Category: blaze media

“Why are you gay?” intoned Tucker Carlson in an African accent. Then the internet exploded. The voices of countless homosexuals and their supportive family members rose in unison to a pitch so shrill it could crack silicon data chips.

They trotted out all the predictable labels. Homophobe. Bigot. Christian nationalist. Carlson was promptly denounced across social media as a homophobe, a bigot, and a purveyor of hateful Christian nationalism — simply for asking the question we are not allowed to ask.

‘I’m not crying because you’re gay,’ she said. ‘I’m crying because I know that life is going to be harder for you.’

It happened on Carlson’s December 4 podcast, which featured an extensive conversation with “Dangerous Faggot” Milo Yiannopoulos. For those who don’t know, Yiannopolous is a right-wing cultural commentator and provocateur with a pronounced histrionic gay affect. Today, he says he has abandoned homosexuality.

Trauma response

Before I go farther, it’s necessary to clear some underbrush. I am interested in the content of what Yiannopolous said, not in what anyone thinks of him as a person. Whether one thinks he’s honest, dishonest, annoying, or charming is irrelevant. What he says is what I’m interested in.

So what did he say?

“In almost every case, and certainly in every male case, [homosexuality] is a trauma response. It is not a sexuality.”

Milo Yiannopolous speaks for me. I endorse what he said and believe it to be true. I believe I became a homosexual because I grew up under a mother with narcissistic personality disorder, a father who left before I could ever meet him, and an attempted murderer and pedophile for a stepfather.

Let me clear away some more underbrush, though it will probably be fruitless.

1. Yes, I believe the large majority of male homosexuals are homosexuals because of childhood circumstances and trauma.

2. Yes, I believe that most of those who claim that they had no childhood trauma are not being candid — including, in some cases, not being candid with themselves. Personal and professional experience leads me to this conclusion.

3. No, I’m not claiming that every single male homosexual had abusive parents. Yes, I recognize that some male homosexuals come from stable, loving families. I have male homosexual friends who fit this description.

What we used to know

We have lived for so long with the culturally enforced mandate to believe in “born this way” that we have to remind society of what it used to know just yesterday. Those of you in middle age will remember that until the past 25 years or so, homosexuality was understood to be the outcome of an abusive or neglectful childhood.

Not only psychiatric researchers, but everyday Americans noticed that most male homosexuals had troubled or nonexistent relationships with their fathers. They noticed that male homosexuals were unusually close to and emotionally enmeshed with their mothers. They noticed that those mothers often had overbearing, domineering, or melodramatic personalities.

If you’re younger than 40 and reading this with shock, I’m telling you the truth. This view was normal, but it was deliberately re-cast as “homophobia” and “ abuse against gays” in the past 25 years by the same activists who brought you “trans kids,” breast removal of healthy teen girls, and cross-sex hormones for teen boys who “are actually girls.”

That’s the set that brought you “born this way.”

‘Science’ fiction

As I write this piece, I’m struggling with how to give readers some citations. The trouble is that on the topic of homosexuality, just like with all things “COVID,” most people think there’s something called “the Science.” Even based right-wingers who rejected the authoritarian commands that tried to compel us to take mRNA “vaccines” and wear masks jump right to “show me THE SCIENCE” when the subject is the origin of homosexuality.

When the topic is this emotional, people stop thinking and start emoting. They start pretending that humans can’t know anything about the world, can’t recognize any patterns, and can’t come to any conclusions unless a Scientist published a Paper in a a Peer-Reviewed Journal.

Nevertheless, I’ll try. Surprising though it may be, the psychiatric and psychological literature, starting with Freud in the early 20th century, has long noted the pattern I described above. And most, though not all, male homosexuals were sexually abused as children or as minors. (I am a homosexual, but I was not molested as a child.)

Commentator and “ex-gay” Joseph Sciambra has published several bibliographies that round up much of this literature.

Normally, people don’t demand “the Science” on other subjects. No one demands “the Science” before noticing that most teenage drivers are more erratic and dangerous and therefore it pays to drive defensively around them. Everyone knows this, not because they read “the Science.” They know it because they have eyes, ears, and a brain that detects patterns.

Gay Old Party

Today, even conservatives are invested in the “born this way” gay narrative. While I’m pleased that the right wing came around on unfair laws that penalized homosexuals simply for being homosexuals (not laws that properly punished lewd public behavior), I’m not pleased that the average Republican now treats “born this way” as the end of the conversation.

The gay activist set has conquered the right wing. Those conservatives who find the position taken in this piece hard to bear have been manipulated emotionally by gay activists.

If you’re a conservative who finds this uncomfortable or “mean,” I think I know another reason why. You have homosexuals in your family whom you love (so do I, friends). Some of them are your children. And if they’re your children, you’re hearing an implicit accusation: “He’s saying I’m a terrible mother who made my son gay.”

No. I’m not (necessarily) saying that, even if you “feel” that I’m saying that. I don’t know you, and I don’t know how you raised your children. As a peer support coach, I’ve spoken to many moms and dads with gay children. These are loving moms and dads, but sometimes they made mistakes, or divorce or other trauma came to pass in the family.

Even the most loving parents will make mistakes, and the culture outside the parental home is ravening at your children and pushing them to adopt deviant and hedonistic lifestyles. Even the best parents can’t keep all of that out.

RELATED: Milo Yiannopolous dares to tell the truth about homosexuality

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‘Coming out’ to my mother

Let me tell you the story of a night in 1986 when I “came out” to my mother at age 12. Align readers know from my past columns that my mother was an abusive, deranged woman who veered into psychopathy at times. But there were moments when a real woman with real feelings came through.

I sat on the avocado-green pleather daybed we used as a couch. My mother was in her armchair, the square glass ashtray and a pack of Merit Ultra Light 100s at her side. It was 8 p.m., and my mother had sent the other children to bed because I had something important to tell her. I think she knew what was coming.

I told my mother that I was gay and that I felt duty-bound to tell her the truth about it. Looking back at myself at 12, I shudder that I was already forming myself into a “gay identity” that would trap me in promiscuity, addiction, and emotional disturbance for decades to come. But I didn’t know any better then.

My mother started crying. It wasn’t her usual self-pitying kind of crying, and it wasn’t her angry crying that would escalate to slaps across the face and screamed insults.

“I worried for so long that I would do this to you, that I would make you gay,” she said while she looked down at her hands. “I never gave you a father, and the father figure I brought into your life turned out to be a monster.”

This was one of the few times in our life together that I can remember when my mother seemed genuine and honest and seemed to care about my well-being. I think her sense of responsibility and guilt was real (my mother wasn’t much for feeling normal parental responsibility).

“I’m not crying because you’re gay,” she said. “I’m crying because I know that life is going to be harder for you. I’m terrified that you’ll get a disease and die early. Please be careful.”

Because my mother had already parentified me, turning me into her “surrogate husband” and emotional caretaker (almost universal with personality-disordered mothers and their children), I started comforting her.

“You didn’t do anything to me, Mom. I was born this way,” I said.

And I believed it.

The limits of tolerance

It is true that my mother never sat down one day and said, “How can I derange my son and turn him into a homosexual?”

