Category: blaze media

The most notably progressive “Star Trek” series will be canceled by CBS Studios and Paramount+, prompting one of its actors to demand the show’s lore nevertheless become more “woke.”

Studios were so supportive of “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” that Paramount+ picked it up for a second season before the show even aired; but that will be all.

‘The world is still not ready to hear the message of love, peace, [and] infinite diversity.’

The show’s demise began when it launched for free on YouTube — an already bad sign — garnering just over 85,000 views in the first 24 hours; not good for a show with an estimated budget of $10 to $20 million per episode.

Nothing could prepare audiences for the show’s trajectory though. The new series boasted polyamorous refugee Klingons, Stephen Colbert, and gender activist Tig Notaro playing a teacher pushing DEI ideology on cadets.

Progressivism certainly flowed through the series’ actors. Case in point, Gina Yashere, who played Lura Thok.

Yashere took to Instagram after the show’s cancelation to declare that audiences aren’t ready to hear about love and tolerance and that future iterations must avoid becoming too white.

RELATED: New ‘Star Trek’ DEI disaster flops despite airing for free: A ‘huge, gay, glee club middle finger’

“Obviously, the world is still not ready to hear the message of love, peace, infinite diversity, acceptance, the eschewing of violence and senseless wars,” she said in a video, first reported by Fandom Pulse.

She added, “And ‘Star Trek’ will be back stronger than ever. And preferably with the same message and not completely whitewashed.”

In her written caption, Yashere made it abundantly clear she was proud of the show’s woke ideology as well.

“Be safe out there peeps. Stay woke. Wokeywoke. Wokest of the woke. Wokeyliscious. A cacophony of woke.”

The show’s messaging was never left for interpretation either. Its actors and showrunners will have to come to terms with the fact that they fully presented their intent, and it was not viewed favorably.

RELATED: Polyamorous refugee Klingons: New ‘Star Trek’ writer makes ‘three-parent household’ a priority

Photo by Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

When the show first aired, series creator Alex Kurtzman said he was “not slowing down on representation in any way,” while characterizing “representation” as being the “beating heart” of the show.

Karim Diane, who played the aforementioned Klingon who wore a skirt and dress, said back in January that his character would have his sexuality “explored.”

This manifested in a Klingon/human love story the character had with an allegedly “nonbinary” person.

Diane has since promised the second season is “basically just Season 1 turned all the way up.”

In a statement to Variety, both CBS and Paramount said that while they were “incredibly proud of the ambition, passion, and creativity” the series showcased, it will not receive a third season.

Variety also reported that “Starfleet Academy” failed to secure a significant audience and did not rank among Nielsen’s Top 10 charts for streaming viewership.

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​Align, Television, Paramount, Woke, Leftism, Ideology, Gender ideology, Star trek, Entertainment 

Best known for his snarky celebrity gossip blog, famous for its vicious takes on Hollywood’s biggest dramas, Perez Hilton recently returned from a grueling hospital ordeal with a shocking message: God is not only real — He is good.

After a bout of the flu that escalated into a perforated stomach ulcer and ultimately sepsis, Hilton was hospitalized for 21 brutal days of procedures and surgeries. During this tumultuous time, he claims he encountered God — not in the kind of drug-induced delirium we often hear about from people in near-death situations, but while he was apparently fully conscious.

‘He is in my heart, and He is the main reason why I am healing so quickly.’

“God presented himself to me,” Hilton said in a 25-minute video released on March 23.

“I was very lucid. It was real, and this has been life-changing,” he added tearfully.

Even though Hilton had a religious upbringing — baptized, confirmed, and schooled in the Catholic faith as a youth — he was “never a believer” until this “miraculous” experience turned his world upside down.

After two weeks of invasive procedures, stubborn infections that wouldn’t heal, new complications picked up in the hospital, and the humbling ordeal of needing help with basic bodily functions, Hilton reached a rock-bottom place he described as “hell.”

But it seems God met him in that darkness and not only spared his earthly life (Hilton is now home and steadily recovering) but, I pray, his eternal one as well.

The 48-year-old, openly gay single father of three surrogate-born children says he’s now “excited to start taking the kids to church” and hopes to enroll them in a local Catholic school near their Las Vegas residence.

RELATED: Gwen Stefani reveals ‘miracle’ that brought her to God at 44

ANGELA WEISS/AFP/Getty Images

What’s more, his spiritual experience has compelled him to make adjustments in his personal life. “I’m ashamed of myself,” Hilton admitted. “I felt this need to produce for my family so much that I was doing this and that … and not doing the little things,” he said, calling himself a “workaholic.”

“It was Grandma who would do dinner with the kids every night. No more. I’m gonna have dinner with my kids and my mom every night from now on,” he vowed.

In an even more recent video, Hilton announced that he has “zero desire to drink” alcohol after his encounter with God.

The video, captioned “goodbye and good riddance,” highlighted how “clear” his eyes look now.

“The future is bright. God is good. I’ve continued my journey with God, and I’m speaking to Him, and He is in my heart, and He is the main reason why I am healing so quickly,” he said, smiling.

Despite his rapid weight loss and exhausted countenance, Hilton appears to be a changed man.

A deeper standard

But if you’re anything like me, these kinds of sudden, highly emotional conversions give you pause — especially when they happen to people with large platforms who depend on clicks and clout.

You may recall the story of 24-year-old British OnlyFans model Lily Phillips, who publicly converted to Christianity and was baptized in December 2025 after going viral for completing the horrendous challenge of sleeping with 101 men in a single day.

I was thrilled to see what initially looked like repentance from Lily. I celebrate when anyone accepts Christ but especially people with grimy, dark backgrounds. If genuine, their testimonies become some of the most powerful, compelling cases for God’s incomprehensible grace — drawing broken people who believe they are unredeemable into the family of God. I love to see it.

But tragically, Lily immediately returned to making, and posting pornographic content, even justifying her pornographic content, saying, “I understand that my faith and my work don’t fit neatly into everyone’s expectations of what a Christian ‘should’ look like,” she recently claimed. “… Christianity, for me, isn’t about pretending I have everything figured out or meeting other people’s standards.”

You won’t ever hear me make the final call on someone’s heart or salvific status. That is God’s role alone. But Scripture does give us instruction about evaluating the legitimacy of our own and others’ faith.

Trees can be judged by their fruit (Matthew 7:15-20). Some seeds sprout quickly and then wither shortly after (Matthew 13:5-6). Faith without works is dead (James 2:17). Obedience — not simply claiming to know the Lord — is the primary indicator of true faith (Matthew 7:21).

These instructions, of course, must be weighed against the grueling process of sanctification — that painfully slow stripping away of our innate bend toward sin. But from what I have witnessed and personally experienced, the process of sanctification doesn’t begin until we let God reign.

When we do, that doesn’t mean we suddenly stop sinning altogether, but it does mean that we’re no longer comfortable in our rebellion. It means we want to stop doing the things that nailed our Savior to a cross — even if it takes years to actually stop doing them.

Time will tell?

I pray that’s the case with Lily — and I pray for the same for Perez Hilton. His public statements of faith in the aftermath of his spiritual encounter initially read, at least to me, as authentic. Not just because he sounds sincere in the videos he’s posted, but because there already seems to be the beginnings of fruits in his life.

Choosing sobriety, taking your kids to church, and setting intentions to put family above work are all promising signs that his professed faith is deeper than the emotional and physical trauma he just survived.

I’m tempted to say time will tell, but it won’t, because, again, hearts can only be read by God. But time will give us clues. Once the emotions of contending with his own death stabilize, once trials and tribulations return, as they always do, once he reckons with the reality that parts of his lifestyle are in rebellion against God — then perhaps we will have a better understanding of what Perez Hilton really believes in.

In the meantime, we should sincerely pray for him. It isn’t easy for a public figure — especially one whose platform is intertwined with the sick and twisted world of Hollywood — to come out as a Christian. I imagine the road ahead of him will be difficult if his faith is sincere. I hope we can ease some of that burden by contending for him in our prayers.

​Faith 

Social media users have been mulling over some puzzling posts made by the White House earlier this week.

The posts, reportedly made within an hour of each other on Wednesday night, have raised more questions than answers due to their cryptic nature.

‘All true patriots, GO!’

One of the posts, which has since been deleted, contained a video showing a woman’s feet and a voice saying, “It’s launching soon, right?”

When asked about the video, a source familiar with the matter told Blaze News, “I wonder what’s launching soon!”

RELATED: ‘Utterly false’: White House sets the record straight over media’s ‘laughable’ Iran narratives

Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The second video remains available on the White House’s X page. It has received over 16.6 million views at the time of writing.

