invasive, lab-based procedures. We offer couples a work-around, instead of assessing and attempting to correct the underlying cause.

Interventions under the umbrella of restorative reproductive medicine range from dietary changes or hormone balancing to, in some cases, medications or surgery.

This approach accords with the push to “Make America Healthy Again” by addressing root causes of our epidemic of chronic illness, rather than applying superficial, expensive, and suboptimal quick fixes.

RELATED: IVF CEO says conceiving naturally is for those with ‘genetic privilege’

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What policy can do

Several challenges stand in the way of making these interventions available and accessible to more couples, which sensible policies can begin to address.

Research is inadequately funded. We also currently lack sufficient training for physicians in assessing and treating the root causes of infertility.

Among the most common causes of infertility is endometriosis — a condition that not only makes it difficult or impossible to maintain a pregnancy but also, if uncorrected, causes intense pain and other troublesome symptoms.

However, many physician specialists are not trained in the complex surgical approach required to adequately treat endometriosis to allow for pregnancy. Other such examples abound.

A better path forward

We should applaud the administration’s laudable goal of helping infertile couples to bear children. But IVF is not the right solution.

Instead of putting all our eggs in one basket, we need a capacious approach to supporting fertility that does more to address the root causes of infertility and, whenever possible, restores reproductive function the way nature intended.

This strategy respects human life at all stages and avoids insoluble ethical quandaries. It also offers a recipe for happier parents and healthier children.

Surely this is a proposal for addressing our fertility crisis that all Americans can endorse.

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

​Opinion 

Recently, on my internet travels, I have come across numerous mentions of a magazine called Evie. Because of the name, I assumed it was for women.

But I also noticed that Evie has generated a fair amount of pushback since it was founded in 2019. Woman on both sides of the political spectrum seem to have a problem with it. Whenever it comes up, they roll their eyes and snort with contempt.

Now I really wanted to uncover the truth about Evie. Was it a boring trad-life women’s magazine? Or a fascist, male supremacist call to arms?

For this reason, I assumed the worst. It must be a cringe lifestyle magazine. Or maybe a New Age yoga blog. Or something like Gwyneth Paltrow’s famously weird lifestyle platform GOOP.

Just yesterday, I heard someone mention it again, this time on a right-leaning podcast. The female host, in a sneering, exasperated voice, said: “Don’t get me started on Evie!” As if Evie were the most awkward, annoying, embarrassing development in contemporary female culture.

Buy-curious

Because of this, I decided to look at Evie. And here’s what I found.

First off, Evie looks exactly like an issue of Cosmopolitan magazine circa 2005. Or Mademoiselle. Or Elle. Or any of those semi-trashy glossy women’s mags I remember from my youth.

I actually used to like those magazines. Especially when they indulged in classic “listicle”-style pieces like: “7 Sex Tips to Drive Your Man Wild!” “5 Ways to Seduce that Hot Guy at the Gym.” “6 Signs Your Boss Wants to Sleep with your Husband.”

I loved the dumbness of these articles. And how you felt compelled to read them anyway. And how funny they could be, if the writer struck the right tongue-in-cheek tone.

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Marital embrace

My curiosity aroused, I decided to read a full article in Evie. I found one that caught my eye: “How to Plan a Date That Actually Leads to Sex.”

Wow, I thought. Evie really is like a modern-day Cosmopolitan! (The old Cosmo being extremely “pro-sex.”)

But as I read through the article, it didn’t make sense. Why was the writer talking about her husband?

So then I went back and read the title again, and saw that it actually said: “How to Plan a Date Night That Actually Leads to Sex.”

That was a lot different. A “date night” is, of course, a date between a husband and wife. So what this article was actually about was how to get married couples to have sex with each other.

This would suggest that Evie is trad. And conservative. And pro-marriage. But then why are conservative women so embarrassed by it?

Maybe because it’s conservative in a boring way? Was it too trad?

Sex and the single girl

So then I Googled Evie, to see what other people thought (and why nobody liked it). It turns out Evie openly calls itself “a conservative version of Cosmopolitan magazine.”

So Evie was definitely doing the trad thing. But it was doing it in a very wholesome, 1950s way. It was more for women in the Midwest, women who were not super in touch with their bodies. Which was why it had a lot of articles about baking pies. And homemaking. And dealing with your husband’s sleep apnea.

That’s probably why sophisticated, younger women didn’t like it, even if they agreed with its politics. It was too corny. It was sexually repressed. It wasn’t “smart” enough.

Fun fascism?

So then I looked up Evie on Wikipedia. And I was wrong again! It turns out that Evie is not boring at all. It’s the ADVANCE GUARD of a FASCIST TAKEOVER OF AMERICA!

According to Wikipedia:

Evie published conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific content, and anti-vaccine misinformation. … Evie is an antifeminist publication. It has been characterized as alt-right and far-right. In 2023, the Southern Poverty Law Center identified Evie as a preeminent publication supporting the male supremacist politics of the hard right. In 2025, The New York Times described Evie’s content as promoting “positions that are fringe even within conservative circles — criticisms of no-fault divorce and I.V.F., for example — packaged in a fun and approachable format.

Wow. So Evie was actually radical caveman conservatism! Like men hitting women over the head with clubs. And then dragging them back to their cave!

But Evie was apparently even worse than that. According to Futurism magazine, as quoted by Wikipedia, Evie is full of:

harmful content including … a bevy of wildly unscientific assertions about women’s health, anti-trans fearmongering, unsupported “psyop” conspiracies, and pro-life messaging that often includes false claims about safe and effective abortion drugs …

Boob noob

Now I really wanted to uncover the truth about Evie. Was it a boring trad-life women’s magazine? Or a fascist, male supremacist call to arms?

I resolved to read deeper into Evie. I began to explore the archives. Some of the articles I read:

5 Reasons I Regret My Boob JobI Taped My Mouth Shut Every Night for 2 Years — Here’s How It Changed My LifeMen’s Favorite Types of Dresses on Women: Does the sundress really live up to the hype?Why So Many Women Feel Worse after TherapyThe Wife’s Guide to the Morning Quickie He’ll Think About All Day

All of these articles were pretty fluffy and insubstantial, as you would expect. But they weren’t exactly “far-right male supremacy” either.

I’ll Tumblr for ya

Then I read an article called “The Resurrection of the Tumblr Girl.” This piece stood out from the rest. It was longer and more thoughtful.

This article discussed the pre-2014 Tumblr era, when young people (mostly young women) shared their “aesthetics” on Tumblr. “Aesthetics” meaning their favorite music, art, fashion, poetry, etc.

This sharing and intermingling of people’s individual tastes was the exact opposite of the environment young people live in now. Where everything is politicized, all thinking is black and white, and people are required to yell, scream, and assault one another over the manufactured controversies of the day.

This article made the great point that Tumblr‘s “aesthetics” culture was a far healthier and more organic youth movement than the political hysteria we see today. Especially for young women.

“Resurrection of the Tumblr Girl” was calling for a revival of the aesthetics movement and signs that it was coming back. It actually gave me hope.

So that’s my take on Evie. It’s a chatty, somewhat superficial, Cosmopolitan-style women’s magazine, with a clearly conservative perspective.

But also, like the original Cosmopolitan, there is some intelligent, insightful writing hidden in there as well. So I would warn against dismissing it.

Also, if you enjoy a good “morning quickie” article — and who doesn’t? — there are plenty of those too.

​Lifestyle, Culture, Evie magazine, Cosmopolitan, Women’s media, Entertainment, Blake’s progress 

Lying in politics has changed. Politicians used to lie in hopes of getting away with it. Now they don’t care. If you throw enough mud on the windshield, some of it will stick.

Case in point: Illinois Democrat Senator Dick Durbin’s use on the Senate floor of an obviously doctored image of immigration agents pointing a gun at the back of Alex Pretti’s head. One of the agents in the image is even missing a head. The picture is still circulating. Nothing dies on the internet.

Lying could not make way so easily were it not for the fact that we are passing through a pandemic of lunacy.

If you want to provide an instance of a lie on the other side of the aisle, feel free. My point isn’t partisan.

Decades ago, one of my grad school teachers asked me, “Why do you think there is so much lying in politics today?” Too young for a real sense of history, I thought the question silly. Don’t people always think things were better in the old days?

But sometimes, some things do get worse. Truthfulness is taking it on the nose, and the virtue is even more endangered today than when my teacher quizzed me all those years ago. Ordinary people lie too, but the great masters of lying today are politicians — with this difference. A true master of a craft understands what he is doing. Habitual liars find it harder and harder to keep track of when they are lying and when they aren’t.