But what my mother feared did happen. The abuse, the depravation, the disordered emotions in my childhood home did make me a homosexual. How I choose to behave is my responsibility, but I did not “choose” to be sexually disordered this way. I was just a child.

If you’re reading this and you’re a homosexual or the parent of one or a loved one, and you don’t believe this applies to you, then go in peace. But please let those of us for whom this is important — let us have this conversation. Too many emotionally triggered people do everything they can to shut it down.

They accuse homosexuals like me of being “abusive” and of “hurting” them. No such thing is occurring. All the sympathy “allies” claim to have for homosexuals when we are “born this way gays” evaporates the moment we change our minds. They insult us and call us insane, with more vitriol than actual anti-gay bullies who beat us up in high school.

Silence equals death

We are going to have this conversation. We’re not going to be silenced or manipulated into being good, quiet little gay boys to fit someone else’s fantasy of having a “fabulous” best friend or son.

I lived the “fabulous” life, and it nearly killed me through alcoholism and self-destructive promiscuity. The way I lived brought despair. And I am typical. I am not “just an unusual gay.” My life story looks like the life stories of the majority of gay men. Yeah, I know. They tell you that isn’t true.

They’re lying because they’re terrified that something they’ve relied on too heavily to define themselves as human men may have been a lie all along. I know, because I lied this way too.

Yes, I’m still attracted to men and not attracted to women. I don’t believe I have the ability to change those subjective feelings, but I may find otherwise in time. For seven years I’ve been single and celibate, and I plan to remain so.

Others must choose their own path in their own time. Nothing I’ve written here can honestly be construed as an attack, or an assault, on other homosexuals or those who love them. The truth is not an act of hate or abuse.

What’s real and true matters, and it’s well past time to tell the truth about the lie we call “born this way.”

​Lgbtq, Gay, Born this way, Lifestyle, Culture, Milo yiannopoulos, Tucker carslon, Conversion therapy, Psychology, Intervention 

Blood allegedly was found in a hotel room Nick Reiner checked into hours after arguing with his famed moviemaker father, Rob Reiner, at Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party, TMZ reported.

Nick Reiner, 32, is in custody with no bail after police said he killed Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner.

When hotel staff entered Nick Reiner’s room later on Sunday morning, they found the shower ‘full of blood’ and blood on the bed, TMZ reported.

The night before the Reiners were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood, California, home, Nick Reiner’s behavior alarmed guests at the party, New York Times reported, citing two attendees who asked not to be named in order to maintain relationships.

More from the Times:

Rob and Nick Reiner got into a shouting match at the party in West Los Angeles, said one of the attendees, who recalled Rob Reiner telling his son that his behavior was inappropriate. The attendee, who did not speak to the Reiners at the party, said that people seemed to be very aware of Nick Reiner’s history with drug abuse, which the family has discussed publicly.

Another attendee said that he did not witness the dispute, but he recognized Rob Reiner in the crowd and noticed the younger Reiner hovering at the fringes of the informal gathering. The guest said that he and other attendees were worried and that several people commented to him on Nick Reiner’s behavior, saying he looked anxious and uncomfortable in a way that deeply unsettled them.

Representatives for O’Brien declined to comment Monday, the Times said.

RELATED: Hollywood icon Rob Reiner, wife found dead in their home; police are calling it a homicide (UPDATE)

Nick Reiner used his credit card to check into the Pierside Santa Monica hotel around 4 a.m. Sunday — just hours after his argument with his father — TMZ reported, citing sources with direct knowledge.

Eyewitnesses who saw Nick Reiner check in to the hotel told TMZ he seemed “tweaked out,” but there were no visible signs that he had been in a violent confrontation and there were no bloodstains or cuts on his body.

TMZ added that Nick Reiner’s reservation was for one day, but he never formally checked out.

When hotel staff entered Nick Reiner’s room later on Sunday morning, they found the shower “full of blood” and blood on the bed, TMZ reported, adding that room’s window was covered by bedsheets.

LAPD Robbery-Homicide detectives went to the hotel Monday to gather evidence and interview employees, TMZ said, adding that Nick Reiner was located and arrested about 20 miles away in Exposition Park, near downtown Los Angeles.

Reiner was arrested around 9:15 p.m. Sunday night; authorities were called for medical aid to the Reiner home around 3:30 p.m. Sunday, where the bodies of his parents were found.

Fox News in its video report said Nick Reiner is on suicide watch.

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Vice President JD Vance silenced the mainstream media for supposedly exaggerating the infighting within President Donald Trump’s administration.

A new Vanity Fair article published Tuesday portrayed Trump’s White House as chaotic and tense based on several interviews with chief of staff Susie Wiles, who has since called out the “disingenuously framed hit piece.” In the piece, Wiles appears to be criticizing several members of Trump’s Cabinet, even calling Vance a “conspiracy theorist.”

‘A conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it.’

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” Wiles said in a post on X. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”

Vance echoed Wiles’ claims that the piece omitted key context — and even embraced the label “conspiracy theorist.”

RELATED: ‘The voices in her head are not real’: Senator Kennedy issues a hilarious rebuke of Jasmine Crockett

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“Sometimes I am a conspiracy theorist, but I only believe in the conspiracy theories that are true,” Vance said during a speech on affordability in Pennsylvania Tuesday.

Vance also clarified that Wiles’ comments were likely made in a lighthearted manner, like many other interactions they’ve shared. Even still, Vance embraced the accusation and pointed to several political moments in recent years that were branded as conspiracy theories before later being accepted as reality.

“By the way, Susie and I have joked in private and in public about that for a long time,” Vance said. “For example, I believed in the crazy conspiracy theory back in 2020 that it was stupid to mask 3-year-olds at the height of the COVID pandemic, that we should actually let them develop some language skills. I believed in this crazy conspiracy theory that the media and the government were covering up the fact that Joe Biden was clearly unable to do the job. And I believed in the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden was trying to throw his political opponents in jail rather than win an argument against his political opponents.”

RELATED: ‘Complete lizard person’: Chuck Schumer gives stunningly tone-deaf remarks following Australia attack

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“At least on some of these conspiracy theories, it turns out that a conspiracy theory is just something that was true six months before the media admitted it.”

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A Japanese tech firm says it is moving toward superintelligence with a big step forward in AI.

Integral AI, which is led by a former Google AI employee, announced in a press release that it had made significant progress with its artificial general intelligence model, which can now acquire new skills without human intervention.

‘Integral AI’s model architecture grows, abstracts, plans, and acts as a unified system.’

The AI system allegedly learns its new skills “safely, efficiently, and reliably,” the company said, while claiming that the AI had surpassed its defined markers and testing protocols.

As such, the AGI is allegedly capable of autonomous skill learning without using pre-existing datasets or human intervention. Integral also said the system is able to develop a “safe and reliable mastery” of skills, meaning that it does produce any “catastrophic risks or unintended side effects.”

What those risks or side effects might be is unclear.

RELATED: Artificial intelligence is not your friend

Photo by David Mareuil/Anadolu via Getty Images

The last parameter, which Integral AI said its system adhered to, was to be energy-efficient. The system was tasked with limiting its energy expenditure to that of a human seeking to acquire the same skill.