The four-second video shows a black screen that then flashes an image of an American flag on a flagpole. The flashing image of the flag is accompanied by a recognizable phone text tone. The caption features two emojis: a phone emoji and a volume emoji.

Some commentators joked in the comments about the possible meaning of the video.

“Activation signal received,” Jack Posobiec said.

“All true patriots, GO!” Raw Egg Nationalist joked.

“Standing back and standing by,” Nic Carter wrote.

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​White house, Politics, Social media, X, Jack posobiec, Flagpole, American flag, Raw egg nationalist, Nic carter 

The British East End has long stood as the beating heart of London’s working class — famous for its docks, bustling markets, pie and mash shops, and the unbreakable Cockney spirit.

That all changed during the ten years of Tony Blair’s government, which, driven by a zealous doctrine of multiculturalism, threw open Britain’s borders. As Blair’s own former speechwriter bluntly put it, this was designed to “rub the right’s nose in diversity.” The result has been a demographic upheaval so swift and far-reaching that today the traditional East Ender is often spoken of as an endangered species.

The most visible sign of this transformation is in local schools. In many East End primary schools, white British children are now a minority.

The 2016 BBC documentary “Last Whites of the East End” brought that shift into public view. A decade on, it plays less like reportage than elegy — a stark record of a culture on the brink of disappearance.

Wholesale displacement

It is telling, if not entirely surprising, that the documentary is no longer available to stream on BBC iPlayer, as if the establishment would rather erase this uncomfortable chapter and its role in it. For this is not a case of natural urban evolution, but the direct result of policy-driven mass immigration, the emergence of parallel societies, and the wholesale displacement of the native population.

The numbers tell part of the story. According to the 2011 Census, white British residents became a minority in London for the first time. Writer David Goodhart noted that between 2001 and 2011, London’s white British population fell by more than 600,000. London has always absorbed newcomers — but the speed of change, he argued, was something different.

In boroughs like Newham, the shift is especially stark. By the time the documentary was filmed, white British residents made up just 16.7% of the population. For those interviewed, these figures are not abstract — they map onto the disappearance of institutions that once anchored daily life: working men’s clubs, markets, churches.

Cockney migration

Cockney identity was never just an accent. It was a dense web of family ties, shared references, and a particular way of navigating life in the city. For Americans, the closest analogue might be the “Old Brooklyn” archetype — a tight-knit, working-class culture forged in proximity and sustained over generations. Today, much of that culture has migrated outward, into Essex towns like Romford and Basildon.

Politicians often frame this movement as upward mobility — a sign that people are leaving for bigger homes and better prospects. But that explanation only partially captures what residents themselves describe. For many, the change is less like opportunity than dislocation. It is not aspiration that drives so-called “white flight,” but the recognition that the neighborhood has become unrecognizable.

Walk through Whitechapel Market today, and the shift is unmistakable. The rhythms of Cockney traders — the coster cries that once defined the place — have largely faded. In their place, the call to prayer from the nearby East London Mosque carries across the market five times a day, an audible sign of how profoundly the area has changed. When pubs are converted into mosques or community centers, and when English is seldom heard on the street, the social glue that once held a working-class community together begins to dissolve.

Socially engineered segregation

The rapid demographic changes in East London are not an accident of history — they are the result of intentional government policy. Decades of uncontrolled immigration, combined with imported antiquated customs that discouraged assimilation, have led to the formation of ethnic enclaves. Rather than socially engineering a liberal utopia, these circumstances have produced segregated communities where different ethnic groups live side by side but rarely interact.

In some migrant communities in East London, consanguineous (cousin) marriage remains prevalent, leading to serious public health problems that mainstream media often ignore. In areas like Newham and Tower Hamlets, rates of infant mortality and congenital disabilities are much higher than the national average.

A 2023 study found that British Pakistanis, who make up about 3% of all U.K. births, accounted for nearly one-third of all British children born with genetic disabilities — a direct result of intra-family marriage. A 2017 report revealed that one in five infant deaths in the east London borough of Redbridge was linked to marriages between first cousins or closer. This practice reinforces loyalty to the biraderi (clan) rather than the nation and seriously slows integration.

RELATED: Pakistani cousin marriage has no place in UK

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Tongue-tied

The most visible sign of this transformation is in local schools. In many East End primary schools, white British children are now a minority. In Newham they make up just 5% of students — the lowest in the region.

The documentary features parents like Leanne, who ultimately chose to move her family to Essex. She explained that her daughter was one of only a few white children in her class, making it hard for her to find friends who shared her cultural background.

English is no longer the main language spoken at home for many families in these boroughs. In Newham alone, over 100 languages are spoken, and in many schools, most students speak English as an additional language. While policymakers often praise such diversity, for the remaining white working class, it creates a sense of profound alienation. The everyday sounds of the street have changed, and for elderly residents interviewed in “Last Whites of the East End,” not being able to speak to their neighbors is the final blow to their sense of belonging.

Strangers at home

Ten years on, “Last Whites of the East End” no longer looks like a snapshot of a community in transition. It reads as an early record of a transformation that has only accelerated.

As the last white British families move to the edges of Essex, they take with them centuries of London’s heritage, leaving behind ethnic enclaves that, while geographically in England, have become culturally and socially detached from the nation that hosts them.

This is not simply “change.” A specific culture — rooted in place, memory, and continuity — is being displaced. What emerges in its place may be called diversity, or progress, or modernity. But for the people who once defined the East End, it is something else entirely: the experience of becoming strangers in what was, until recently, their own home.

​Immigration, London, Lifestyle, Europe, The death of europa, Tony blair, The last whites of the east end, Bbc, Documentaries, Television, Culture, Entertainment, Letter from the uk 

After much controversy in the last few years, the elite levels of sports may be making a return to sanity.

In a major win for women’s sports, the International Olympic Committee issued a new policy on Thursday effectively banning trans-identifying athletes from competing in the category that aligns with their gender identity, though not from competing in the category that aligns with their biology.

‘The IOC determined that a sex-based eligibility rule is necessary and adequate to the attainment of the IOC’s goals for competition at IOC Events.’

The IOC echoed two conclusions that many conservative activists have been saying for years: “Male sex … confers performance advantage in all sports and events that rely on strength, power, and/or endurance,” and “to protect fairness in such sports and events, as well as safety particularly in contact sports (e.g. combat, collision, projectile sports), it is necessary and adequate to base eligibility for competition on biological sex.”

This new policy comes after the IOC’s “broad-based review” of the IOC’s framework for women’s sports. The review was launched in September 2024 and concluded this month.

RELATED: Transgender NCAA volleyball player finally speaks out to deny allegations

Photo by Oliver Contreras / AFP via Getty Images

The policy, which replaces any and all previous policies that allowed trans-identifying athletes to compete based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex, is aligned with President Trump’s February 5, 2025, executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”

The IOC also acknowledged that this announcement would be upsetting to trans-identifying athletes and activists but that they intend to move forward with the policy: “The IOC recognises that XY athletes who identify as women and who want the opportunity to compete at IOC Events according to their legal sex or gender identity may disagree with this policy. However, after a thorough scientific review and consultations with constituents of the Olympic Movement, the IOC determined that a sex-based eligibility rule is necessary and adequate to the attainment of the IOC’s goals for competition at IOC Events.”

As expected, the outrage machine was not far behind the announcement.

CNN’s headline on social media read: “Transgender women athletes are banned from competing in the Olympics following new IOC guidelines,” despite there being no mention of banning anyone from competing.

Jennifer Sey, the CEO of XX-XY Athletes, called out CNN for the misleading headline and summarized the actual policy of the IOC: “No one is banned. Stop lying. Men can compete in men’s.”

Riley Gaines likewise issued a clarification for anyone misled by the headlines: “‘Trans women’ haven’t been banned from women’s sports. Men have. Hope this helps!”

The IOC made clear that this policy is “not retroactive” and will be applicable for the first time at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Blaze News reached out to XX-XY Athletes and CNN for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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​Politics, Women’s sports, Transgender athletes, Olympics 

The reality dating show “Love Is Blind” is drawing some unexpected attention — not for the usual romance and drama, but for the faith and family-first message this latest season may be sending viewers.

And BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is highlighting the two couples this season that send this message: one divided over views on children and commitment and another bonding over a shared Christian faith.

“People are talking about this season in particular for a couple reasons. One, because of how one couple talks about kids, one contestant, and how the sister really just kind of doesn’t like kids and talks about kids as if they’re burdens,” Stuckey explains.