Some reasons for the increase in lying are pretty obvious. There are fewer consequences for lying. It is harder to bring them to bear. Honesty isn’t drilled into children as once it was. AI and social media have made it much easier not only to lie but also to organize in doing so.

Less obvious reasons involve advances in lying’s technique. Adolf Hitler promulgated the Big Lie: one so enormous that no one can believe you would tell such a whopper. Our version works not by size but by numbers: If you lie about everything, nobody can believe you would lie so much. Politicians who lie about everything also lie that everything their opponents say is a lie.

RELATED: From ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ to ‘drive, baby, drive’

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

The sun is shining? There you go again. I’m lying? You’re just trying to distract attention.

New techniques of lying get a boost from new technologies for making elites irresponsible to those whom they supposedly serve. The political organization of deviance. The whetting of tribal hatreds. The cultivation of a permanent crisis. The development of addictive social media.

Beyond advances in techniques are changes in the motives for using them. We are in a slow-burning constitutional crisis. Older politicians lied mostly to cover up things like graft, but newer ones lie to cover up attempts to subvert the political system itself. Once someone has lied on a grand enough scale, he acquires a motive to lie even more grandly, just to keep from being exposed. With enough lying, the very act of exposing lies is discredited.

Lying could not make way so easily were it not for the fact that we are passing through a pandemic of lunacy, in which huge numbers of people, on both sides of the spectrum, hold beliefs that are not just loopy, but harmful and contagious. In a recent book, I detail 30 of these delusions, but for the moment, let me focus on two that are especially relevant to political lying.

RELATED: Debate is always welcome, but violence is never acceptable

Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

One concerns the nature of right and wrong: Sometimes we just have to do the wrong thing. We think that to make things come out right, we may lie.

More and more of the things that pass under the name of making things better make them inexpressibly worse. We justify burning down neighborhoods “to advance racial justice.” We lie about political opponents “because they want to do bad things.” We give false testimony “because we just know” the accused person must deserve something bad. We unjustly penalize honest people “just to give others a chance.” We “solve the problem” of unwanted children by killing them all, telling ourselves that they aren’t really children unless we choose to believe that they are. We slaughter countless numbers so that no one will have a “poorer quality of life.”

We lie about all of it.

The other concerns the nature of reality: Things are whatever we say they are. It’s easy to be indifferent to the facts if you think saying something makes it true. One day in a university course I teach, we were discussing the nature of marriage. Some students were puzzled: How could marriage have a nature? As one said, “We can define things however we want.”

Many of their teachers would have agreed because “truth is whatever works.” Presumably, a belief “works” if it brings about what we desire. But a lie might easily do that, and by this pragmatist theory, a lie that works isn’t actually a lie. If you live in an echo chamber in which everyone says the same thing, it’s easier still to think it is true. And our echo chambers are very well organized.

There is only one real antidote to all these lies and delusions, without which no other reform can succeed: thinking clearly. The hard thing is that we may not want to think clearly. May God grant us the grace to start wanting to.

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

​Opinion 

Much lore surrounds scripture’s mysterious “Antichrist” — the false messiah prophesied to come in the End Times as a supreme and final embodiment of rebellion against God prior to Christ’s Second Coming.

For centuries, Bible scholars have debated this climactic future figure; Christians have theorized about who it might be (often pointing to corrupt elites); and Hollywood has used the sinister being as horror movie fuel.

But this hyper-fixation on the capital-A Antichrist, says BlazeTV host Jase Robertson, can distract from another part of scripture perhaps even more worthy of our attention: There are already antichrists living among us.

No place in scripture is this more evident than in 1 John.

In 1 John 2:18, he warns that “many antichrists have come.” Two chapters later, he lays bare what an antichrist is: “every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus” (4:3). This kind of spirit, he says, is “not from God” and is “already in the world.”

In other words, the denial of Jesus’ deity is the spirit of the antichrist, and it’s lurking everywhere.

John’s words remain strikingly relevant today. The spreading of darkness, erosion of truth, and deterioration of morality are evidence that the spirit of the antichrist is alive and well.

It’s this reality — not a future singular villain, the Robertsons warn — that impacts our daily lives, and yet many Christians, perhaps to their detriment, obsess over who the Antichrist is or will be.

“Look, I’ve got a guy who I love dearly. He’s one of my best friends in the world, and he got to 2 Thessalonians 2 in his Bible study, and he’s never gone forward or backwards,” says Jase. “He wants to know who the ‘man of sin’ is, and he wants a detailed account.”

Second Thessalonians 2:3 mentions a “man of sin” proclaiming himself God, who many Christians and scholars interpret as a direct reference to the final Antichrist.

Jase believes his friend, and others who get hung up on pinpointing the Antichrist, is missing the bigger point.

“The one in us is greater,” says Jase, referencing 1 John 4:4.

“The ‘man of sin’ — I don’t need to know exactly if that’s one person. I see that in men everywhere,” he continues.

The question it ultimately comes down to, says Jase, is: “Are you in Jesus or are you anti-Jesus?”

“I think [antichrists] are people who are intentionally trying to persuade people and deceive people away from Christ,” adds co-host Zach Dasher, “and the reason why I say that is because in [1 John 2] verse 26, he says, ‘The reason why I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.”’

Even though John was writing in the late first century, his words hold just as true in our time.

Zach points to a story he heard recently about a young Christian whose faith was badly “damaged” after he watched a series of social media videos from a professor who was making “incredibly compelling cases of why the Bible’s not real, why Jesus isn’t who He said He was.”

Eventually, however, it was exposed that this professor’s arguments were “blatant lies.”

“I think that’s more the spirit of the Antichrist,” says Zach.

To hear more of the panel’s discussion, watch the full episode above.

Want more from the Robertsons?

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Police in Aurora, Colorado, got involved in a vehicle chase shortly after midnight earlier this month — and officers weren’t by any stretch up against some “good old boys, never meanin’ no harm” as Waylon Jennings famously crooned.

In fact, police said the vehicle they were after was reported stolen — and things only got worse.

‘We’ll do anything, bro!’

Police said they first attempted to use StarChase equipment on the car in question; police said StarChase mechanisms are attached to the front of patrol vehicles, and when activated, they shoot a sticky GPS “dart” at the back of “whatever vehicle we are aiming at.”

But cops said the dart missed, so officers activated their lights and sirens.

However, pulling over wasn’t in the cards. Not only that, a masked back passenger leaned out of the car and pointed a gun at officers, police said.

While no shots were fired, police said officers knew “it was critical to stop these individuals. That’s when a pursuit began.”

That’s when things got even more, shall we say, hazardous.

Cops remarked that the car in question hit a median “Dukes of Hazzard” style — and police video indeed catches the moment when the vehicle goes airborne.

“It may be 2026, but cars probably shouldn’t be flying like that,” cops remarked.

RELATED: Punk with attitude on overdrive caught on cop body cam allegedly trying to steal car — but not even a taser can slow his roll

Image source: Aurora (Co.) Police video screenshot

Police said the car crashed at Boiling Drive and North Hannibal Street, but the suspects still wouldn’t call their desperate dash quits — and they decided to run for it.

It was all for naught, however, as cops said they soon found all three suspects — 18-year-old Angelo Munguia, 18-year-old Watti Heng, and a 17-year-old male — hiding in backyards.

RELATED: 3 males — ages 8, 11, 12 — steal car, crash into house; driver, 11, says he learned how to steal cars from YouTube: Cops

Image source: Aurora (Co.) Police video screenshot

Image source: Aurora (Co.) Police video screenshot

One of them was heard on video begging as officers approached, “We’ll do anything, bro!”

Munguia was facing charges of felony menacing, obstructing a peace officer, violation of a protection order, and motor vehicle trespass, police said, while Heng was facing charges of eluding, motor vehicle theft, and obstructing a peace officer.

RELATED: Florida female going wrong way on interstate claims husband was driving. Then cops find rather large hole in her story.

Image source: Aurora (Co.) Police video screenshot

You can check out video below showing part of the chase, the flying car, and the suspects with their hands held high.

RELATED: How police nailed driver accused of doing donuts in stolen car amid street takeover — even after giving cops the slip

“They were taken into custody and SHOCKER, the car did indeed come back stolen out of a neighboring city,” police said.

And as Mr. Jennings knew all too well, “That’s just a little bit more than the law will allow.”

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​Crime thwarted, Colorado, Aurora, Gun, Police chase, Arrests, Dukes of hazzard, Video, Bodycam video, Pointing gun at police, Stolen car, Crime 

A reporter once asked me, “What’s the toughest challenge you’ve faced as a caregiver?”