“These principles served as fundamental cornerstones and developmental benchmarks during the inception and testing of this first-in-its-class AGI learning system,” the press release said. Integral added that the system marked a “fundamental leap beyond the limits of current AI technologies.”

The Tokyo tech company also claimed its achievement was the next step toward “superintelligence” and marked a new era for humanity, with the AI’s learning process allegedly mirroring the complexity of human thought.

“Integral AI’s model architecture grows, abstracts, plans, and acts as a unified system,” the company wrote, adding that the system will serve as the groundwork for “unprecedented adaptability,” particularly in the field of robotics.

This means that with the help of this AGI, autonomous robots would be able to observe and learn in the real world and conceivably pick up new skills in real-world environments without the help of pesky humans.

RELATED: ART? Beeple puts Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg heads on robot dogs that ‘poop’ $100K NFTs

Photo by David Mareuil/Anadolu via Getty Images

Jad Tarifi, CEO and co-founder of Integral AI, called the announcement “more than just a technical achievement” that is “the next chapter in the story of human civilization.”

“Our mission now is to scale this AGI-capable model, still in its infancy, toward embodied superintelligence that expands freedom and collective agency,” Tarifi added.

According to Interesting Engineering, the Lebanese founder said he worked at Google for a decade before starting his own company. He allegedly chose Japan over Silicon Valley because of Japan’s position as a world leader in robotics.

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BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler has an interesting prediction for 2026 — and it’s one that most people on the right would be happy to see come true.

“My biggest prediction for 2026 is that a member of the U.S. Congress will be denaturalized, removed from her seat in Congress, and deported from the United States of America,” Wheeler says. “And it’s no secret to whom I am referring.”

She is referring to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who is facing intense scrutiny after an article from the Daily Mail revealed what Wheeler calls “pretty airtight evidence” that Ilhan Omar married her brother.

“Ilhan Omar’s first husband, she married here in the United States only in a religious ceremony. She married a Muslim man named Hirsi. They were married by a Muslim cleric in an Islamic ceremony, but they never married civilly. So their marriage was never recognized by the United States government,” Wheeler explains.

“Ilhan Omar was married to Hirsi for many years. But then suddenly, she, in a civil ceremony, was married to a different man. She married a man named Elmi, the man who is accused of being her brother,” she says.

The marriage secured Elmi residence in the United States, though he later left for the United Kingdom.

“That’s not even the primary reason that Ilhan Omar should face denaturalization. The primary reason is her status as a naturalized citizen was, according to some very credible reports, based on a lie,” Wheeler says.

“Ilhan Omar’s father claimed that he was fleeing Somalia because the communist Marxist regime at the time was after him. But sources tell journalist Ashley Rindsberg that Ilhan Omar’s father was actually a member of that violent communist Marxist regime. He worked in propaganda, and he was fleeing because the government was being toppled by the people and he was afraid for his life,” she explains.

“Well, eventually Ilhan Omar’s father claimed asylum here in the United States, and Ilhan Omar because a naturalized American citizen, but if it was based on a lie, then her citizenship ought to be revoked,” she continues.

And it’s not just Wheeler’s wish that Omar be denaturalized and deported, but border czar Tom Homan has confirmed that she is under investigation for immigration fraud.

“He’s looking; he’s ‘running it down this week,’ he says. Make it come true, Mr. Homan,” Wheeler jokes, adding, “Make my 2026 prediction come true.”

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, 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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President Donald Trump filed a massive defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday over an edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech that appeared in a BBC “Panorama” documentary.

The lawsuit claims that the BBC’s “deceptive and defamatory distortion, doctoring, manipulation, and splicing damaged President Trump in his occupation, damaged his professional reputation, and portrayed him as engaging in supposed calls for rioting and violence that he never actually made.”

‘The FAKE NEWS “reporters” in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s**t as the ones here in America.’

The complaint notes further that the “aggressively anti-Trump” documentary, which aired shortly before the 2024 presidential election and painted Kamala Harris as an optimal candidate, constituted “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”

A tale of two speeches

Trump originally said at 12:12 p.m. in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021:

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Any one you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness.

The president noted nearly an hour later after first raising concerns about voting irregularities and potential fraud in the 2020 election, “Most people would stand there at nine o’clock in the evening and say, ‘I want to thank you very much,’ and they go off to some other life, but I said, ‘Something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong — can’t have happened.’ And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”

The “Panorama” documentary spliced and reorganized Trump’s remarks to make it appear as though he said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”

In addition to creating a false narrative by coupling two parts of the speech that were divided by over 50 minutes’ worth of content and omitting Trump’s call for supporters to behave “peacefully,” the documentary showed flag-waving men descending on the Capitol after the president spoke — despite the video having been recorded before Trump’s speech.

RELATED: ‘Enemy of Europe’: Liberal globalists attack Trump over recognizing ‘civilizational erasure’ in Europe

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The Telegraph obtained and reported on a whistleblower memo earlier this year revealing that there were concerns at the BBC over the apparently deceptive work.

The whistleblower memo noted that the “mangled” footage made Trump “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” and insinuated, with the help of the footage of men marching on the Capitol, that “Trump’s supporters had taken up his ‘call to arms.'”

Too little, too late

Last month, the BBC came under fire both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Telegraph, “Trust in the media is at an all-time low because of deceptive editing, misleading reporting, and outright lies. This is yet another example, of many, highlighting why countless Americans turn to alternative media sources to get their news.”

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS ‘reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s**t as the ones here in America!!!”

“This is a total disgrace. The BBC has doctored footage of Trump to make it look as though he incited a riot — when he in fact said no such thing,” wrote former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “We have Britain’s national broadcaster using a flagship programme to tell palpable untruths about Britain’s closest ally. Is anyone at the BBC going to take responsibility — and resign?”

In the face of mounting pressure, the BBC issued a retraction, and the director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, both resigned in disgrace.

“Like all public organizations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent, and accountable,” Davie said in statement. “Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made, and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”

Turness similarly assumed some responsibility for the fiasco, noting the controversy had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC” and adding that “the buck stops with me.”

‘The BBC had no regard for the truth.’

Turness suggested, however, that the broadcast corporation was not biased.

“In public life, leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down,” said Turness. “While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”

Samir Shah, the chair of the BBC, subsequently sent a personal letter to the White House apologizing for the edit; however, the network refused to pay compensation, claiming that there was no basis for Trump’s defamation claim.

Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss encouraged Trump to take legal action against the BBC, suggesting in a Nov. 15 interview that the network’s apology was insufficient “because they keep doing it again and again. They have painted a completely false picture of President Trump in Britain over a number of years. They’ve done the same thing about conservatives in our country.”

Pay the piper

Trump’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and demands judgment against the BBC for at least $5 billion in damages, states:

The lack of any effort by the BBC to publish content even remotely resembling objective journalism, or to maintain even a slight semblance of objectivity in the Panorama Documentary, demonstrates that the BBC had no regard for the truth about President Trump, and that the doctoring of his Speech was not inadvertent, but instead was an intentional component of the BBC’s effort to craft as one-sided an impression and narrative against President Trump as possible.