“But then on the other side of it, you’ve got this very Christian, stable-seeming couple that is sharing this really sweet testimony,” she says.

In the show, Emma, who is dating Mike, is unsure of having children, while Mike sees children as a nonnegotiable. The issue begins to fester and grow when Emma’s sister, who has her own children, tells the couple that if she could go back and choose — she wouldn’t have children.

The pair made it to the altar, but Mike said no to marriage, explaining that he couldn’t marry a woman who didn’t want kids.

Stuckey believes he made the “right decision.”

“I’m not saying that Emma is unmarriable or, you know, inherently bad. Maybe she’ll make a different decision. It’s not even only the kids’ thing. It’s just that self-centered mentality that I think is not going to be good for anyone, and I really hope that Mike finds the woman for him,” she says.

Another couple, Vic and Christine, became a fan favorite when they not only fell in love with each other, but they shared a level of faith that is rarely represented on reality television.

“In one of the first dates between this couple, the guy, Vic, mentions that he wants a God-fearing woman. And then the woman, Christine, ends one of their early dates with prayer,” Stuckey explains.

“I don’t really know anything else about them or, you know, their theology or anything like that, but I just think that is a sweet moment that you don’t typically see on TV,” she continues.

And in an interview with Kayleigh McEnany on Fox News, the couple elaborated on their faith-based relationship.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations about covenant versus contract, and there is such a really true meaning behind that of when you have that covenant and you have that foundation. It makes a world of difference in the relationship,” Christine told McEnany.

“I’ve never felt so confident and so at peace and ease in a relationship, let alone a marriage, which can be stressful and difficult, especially when it happens so quickly, but God’s been very, very present,” she added.

“That’s incredible,” Stuckey comments, shocked. “I, you know, don’t necessarily recommend finding your future husband or wife on a reality TV show because so much gossip and innuendo and temptation and sensationalism typically can color the relationship, and it can make it really difficult to truly get to know someone.”

“But God can work through anything. And I love that He really hoisted up a couple to hopefully be an example to other people,” she continues, adding, “And you never know who this is going to reach.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Love is blind, Reality television, Christianity, Christian couple, Marriage, Faith based relationship 

An opponent of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) has targeted NASCAR as his No. 1 priority.

Senate candidate Paul Dans, a member of the first Trump administration, has remained steadfast in his dedication to unseating Graham.

‘We don’t give a crap what Bubba Wallace thinks.’

On Sunday, however, Dans posted a video from the Goodyear 400, held at South Carolina’s iconic Darlington Raceway, and revealed one of his day-one promises.

Dans said that, if elected, he would immediately pick up the phone and ask NASCAR to overturn one of its George Floyd-era rules.

“On June 10, 2020, NASCAR banned the flying of Confederate flags at its races,” Dans began. “As your next U.S. senator from South Carolina, my first call is going to be to the CEO of NASCAR, Jim France.”

“Sir, we want to fly our flags again at NASCAR, and we don’t give a crap what Bubba Wallace thinks. South Carolina will rise again,” Dans added.

NASCAR banned the flags from its events in 2020 just two days after driver Wallace called for their removal in the wake of Floyd’s death, which had happened about two weeks prior.

NASCAR said at the time that the presence of the Confederate flag at its events “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors, and our industry. … The display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.”

RELATED: ‘I’m on fire!’ NASCAR indefinitely suspends driver for using ‘gay voice’

Photo by Malcolm Hope/Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Less than two weeks after the ban, an alleged noose was found in Wallace’s garage stall, followed by “a piece of twine tied in what appeared to be a noose” found “hanging from a tree on raceway property” at Sonoma Raceway in California.

Days later, the FBI concluded no crime had been committed and revealed that the rope in Wallace’s stall had been there since October 2019, and “nobody could have known Mr. Wallace would be assigned” to that stall.

The alleged noose turned out to be a “a garage door pull rope fashioned like a noose.”

RELATED: Michael Jordan shocks NASCAR by doing something no one has done in 77 years

Photo by Matt Hazlett/Getty Images

Dans’ platform focuses heavily on replacing Graham; his website reads, “Fire Lindsey Graham,” in a pop-up upon first visit, alongside a photo of the candidate with President Trump.

Other positions by Dans include “no more endless wars” and “obliterate the deep state.”

The candidate is well known for being the director of Project 2025, a document that drew much criticism from left-wing sources in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. For example, the ACLU described the project as “a roadmap for how to replace the rule of law with right-wing ideals.”

However, the project’s website says it was a way to “prepare for a new conservative administration through policy, training, and personnel.”

Graham’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Republican primary for South Carolina takes place on June 9.

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​News, South carolina, Nascar, Confederacy, Confederate flag, Politics, Lindsey graham 

For decades, Cesar Chavez occupied near-canonical status in American universities. The United Farm Workers leader’s name adorned schools, his image filled lecture slides, and his story was told as secular hagiography: the humble labor leader who organized the oppressed, challenged exploitation, and embodied moral courage in the struggle for justice.

Now that image is cracking.

The reassessment of Chavez is not the end of something. It is the beginning of a broader reckoning.

A blockbuster New York Times story this month detailed serious allegations of sexual misconduct, including deeply disturbing claims that, if true, must force a fundamental reassessment of Chavez. The question is not only whether the allegations are true, but why this reckoning arrived only now.

What we are witnessing is not merely the fall of a man but the exposure of a pattern — one that reveals more about the moral framework of academic elites than about Chavez himself.

The manufactured hero

For years, Chavez has been presented, especially in university settings, as a hero of the proletariat. Not always in explicitly Marxist terms, of course. The language is smoother than that. But the structure is unmistakable: Chavez as the labor leader who stood against capital, exposed exploitation, and mobilized collective struggle in the name of justice.

Students are taught to see history as the story of structural oppression and economic conflict. Chavez became a usable symbol in that story. Because he served that function, his image was carefully curated.

What is now becoming clear is that the darker aspects of Chavez’s life were not entirely unknown. Reports of infidelity, domineering leadership, and abuses of power were not buried in some inaccessible archive. They were part of the broader historical record.

Silence around sin

Yet they were largely ignored.

That is how leftist professors handle their heroes. The facts that do not serve the narrative get minimized, reframed, or omitted. This is the first lesson of the current moment: The moral concern of the DEI professoriat is not truth but rather usefulness to the cause.

A figure is praised or condemned not by a consistent moral standard, but by whether he advances a political project. As long as Chavez could serve as a symbol of labor activism and anti-capitalist struggle, his sins remained background noise. Now that those sins threaten his usefulness, they have moved to the foreground.

No new moral conscience has emerged on the left. What we’re seeing is pure calculation.

RELATED: Labor group cancels Cesar Chavez events over ‘profoundly shocking’ new allegations

Tony Korody/Sygma/Getty Images

A narrow moral vision

The deeper problem goes beyond hypocrisy. The moral vision offered by Chavez’s academic admirers is radically narrow. It focuses almost entirely on one category of wrongdoing: economic injustice. Greed, real and serious as it is, gets elevated into the supreme moral concern. Entire departments and movements organize themselves around exposing and correcting it.

But what about lust? What about pride? What about the abuse of power in personal life, not just economic systems?

Those sins get treated as secondary or, worse, as distractions from the real work of social transformation. The result is a moral framework that is selective and shallow. It addresses external structures while neglecting the corruption of the human heart. Marxism 101 still teaches that if we revolt our way into a better system, we can somehow produce a better man.

But a philosophy with no coherent account of sin cannot solve sin.

From moralism to tyranny

That failure has predictable consequences. If the problem lies mainly in external systems, then the solution must also be external: regulation, enforcement, and conformity. Behavior must be monitored. Speech must be controlled. Dissent must be suppressed.

That is why academic environments that preach tolerance so often practice censorship. That is why calls for equity come paired with ideological compliance. Those who depart from the approved narrative do not get argued with. They get disciplined.

Until we recover a full account of human nature, one that takes sin seriously and looks beyond man for its cure, we will repeat this cycle again and again.

And that is why such movements, once they gain power, tilt toward tyranny. They do not govern by the standards of fairness they once demanded, because their moral framework never grounded those standards in the first place. It only deployed them when useful.

The fall of Chavez is not an anomaly. It is a case study. A movement that cannot account for sin will eventually be undone by it. Robespierre gets guillotined every time.

The deeper problem

At the heart of all this sits a basic misdiagnosis. Man’s greatest problem is not economic inequality. It is not structural oppression. It is not even political injustice, though all of those are real. Man’s greatest problem is sin.