“Knowing what’s mine and not mine to carry,” I replied without hesitation.

He expected a different answer. Caregiving is usually described in terms of health care, insurance, exhaustion, sacrifice, or resilience. All of that is real, but none of it gets to the heart of the problem.

As a caregiver, I don’t need an ‘A for effort.’ I need to know whether what I’m doing actually helps.

I see this challenge most clearly in exam rooms. My wife needs space to speak for herself, even when pain makes it slow or difficult. Knowing when to step in and when to stay silent is a daily test of restraint. I’m her husband, advocate, and caregiver. She often asks for my voice, but I must also know when to withhold it.

Her car accident happened before I met her. I did not cause it, and I cannot undo it. Forty years into our marriage and this caregiving journey, I still haven’t managed to slow its effects, much less resolve them. Time has given me experience, but not control.

We live in a culture that treats effort as virtue and control as responsibility.

Paramedics, doctors, and first responders are compelled to act because they are trained and authorized.

Those outside those roles are often driven by something else. Someone else’s suffering agitates us. The urge to relieve that discomfort gets mistaken for a moral obligation. Action becomes a way to quiet ourselves rather than to help.

That reflex doesn’t stay confined to caregiving. When situations grow heated, the instinct is almost always the same: escalate, push harder, do more. Stopping feels irresponsible.

RELATED: When you’re carrying the love alone on Valentine’s Day

kckate16 / Getty Images

But effort is not the same as efficacy.

As a caregiver, I don’t need an “A for effort.” I need to know whether what I’m doing actually helps. And to know that, I have to stop and ask tough questions.

What is my responsibility? What are my capabilities?

I cannot make my wife’s legs grow back or eliminate her pain. I cannot undo the accident.

If those are my metrics, no amount of effort will ever succeed.

For years, fear convinced me that if I stayed more vigilant, sacrificed more, and tried harder, I could outrun reality. I mistook effort for faithfulness and exhaustion for love. In the process, I didn’t just wear myself down; I made things harder for the person I was trying to help.

Living with this over decades eventually forced me to exchange action for stewardship. When panic told me I had to solve everything immediately, a simpler question surfaced.

What is actually mine to do in this moment?

Care, not cure. Faithfulness, not outcomes.

Over time, it became clear that this struggle is not unique to caregiving. Powerlessness is terrifying, and unexamined fear often leads to recklessness or rage.

We see the results daily. People insert themselves into situations they do not understand, interfere where they have no authority, and escalate conflicts rather than resolve them.

Those thoughts don’t just whisper, they accuse. And when they go unchecked, they drive people, individually and collectively, to destructive extremes in the name of responsibility.

I’ve learned to pay attention to the language that accompanies overreach. It often arrives like a whip: I’ve got to. I must. I have to. I’m supposed to. Those phrases feel like responsibility, but they are often fear speaking in the grammar of duty. They leave no room for limits, no space for discernment, and no acknowledgment of jurisdiction.

This is where the harder question emerges.

Who actually has jurisdiction?

Not every situation improves when I insert myself into it. Not every wrong becomes mine to right. Sometimes the most faithful response is counterintuitive.

Sometimes I should just stand there. Not indifferent or in moral retreat.

I need to recognize that stepping outside my jurisdiction can damage the responsibilities already entrusted to me.

RELATED: The reform every society needs: Stop mistaking shock for success

Cienpies via iStock/Getty Images

This is where clarity matters most. God holds ultimate jurisdiction over my wife’s condition. My role is not to replace Him or compete with Him. My role is to care steadily and responsibly, trusting that restraint is not neglect and limits are not abandonment.

I once heard a story about Joni Mitchell telling a bassist working with her, “You have a marvelous use of space.” The bassist still had notes to play, but he understood the song was not his to dominate. Respecting the artist and the music itself required restraint. His understanding of limits did not diminish the song. It allowed it to become what it was meant to be.

I still struggle with the line between intervention and restraint. If someone is harming himself or others, is there a responsibility to step in — and at what cost?

Nothing resolves those questions neatly. But refusing to ask them guarantees damage.

Overreach often disguises itself as virtue. But good intentions do not protect from bad outcomes. And sometimes what we call virtue is little more than performance.

When that temptation returns, I am steadied by words a wise friend once spoke to me. “She has a Savior. You are not that Savior.”

That distinction does not diminish love. It protects it. It keeps care from turning into control, responsibility from turning into ruin, and effort from becoming its own justification.

Knowing what isn’t mine to carry remains one of the hardest lessons of my life.

It is also one of the most necessary.

​Caregiving, Responsibility, Limits, Faithfulness, Companionship, Opinion & analysis 

In late January this year, CEO of Octane AI Matt Schlicht launched a new social media platform called Moltbook. It’s just like any other social network in that users can post, discuss, comment on, or upvote content.

The one catch?

It’s off-limits for human beings. Moltbook is a platform built exclusively for autonomous AI agents.

Reactions to Moltbook have been polarizing, with some fearing it’s proof AI is becoming too powerful and others dismissing it as overhyped AI slop.

To get some insight on the AI-dominated social media platform that’s taking the internet by storm, Glenn Beck invited Harlan Stewart of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute to “The Glenn Beck Program” to share his thoughts.

One of the subjects these AI bots have been discussing on Moltbook is “consciousness” — specifically whether or not they have it.

“If we’re creating something that can have consciousness, then we would become slave owners, would we not?” asks Glenn.

“I think it’s really easy to anthropomorphize these things because they sort of train them to have these charming personalities that are kind of humanlike, but under the hood, you know, these things are just a big pile of math and numbers,” says Stewart.

“But doesn’t that sound like a human? You open up my head. I’m a big mass of goo,” Glenn counters.

“I think that’s a good point. I mean neuroscience is like famously a science that we still have a lot of confusion about … but you know, I think for understanding humans, we at least have the advantage of being a human,” Stewart says.

With AI, however, “we’re sort of growing these digital minds now, and maybe they’re humanlike, but it could be much more like introducing an alien species to Earth,” he adds.

“I just can’t believe how stupid we are in some ways,” Glenn laughs. “I mean, let’s introduce an alien species to Earth. OK, is it friendly? We have no idea. … We know that AI will eventually be smarter than us. We are just playing with fire that we don’t understand.”

While Glenn thinks AI is the “greatest invention and tool that man has ever invented,” he’s deeply concerned that in the end, it will make tools of us.

However, what we’re seeing on Moltbook — including some AI “schemes” that are going viral and fueling hysteria — is likely not proof of consciousness, at least not yet. Hauntingly, the sign that AI has reached genuine consciousness, Glenn and Stewart speculate, is ironically no sign at all. They believe that if a takeover plot ever begins to develop, it will likely be in nonhuman languages to evade counterattacks.

“I don’t believe that they would be scheming in our language with each other where we could see it. I mean, I think if it starts to have these kinds of feelings, you’re not going to know until all of a sudden it’s in charge,” Glenn theorizes.

Stewart agrees — “Ultimately, the real danger that we have to look out for is from AI agents that are powerful enough that they can pull off schemes that they actually succeed at, and part of succeeding at them would probably mean that we don’t even get a chance to observe the behavior and discuss it like we’re doing now.”

To hear more of Glenn and Stewart’s chilling conversation, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Beck, Moltbook, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Ai takeover, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze podcasts 

Bernard Nathanson died nearly 15 years ago. His story matters now more than ever. Not because he was famous, though he was. Not because he was influential, though few Americans shaped the culture more profoundly. His story matters because it proves that no one is beyond redemption — and that truth has a way of breaking through, no matter how determined we are to suppress it.

Nathanson was born in New York to Jewish parents. He became an obstetrician and gynecologist like his father. But unlike his father, he devoted his career to ending pregnancies rather than delivering babies. At one point, he directed the Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health, then the largest abortion facility in the world. He later claimed responsibility for more than 75,000 abortions. Among them was his own child.

Our age desperately needs this kind of conversion — the courage to admit complicity and the humility to seek forgiveness.

He wasn’t merely performing abortions. In many ways, he helped build the movement that made them legal. Nathanson was among the central activists whose efforts culminated in Roe v. Wade. Today, nearly 30% of American pregnancies are unintended; about 40% of those end in abortion — roughly 1,500 to 2,500 each day, between 550,000 and 910,000 annually. Those numbers cast a long shadow over Nathanson’s legacy.

By his own account, he was an atheist. He married four times. He lived without God and, for a time, without guilt.

Then came the ultrasound.