A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Guardian that “President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”

A spokesperson for the network said in a statement, “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”

A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office noted that while Downing Street will always “defend the principle of a strong, independent BBC as a trusted and relied-upon national broadcaster reporting without fear or favor,” the prime minister’s office has “also consistently said it is vitally important that they act to maintain trust, correcting mistakes quickly when they occur.”

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More Americans than ever are buying smartwatches. Some are even gifting them in the run-up to Christmas, as if the spirit of the season is best expressed through a vibrating shackle.

I know, because I used to be shackled. A few months ago, I bought a Garmin Venu Sq 2. It’s a sleek little square that promises peace, progress, and a better VO₂ max.

I finally snapped the day the watch informed me that my stress was ‘very high’ while I was literally sitting still reading a book.

I’m an avid long-distance runner. I’ve run through heat waves, torrential rain, and entire breakups. A watch is supposed to free you, to only respond when you actually want information. Instead, mine turned into a digital probation officer, gleefully reporting every “weakness” it spotted. And it spotted plenty.

Passive-aggressive presence

At first, it was comfortable. A GPS-connected companion with the battery life of a camel. Then, slowly, it tightened its grip — not physically, but mentally. A passive-aggressive presence. A tiny narc. You only slept five hours. Your heart rate variability is low. Your stress is elevated.

No kidding. My stress was elevated because my watch wouldn’t shut up.

What began as a fitness tool became a full-time critic. Every step judged. Every pause logged. Every slight deviation from perfection recorded with the clinical joy of a bureaucrat stamping a form. The absurdity peaked on a Saturday morning when my wrist buzzed to announce that my “body battery” was low. This was a new level of shame: being scolded by a device I literally have to plug in to keep alive.

Mastered by metrics

The paradox at the heart of wearables is simple but worth spelling out. They sell serenity, yet they manufacture unrest. They promise control, yet they cultivate dependence. A smartwatch doesn’t enhance your intuition. Quite the opposite. It replaces it. Instead of listening to your breathing, you listen to a beep. Instead of feeling your cadence, you consult an algorithm. Before long, you become a servant to metrics you never asked for, chasing numbers that never stop multiplying.

Even worse, these trackers harvest every moment — your movement, your pulse, your snoring, your stumbles. Every second is sucked into some server farm, where it becomes a profit stream. A surveillance scheme disguised as self-improvement. Freedom isn’t a wearable. It’s the feeling that hits you the moment you rip the thing off.

Toxic timepiece

And then comes the part that feels almost satirical. Not only do smartwatches poison your mind, but they also poison your body. Recent studies show that many premium wristbands, especially the fancy fluorinated rubber ones, contain staggering concentrations of PFHxA, a “forever chemical” that sticks around longer than most New Year’s resolutions and certainly longer than any of my attempts at Dry January.

One band clocked in at over 16,000 parts per billion, making it less an accessory and more a portable toxic-waste site. To put that number in perspective, if a river tested that high, the EPA would show up in hazmat suits and politely ask the fish to evacuate.

These PFHxA compounds don’t just sit on the surface. They can seep, inch by inch, through the skin — our largest organ, the one we naïvely assume is busy protecting us instead of actively absorbing industrial runoff from a glorified pedometer.

Researchers say a significant percentage of this stuff can pass through human skin under normal conditions. To be clear, normal conditions simply mean you’re doing absolutely nothing unusual. Sitting at a desk, walking through Target, standing in line for coffee, trying to watch a show that isn’t drowning in homoerotic tension.

To make things worse, the more you sweat, strain, and move (the whole reason you bought a fitness tracker), the more efficiently the band can deliver its toxic little cocktail into your bloodstream. A device that poisons you precisely when you’re trying to be healthy. It’s as poetic as it is perverse.

RELATED: Your smart watch is poisoning you — and your children

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‘Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!’

I finally snapped the day the watch informed me that my stress was “very high” while I was literally sitting still reading a book. That was the moment I had an awakening. The device wasn’t documenting my life. Instead, it was dictating it. I felt like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” pacing the hallway and giving my smartwatch the same look he gave the door before smashing it in.

So I tossed it. Straight into the trash, like a cursed ring. And the strangest thing happened, almost instantly: peace. Pure, analog peace. I went for a run relying only on my own rhythm, my own breath, and my own internal clock — which has never once asked me to update its firmware. My pace felt smoother. My shoulders loosened. I remembered what running is supposed to feel like.

Your smartwatch needs you far more than you need it. Without you, it’s just a blinking brick. With you, it becomes a constant companion that collects your life, critiques your choices, and sells your data — all while constantly reminding you that you’re not enough without it.

If you’re wearing one right now, consider ripping it off. If you’re thinking of buying one, maybe don’t. And if you’re planning to gift one, absolutely stop. Your loved ones deserve better than a wrist-mounted tattletale. Give them socks. Give them chocolate. Give them a gift card they’ll use happily and mock you for later (because yes, you absolutely phoned that one in). Anything but a smartwatch.

​Smartwatch, Apple watch, Lifestyle, Christmas, Gift guide, Return, Wearables, Big tech, How not to spend it 

The United States Army identified two National Guard members who were killed over the weekend in Syria.

On Monday, the Department of the Army identified the soldiers as Sgt. Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar, 25, of Des Moines, Iowa, and Sgt. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, of Marshalltown, Iowa.

‘Please pray for our Soldiers all around this cruel world.’

The Army’s statement says they were supporting Operation Inherent Resolve in Palmyra, Syria, when they were “engaged by hostile forces” and killed Saturday.

Fox News reported that a lone Islamic state gunman targeted a group including Torres-Tovar and Howard. The attack also killed a U.S. civilian interpreter and wounded three more U.S. soldiers.

RELATED: Trump promises ‘very serious retaliation’ after ‘ISIS attack’ that killed 2 US Army soldiers, 1 US interpreter in Syria

Operation Inherent Resolve’s mission in Syria is “to enable the enduring defeat of ISIS.”

Both were assigned to 1st Squadron, 113th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division of the Iowa National Guard, Boone, Iowa.

Meskwaki Nation Police Chief Jeffrey Bunn, the father of Howard, released a heartbreaking statement in the wake of the news.

“Today two of our Iowa Army National Guard Soldiers were killed in action along with a Civilian Interpreter in Syria,” Bunn said on Sunday.

“My wife Misty and I had that visit from Army Commanders you never want to have. Our son Nate was one of the Soldiers that paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us, to keep us all safer. He loved what he was doing and would be the first in and last out, no one left behind. Please pray for our Soldiers all around this cruel world. We will see you again son, until then we have it from here.”

On Sunday, President Donald Trump promised “a lot of damage done to the people that did it.”

“They got the person, the individual person. But there will be big damage done,” he added.

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​Politics, Isis, Army, National guard, Jeffrey bunn, United states, United states army, Syria, Operation inherent resolve, Edgar brian torres tovar, William nathaniel howard, Palmyra syria 

The elections of 2026 and 2028 will be “Flight 93 elections,” but not in the way Michael Anton envisioned in 2016. Anton famously compared supporting Donald Trump to charging the cockpit of a hijacked plane: reckless, dangerous, but preferable to certain death.