It is the corruption of the heart that gives rise to every form of injustice, whether in the marketplace or the home, the factory or the family. No amount of social reorganization can fix that. You can redistribute wealth, rewrite laws, and restructure institutions and still end up with the same fallen human nature operating under new conditions.

That is why movements that promise moral transformation through politics end in disappointment. They try to fix what is internal by manipulating what is external. A Latin American studies professor once told a friend of mine, “Che su Christo.” Che is Christ.

RELATED: The lie that launched a thousand riots

Fitzgerald Whitney/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The only real solution

But there is only one Christ and only one remedy for sin, and it is the one most conspicuously absent from the classrooms that long celebrated Chavez.

The answer is not a program or a policy. It is a person.

Christ does not merely demand outward reform. He gives a new heart. He restores sinners to communion with God. He addresses not only the consequences of sin, but its source. He transforms the inner man, and from that transformation flow justice, righteousness, and love.

That is precisely why He is excluded. A system built on human effort, collective struggle, and ideological conformity cannot tolerate a solution rooted in repentance, grace, and divine authority. It is the works-righteousness religion of our age.

The inevitable reckoning

The reassessment of Chavez is not the end of something. It is the beginning of a broader reckoning. If our heroes are chosen for usefulness rather than virtue, they will disappoint us. If our moral standards are selective, they will collapse under their own inconsistency.

And if we refuse to acknowledge the true nature of sin, we will keep acting surprised by its consequences. The real lesson of this moment is not that another historical figure has fallen. It is that a moral system built on partial truths and ideological commitments cannot bear the weight of reality.

Until we recover a full account of human nature, one that takes sin seriously and looks beyond man for its cure, we will repeat this cycle again and again.

​Opinion & analysis, Cesar chavez, Cesar chavez allegations, United farm workers union, Sexual misconduct, Sexual abuse allegations, The left, Professors, Narrative, Marxism, Labor unions, Justice, Oppressed, Virtue, Sin, Human nature 

A Columbia County grand jury indicted a very popular TikTok influencer on Thursday over charges related to the alleged rape of seven women over a decade.

Benjamin Gleason, who has over a million followers, was arrested by New York state police on 17 counts and pleaded not guilty.

It is unclear if Gleason contacted any of the alleged victims through his social media account.

The alleged victims ranged in age from approximately 17 to 27 years old, according to prosecutors.

Gleason identifies himself as an American artist on his social media profile and claims to be “your girlfriends [sic] favorite influencer.” His videos include lip-syncing, music performances, and commentary about dealing with borderline personality disorder.

The charges against Gleason include:

Three counts of predatory sexual assault;Three counts of first-degree rape by forcible compulsion;Three counts of first-degree rape involving physically helpless victims;Four counts of criminal sexual act in the first degree;One count of aggravated sexual abuse in the second degree; andOne count of sexual abuse in the first degree.

He could face up to life in prison over the charges, if convicted.

It is unclear if Gleason contacted any of the alleged victims through his social media account.

RELATED: Activist pretends to be child online to catch alleged pedophiles: ‘You ain’t getting away, homeboy!’

Gleason had also created a GoFundMe donation account to ask his followers to raise $6K to repair his teeth. He said that his former struggles with addiction had damaged his teeth.

“The cost of dental repair is overwhelming, and it’s simply out of reach for me right now,” the suspect wrote.

That campaign has raised only $20.

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​Tiktok influencer rape, Serial rapist influencer, Benjamin gleason arrested, Influencer arrested for rape, Crime 

After President Donald Trump accused state Rep. James Talarico (D) of insulting Jesus, the Texas lawmaker responded with a speech framing progressive policy positions as expressions of Christian values — and Trump’s positions as the antithesis of them.

But BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey believes the president was right.

“Let me tell you the good news. The good news is, their candidate is whacked out with his six different forms of gender and all the things that I saw. The insult to Jesus,” Trump told Brian Kilmeade on Fox News.

“Trump is obviously absolutely right about that. He’s right about everything that he said,” Stuckey says. “Talarico is very extreme, very kooky. He uses the name of Jesus to justify his extremism.”

And Talarico took the opportunity to respond to Trump’s criticism.

“The President of the United States just said that I insulted Jesus. You want to know what insults Jesus? Kicking the sick off their health care while cutting taxes for billionaires. You know what insults Jesus? Deporting the stranger and separating babies from their mothers,” Talarico began.

“You know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent schoolchildren in Iran and sending our brave men and women off to die in another forever war. You know what insults Jesus? Covering up the Epstein files and then refusing to prosecute a single person in them,” he continued.

Talarico went on to ask the audience, which appeared to be churchgoers, whether they can imagine war in heaven, bigotry in heaven, or poverty in heaven.

“This would be my advice to Trump,” Stuckey says. “I don’t want Trump to talk about Talarico anymore. I don’t want him to talk about Talarico anymore, even though everything he said is absolutely true.”

“I support Trump, but his realm is not theology, and so comments like he’s ‘an insult to Jesus’ don’t really help this conversation,” she continues, pointing out that Talarico, like Satan, mixes lies with truth.

“And so, I’ll just point out some of the true things that he says before I get into the complete and total lies. Jesus is saddened by sickness and death. Jesus is saddened by the killing of innocents always. Jesus is definitely against Jeffrey Epstein and the delay of justice,” she explains.

However, Talarico was also very wrong about several of his claims.

“It is not true that Jesus is always against war. Romans 13, New Testament, part of the inerrant word of God, says that the government bears the sword to punish the evildoer, both here and abroad. Lots of debate and nuance about when and how that should be used, absolutely,” Stuckey says.

“But it does mean, at least in principle, that not all government-wielded violence is wrong. And actually, that it is at times necessary to protect the innocent and to quell evil,” she continues, pointing out that it is also “not true” that in order to love the sick, “we have to have a government-provided and mandated health care system.”

“Christians have a very long, rich history of caring for the sick, and we should continue to do that. That does not require us to support Medicare for all,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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​Relatable, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Allie beth stuckey, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Christianity, James talarico, President donald trump, The bible, Christian, Religion 

A student-run newspaper has apologized this week but not to the peer who was murdered.

Loyola University Chicago student Sheridan Gorman, 18, was shot and killed on March 19 around 1:00 a.m. The Department of Homeland Security said at the time she had been walking in a park with friends.

‘We deeply regret these errors, and we’re committed to continuing the high standards we hold for ourselves as journalists.’

DHS went on to accuse Jose Medina-Medina, “a Venezuelan criminal illegal alien,” of wearing a mask and shooting Gorman as she attempted to run away.

Now Loyola University Chicago’s newspaper is apologizing for characterizing the accused as an “illegal immigrant.”

In an article published on Sunday, the Loyola Phoenix added an editor’s note about language used in an Instagram post on Monday.

The outlet first wrote that its original headline on Instagram, “Immigrant Man Charged in Murder of Sheridan Gorman, DHS Involved,” was inappropriate because it caused “harm” to “community members.”

“That headline didn’t reflect the most important elements in the story, and it was taken down minutes later to prevent any further harm to affected community members,” the Loyola Phoenix began.

Then the student-driven paper apologized for using the term “illegal immigrant” entirely.

RELATED: College student went to Chicago park to see northern lights — and was lethally shot by illegal alien suspect, DHS says

“In the body of the original post, we described the man who was charged as an ‘illegal immigrant,’ using language provided by the Department of Homeland Security. That language does not align with Associated Press style, nor does it align with the values of this newspaper,” the note said.

“No human’s existence is illegal, and we quickly changed our wording to reflect that.”

Associated Press dropped the term “illegal immigrant” in 2013 and currently provides a bevy of alternate terms while declaring one should “use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant.”

The style guide goes on to say that terms like “immigrants lacking permanent legal status” or “irregular migration” are acceptable substitutes. The guide explicitly says not to use the terms “alien, unauthorized immigrant, irregular migrant, an illegal, illegals, or undocumented,” except when quoting people or government documents.

“Many immigrants have some sort of documents, but not the necessary ones,” it adds.

RELATED: Will Pritzker honor ICE detainer against illegal alien accused of murdering 18-year-old college student?

Photo by Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Loyola’s paper continued, saying it acknowledged the “harm such language can cause and the power and importance of the words we choose to use.”

“We deeply regret these errors, and we’re committed to continuing the high standards we hold for ourselves as journalists and members of the Loyola, Rogers Park, and Chicago communities,” the message concluded.

Blaze News reached out to the article’s author, Lilli Malone, who is also listed as the editor in chief of the paper, but did not receive a response.