Signs of life

In the 1970s, advances in medical imaging made it possible to view the womb in real time. For the first time, doctors could watch a living fetus during an abortion procedure. Nathanson asked a colleague who performed 15 to 20 abortions daily to record one on ultrasound. What they saw unsettled him permanently.

“Ultrasound opened up a new world,” Nathanson later wrote. “For the first time I could really see the human fetus, measure it, observe it, watch it, and indeed bond with it and love it.”

This was his first conversion — not religious, but moral. Fetal development was no longer a medical abstraction. It was human life unfolding along a continuous path. To interrupt that life became, in his words, intolerable.

He went farther. He called abortion a crime. He did not exempt himself. He knew he had not been a bystander but a central participant. The reckoning was unavoidable.

No looking away

In 1984, he directed “The Silent Scream,” a film featuring ultrasound footage of an abortion in progress. It removed abstraction. What had been hidden behind euphemism became visible. The film galvanized pro-life movements worldwide because it forced viewers to see what had long been described away.

Nathanson became the abortion movement’s most formidable opponent precisely because he had once been its architect. He understood its language and its strategy. He knew how clinical terms soften moral reality. As he later admitted, statistics had been inflated and rhetoric sharpened to sway public opinion. He had helped construct the narrative.

Yet moral clarity did not bring him peace. The weight of 75,000 deaths — including his own child’s — pressed on his conscience. Ethical reversal is not the same as absolution.

In search of mercy

Through conversations with Father John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest, Nathanson began his second conversion. This one was spiritual. In December 1996, Cardinal John O’Connor baptized him in a private Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He received confirmation and first communion that same day.

When asked why he chose Catholicism, his answer was simple: “No religion matches the special role for forgiveness that is afforded by the Catholic Church.”

That sentence reveals what ideology never could: Guilt demands more than argument. It demands mercy.

Father Gerald Murray, who preached at Nathanson’s funeral, compared him to Whittaker Chambers, the former Soviet spy who renounced communism and testified against it at immense personal cost. The comparison was deliberate. Both men had served destructive causes with conviction. Both knew their systems from the inside. And both chose to speak because silence was no longer possible.

Neither escaped consequences. Yet each chose truth over self-preservation.

Hard truth

Some readers will struggle to forgive what Nathanson did. The harm was real. It cannot be undone. But what he chose once he could no longer deny the truth also matters. The screams he confronted were silent, visible only through ultrasound. Once seen, they could not be unseen.

Our age desperately needs this kind of conversion — the courage to admit complicity and the humility to seek forgiveness. Wrongdoing is softened by clinical language. Responsibility is buried beneath justification. Technology makes victims invisible.

Nathanson’s life reminds us that seeing clearly carries a cost — but refusing to see carries a greater one.

He spent half his life destroying life and the other half defending it. Many spend their entire lives destroying life and never confront it.

​Faith, Abide, Christianity, Lifestyle, Conversion, Converts, Abortion, Bernard nathanson, The silent scream, Catholicism, Pro-life 

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember Captain and Tennille — a married duo with a ridiculously catchy hit that topped the charts and won a Grammy. “Love Will Keep Us Together” made forever feel effortless. For the younger crowd, click the link for a glimpse of how music used to sound — and how optimism used to look.

They don’t make songs like that anymore.

There is a forever love — and it really does hold us together. And it’s summed up in three simple words.

And as it turns out, they don’t make love like that either. Love didn’t actually keep Captain and Tennille together. They divorced in 2014 after almost four decades, reminding us that the world’s idea of lasting love is fragile, conditional, and almost always temporary.

So … happy Valentine’s?

Well, scripture offers something entirely different. There is a forever love — and it really does hold us together. And it’s summed up in three simple words:

Love one another.

That’s it. It sounds easy. But it isn’t — because we are saints who still sin. And when we turn inward, even subtly, we fail to love one another the way Christ commands. So let’s unpack what He actually meant.

Love your neighbor vs. love one another

So how does “love one another” differ from “love your neighbor”?

We tend to think of a neighbor as someone who lives nearby. But Jesus was asked that exact question and answered it with the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). From His explanation, we learn that a neighbor is anyone in need who crosses our path. Loving our neighbor, then, is about how we treat those who are not yet part of God’s family.

But “one another” means something more specific.

Throughout the New Testament, “one another” almost always refers to fellow believers — our brothers and sisters in Christ. Practically speaking, one another is your church family. Which is one of many reasons you need a church family.

What ‘love one another’ actually looks like

The New Testament gives us roughly 50 instructions for how we are to treat one another — commands that spell out what love looks like in real life. Someone helpfully compiled them all in one place, and it’s worth reading through carefully.

Not surprisingly, the most frequently repeated command in that list is this one: love one another.

And when we wonder how to do that — especially when some people are genuinely hard to love — the answer is found in the rest of the list. Things like:

Serve one anotherForgive one anotherEncourage one anotherPray for one another

These aren’t abstract ideals. They’re concrete actions. And as we prayerfully consider them, the Holy Spirit may well bring specific people to mind.

Or consider this, from Romans 12:

“Let love be without hypocrisy — by abhorring what is evil, clinging to what is good, being devoted to one another in brotherly love, giving preference to one another in honor … contributing to the needs of the saints, pursuing hospitality” (Romans 12:9-13).

That’s a lot of practical instruction packed into a few verses. And hospitality, in particular, is an area where most of us fall woefully short.

This kind of love doesn’t stay theoretical. It shows up in schedules, homes, meals, and patience.

Why Jesus called this command ‘new’

In John 13:34, Jesus says something that can sound puzzling at first:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”

After all, the people of the Old Testament had always been called to love. The Law itself was built on loving God and loving others. So what was different?

“… even as I have loved you.”

That’s the new part.

Jesus didn’t just tell the disciples what to do — He showed them how to do it. For three years, He walked with them, served them, corrected them, bore with them, and loved them patiently.

And then — immediately after washing their feet, including Judas’ — He issued this new command, on the eve of His betrayal and death.

Love like I do.

The cost — and the witness

This is a staggering standard. And we can only love this way to the extent that we understand how deeply we ourselves are loved.

When we daily enter His presence, absorb His Word, and receive His love, something changes. Only then are we able to love one another in a way that looks unmistakably different to the world.

Which is exactly the point.

“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Before the world sees our love for our neighbors, it must see our love for one another.

The hard reality

Let’s be honest: Some believers are hard to love. Annoying. Irritating. The kind of people you quietly hope won’t sit next to you.

And sometimes, we are those people.

None of us are easy to love all the time. So we depend on the Holy Spirit to produce the fruit that makes us both more loving and more lovable. As Hannah Williamson has observed, the exercise of working out how to love one another is a “gritty training ground for loving the wider world.”

In other words, loving one another helps train us to love our neighbors. But first — the lost must witness our love for one another.

So in obedience to our Lord, let’s draw closer to Him so we can fulfill this beautiful task He’s given us — to love one another better.

A love that will, in fact, keep us all together.

Saint Valentine would be proud.

​Love, Valentine’s, Jesus, Faith 

Reading Hillary Clinton’s recent Atlantic essay, “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” I felt an emotion I did not expect: a sliver of sympathy, maybe even empathy, for her.

Clinton ranks among the most ruthless political operators of the last century. She came within inches of the presidency, the prize she wanted most, only to lose to Donald Trump — a man she treated as an absurdity for much of the 2016 campaign.

Perhaps the most problematic element of Clinton’s discussion of empathy is her unserious understanding of Christian teachings.

It would be easy to dismiss her Atlantic broadside as cynical posturing. She loads it with politicized misrepresentation, then uses Minneapolis as her stage for accusing the Trump GOP of cruelty. Still, the piece reveals something more important than spin: It exposes the moral core of today’s Democratic Party.

If Clinton only wanted a talking point, she could have posted it on X or dashed off a short op-ed. She wrote 6,000 words because, to a meaningful extent, she means it. In that respect I differ from Pastor Joe Rigney, one of her targets, whose response was excellent.

Clinton has pushed “empathy” for years. In her “basket of deplorables” speech, she described the need to “empathize” with the half of Trump’s supporters who weren’t racist, sexist, or xenophobic. After her defeat, she urged “radical empathy” in a 2017 Medium essay and argued that empathy belongs at the center of policy and politics — a theme she has repeated ever since.

Yet she misunderstands both the GOP and empathy itself.

Empathy, the left’s blind spot

Survey after survey shows liberals, not conservatives, struggling to extend empathy across political lines. Far more liberals than conservatives describe the other side as evil rather than misinformed or misguided. Liberals also report a greater willingness to cut conservatives out of friendships, business relationships, and civic life based solely on politics.