Nine years later, the metaphor has inverted. The forces that once stormed the cockpit now control it. They have locked the door, fortified the controls, and flown the Republican Party in widening circles toward disaster. No one inside can change course. The GOP plane is rapidly losing altitude, and everyone aboard can see it coming.

Continuing down this path does not preserve conservatism. It buries it inside an irredeemable party.

At this stage, the only rational move involves grabbing a parachute and jumping. Staying seated guarantees political death.

The gamble failed

Anton wrote his essay when the Republican Party had already revealed itself as corrupt, inert, and incapable of reform. That decay produced Trump. He appeared as something new: a transactional, deeply flawed outsider promising to smash the uniparty and deliver for workers and small businesses long ignored by corporate Republicanism.

Many voters tolerated Trump’s personal failings and erratic behavior because he represented a rupture. At least it was different.

Nine years on, Republicans carry all the liabilities of Trump’s image and record without securing the benefits that justified the gamble. His better policies stall in court. His worst instincts endure. Meanwhile, Republicans lose elections in territory that once leaned safely red.

Trump obsesses over his ballroom project, courts tech and crypto bros, cuts deals with China and Qatar, and waves away economic pain that millions feel daily. Consumers face rising prices. College graduates struggle to find work. Small businesses buckle under costs. The White House insists the economy is strong.

It is not.

History repeats

This failure did not begin with Trump. The Tea Party quickly collapsed because it tried to reform a party that could not be reformed. The GOP long ago ceased functioning as a conservative party. It exists to serve corporate donors while marketing fear of the left to a skeptical electorate.

History offers a warning. The Whig Party collapsed once it became obvious that it stood for nothing relevant to its era. The Republican Party replaced it. Today’s GOP has perfected the art of symbolic resistance paired with practical surrender. It’s fake opposition.

Trump’s rise looked like a break from that pattern. Sadly, it was not. He has spent five election cycles endorsing establishment Republicans, preserving the very faction that produced the crisis. His rhetoric attacks “RINOs,” but his endorsements entrench them.

His current agenda reflects the same contradiction: Big Tech, techno-feudal economics, Qatari pandering, Chinese student visas, and government-backed industrial schemes sold as innovation, paired with denial of inflation and hardship.

All the liabilities, none of the benefits

The result proves electorally poisonous. Republicans repel suburban voters and working-class voters simultaneously. They project the aloof corporatism of the pre-Trump era mixed with cultural coarseness and denial of obvious hardship.

Since 2017, Republicans have compiled a grim down-ballot record, interrupted only by Trump’s 2024 victory against a weak opponent in a terrible economy. Rather than consolidate that win, Trump chose to own the economy outright and burn political capital.

Conservatives now die on hills that are not their own. They inherit Trump’s liabilities without achieving the promised purge of the party’s corporate class. The GOP and Trump’s coalition increasingly merge into a single structure that offers spectacle instead of reform.

RELATED: Democrats are running as Bush-era Republicans — and winning

Seahorse Vector via iStock/Getty Images

The case for a clean break

As Republican candidates face double-digit swings toward Democrats even in light-red districts, the choice sharpens. Conservatives can continue propping up a failed party and risk discrediting their ideas permanently. We could embrace the “aristopopulism” of JD Vance and his circle. Or we could force a realignment.

A new party could channel distrust of techno-feudalism, mass surveillance, foreign labor exploitation, and a K-shaped economy engineered through government favoritism. It could ground itself in tangible productivity, property rights, sound money, privacy, small business, and national sovereignty.

Every decade or so, Republican dysfunction becomes obvious enough to provoke rebellion: Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, MAGA. Each time, the insurgency gets absorbed and neutralized by the same structure.

We have reached that moment again.

Continuing down this path does not preserve conservatism. It buries it inside an irredeemable party. The Republican Party has reached the end of its rope. The only question is whether conservatives recognize it before the fall becomes irreversible.

​2026 midterms, Gop, Flight 93 election, Michael anton, Neocons, Opinion & analysis, 2028 election, Republican party, Realignment, Ronald reagan, Donald trump, Newt gingrich, Red states, Tea party, Conservatives 

Netflix says it may depict or portray your child’s likeness if you visit one of its venues.

The scary terms of service come from Netflix House, a new “free to enter” destination that has popped up in Dallas and Philadelphia simultaneously.

‘Our likeness is one of the only things we have left in the age of AI.’

Netflix House is described as a “first-of-its-kind, permanent, year-round home” for Netflix-themed games, experiences, and merch. While fans can enter for free, it may cost them perpetual rights to their name, image, and likeness if Netflix has its way.

In a viral video, content creator Rebecca Caplinger explained the frightening terms that Netflix listed on its help page for the venues. Therein Netflix notifies attendees that even their children will lose their NIL rights.

“When you visit Netflix House, we may photograph, record, depict, or otherwise capture the name, image, voice, or likeness of you, or in the case of parents or guardians, of any minor (‘your child’), as you engage with the Experiences, and/or other content offered within Netflix House,” the terms read.

The legal statement continues, stating that “anyone” authorized by Netflix affiliates will gain “irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive right to photograph, record, depict, and/or portray you or your child” as well as use their “simulated likeness, name, image, photograph, voice, and actions, in connection with Netflix House operations (including, by way of example, for security or analytical purposes).”

RELATED: New Netflix movie reimagines fairy-tale villains as misunderstood — and it’s getting scorched online

Not only do Netflix House’s rules allegedly give Netflix ownership of content featuring you, it notes that any “user generated content” taken inside the venue still relinquishes its copyrights to Netflix perpetually and remains “non-exclusive” and “royalty-free” while having irrevocable licensing.

Caplinger noted that she first saw the terms of service in a TikTok video and had to check it out for herself.

“It’s real, and it’s worse than I thought it was,” Caplinger said, as she revealed she has a background in criminal justice and security.

“I don’t like what they’re doing. … When you walk in there, you’re giving them everything,” she added. “And you’re giving them the right to AI-generate you.”

RELATED: Culture’s great subversion machine has broken down at last

Photo by Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images for Netflix

“Parents should be f**king pissed,” Caplinger told Blaze News. “I am concerned that a lot of parents do not care about child safety online … hopefully it’s just a wake-up call.”

“I don’t think that any company or corporation should be trying to buy out your likeness, I think that it’s a bigger ploy,” the New Jersey resident went on.

She concluded, “Our likeness is one of the only things we have left in the age of AI, our human behavior. So basically you’re selling your human behavior to a robot.”

Blaze News reached out to Netflix to ask about customer concerns and whether or not it believes that simply entering a venue should mean people hand over their NIL licensing.

Netflix did not respond to the request for comment.

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​Netflix, Return, Likeness, Nil, Image rights, Ai, Artificial intelligence, Netflix house, Copyright, Tech 

The Trump administration blasted U.S. District Judge Judith Levy over the weekend for her “truly wicked” praise and deferential treatment of a predator who stole into the United States multiple times and brutalized an American citizen.