In its report, DHS said that Medina-Medina was released into the country in May 2023 after being apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol and released again that June after he was arrested for alleged shoplifting in Chicago.

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​News, Murder, Illegal immigrant, Immigration, Chicago, Illinois, Venezuela, College, University, Crime, Politics 

In yet another example of our human experiences being harvested to feed Big Tech, it has come to light that data culled from Pokémon Go, the once-trendy phone-based game, was leveraged to push robotics to the next level — players unaware. Those goofy humans running around their trendy cities, chasing meaningless but well-branded digital phantoms, never had the least idea who they were serving or what they were actually doing in the protracted “just for fun” exercise.

In point of fact, Pokémon Go, which incentivized users to “catch ’em all” in the immersive new “augmented reality” world, did disclose in its terms and conditions that none of the collected data would be owned by the players. Niantic Spatial, the owner of the game and designer of the bait-like fantasy creatures, buried this item deep in the small print, of course. The company knew, and we know now, that the players, much like anyone impatiently clicking those little pop-up checkboxes, never cared and likely never even read the T&Cs.

It’s the theme of the times: harvesting the human until the human can be replaced.

Niantic’s dataset is so valuable because its players ran and walked with their children and friends through the unmapped urban canyons of the world, so difficult for GPS to access. Coco Robotics had a problem getting robots to deliver pizzas without GPS. The result — the intended outcome — is called visual positioning system. Niantic calls it “the future,” and it’s what robots of the present and future will be using to orient and navigate the physical world.

Robots will use VPS for delivering pizzas. Soon, they’ll also use it to deliver kinetic payloads — missiles, as civilians call them — to the doors of living, conscious beings. It would be nice to believe that former Pokémon Go aficionados will find themselves morally torn about such things, and as the explosions refresh their dulled recollections one last time, maybe a few of them will.

For now, as the brute facts of user exploitation come to light, there doesn’t appear to be much, if any, player complaint.

But what of the more sinister underlying pattern — people actively replacing themselves? At what point will people care about that? The new workflow of ramping up our own digital substitutes just keeps repeating itself. Games are developed and used for ulterior purposes, including military ones, as gamers who played Battlefield 3’s detailed Kharg Island map ruefully observe. Amazon plans to let go 14,000 employees in the near future. Jack Dorsey just dropped his staff from 10,000 to 6,000 with an X post. If they’re not safe, who is?

RELATED: California’s next dumb tech idea: Show your papers to scroll

Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Pokémon Go players aren’t to be blamed any more than the rest of us who know the adage, “If the product is free, you’re the product,” but failed to find much else to do with our time over the past 20 years but stare at “our” screens, ever more intently, for ever greater stretches of unremembered time.

One wonders: How far in advance of the development and release of Pokémon Go did the creators understand its collected data would be the big payoff? How long have they waited for the robotics tech to need their human datasets to scale? Can we blame the creators trapped in the substitutionary circuit any more than the users?

Our avoidant response to the flywheel of our self-induced obsolescence is enabled by soothingly rational arguments. After all, look around: Isn’t our national infrastructure wasting away? Isn’t our population aging? Wouldn’t we rather all take an early retirement? On the strength of such ideas, Jeff Bezos has unveiled his latest stratagem for hyperscaled success. The archetypal nerd, whose outsized winnings from the on-demand, on-the-couch economy have fueled his transformation into an ‘80s-style action figure, is pivoting into an AI-driven conquest of industry and manufacturing.

He is gathering a reported $100 million to buy up whatever distressed, fire-sale material operations he can, rejigger the works with robots, let his Prometheus AI djinn do the management, and, along the way, jettison the human “element” entirely. Is this to usher in the age of no work and all play? Back to owning nothing and being happy we go, this time wrapped in a nationalist instead of globalist skin.

And what happens after AI conquers every building, every company, every neighborhood? There’s no more value to be extracted from our world but us. It’s the theme of the times: harvesting the human until the human can be replaced. With what, if anything, “expert” opinion differs.

​Tech 

Philadelphia’s far-left district attorney issued a warning to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who have been deployed to the city’s airport to help ease the burden on Transportation Security Administration agents amid the ongoing Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

During a press conference at the Philadelphia International Airport on Tuesday, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) threatened to arrest and prosecute ICE agents.

‘If you don’t like it, Larry, tell your fellow Democrats to fund’ DHS.

“I have a message for the good people, and there are a lot of good people who work for ICE as agents: Keep your oath; uphold the United States Constitution,” Krasner stated.

He said that he views “mass deportation” as “immoral,” but added that his opinion “does not matter for my job.”

“My job is to enforce the law,” he continued.

“You commit crimes within the jurisdiction that is the city and county of Philadelphia — I prosecute you. That is how it works. No, I don’t take a phone call from the president, saying, ‘Let him go.’ No, the president cannot pardon you.”

RELATED: ‘We will find you’: Soros-backed district attorney vows to ‘hunt down’ ICE agents who violate law

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Krasner, who previously received financial aid from left-wing billionaire George Soros, repeated that President Donald Trump would not be able to pardon prosecuted ICE agents.

“And yes, I will put you in handcuffs, and I will put you in a courtroom. And if necessary, I will put you in a jail cell if you decide to make the terrazzo floor of this airport anything like what you did in the streets of Minneapolis, which involved the criminal homicide of unarmed, innocent people. We are not having that here,” Krasner added.

RELATED: ‘You don’t want this smoke’: Philly DA and sheriff threaten ICE officers — DHS just laughs

Larry Krasner. Gilbert Carrasquillo/GC Images/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Krasner posted a video on social media further condemning ICE’s deployment to airports.

“My message to ICE agents deployed at PHL Airport: Don’t break the law, or you’re going to find out,” he wrote.

The White House responded by calling Krasner “sick and deranged.”

“@ICEgov is there to help because Democrats have forced @TSA officers to work without paychecks. If you don’t like it, Larry, tell your fellow Democrats to fund @DHSgov,” Rapid Response 47 replied.

“To most Americans, our ICE officers are heroes as they put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists,” DHS acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told Blaze News. “What Krasner is trying to do is unlawful, and he knows it. Federal officials acting in the course of their duties are immune from liability under state law.”

“Attacks and demonization of ICE law enforcement are wrong. Because of smears like this, our ICE officers are now facing a more than 1,300% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line to arrest murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists,” Bis continued. “What’s immoral is illegal aliens killing American citizens like 18-year-old Loyola University student Sheridan Gorman, who was shot and killed last week, allegedly by Jose Medina-Medina, a Venezuelan criminal illegal alien.”

Editor’s note: This article has been edited after publication to incorporate a statement from the DHS.

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​News, Larry krasner, Larence krasner, Philadelphia, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Immigration crisis, Illegal immigration crisis, Immigration, Transportation security administration, Tsa, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Dhs shutdown, Airports, Politics 

President Donald Trump is once again weighing in on the ongoing peace talks with Iran, portraying the adversary as “strange” and increasingly desperate.

Trump is hammering Iran to cut a deal with the United States as the conflict with Iran approaches its fourth week. Iranian media has denied that there are ongoing peace talks, but the president insists Iranian officials are “begging” to make a deal to end the hostilities.

‘Only President Trump determines who negotiates.’

“The Iranian negotiators are very different and ‘strange,'” Trump said in a Truth Social post Thursday. “They are ‘begging’ us to make a deal, which they should be doing since they have been militarily obliterated, with zero chance of a comeback, and yet they publicly state that they are only ‘looking at our proposal.'”

“WRONG!!! They better get serious soon, before it is too late, because once that happens, there is NO TURNING BACK, and it won’t be pretty!”

RELATED: ‘Utterly false’: White House sets the record straight over media’s ‘laughable’ Iran narratives

Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

After Trump initially made the negotiations public on Monday, reports began swirling about which officials are being included, and in some cases excluded, from the talks.

CNN reported earlier in the week that Iranian officials would not re-enter negotiations with Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, instead insisting on meeting with Vice President JD Vance. The anonymous reports that Kushner and Witkoff were cut out of meetings were quickly quashed by the White House and other sources who set the record straight.

“President Trump and only President Trump determines who negotiates on behalf of the United States,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Blaze News.

“As the president stated today, Vice President Vance, Secretary [Marco] Rubio, Special Envoy Witkoff, and Mr. Kushner will all be involved.”

RELATED: ‘TOTAL RESOLUTION’: Trump orders temporary suspension amid Iran peace talks

Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images

Another source familiar with the negotiations told Blaze News that these reports are a form of foreign propaganda relying on accounts of potential adversaries who want to see the peace talks fail.