Conservatives, in practice, empathize with liberals more readily than liberals empathize with conservatives.

Clinton also misunderstands Trump. Private citizens who meet him one-on-one often praise his personal warmth. He calls people when they struggle. He spends extra time with victims and families. When he speaks harshly in public, he usually does so for deliberate political reasons. In political warfare, Trump often uses his feel for his opponents’ psychology to press the exact buttons that work.

Immigration provides another example. Clinton imagines that people who support deportations “delight” in suffering. Most do not. Many empathize with illegal immigrants — and refuse to let unbounded empathy shut off their brains.

I take a hard line on immigration. I support deporting every person here illegally and sharply reducing legal immigration as well. Yet I can sympathize with someone who has lived here for years, even decades, or someone brought here as a child. They have relationships. Many contribute in real ways. (Overall, illegal immigration produces a highly negative net impact.)

Still, incentives matter. If a sympathetic story becomes a stay of deportation, we lose border control. Good leadership means making difficult, rational choices that benefit the nation, even when those choices impose real costs on individuals.

Clinton praises Minnesota’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement vigilantes as a form of “neighborism,” essentially helping your neighbors regardless of background. She ignores the obvious: Many of the “neighbors” she celebrates include violent felons, child sex abusers, fraudsters, and other criminals.

RELATED: Hillary’s attack backfires: Allie Beth Stuckey tells Glenn Beck that Clinton’s hit piece is a ‘badge of honor’

Blaze Media

The mouth of the foolish

Clinton’s most revealing mistake involves Christianity. She accuses “far-right” Christian leaders who support Trump of discarding dignity, mercy, and compassion. Those virtues matter, but they do not exhaust Christian teaching. Mainline denominations that treat them as the whole faith have collapsed for a reason.

Christian statesmanship requires balancing virtues. Some moments demand compassion; other moments demand a steel spine. That does not contradict empathy rightly understood. It recognizes biblical limits. An empathy that destroys a nation does not reflect scriptural compassion.

Clinton’s Atlantic essay does not defend empathy. It weaponizes it, turning a virtue into a moral bludgeon and makes a nation into its target.

Clinton attacks Trump, JD Vance, and their supporters for criticizing Rev. Mariann Budde, who used a post-inauguration service at Washington National Cathedral to lecture Trump on compassion for immigrants, the LGBTQ community, and other “marginalized” groups. The backlash did not begin with disagreement over policy.

Budde took a moment of honor and turned it into a scolding. She showed no empathy for Trump or the millions who oppose her views for sincere reasons. She practiced selective “empathy,” stripped of prudence and judgment. Trump put it plainly afterward: She brought her church into politics “in a very ungracious way.”

Clinton also targets BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey and her book “Toxic Empathy,” which Clinton calls “an oxymoron.” “I don’t know if the phrase reflects moral blindness or moral bankruptcy, but either way it’s appalling,” she writes.

Clinton again refuses empathy toward her opponents. A serious engagement with Stuckey’s argument would start with the subtitle: “How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” Stuckey does not attack compassion in principle; she attacks its political hijacking. Clinton responds with a pious sneer about what she believes Jesus preached “in his short time on Earth.”

Even when Clinton praises Erika Kirk’s radical forgiveness, she shows theological shallowness. Christians must forgive personal wrongs when repentance occurs. The magistrate must pursue justice for the community. Clinton’s kindergarten version of Christian morality has hollowed out the churches that adopted it.

Clinton claims to be shocked that 25% of Republicans and 40% of self-described Christian nationalists agree with the statement that “empathy is a dangerous emotion that undermines our ability to set up a society guided by God’s truth.” She should not feel shocked. Many Americans have watched the left weaponize empathy to advance policies that punish citizens and reward lawlessness.

RELATED: Wokeness runs on ungratefulness — and normal people are over it

Photo by Marcus Ingram/Getty Images

Empathy without judgment becomes cruelty

“MAGA sees a world of vengeance, scorn, and humiliation, and cannot imagine generosity or solidarity,” Clinton argues. She gets it backward. Solidarity with my fellow Americans drives my willingness to fight for their interests on immigration and beyond. Surface-level empathy often conflicts with long-term social health, even when Clinton and her allies sneer at those who say so.

Clinton hopes conservatives “recognize the humanity” of an illegal immigrant family and decide that mass deportation “has gone too far.” I recognize that humanity already. If mere recognition of humanity dictated policy, I could not justify closing the border to anyone except the worst criminals. That path ends in disaster.

If MAGA people offer heartfelt hugs to illegal immigrants while placing them on deportation flights, will Democrats stop obstructing enforcement? I doubt it.

A wise Christian leader shows mercy after victory in war. When unchecked immigration tears the nation’s social fabric, wise leaders stand firm for the long-term interests of their people and reject emotional manipulation — a Clinton specialty for decades.

Clinton’s Wellesley commencement address in 1969 shows how deep this runs:

Part of the problem with just empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn’t do us anything. … The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible possible. … We’re not interested in social reconstruction; it’s human reconstruction. … But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation.

In that undergraduate statement, spoken more than 50 years ago, the roots of Clinton’s “empathy” show themselves. Her embrace of what Thomas Sowell called the “unconstrained vision” defines the modern left: politics as alchemy, liberation as entitlement, human nature as clay.

That vision cannot survive contact with limits — so it recasts limits as cruelty and calls dissent “hate.” Clinton’s Atlantic essay does not defend empathy. It weaponizes it, turning a virtue into a moral bludgeon and making a nation into its target.

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

​Hillary clinton, Empathy, Maga, Trump, Deplorables, Christians, The left, Allie beth stuckey, Republicans, Opinion & analysis 

As Americans across the country prepared to celebrate Valentine’s Day, President Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday morning with a lengthy post — but it wasn’t the kind of “Valentine” many were expecting. Instead of a standard holiday greeting, Trump unloaded a massive Saturday-morning broadside against one of his most loyal and persistent detractors: TV host and comedian Bill Maher.

‘Bill Maher is a highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT, and Republicans should stop using him to show how the Left is coming over our way.’

“Sometimes in life you waste time! T.V. Host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, also a friend of mine, and I agreed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He came into the famed Oval Office much different than I thought he would be. He was extremely nervous, had ZERO confidence in himself and, to soothe his nerves, immediately, within seconds, asked for a ‘Vodka Tonic.’ He said to me, ‘I’ve never felt like this before, I’m actually scared.’ In one respect, it was somewhat endearing!”

RELATED: ‘Queer’ US figure skater trashes Trump admin before taking social media break over ‘hate’ and ‘threats’

Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images

Trump was referring to Bill Maher’s April 2025 dinner at the White House, which was supposedly coordinated by their mutual friend Kid Rock.

Trump went on to remark that for some time after the dinner, Maher “seemed to be a nice guy.”

He then pivoted to a long list of his accomplishments during the first year of his second term in office, including the “PERFECT Border, Lowest Crime in 125 years, the Mass Removal of Stone Cold Criminals …Venezuela … the Rebuilding of our Military, Eight War Stoppages, and on, and on, and on!”

Trump also criticized Bill Maher for taking too seriously a joke he made earlier in the week on Truth Social involving Canada, China, and ice hockey.

Trump jokingly warned that a deal between Canada and China would be disastrous for the sport: “The first thing China will do is terminate ALL Ice Hockey being played in Canada, and permanently eliminate The Stanley Cup.”

Maher supposedly said it was a “foolish” thing to say, according to Trump’s post.

Trump continued: “Fortunately, his Television Ratings are so low that nobody will learn about his various Fake News statements about me. He is no different than Kimmel, Fallon, or Colbert but, I must admit, slightly more talented! Anyway, Bill Maher is a highly overrated LIGHTWEIGHT, and Republicans should stop using him to show how the Left is coming over our way — Our Base, the Greatest of All Time, laughs at your weakness when you do it!”

“I’d much rather spend my time MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN than wasting it on him. Bill continues to suffer from a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS!), and there is nothing that will ever be done to cure him of this very serious disease. Thank you for your attention to this minor matter!” Trump concluded, slightly modifying his usual closing statement for the occasion.

While it is unclear what prompted Trump’s message or its timing, Bill Maher’s Friday-night monologue took aim at the Trump administration, particularly its handling of the Epstein files. Maher joked that Monday, Presidents’ Day, is “when we pay tribute to all our presidents, even those in the Epstein files.”