Edys Renan Membreño Díaz, a 30-year-old Honduran national, is presently serving between six and 15 years in a Michigan state prison for raping and sodomizing a woman he knew was incapable of giving consent, who has cerebral palsy and cognitive delays. Díaz, who moved to Michigan in 2021, raped the victim on two occasions: on July 15 and July 17, 2022, leaving her with injuries.

‘This isn’t justice; it’s judicial activism prioritizing criminals over citizens.’

While Díaz could be a free man as soon as July 23, 2028, federal prosecutors want the rapist to serve an additional two years for his violation of U.S. immigration law. Díaz has illegally entered the U.S. seven times.

According to court documents, prosecutors believe that a sentence of two years would recognize the gravity both of the rapist’s repeated illegal entry into the U.S. and his criminal conduct while in the country and would serve as a deterrent to future criminal activity.

The rapist’s lawyer alternatively asked Levy, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who has made a big deal out of her lesbian identity, to give the rapist a sentence concurrent with his sentence in the state case such that he would still eligible for release in 2028.

Levy not only decided to spare Díaz from a longer prison sentence for immigration crimes but echoed his lawyer’s framing — that the rapist was a family man simply doing the work that Americans supposedly find unappealing.

RELATED: Portland man allegedly lured 15-year-old girl from public library and raped her for days, police say

kali9/Getty Images

According to the sentencing transcript highlighted by the Detroit News, Levy said that while Díaz’s sex crimes were “horrible,” he has “taken responsibility for that, expressed remorse,” and is serving “a lengthy state sentence as punishment for that conduct.”

The Obama judge proceeded to paint the rapist as something of a victim of circumstance and a praiseworthy figure, going so far as to celebrate his efforts to displace U.S. citizen labor for the benefit of foreigners outside the country.

“You have lost two siblings to violence in Honduras, and your mother expresses her dependence on you in her need for the resources and love that you have provided to her,” said Levy. “So I commend you for supporting your family, for expressing your devotion to them, and for working here in the United States in jobs that Americans apparently do not want to work in.”

Díaz has recently indicated that he now wants to go home to Honduras, and Levy suggested further that the rapist’s vows not to enter into the U.S. illegally an eighth time and to dissuade his fellow Hondurans from jumping the border together signaled that he was “promoting respect for the law.”

The Obama judge decided to let the rapist off on his immigration crimes with time allegedly served and a special assessment fine of $100.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan Fairchild told Levy that the sentence imposed constituted an “unreasonable departure from the guideline range.” The government subsequently appealed Levy’s decision.

In the appeal, assistant U.S. Attorney Meghan Sweeney Bean noted, “Despite six prior removals from the United States, Membrano Diaz returned and raped and sodomized a disabled American citizen. A non-custodial sentence here was an abuse of discretion.”

In addition to noting that Levy “unreasonably discounted the serious nature of the offense and Membrano Diaz’s disturbing history and characteristics,” Bean pointed out that the Obama judge’s “time served” sentence was preposterous, as “the defendant cannot receive credit against his federal sentence for that period of prior detention, because it has already been credited against the state sentence.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in response to Levy’s decision, “Unspeakable Depravity.”

“U.S. District Judge Judith Levy refused to sentence him to 2 more years for immigration crimes and called this monster a future ‘ambassador for living up to our immigration restrictions,'” McLaughlin noted in a X post on Saturday. “This Obama appointed judge went on to praise him for ‘family devotion and willingness to perform work that it claimed Americans find undesirable.’ Truly wicked.”

Kevin Kijewski, a Republican who is running to become attorney general of Michigan, wrote, “This isn’t justice; it’s judicial activism prioritizing criminals over citizens and spitting on federal law enforcement’s work to secure our borders under President Trump’s leadership.”

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​Edys renan membreño díaz, U.s. district judge judith levy, Immigration, Rapist, Criminal, Illegal alien, Deportation, Federal judge, Judicial activism, Activist, Tricia mclaughlin, Dhs, Obama, Barack obama, Politics 

If you’re listening to the mainstream media, you’ll likely hear Kilmar Abrego Garcia referred to as the “Maryland father” — not an illegal alien gang member.

“They’ll leave out the fact that he is, of course, an alleged MS-13 gang member and human trafficker. He’s just a Maryland father. I mean, it’s just that there’s, like, minor details of gang-related activity and minor details of human trafficking,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales says sarcastically.

“It’s been a long journey with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, but he of course was released from immigration detention yesterday back into the United States,” she adds.

An Obama-appointed judge, Paula Xinis, said federal authorities had detained him again after his return to the United States “without any legal basis.”

“You mean to tell me, Mrs. Obama-appointed judge, that there is not a legal basis to detain an illegal immigrant?” Gonzales asks.

“That’s the legal basis. He’s here illegally, and we need to detain him so we can remove him. Otherwise why have any laws at all?” she adds.

However, that’s not the worst of what Xinis has done.

“This Obama-appointed judge has also granted this man more power than the president, that he can’t be locked up again. We are not allowed to lock him up. We are not allowed to keep Americans safe from this criminal,” Gonzales explains.

“What is this country, you guys?” she asks, adding, “What is this country if we can’t arrest and detain criminals? Like, have you ever heard of an American citizen getting this treatment? Oh, you committed a crime? Oh, we’re going to arrest you, and we are going to what? Detain you. That’s how it works for every American who commits crimes in this country.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Free, Video, Upload, Camera phone, Sharing, Video phone, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Kilmar abrego garcia, Maryland father, Paula xinis, Ms 13, Gang member, Illegal immigration, Immigration crisis, President donald trump, Trump, Trump administration 

In the fifth century B.C., a group of Greek city-states formed a defensive alliance known as the Delian League to protect them against the Persian Empire.

Athens, the most powerful member, gradually increased its power. Its rulers moved the league’s common treasury from the island of Delos to Athens (to keep it safe, of course), attacked allies that attempted to secede, and started casually referring to the alliance as “our empire.”

If you want good allies, you need to be a good ally.

The most brazen assertion came when the Athenian leader Pericles raided the league treasury to fund building projects in Athens (including the Parthenon).

When the other league members objected, Pericles insisted that the treasury was less like a common military budget and more like protection money: As long as the Persians aren’t breaking down your doors, we can spend league funds however we want.

Obviously, this is no way to treat one’s allies. It is not just exploitative; it is counterproductive. During the ensuing Peloponnesian War, Athens spent as much time fighting its own rebellious allies as it did fighting Sparta.

The United States, however, has spent the last several decades conducting its foreign relations on the opposite principle. We have the same hegemonic role Athens held, but instead of robbing our allies, we let them rob and betray us.

A few months ago, the government of Kuwait — a country hundreds of Americans died to defend just a few decades ago and that continues to rely on us for protection against Iran — launched a “Kuwait-China Friendship Club” to strengthen military ties with Beijing.

And if cozying up to our biggest geopolitical rival weren’t enough, Kuwait is also ripping us off.

The United States played a huge role in building Kuwait’s massive Al Zour oil refinery, and the country’s government still owes us hundreds of millions of dollars.