“CNN and NYPost are using anonymous sources aka sources from other Middle Eastern countries who clearly want to scuttle negotiations to launder foreign propaganda and blatant misinformation,” the source told Blaze News.

“The big tell is it’s not even being sourced to the Iranians but other unnamed regional sources who may or may not have a reason to undermine negotiations by peddling this type of laughable fiction,” the source added. “The whole premise and their sourcing is laughable — they’re relying on other countries who may have an interest in quashing any negotiations here.”

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​Donald trump, Karoline leavitt, Marco rubio, Jd vance, Steve witkoff, Jared kushner, Iran, Iran war, Middle east war, Fake news, No new wars, Politics 

A viral hoax circulating right now claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dead. Conspiracy theorists perpetuating this narrative speculate that his recent appearances are actually sophisticated AI deepfakes, despite fact-checks confirming he’s alive and well.

Glenn Beck was disturbed when he realized the popularity of this conspiracy theory.

“We have to be able to see through these fake stories. We have to slow down enough and think through logically,” he says.

Hiding Netanyahu’s death would demand “silence from the people who physically surround him — that’s family, personal staff, security detail, medical personnel, drivers, aides, schedulers,” Glenn adds.

Some of those people, he argues, would “have every incentive — financial, ideological, even personal — to speak up if something this enormous were true,” making it “damn near impossible” to keep the news concealed.

Glenn explains the impossibility of such a scenario.

“[Netanyahu] has to constantly interact with military leadership, the intelligence, the cabinet members, the opposition leaders, the foreign diplomats. If the man were gone, every single one of those interactions has to become a performance. Every meeting becomes a theater,” he says.

“Then you have the United States government. You have the European allies, regional adversaries, intelligence services across the globe. They all have to either be fooled or actively participate in the deception,” Glenn continues.

“Think about that for a minute — rival intelligence agencies, some of which exist specifically to expose weakness or deception in Israel. They would all have to miss or suppress it. That’s just not how intelligence services behave. They leak, they compete, they expose.”

Then there’s the massive media arm — “the hostile press, the friendly press, the foreign press, the independent journalists” along with all their “camera crews,” “audio technicians,” and “editors” — that would have to be either completely duped by a “flawless” scheme or fully “complicit” in the ruse.

“Journalists break careers for stories far smaller than this. This would be the biggest political cover-up in modern history, and no one has the human instinct to cash in on that, on Israel?” Glenn asks skeptically.

For those claiming that all of Netanyahu’s recent appearances are AI deepfakes, Glenn has a blunt message: AI is advanced, but not that advanced — at least not yet.

“You would need the technology that could generate full-motion, real-time video; … handle unpredictable environments, lighting, background noise, interruptions; … maintain consistency across multiple appearances, different angles, different days; and do it so perfectly that video experts cannot detect it, foreign intelligence could not detect it, political opponents can’t expose it,” he explains.

“If that technology exists at that level — not in a lab, but operationally deployed — it would be the most valuable and destabilizing capability on Earth, and it wouldn’t be used for Benjamin Netanyahu. It would be used for something far, far greater than that,” he continues.

Realistically pulling off a scheme as grand as hiding a world leader’s death from the entire world is simply too great a task for our current technological capabilities, Glenn concludes.

“You’d need total silence from the inner circle, total coordination against his entire government, total compliance or total failure of government intelligence from all over the world, … total [complicity] or total incompetence of the international media, and flawless, undetectable AI that could replace a human being in dynamic public settings,” he summarizes.

“That’s a pretty big wall to get over.”

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Ai deepfake, Benjamin netanyahu, Israel, Netanyahu death, Rumor 

Think back to fourth-grade American history. We learned why the Articles of Confederation failed and why the Constitution replaced them. One major problem was that states struggled to trade with one another and often tried to protect local interests by taxing or restricting goods from other states.

That helps explain why the Constitutional Convention gave Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce in Article I.

The challenge to the machine-gun ban asks more than whether one statute survives. It asks whether the Constitution’s architecture still restrains power at all.

In grade school, the principle sounded straightforward enough. Two centuries of litigation have made it anything but. A basic question still hangs over the Commerce Clause: How much power does it actually give Congress?

Can Congress force you to buy health insurance? Can it stop you from growing wheat in your own garden to bake your own bread? Can it ban you from possessing a firearm?

Not buying a firearm, which plainly involves commerce. Not using one. Just possessing one.

And does the answer change if that firearm happens to be a machine gun?

In 1986, Congress made it illegal “for any person to transfer or possess a machine gun,” with narrow exceptions for military use and for machine guns lawfully possessed before the statute took effect. For everyone else, the ban is absolute.

One might expect Congress to have debated whether the Commerce Clause, or any other constitutional provision, gave legislators the power to ban mere possession of a machine gun. It did not. The only real justification for banning post-1986 machine guns came in a single House floor statement from Rep. William J. Hughes (D-N.J.), the amendment’s sponsor: “I do not know why anyone would object to the banning of machine guns.”

Hughes did not offer a constitutional justification. He simply assumed Congress had the power and never bothered to prove it.

In reality, Congress does not possess a general police power. It cannot create a comprehensive national criminal code simply because it wants to. That authority belongs chiefly to the states. Congress may enact criminal laws only when they rest on one of its few enumerated powers.

That’s the essence of federalism.

RELATED: Want a machine gun? These states might soon make buying one easier

JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP/Getty Images

So the real question remains: Does Congress have the power to prohibit mere possession of a machine gun, or does that authority remain with the states and the people?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has confronted the question before, but it has never answered it.

In 1997, the full court, sitting en banc, split evenly in United States v. Kirk. Sixteen of the 17 judges participated, and the court divided straight down the middle. Half concluded that the machine-gun ban exceeded Congress’ Commerce Clause authority. Half disagreed. Because no majority emerged, the district court’s judgment was affirmed by default, and the written opinions carried no precedential force.

Three months later, the court faced the issue again in United States v. Knutson. This time, the panel included three judges who believed Congress did have the power to ban machine guns. They upheld the law. The full court stayed silent, and Knutson remains binding precedent.

Two months ago, Judge Don Willett raised the issue again in a nonbinding concurrence in United States v. Wilson. Willett expressed serious doubt that Congress has constitutional authority to prohibit mere possession of a firearm. He walked through the Supreme Court’s three recognized categories of Commerce Clause authority: the channels of interstate commerce, the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and activities that substantially affect interstate commerce. Mere possession of a firearm, he concluded, “fits uneasily within any of these categories.”

Willett’s observation gets to the heart of the problem.

If mere possession counts as interstate commerce, or as something Congress may regulate under the Commerce Clause, then federal power no longer has a meaningful limiting principle. Congress can regulate nearly anything, so long as some lawyer can imagine a downstream economic effect.

That is not constitutional government. It is federal power without a boundary.

Now, nearly three decades after Knutson, the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Temple Gun Club are prepared to press the issue again. Temple Gun Club is made up of law-abiding citizens who want machine-gun ownership made lawful for their members. The organization is not talking about weapons bought on some national market. It is talking about firearms the members would build themselves by converting guns they already lawfully own, firearms that never entered the stream of interstate commerce.

This case is about more than just machine guns. It is about whether the Commerce Clause still has limits. If Congress may ban possession of an item that was never bought, never sold, never exchanged across state lines, and has no substantial effect on interstate commerce, then Congress can regulate virtually every aspect of human life.

RELATED: When good guys carry, killers lose — and the media looks away

Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/Denver Post/Getty Images

Willett made the point well in Wilson:

Far from viewing this sort of incremental, frog-boiling expansion of federal power as legitimate, the Founding generation saw it as the more insidious threat — a quiet, gradual erosion of liberty rather than a sudden seizure of it.

That’s right. The courts should return to first principles. They should revisit the machine-gun ban and ask the question Congress ducked in 1986: Does “regulate commerce” still mean something limited and intelligible, or has the phrase become a blank check for federal control?

The challenge to the machine-gun ban asks more than whether one statute survives. It asks whether the Constitution’s architecture still restrains power at all — or whether the 10th Amendment has been reduced to a historical footnote.

​Opinion & analysis, Machine gun, Ban, 1986 machine gun ban, Constitution, Commerce clause, Congress, Limited government, Possession, Federal lawsuit, Fifth circuit, Second amendment, Supreme court, William j. hughes, Police power, Federalism 

An illegal alien who’s been deported four times faces upgraded charges now that the elderly Air Force veteran he’s accused of shoving onto subway tracks in New York City earlier this month has died.