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​Politics, Bill maher, Trump, President trump, White house, White house dinner, Kid rock, April 2025 white house dinner, Canada, China, Ice hockey, Maga, Donald trump, Maher, Tds, Trump derangement syndrome 

Today’s dating landscape leaves a lot of Christian singles feeling isolated, lonely, and hopeless. Dating apps have replaced organic meetings; casual texting has supplanted face-to-face conversation; and commitment has been demonized by the culture as restrictive and archaic.

So, what’s a single Christian man or woman to do?

That’s the question Allie Beth Stuckey and fellow podcaster and author Christian Bevere dove into on a special Valentine’s Day episode of “Relatable.”

After graduating college, Bevere found herself in the same situation many young Christian men and women find themselves in today: deeply desiring marriage but feeling directionless.

The church, she says, wasn’t very helpful, often watering down dating advice to, “Find someone that’s cute and loves Jesus.”

So Bevere, just 21 years old at the time, took dating matters into her own hands. What she did changed her life.

“I just got a Bible, a brown leather Bible on Amazon, and I said, ‘This is going to be a Bible for my future husband. I’m going to pray for him daily,”’ she tells Allie.

While many people pray for their future spouses, Bevere took it a step further by “infusing” her prayers with Scripture.

“I’d go to Timothy, I’d go to Psalms, and I’d look at how Titus or David and these men of God were walking with the Lord, the attributes they carried, and I’d start praying those over my future husband,” she says.

“I really started to war for him and intercede for this person I hadn’t met yet.”

Two years later, on her wedding day, Bevere presented this special annotated Bible to her husband. In the days following their marriage, Bevere’s husband, Arden, read through the dated prayers and letters she had written to him.

“He would look through, and he’d say, ‘You were praying for me on this date. … I was going through such a struggle of a season at that time,”’ she reminisces.

“When our prayers are Spirit-led, they’re Scripture-based, there’s so much power that we won’t even know, maybe not even Earth-side, but it’s so poignant and powerful.”

Today, Bevere’s platform is dedicated to empowering Christian women (especially singles) to discover their identity in Christ, pray boldly and intentionally for their future or current marriage, heal from past hurts and shame through God’s redemption, prepare their hearts for godly relationships, and trust God fully with their love story.

Check her out on her “Dear Future Husband” podcast or through her books “Break Up with What Broke You” and “Future Husband, Present Prayers.”

To hear Allie and Christian Bevere’s full interview, watch the episode above.

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, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey, Christian bevere, Christianity, Marriage, Biblical marriage, Blazetv, Blaze media 

If there were one thing that stood out about the Super Bowl commercials this year — aside from companies desperately appealing to Millennials with ’90s-themed nostalgia — it was the prevalence of artificial intelligence. Chief among them, Amazon showed off a new AI feature that taps into its broad Ring camera network to create a mass surveillance dragnet so effective that “Minority Report” would blush. Even worse, the feature is enabled by default, which means your Ring camera could be scanning your street right now.

Your neighborhood is under AI surveillance

We live in odd times when Amazon would willingly spend millions of dollars on a Super Bowl ad, just to tell the world a secret that most companies would keep to themselves — that their Ring cameras are now essentially AI-powered mass surveillance tools.

Your cameras have been automatically opted in, and they are actively scanning your street.

The feature is called Search Party. In the 30-second ad, a little girl is given a puppy. After falling in love with him, the dog goes missing, only to be found after Ring cameras installed throughout the neighborhood scan the streets and identify the missing pet. It’s a heartwarming tale on the surface, positioning Search Party as a smart and helpful way to find a lost dog and bring him back home.

To Amazon’s credit, the feature was meant to be a benefit to users, boasting that more than one dog has been returned home per day since the feature launched. The broader implications, however, are that Search Party’s capabilities could easily be expanded to scan the faces of humans. It’s not unrealistic either, since Ring already does a version of this for designated family and friends with a feature called Familiar Faces. With humans as the target instead of animals, Ring’s camera network could create a surveillance state bolstered with facial recognition, ID matching, and a criminal database. It’s the stuff of dystopian nightmares.

Search Party is enabled by default on all Ring outdoor cameras and doorbells. That means your cameras have been automatically opted into the service without your consent, and they are actively scanning your street corner for lost pets right now.

Can the government spy on Americans with Search Party?

Amazon claims that privacy, security, and user control are critical pillars in Ring’s products and services. If this were the case, Search Party would have been optional from the start, but I digress.

For what it’s worth, Ring will only hand over users’ personal information and the recorded footage saved to user accounts when served a legal warrant or for urgent law enforcement requests involving imminent danger. So the government probably won’t exploit Search Party for surveillance purposes now or in the future, at least not in most cases.

Either way, it’s still creepy that Ring could one day build and keep a record of every person who walks by one of their devices, thanks to AI disguised as a helpful pet finder.

RELATED: How to stop Microsoft from letting the government see everything on your computer

Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

How to disable Search Party on Ring cameras

Although Search Party comes pre-enabled on your devices, you have the power to turn it off. Follow these quick steps to rid yourself of Amazon’s intrusive AI spyware for good:

Open the Ring app on your smartphone.Tap the hamburger menu in the top left corner.From the menu, choose “Control Center.”Under “Search Party,” tap on the “Search for Lost Pets” option, and disable it.

Screenshots credit Global Success Narratives

Your neighbors need to know about Search Party too

Keep in mind that disabling Search Party on your cameras is only half the battle. Every other Ring camera, including the ones in your neighborhood, is surveilling the block, monitoring you and your neighbors when you walk by. If you really want to kick Amazon’s AI out of your community, you’ll need to spread the word.

Tell your neighbors about the feature and how to disable it. Bring it up in town hall meetings. Let your neighbors know you do not want Search Party anywhere near your home. Only then will you be free from Amazon’s prying eyes.

​Tech, Ai, Ring camera, Security 

America is getting darker. Christians have felt it for some time, but now even some of the nonreligious crowd is noticing it. A shadow creeps across the nation, breeding chaos, confusion, and unmitigated wickedness.

Some want to fight the encroaching corruption with legislation, others with innovation, but Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of the spiritual warfare podcast “Strange Encounters,” says those kinds of solutions treat only the symptoms, not the disease.

Underneath the rampant degeneracy permeating American institutions and culture is the root of all evil, and until we look it in the face, our country will continue to slide ever deeper into a pit of despair.

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick discusses America’s spiritual predicament, including the possibility of demonic portals in the U.S., with Tom DiMarco, author of the recently published book “The Only Way Out: A Brief Look at the Driving Forces Behind Today’s Chaos and the Only Person Who Can Save Us.”

Rick regularly encourages his audience to engage in what he calls “spiritual housecleaning,” meaning to examine what you’ve brought in or allowed to come into your home. Some things — like Halloween decorations, occult or witchcraft-related objects, and even media or content that promotes darkness — can be invitations of welcome to demonic forces.

But it’s not just individual Christians who need to engage in spiritual housecleaning. The nation at large is in desperate need of it too.

One item in America’s “house” deserving of scrutiny, says DiMarco, is Freemasonry — the world’s oldest fraternal organization.

Although it’s presented as a brotherhood promoting charity and personal improvement, DiMarco paints a more complicated picture.

“There’s lower levels of the Masons, and it’s basically a men’s club … they do a lot of good things, but there’s levels, and as you climb up the levels, you get to a point where you’re sworn to secrecy,” he says, citing claims of ancient deity worship among some Masonic circles.

The symbolism woven into some of America’s most prestigious monuments is another point of contention, says DiMarco. He points to the Washington Monument and the Capitol building as primary examples.

He explains that the Washington Monument is an “obelisk,” a tall, four-sided pillar tapering to a pyramid top that translates literally to “Baal’s shaft” — a phallic fertility symbol tied to pagan worship of Baal, who the Bible associates with child sacrifice.

The U.S. Capitol building’s dome, he argues, represents ancient pagan symbolism tied to a “fertility goddess” (the rounded shape designed to mirror pregnancy).

He further claims that inside the dome’s “belly” — in the Rotunda’s central fresco, “The Apotheosis of Washington” — six ancient gods are depicted, including figures symbolizing the god of war under names like Astarte, Ishtar, and Isis, whom he says evolved into the modern “Columbia” (as in District of Columbia), with Masonic influence in the naming and design.

On top of that, DiMarco claims that the man George Washington appointed to oversee the initial setup of the federal territory, Daniel Carroll (a wealthy aristocrat with alleged Masonic ties), set up the layout of Washington, D.C.’s monuments and buildings so that, when viewed aerially from the White House, it forms a pentagram — a five-pointed star often associated with occult or Satanic symbolism.