Closer to home, Mexico — which Bill Clinton bailed out to the tune of $20 billion — takes in more than $60 billion a year in remittance money from the United States, all while its socialist oil company refuses to pay the $1.2 billion it owes to American contractors.

RELATED: Trump makes America dangerous again — to our enemies

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

The NATO countries are even worse. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, just six of the alliance’s 32 members spent the required 2% of GDP on defense.

Meanwhile, these countries used the money they weren’t spending on guns to build massive welfare states (their equivalent of Pericles’ Parthenon). They also eviscerated their domestic energy production and became increasingly reliant on oil from Russia, the country the alliance is supposed to keep in check.

Thankfully, a combination of Vladimir Putin’s aggression and Donald Trump’s bullying has increased the number of countries meeting the 2% threshold from six to 23.

If you want good allies, you need to be a good ally.

That means no more meddling in the name of “international development” or “advancing democracy.” Just mutual clarifications of national interest and frank discussions about how to advance those interests.

Athens’ focus on its own self-interest was its undoing. America’s neglect of it might have been ours. Under President Trump, however, it looks like that is starting to change.

​Opinion & analysis, America first, Nato, Defense, Military spending, China, Russia, Donald trump, Kuwait, Al zour oil refinery, Foreign policy, National security, National interest, Greece, Athens, Delian league, Pericles, Peloponnesian war, Bill clinton, Mexico, Remittances, Economy 

I have lost grandparents, childhood friends, and college friends. As you age, death becomes familiar. Each loss shakes you briefly, reminds you that life is fragile, and then fades. You drift back into the illusion that tomorrow is guaranteed. That you will have time later to become a better Christian, husband, and father.

That illusion shattered on September 10, the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist.

Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies. His race is finished. Ours must now begin.

I did not know Charlie personally. I worked as his publicist last summer for what became his second-to-last book, “Right Wing Revolution,” but we never spoke directly. Still his death devastated me in a way no other loss had.

I had to understand why. Answering that question became the genesis of this book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.”

On the day Charlie was killed, I joined my wife to pick up our 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter from preschool. The day before, she had asked again and again, “Dada in car? Dada here?” This time, I wanted to be there when she came running out.

As we pulled into the parking lot, my phone lit up. Charlie Kirk had been shot. My stomach dropped.

I had felt that dread once before. On July 13, 2024, I was rocking my daughter to sleep when an alert flashed that President Trump had been shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. Minutes later, dread gave way to relief. Trump survived.

This time, the dread did not lift.

While my wife walked toward the school entrance, I sat frozen in the car, refreshing news feeds. Then I saw the video. The moment the bullet struck Charlie.

One look told me no one could survive that wound.

Then my daughter appeared.

Her face lit up when she saw me. Pure joy. The same joy Charlie’s daughter would never experience again.

As my little girl ran toward the car shouting, “Dada!” another child had just lost her father forever. His daughter. His son. His wife. They would never again live a moment like the one unfolding before me.

Nothing had changed for my daughter. Everything had changed for me.

That night, I slept on the floor beside my oldest daughter’s crib. I lay awake for hours, listening to her breathing and thinking of Charlie’s children and of Erika, facing the impossible task of explaining why their father would never walk through the door again.

In the days that followed, I cried more than I ever had. I am not a man who cries. But something in me died with Charlie, and something else was born.

I began studying Charlie’s words, speeches, debates, and sermons. Not as content but as testimony. What I saw changed me. Charlie possessed a maturity beyond his years, a steadiness most men twice his age never reach. He knew who he was and whom he served. He knew his mission and the cost of it. He accepted that cost.

In Charlie, I saw the man I wanted to be. Strong yet gentle. Courageous yet humble. Unmoved by hatred because he feared God more than man. That recognition exposed an uncomfortable truth. I shared many of Charlie’s convictions but not his courage.

I had spoken boldly only when it was safe. I avoided conflict when it was convenient. The wounds of losing lifelong friends in 2020 because I voted for Trump still stung, and I carried a residual fear of losing more.

Charlie did not hesitate. He lived Matthew 5 and Mark 8 not as verses but as marching orders. He carried his cross onto hostile campuses and into debates before crowds that despised him, knowing exactly what it cost.

When that hatred finally culminated in a sniper’s bullet, it ended his life but not the mission that made him a target.

His death exposed my compromises. It forced me to confront the gap between the man I was and the man God was calling me to be. It demanded that I stop postponing courage and start living the truth now. Costly truth. Dangerous truth. Biblical truth.

Charlie’s life and death were not political events. They were spiritual ones.

He defended the family because God commanded it. He rejected identity politics because every person bears God’s image. He championed fathers because fatherlessness destroys nations. He defended black Americans by insisting on their dignity as individuals created by God, not as pawns of a political movement. He confronted transgender ideology because lies about human nature are lies about God Himself.

For that, he was vilified, dehumanized, and finally murdered.

The ideology that killed Charlie did not emerge overnight. It grew in the silence of those who knew better but feared the cost of speaking. Evil advances when good men retreat, and too many of us did.

RELATED: America’s new lost generation is looking for home — and finding the wrong ones

Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Charlie did not retreat. Now none of us can afford hesitation.

The man I was — cautious and hesitant — died with Charlie. In his place stands a man who understands that truth requires sacrifice, that silence is surrender, and that the only approval that matters comes from God.

My daughter deserves a country where political murder is condemned, not excused. Where truth is spoken even when it is dangerous. Where courage is not outsourced to a handful of men like Charlie Kirk but lived by millions.

That is why I wrote “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.” Not simply to remember Charlie but because his death demanded my transformation and now demands yours.

Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies.

His race is finished. Ours must now begin.

The torch is ours to carry — for Christ, for country, and for Charlie.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from the author’s new book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk” (Bombardier Books, Post Hill Press).

​Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Christians, Courage, Opinion & analysis, Leftists, Parenthood, Death, Christianity 

Pizza Hut Classic is evidence that even if a company gets its branding right, customer service is the oil that keeps the machine running.

Since 2019, Pizza Hut has been spreading its retro vibes across the continent by reintroducing its 1990s decor, design, and dining experience.

‘The interior features cozy red booths and old-school Pizza Hut lamps.’

From Warren, Ohio to Hempstead, Texas, the iconic Pizza Hut chandeliers are being rehung, and the fantastic buffet is being put out once again. According to Chefs Resource, some locations have even brought back the beloved dessert bar.

Slice of life

With the return of the 1974 logo and nostalgic appeal, Pizza Hut did the inverse of Cracker Barrel. Instead of trying to modernize and simplify their decor, the pie-slingers retrofitted and cluttered theirs.

A page called the Retrologist dissected the formula and determined exactly what the word “Classic” in Pizza Hut Classic really means. To meet the new (old) standard, the writer pinpointed that each location must include the following:

1. The old logo is used in pole signage as well as at the top of the (usually but not always) red-roofed restaurant. The pole sign features the addition of the word “Classic.”
2. The interior features cozy red booths and old-school Pizza Hut lamps.
3. Stickers featuring the long-discarded character Pizza Hut Pete are found on the door.
4. Posters feature classic photos from Pizza Huts of yore.
5. A plaque displays a quote from Pizza Hut co-founder Dan Carney, explaining the concept as a celebration of the brand’s heritage.