Bairon Posada-Hernandez — a Honduran national with 15 prior charges on his record — was initially charged with attempted murder in connection with the incident, the Department of Homeland Security said.

‘I hope he rots in hell.’

However, the New York Daily News, citing court records, reported that charges against the 34-year-old suspect were upgraded to murder Wednesday after the elderly victim who had been on life support recently passed away.

More from the Daily News:

Richard Williams, 83, was waiting on the downtown platform for the F and Q trains at the Lexington Ave.-63rd St. station when he was shoved onto the tracks around 11:30 a.m. on March 8. Moments before, the assailant had pushed a 30-year-old man standing next to Williams onto the tracks as well without saying a word, cops said.

Williams was rushed to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell in critical condition, the paper said, adding that his eldest daughter said he wasn’t expected to survive.

“It doesn’t look good,” Debbie Williams told the Daily News from her father’s bedside. Richard Williams died on March 17, the paper said.

Police told the Daily News that the city’s medical examiner attributed Williams’ cause of death to multiple blunt-force injuries.

RELATED: ‘Heinous’ thug accused of shoving 83-year-old military vet onto NYC subway tracks was deported 4 times, charged 15 times: DHS

“I hope he rots in hell,” Debbie Williams said of the suspect, according to the paper.

Posada-Hernandez pleaded not guilty earlier this month; his arraignment on the new charges is scheduled for Monday, the paper said.

The suspect’s attorney Michael Papson told the Daily News his client “vehemently denies these allegations. He’s never been arrested in the state of New York — ever.”

However, Homeland Security Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis had a different take, calling Posada-Hernandez a “heinous” and “serial criminal” who “should never have been able to walk our streets and harm innocent Americans.”

More from DHS:

Posada-Hernandez first entered the country on January 2, 2008, and has been deported four different times, most recently in 2020. He entered illegally a fifth time at an unknown date and location.

The suspect has a lengthy criminal history, including 15 prior charges such as simple assault, domestic violence, obstruction of police, possession of a weapon, drug possession, and aggravated assault.

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​Crime, Bairon posada-hernandez, Department of homeland security, Richard williams, Air force vet, Elderly man, New york city, Subway, Shoved onto subway tracks, Murder charge, Illegal alien, Illegal immigration, Politics 

Buckle up, Boomers and Gen Xers, because I’m going to serve you up some nostalgia bait. Stop at the concession booth to pick up your complimentary rose-colored glasses, and don’t feel shy.

Generation X was born between 1965 and 1980. We are the last generation who experienced the real, physical world the way most humans have experienced it. We came along when generational transitions were gradual. We knew our Boomer parents’ music and movie stars, and we know our Silent Generation grandparents’ music and movie stars. As a kid, I knew who the Andrews Sisters were, and I could sing along because my grandmother played their records.

There will be Slant Six engines running in good health long after I’m dead, just as God intended.

Compare to today: The average Gen Z kid has no idea who Michael Jackson, Madonna, or Lucille Ball are. Starting with Millennials, a chasm opened up between generations. People a generation younger asked who some of the most world-famous stars were when they were working and alive just 20 years earlier.

With Gen Z it’s even starker. They were given digital poison in the form of smartphones in their tender years, and the entire cultural landscape fragmented into a billion bespoke Balkan states.

It’s hard to convince young people that some of the technologies from the bad old world of analog were actually superior to what we have today. They don’t believe that phone calls on copper wire were clear and never dropped (it’s true, though). Hilariously, they think film photography was always blurry and little better at capturing detail than an Impressionist painter.

Well, some of these things were better. And I want them back.

1. Kodachrome film

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

I trained as a photographer in college, and that was going to be my career. But then digital came along. I was in romantic love with the hands-on craft that was film photography. When computers took over, I packed it all away because I was in love with silver gelatin emulsions, not silicon chips.

The loss of Kodachrome color slide film was the worst, and I shed real tears when Kodak pulled the plug. There was no color film in history that reproduced color as well as Kodachrome did; there’s a reason Paul Simon wrote the song. He was right.

Kodachrome was actually a black-and-white film with no built-in dyes like all other color films. Instead it captured the blue, red, and green light on three layers in the film separately. The color dyes were added during the wet chemical processing, and those dyes were richer and more time-stable than ordinary color film. This is why a Kodachrome slide from the 1940s looks like a high-quality photograph taken today — there’s no fading or washed-out colors like many of us see in old color photos in our family albums.

It was also the sharpest film with the highest resolution. A scene taken on Kodachrome was reproduced in such detail that looking at the slide was nearly like looking at real life through a window.

Because you’re reading this on a computer screen, you and I can’t see what the slide “really” looks like. It’s mediated by an electronic screen. But you can still see the rich color and fine detail that no other film could achieve.

2. Three-strip Technicolor

People today talk about bright hues looking like “Technicolor,” but few people understand what that really meant. For decades in Hollywood, the patented Technicolor film process was different from every other color film technology, and it reined supreme. Motion pictures shot in Technicolor were brighter and more vivid than any other process. They made real life look like the Land of Oz.

The quality came at a price. Like Kodachrome, Technicolor used black-and-white film, adding stable, rich color dyes later during processing and printing. This made the shooting process difficult. The film was “slow,” requiring so much light on set that actors sometimes got eye damage. They certainly sweat a lot.

Technicolor cameras ran three separate strips of black-and-white motion picture film through the camera at the same time. A “beam splitter” separated the light into red, green, and blue, directing one color only to each of the three strips of film. The cameras were heavy and needed to be sound-baffled during a shoot.

Striking the final print for projection required precision machines that could line up each of the three strips of film in perfect registration to lay down cyan, yellow, and magenta dyes. It took precision-machining, skill, time, and money. That’s why the process was abandoned when cheaper, easier all-in-one color motion picture film became available.

But that’s also why the Technicolor process was so beloved that songs were written about it. This is from the Technicolor production “Silk Stockings” with Janis Paige singing to Fred Astaire.

3. Air-cooled Volkswagen engines

I went outside to play in 1978 and came upon my stepfather on his knees behind the 1967 beige VW bug that was our family car. “God — son of a *@^%!” he cussed as the engine cranked and cranked and wouldn’t fire up. He was trying to gap the points in the distributor, a job he was never good at. I learned to do it decades later from a classic butch lesbian, and it didn’t seem that hard to me.

My stepdad was doing this because that’s what normal people did in those days. You tuned up your own car. Most dads had a toolset and the know-how to do car maintenance at home. Repairs were less expensive, and you didn’t have to have a computer technician “scan” your engine to figure out what the bloody computer thought was wrong with it.

Sure, the old VWs were simple and had few features. The heaters were so bad that winter driving required an ice scraper for the inside of the windscreen. The bugs were tiny compared to modern cars, but you could get a surprising amount in there if you were clever.

Sure, they were light (some people call them death traps), but that was great when my mother went off a snowy road in Upstate New York, and four boys from the local college fraternity just picked it up out of the ditch and set it back on the road.

I’d give anything to hear that musical, metallic tinkle of the exhaust pipes on America’s roads today.

4. The Chrysler Slant Six engine

If you know, you know. America never built a more durable engine than the famous Chrysler Slant Six. The engine got its name because the designers tilted it 30 degrees to fit the block under the lower, sleeker hoods that became stylish in the early 1960s.

This six-cylinder may not have had the raw horsepower of a big block V8, but it produced a surprising amount of oomph for its size, and it was an engine that never died. If you’ve owned one, you can hear the sewing machine-like purr and tick in your mind.

We had two Slant Six-powered family cars growing up. As an adult, I’ve had a Dodge Dart and a Plymouth Belvedere powered by this motor. There’s no better way to spend an afternoon than adjusting the valves on a Slant Six while it’s running. I miss how easy it was to work on these engines, made in the days when you could move around under the hood and adjust something without taking off 15 components just to get enough room to put a finger in the engine bay.

There will be Slant Six engines running in good health long after I’m dead, just as God intended.

RELATED: My 1966 Plymouth Belvedere let her 225 Slant-6 do the talking

NBC/Getty Images

5. Customer service

This is a social technology that needs to make a comeback. My first jobs as a teenager were running the cash register at a Wegman’s grocery store and bringing burgers to tables at a Big Boy restaurant. Friendly, efficient customer service was mandatory. It was expected by every customer and every employer.

You were to greet customers with a friendly hello and an offer to help. Smiles were either compulsory or strongly encouraged. If a customer needed to find an item, you found it for them and walked them over to the right aisle.