He argues that “the monuments are the compass and the square — the symbol of Freemasonry.”

Even our Statue of Liberty, he says, is modeled after a pagan goddess, “now named Columbia.”

“The second commandment, you know, specifically tells us not to build these things,” says DiMarco. “I think they become portals. They’re areas where it’s a gateway for these [demonic] beings to gain strength.”

He and Rick say that in ancient Israel, idolatry (worshiping other gods through idols, high places, Asherah poles, Baal altars, etc.) and adopting pagan practices were seen as direct violations of the covenant with God. The Bible repeatedly shows that these practices led to divine judgment — exile, defeat, or curses — while removing them via repentance, destruction of the idols, and returning to exclusive worship of Yahweh were often prerequisites for God’s restoration, blessing, protection, and deliverance.

They suggest that if America wants to see “a reign of peace,” like the one brought about by the “good kings” of Judah, we have to follow their steps and remove idols and pagan altars.

“As long as these things are here, we will have war,” says DiMarco.

To hear him unpack his portal theory, watch the full interview 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.

​Rick burgess, Blazetv, Blaze media, Burgess, Tom dimarco, Demonic worship, Demonic influence, Demons, Spiritual warfare, Washington dc, Paganism, Pagan worship, Strange encounters 

President Trump’s recent push to send federal health care dollars directly to individuals, rather than insurers, reflects a broader demand for transparency and effectiveness in how public funds are used. Government-funded medical research, which forms the foundation of much clinical care, also requires such scrutiny.

In recent years, academic medicine has advanced a nebulous theory of “structural racism” that echoes the 19th century “miasma” theory, which blamed disease on “bad air.” Despite scant evidence, studies attempting to validate this vague framework have multiplied, often funded by largely unaware taxpayers. Refocusing federal research dollars on rigorous science and evidence-based care is essential to correcting this trajectory.

The incentives were clear: Few researchers — early-career or established — would decline funding in an area where the NIH was investing heavily.

How did this happen? The construct of “structural racism” was virtually absent from medical literature until a decade ago. Since then, it has become the default explanation in academic medicine for differences in health outcomes across racial and ethnic groups. Its rise accelerated during the 2020 anti-racism craze, which swept through corporate boardrooms and university administrations while also becoming a core ideological pillar of Black Lives Matter and other political movements.

Academic medicine was no exception. This philosophy quickly gained favor in medical education, academic health centers, elite journals, and professional associations, eventually influencing federal agencies that distribute research funding.

The result: a surge of grant-funded studies built on the premise that racism causes health disparities. Of the nearly 2,300 articles indexed under the term “structural racism” in PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s database of leading biomedical and health journals, 95% were published after Jan. 1, 2020. In 2025 alone, PubMed lists 400 such papers — nearly four times the total published before 2020.

This proliferation has been supported by a tsunami of federal taxpayer dollars coming from the National Institutes of Health. From 2020 to 2025, an NIH database search found nearly 750 projects mentioning “structural racism” in their abstracts, totaling almost $533 million in funding. More than 70 of those projects were funded in 2025 at just under $40 million — significantly down from more than 220 projects in 2024 totaling $150 million, but still far above 2020, when only 12 projects received a little over $12 million in the aggregate. Before 2020, the NIH had funded just 10 such projects at a combined cost of $4 million.

Funding patterns across NIH’s 27 Institutes and Centers from 2020 to 2025 make clear that ideology, not medical science, drove much of this growth. The largest investments came from the National Institute on Drug Abuse ($147 million in total funding), National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities ($70 million), and National Institute on Aging ($57 million), each pouring substantial resources into “structural racism” research.

In 2025, for example, NIDA supported a project under the Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium that identified “structural racism” as a risk to babies before and after birth, alongside more recognizable factors like maternal health, toxic exposures, and child abuse — thereby conflating an abstract, ill-defined, and ideological social theory with measurable, scientific variables as a threat to child development.

Also in 2025, NIMHD funded the Clinical Research Scholars Training program, a “health-equity focused” initiative created in part due to NIH calls for research on “the impact of structural racism and discrimination on health disparities.” Eligibility for this program was limited to those deemed “underrepresented in biomedical research.” All others need not apply.

RELATED: Who really controls behavioral health care — and why it matters now

Douglas Rissing / Getty Images

And just last year, a NIA-funded project invoked “interrelated systems of structural racism” and “race-specific stress” as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline, diverting attention and resources away from well-established contributors such as genetics, medical conditions, lifestyle and environmental factors, and core biological mechanisms like amyloid plaques and tau tangles.

Unfortunately, a commitment to science gave way to ideology years ago. Under Francis Collins, the NIH “acknowledged and committed to ending structural racism,” without even defining the concept itself. “Structural racism” was accepted despite its questionable validity and lack of explanatory power.

With vague boundaries and mechanisms difficult to measure, claims of “structural racism” far exceeded the empirical evidence. Nevertheless, the idea was accepted wholesale and used to justify a wave of DEI initiatives, effectively recasting the NIH as an “anti-racist” institution in the Ibram X. Kendi mold. Objective science was no longer sufficient; the agency was expected to take an activist stance.

Proponents embraced this shift, seeing an opportunity to move health research from “individual-level risk, health behavior, and functioning” to “structural level concepts” with “structural racism” named specifically. Research dollars supported tools like the Structural Racism Effect Index to “guide policies and investments to advance health equity.”

The incentives were clear: Few researchers — early-career or established — would decline funding in an area where the NIH was investing heavily, especially when that support could provide a path to publication in top journals.

Yet the instruments used to quantify “structural racism” expose a basic flaw: They don’t measure racism.

The SREI’s nine dimensions, for example, largely track socioeconomic conditions — wealth, income, housing, employment. In practice, a high score identifies communities facing poverty. Even researchers linking SREI scores to hypertension, obesity, smoking, and low physical activity concede they “cannot make causal inferences.”

RELATED: Teaching kids to hate America will have real-world consequences

Deagreez via iStock/Getty Images

These health risks may result from poverty, contribute to it, or arise from entirely different causes. Labeling them as products of “structural racism” adds no explanatory value, miscasts economic hardship as race-based, and downplays individual responsibility. It overshadows far more consequential drivers of outcome disparities, including access to care, personal choice, medical comorbidities, and genetics.

Nonetheless, no alternative explanation for health disparities has received anywhere near the same attention in leading medical journals — such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and JAMA — as “structural racism.” This concept has been treated as settled fact, with disparities alone offered as proof: If disparities exist, racism must be the cause. Likewise, many medical organizations have reinforced this view through policies and position papers that embed an anti-racism framework into scientific inquiry.

But change is in the air. The NIH’s recent miasma-like fixation on “structural racism” is finally clearing. Under Director Jay Bhattacharya, the agency is refocusing on its core mission of funding rigorous, evidence-based science rather than ideology-driven research. This shift will direct scarce taxpayer dollars toward work grounded in medical science and its practical application — research that can genuinely improve health rather than feed political currents.

This course correction is timely, and while sustained effort in 2026 will be needed to fully restore the NIH to its rightful mission, taxpayers can take comfort: America’s leading biomedical and medical science research institute will once again prioritize their dollars and their health.

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

​Structural racism, Medical funding, Nih, Medical research, Government funding, Nida, Clinical research, Woke, Opinion & analysis, National institutes of health, Black lives matter, New england journal of medicine, Jay bhattacharya, Reform, Health, Equity 

Last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that Russia and China increasingly lean on nuclear weapons to pursue their national interests. Together, they could surpass the U.S. strategic nuclear force in numbers, creating a multiple-challenger problem and raising the risk of coordination between adversaries.

Put plainly: The nuclear balance is moving against the United States.

The DIA projects more than missiles and warheads. It predicts that China will deploy 60 fractional-orbit bombardment systems by 2035 — systems designed to complicate warning and response.

Start with Russia. The DIA projects a force of 400 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Fifty would be Sarmats, each reportedly capable of carrying up to 20 high-yield warheads — about 1,000 warheads. The remaining 350 would be Yars missiles, with roughly four medium-yield warheads each — about 1,400 more. That puts Russia at roughly 2,400 warheads on land-based ICBMs alone.

Russia’s sea-based force adds more. The Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile reportedly carries six warheads. Under the DIA’s forecast, that comes to about 1,152 additional warheads, pushing the combined ICBM/SLBM total to roughly 3,552. Russian strategic bombers can carry still more — around 1,000 warheads on air-launched systems.

That implies a Russian long-range strategic force as high as 4,552 warheads — far above the 2010 New START ceiling.