What do you get today when you walk into any retail store? Dead-eyed, silent stares from any staff younger than 35. Need to find a pipe fitting in a big store like Lowe’s? Try asking. You’ll get, “Um … a what? If we had any, they’d be, like, over there,” as “Jonas” waves in a northeasterly direction.

Surprisingly, a young clerk at my local McDonald’s reminded me of the good old days of customer service last week. Like so many places, McDonald’s is making its restaurants hostile to humans. In addition to the ugly, gray, brutalist “updated” architecture, the lobbies are crammed with touch-screen kiosks, while the staffed registers have been reduced to one or two maximum. As recently as 15 years ago, McDonald’s had a reputation for employing staff that were neater, tidier, and friendlier than the competition.

That’s gone now — except for this one young man at my local McD’s. I walked past the kiosks and up to the register, expecting to be ignored for five minutes as is now McDonald’s standard. “Jeff” was about 22. His shirt was tucked in. He was neatly groomed. He smiled at me and said, “Welcome to McDonald’s; how are you today?” He meant it. He was looking me in the eye. I was so pleasantly surprised I thought I was dreaming, and I made a point to thank him for being human and polite.

The other day, I saw this old early ’80s commercial for McDonald’s Shamrock Shake. Take a look, and try not to tear up. If you’re 35 or under, you probably think the chipper and upbeat tone looks “fake.” You may not believe anyone ever acted that way. You might even find this level of cheer “cringe.”

Well, it was like that. I was there. And I want it back.

​Generation x, Kodachrome, Lifestyle, Culture, Technicolor, Chrysler slant six, Cars, Nostalgia, Customer service, Mcdonald’s, Intervention 

America’s newest political battlefield runs through one of the most miserable places in the country: the airport.

Democrats have held up funding for the Department of Homeland Security amid their ongoing war over ICE, and after a month without pay, TSA employees have started refusing to come to work. The result has been crippling delays at major airports, with waits stretching four hours or more and turning an already degraded flying experience into something closer to a public humiliation ritual.

The GOP theoretically holds the levers of power, but in practice it remains terrified of disturbing the status quo.

The brutal truth is that one political party is willing to disrupt travel across the country to protect illegal immigrants and preserve a future voter pipeline. Even after assassination attempts, lawfare against political opponents, and an open push for demographic replacement, conservatives still hesitate to admit that our political battles have become existential.

In theory, the United States remains the wealthiest and most powerful nation on earth. In practice, basic air travel now is a dysfunctional disaster. Seats are cramped, service is miserable, fellow passengers are often feral, and airlines charge extra for every scrap of convenience in the hope of squeezing one last dollar from exhausted travelers.

For a while, the indignity at least purchased speed. Flying still got you from one place to another faster than anything else. But incompetence, cost-cutting, and crumbling infrastructure have made significant delays routine. Travelers now regularly build an extra day into both ends of a trip because same-day arrival has become an increasingly reckless assumption.

Adding four-hour TSA lines to that ordeal is more than just another inconvenience. It’s simply insulting.

To his credit, President Trump has moved ICE officers into airports to assist with screening. It is less satisfying than watching those officers execute deportation raids, but early signs suggest the move has worked. Atlanta reportedly went from nearly five hours of screening delays to roughly five minutes. ICE officers appear to be in good spirits, and the agency itself seems to be recovering some badly needed public goodwill. Tom Homan has even said ICE agents will continue deportation operations while helping with TSA duties. It is not an ideal arrangement, but Trump has once again found a way to turn executive action into a political win.

RELATED: The right’s only way out of podcast chaos is radical honesty

Blaze Media Illustration

Still, the TSA mess raises a larger strategic question, one that extends well beyond airports.

During the COVID lockdowns, public schools across the country shut their doors. Conservatives had spent years correctly describing government education as a progressive propaganda machine and a patronage network for Democratic clients. Yet when the system buckled, the right did not use the opening to challenge the legitimacy of the whole structure. Republicans begged for schools to reopen as quickly as possible. Faced with a rare chance to dismantle an atrocious institution, conservatives instead demanded a “return to normal.” But normal was already a disaster.

The same pattern now applies to the TSA.

The agency did not even exist before 2001, and it has performed badly almost from the start. Most contraband still gets through screening. The TSA has not stopped a single terrorist attack. Like the public school system, it functions largely as a jobs program for Democrat clients while draining billions from taxpayers and making ordinary life demonstrably worse.

Republicans still act as though enduring a few nasty New York Times editorials is too high a price to pay to save the country.

Rather than using this crisis to argue for dismantling the TSA, Republicans have rushed to prove that it is indispensable. The short-term political benefit is obvious enough. No administration wants to own airport chaos. But every such rescue reinforces a deeper assumption shared by both parties: Any government program, once created, becomes permanent. No one is going to vote himself into a smaller state. The incentives do not allow it. America is far more likely to watch the regime collapse than to see it willingly scale itself back.

That failure of imagination points to a larger problem.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the presidency while holding a friendly Supreme Court, yet they still appear terrified to govern. Only Trump, in his early burst of executive orders, showed much appetite for using the moment. Even that momentum slowed once the administration ran into the courts and Congress refused to codify any serious part of the MAGA agenda. The GOP theoretically holds the levers of power, but in practice it remains terrified of disturbing the status quo.

RELATED: The taboo conservatives refuse to confront

Blaze Media Illustration

Democrats behave very differently. Even from a minority position, they are willing to shut down travel across the country for the explicit purpose of keeping illegal immigrants here. Members of the Democratic Party understand that their coalition depends on dissolving the old American nation and distributing its assets to clients in exchange for votes. That agenda is not particularly popular with the historic American population, but it is attractive to new arrivals who did not build the country and feel no inherited obligation toward it.

To remain electorally viable, Democrats need an ever-expanding pool of imported voters dependent on public wealth transfers to cancel out the votes of the native population. If they can replace enough of the country, they can govern it indefinitely. Progressives celebrate that possibility whenever they are not dismissing it as a conspiracy theory.

If one party is willing to grind national air travel to a halt to preserve its electoral advantage while the other will not pass basic legislation for fear of offending someone, the country has a big problem. Trump has pressed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act to strengthen election integrity and give Republicans a tactical advantage, yet the GOP continues to drag its feet. One party behaves as if politics actually matters. The other behaves as if politics is an embarrassing chore.

Democrats are willing to hold the nation hostage in airport security lines to secure victory. Republicans still act as though enduring a few nasty New York Times editorials is too high a price to pay to save the country. A movement that fears bad press more than national dispossession has surrendered the habits of self-government and forgotten what political power is for.

​Tsa, Air travel, Tsa lines, Gop, Airports, Democrats, Trump, Ice, Covid, Maga, Opinion & analysis, Demographics, Government shutdown, Congress, Mass deportations, Illegal immigration, Immigration and customs enforcement, Illegal aliens 

Wisconsin police were on the smelly trail of a “serial defecator” until the woman was tracked down through the use of a drone and trail cameras.

A viral post from the Stoughton Police Department on Facebook said the drone captured video of the 46-year-old woman on Feb. 5.

In the video published by WISN, the officer reassured her that video of their interaction would not air on television.

“SPD USES DRONE TO ARREST SERIAL DEFECATOR IN CITY PARK,” police wrote in all caps.

An extensive investigation established a defecation pattern early in the morning at the park by use of the cameras and drone. This led to an officer confronting the woman about her illicit and public lavatorial activities.

“After multiple reports of residents finding human feces and used toilet paper in a city park, SPD used trail cameras and a drone to ID and cite the person responsible,” police said.

WISN-TV obtained video of the police officer confronting the woman at 5 a.m.

“Can you come here and talk to me?” he asks her.

“Sure,” she responds.

“Can you look directly above me? See the drone that just caught you going to the bathroom back here?” he asks.

“Yeah,” she responds.

“You’ve been doing this quite a while too,” he says.

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” she replies.

The woman said she routinely jogs but was unable to use the portable toilets that were usually available during warmer climes. The officer told her to stop defecating on the trail and gave her a citation.

In the video published by WISN, the officer reassured her that video of their interaction would not air on television.

“I am mortified,” she responded.

RELATED: Officials of ‘Latinx’ LGBTQ+ center are outraged that months-long fecal attacks are not an arrestable offense

Police also responded to concerns that the woman might have been homeless by denying those suspicions.

WISN identified the public defecator as a health professional but would not identify her because she was not charged criminally.

The nurse practitioner will likely have to pay a $187 fine.

Stoughton is a city of about 13K residents located about 20 miles south of Madison.

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​Serial defecator, Defecator on wisconsin trail, Mortified defecator, Video arrest of defecator, Crime