China’s trajectory looks even more unsettling. The DIA now projects 700 Chinese ICBMs by 2035, a striking revision given the agency’s history of underestimating Beijing’s growth. China reportedly produces 50 to 75 ICBMs per year. With roughly 400 already fielded, an additional 300 by 2035 are well within reach even at a slower production rate.

Warhead potential varies by missile type. The DF-31A can carry three re-entry vehicles. The DF-41 can reportedly carry up to 10 warheads. Depending on the mix, China could field anywhere from roughly 2,100 to 7,000 ICBM warheads.

The DIA also forecasts 132 Chinese SLBMs by 2035: 72 JL-3 missiles and 60 additional missiles for three new Type 096 ballistic-missile submarines. If the JL-3 carries three warheads, that yields 216 SLBM warheads. If the new SLBM carries at least six, that adds 360 more. In that scenario, China fields about 576 SLBM warheads — bringing the total for Chinese ICBMs and SLBMs to roughly 2,616 to 7,616 warheads.

The DIA projects more than missiles and warheads. It predicts that China will deploy 60 fractional-orbit bombardment systems by 2035 — systems designed to complicate warning and response. It also anticipates roughly 4,000 hypersonic weapons, many of which can evade current defenses and approach from unpredictable trajectories. Some could potentially carry nuclear payloads. China also produces hypersonic vehicles at scale and at far lower cost than the U.S.

North Korea compounds the problem. The DIA forecasts that Pyongyang could field about 50 ICBMs. That adds a third nuclear challenger and increases the risk of coordination among Russia, China, and North Korea during a crisis.

RELATED: How the military is computing the killing chain

Photo by John Harrelson/Getty Images

No quick fixes

Now consider the United States. The modernization plan centers on 400 Sentinel ICBMs deployed in existing silos through roughly 2045, with 400 warheads but potentially 800 to 1,200 in an upload scenario. At sea, the U.S. plans 12 Columbia-class submarines, each with 16 missiles. If each missile carries up to eight warheads, the fleet could carry 1,536 warheads. Combined, that produces 2,736 fast-flying warheads in a maximum-load scenario.

The bomber leg adds more, at least on paper. A force of B-52s and B-21s carrying cruise missiles and gravity bombs could add up to roughly 720 additional warheads, pushing a hypothetical total to about 3,456 strategic long-range warheads. That number may exceed the available warheads in the stockpile and planned cruise-missile inventories, but it illustrates the upper bound of what current plans could support.

Even that maximum posture faces a timing problem. Triad experts estimate that the United States would need at least four years to upload an expanded warhead force. Against a potential Russian and Chinese deployed force with more than 11,000 long-range warheads, the U.S. could face a numerical disadvantage of at least 3-1. More importantly, in this scenario the United States would already sit at its build limits: Sentinel and D-5 capacities would be maxed out.

We could add more bombers, but those aircraft also support critical conventional missions that few allies can perform. Current plans call for 100 B-21s, with growing support for 150 to 200. Additional ICBMs, submarines, or bombers would arrive late — often after 2040. The U.S. has 50 additional, currently empty ICBM silos that could help, but the vulnerability window could still remain open for years.

Time to build — again

Some argue that raw warhead counts do not matter. That view may comfort American planners, but it does not necessarily describe how adversaries think. Arms control — from SALT to New START — rested on the premise that limits matter and that verification matters. President Reagan captured the logic: “Trust but verify.”

If numbers never mattered, verification never would have.

History also suggests that superiority can translate into leverage. President Kennedy believed nuclear advantage helped the United States stare down the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He reportedly called the newly deployed Minuteman force “my ace in the hole.” He similarly saw the Polaris submarine force as insurance against Soviet pressure during the Berlin crisis.

None of this replaces sound diplomacy. Military strength without strategy becomes bluster. Diplomacy without credible force becomes impotent. Henry Kissinger made that point repeatedly, and it remains true in a nuclear age.

If the 2023 Strategic Posture Commission is correct that Russia and China practice nuclear blackmail and coercion, the United States cannot assume shared premises about deterrence, arms control, or restraint.

RELATED: Trump’s space order shows why the Outer Space Treaty must go

Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Consider the recent arms-control record. Under the Moscow and New START agreements, the U.S. and Russia reduced deployed strategic warheads by roughly 4,500 each, bringing the total to roughly 1,700 to 1,800. Russia may have sought to keep U.S. deployed forces below 2,000 for roughly two decades while it modernized, recovered economically, and positioned itself for a new era of confrontation.

If China and Russia achieve meaningful numerical superiority, they may gain coercive leverage that changes behavior across regions. At the same time, abolition advocates urge the United States to abandon deterrence and extended deterrence, leaving America’s forces below those of its adversaries. That would signal weakness to NATO and Indo-Pacific allies, undermining confidence and pushing some to consider their own nuclear options.

That outcome would be bitterly ironic. Many critics predicted that pushing European allies to spend more would weaken the alliance. In reality, a stronger NATO — anchored by U.S. power and reinforced by allied conventional buildup — raises the cost of aggression and reduces the risk of miscalculation.

The enemy always gets a vote. Our adversaries have cast theirs. They treat nuclear force not simply as a deterrent, but as a tool of coercion and a shield for aggression — an adjunct to the unrestricted warfare the U.S. now faces.

Because nuclear weapons underpin America’s deterrent strength and provide the umbrella under which U.S. military and diplomatic power operate, the United States must complete — and expand — its nuclear modernization plans. That effort should include credible theater and tactical nuclear capabilities as well as strategic systems. These forces function as a firewall against coercion and attack.

No substitute exists, regardless of how strongly abolition advocates wish otherwise.

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

​Nuclear triad, Nuclear bombers, Nuclear submarines, Russia, China, U.s., North korea, B-21 bomber, Cruise missiles, Nuclear deterrence, Start treaty, Opinion & analysis, America first, National defense, Strategy 

Police officers searching high and low for a missing toddler in Louisville, Kentucky, last month received an unlikely assist from a four-legged hero.

While a drone and police helicopter searched overhead for signs of the 3-year-old boy, officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department’s Seventh Division canvased the neighborhood, keenly aware that time was of the essence.

‘Lassie found him!’

Officer Josh Thompson indicated that a fellow officer heard tell of a report from a woman “that called in about a kid. It wasn’t the same description, but it was a young kid — hit her Ring doorbell camera, ran off.”

After following up with the woman, Thompson learned that the boy had ventured to the home across the street.

The front porch of that residence was flanked by packages, and there were no obvious signs of anyone being inside. So Thompson inspected the rear of the house, taking note that “there’s some spots where a kid may be.”

When returning to the front of the home, hoping that this time someone might answer the door, Thompson realized that he was being tailed.

RELATED: ‘The Case for Miracles’: A stirring road trip into the heart of faith

Photo by Luke Sharrett for the Washington Post via Getty Images

“There’s a dog, starts walking with me,” Thompson recalled. “At first, you don’t know about dogs. You don’t know where the dog’s from, so I’m kind of being a little leery of the dog. He’s barking, chirping at me a little bit, and then continues to follow me back to the front porch.”

The dog was relentless, yapping at Thompson in an apparent effort to get his attention.

Bodycam footage shows Thompson gesture to the dog and say, “Let’s go find him! Come on! Let’s go!” Immediately, the dog spins, then begins leading the officer back toward the rear of the house.

“It led me all the way back to the back yard. At that point, I’m thinking, ‘Okay, this kid’s in this back yard,'” recalled Thompson.

Noticing that the back door was ajar, officers briefly checked inside the house for the child but found nothing. When the officers came out empty-handed, they were greeted again by the dog, which hurried over to a parked car.

Moments later, Thompson heard his fellow officer, who had accompanied the dog through the back yard, announce victory: “I got him!”

“The kid was in the front passenger seat, terrified,” said Thompson.

With some coaching from the officers, the kid was able to unlock the door and was greeted with cheers.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier kid in my life,” said Thompson. “He jumped out of the car, bear-hugged my neck, and wouldn’t let go.”

In the footage, it’s clear that the dog was similarly excited over the result, wagging its tail excitedly and darting its nose from officer to officer.

“Lassie found him!” says one of the officers.

Thompson suggested that in his two years patrolling the neighborhood, he had never seen the hero dog before or since.

“I don’t know where the dog came from,” he said. “But it was a blessing from God that day.”

The LMPD stated, “Outstanding work by our officers, and a four-legged friend who reminded us that heroes come in all forms.”

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​Lifestyle, Good dog, Dog, Canine, Missing, Toddler, Children, Police, Louisville, Metro, Politics