While many of the revamped locations have received rave reviews, there still exists a way to make such a fine dining experience awful, even if surrounded by everything that made customers flock to the buffet 30 years ago.

RELATED: The ‘rebranding’ brigade’s war on beauty

Photo by Andrew Chapados/Blaze News

Word salad

For a Pizza Hut Classic ruined by modern belief systems, look no farther than north of the border, in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough.

While the restaurant did include the iconic chandeliers and some of the retro furnishings, it did not have old soda fountains or the memorable menus spotted at other locations. Instead, this unique eatery represented a new (low) standard of lackluster customer service, coupled with sprinklings of unfettered immigration policy.

These accommodations, or lack there of, will surely split customers down political lines. Yes, there are retro red Pepsi cups, but the waitress who literally speaks no English may fill that cup with Diet Pepsi with ice instead of “water with no ice.”

Is there a salad bar? Yes. Is the salad bar limited to plain lettuce and croutons? Also yes. Were there pieces of lettuce dropped in the ranch dressing (the only available dressing) for the duration of the visit? Definitely.

RELATED: Cracker Barrel’s logo lives — but like every digital-age public space, it now looks dead inside

Photo by Andrew Chapados/Blaze News

Meat and greet

A steady rotation of cheese, deluxe, and Hawaiian pizza was only broken up by one couple’s complaints about the lack of variety. A manager — also largely unintelligible in her speech — replied first with a refusal to change the rotation. Strangely, about 10 minutes later, she eventually brought out two meat lovers’ pizzas, in an apparent act of defiance.

The damaged seating in the restaurant combined with a chip out of the “Hut” portion of the building’s exterior revealed years-old paint and, along with it, a yearning for more care to be given. A restaurant that could be so nostalgic, but ruined by the apparent comforts of a district that has voted Liberal in its last three federal elections for a woman from the U.K. who holds citizenship in three countries, including Pakistan.

“I wanted to go to a dine-in, because in most places, including the U.K., you can’t do that now,” said reporter Lewis Brackpool, who visited the location. He added, “I come to one, and what do you know — it sucks.”

In at a massive discount due to the exchange rate, Brackpool could not help but feel like many who are from the area: that what had been promised was robbed.

The experience can be summed up in the words of an anonymous would-be customer who, upon seeing a commercial of what a Pizza Hut buffet looked like in the 1990s in comparison to the location in question, said, “They took this from us.”

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​Culture, Align, Pizza hut, Restaurant, Nostalgia, Retro, Dine-in, Immigration, Canada, America, United kingdom, Pizza, Lifestyle, Review 

The family of a 62-year-old man is mourning his death after he was mauled by three dogs in Katy, according to Texas police.

The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said witnesses reported a man mauled by dogs on Monday before chasing off the animals.

Animal control had no previous history with the dogs.

When EMS personnel arrived at the scene, they pronounced the man dead.

Police then found a mother and a daughter who had also been attacked by the dogs near Permission Creek Lane, according to the public information officer Thomas Gilliland. They were transported to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries.

Gilliland said the man’s family went looking for him when he didn’t return home from a morning routine walk.

The dogs were described as pit bull mix.

Police were able to find the dogs, and two were taken by animal control, while the third was shot by deputies and euthanized by animal control. They will be quarantined for 10 days, after which a judge will determine their fate.

Animal control had no previous history with the dogs. Gilliland said authorities had not determined how the dogs got out of the home.

The identity of the man was not released by police.

RELATED: 17-year-old girl brutally mauled by pack of dogs — her mom says she was unrecognizable

Homicide detectives interviewed the owner of the dogs.

Charges have not yet been filed.

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​Dog mauling, Dog attack, Texas dog attack, Pit bull attack, Crime 

What happened Sunday at the home of Rob and Michele Reiner is a family nightmare. A son battling addiction, likely complicated by mental illness. Parents who loved him. A volatile situation that finally erupted into irreversible tragedy.

I grieve for them.

Shame keeps families quiet. Fear keeps them guarded. Love keeps them hoping longer than wisdom sometimes allows.

I also grieve for the families who read those headlines and felt something tighten in their chest because the story felt painfully familiar.

We often hear the phrase, “If you see something, say something.” The problem is that most people do not know what to say. So they say nothing at all.

What if we started somewhere simpler?

I see you. I see the weight you are carrying. I hurt with you.

Families living with addiction and serious mental illness often find themselves isolated. Not only because of the chaos inside their homes, but because friends, neighbors, and even faith communities hesitate to step closer, unsure of what to say or do. Over time, silence settles in.

Long before police are called, before neighbors hear sirens, before a tragedy becomes a headline, people live inside relentless stress and uncertainty every day.

They are caregivers.

We rarely use that word for parents, spouses, or siblings of addicts, but we should. These families do not simply react to bad choices. They manage instability. They monitor risk. They absorb emotional whiplash. They try to keep everyone safe while holding together a household under extraordinary strain.

In many ways, this disorientation rivals Alzheimer’s. In some cases, it proves even more destabilizing.

Addiction is cruelly unpredictable. It offers moments of clarity that feel like hope. A sober conversation. An apology. A promise that sounds sincere. Those moments can disarm a family member who desperately wants to believe the worst has passed.

Then the pivot comes. Calm turns to chaos. Remorse gives way to rage. Many families learn to live on edge, constantly recalibrating, never certain whether today will be manageable or explosive.

Law enforcement officers understand this reality well. Many domestic calls involve addiction, mental illness, or both. Tension often greets officers at the door, followed by a familiar refrain: “We didn’t know what else to do.”

Calling these family members caregivers matters because it reframes the conversation. It moves us away from judgment and toward reality. From, “Why don’t they just …?” to, “What are they carrying?” It acknowledges that these families manage risk, not just emotions.

The recovery community has long emphasized truths that save lives: You did not cause it. You cannot control it. You cannot cure it. These principles are not cold. They bring clarity. And clarity matters when safety is at stake.

RELATED: The grace our cruel culture can’t understand

Photo by Gary Hershorn / Getty Images

Another truth too often postponed until tragedy strikes deserves equal emphasis: The caregiver’s safety matters too.

Friends and faith communities often respond with a familiar phrase: “Let me know if there’s anything you need.” It sounds kind, but it places the burden back on someone already exhausted and often afraid.

Caregivers need something different. They need people willing to ask better questions.

Are you safe right now? Is there a plan if things escalate? Who is checking on you? Would it help if I stayed with you or helped you find a safe place tonight?

These questions do not intrude. They protect.

Often, the most meaningful help does not come as a solution, but as a witness. Henri Nouwen once observed that the people who matter most rarely offer advice or cures. They share the pain. They sit at the kitchen table. They walk alongside without looking away.

Caregivers living with someone battling addiction and mental illness often need at least one safe presence who sees clearly, speaks honestly, and stays when things grow uncomfortable.

We have permission to care, but not always the vocabulary.

Shame keeps families quiet. Fear keeps them guarded. Love keeps them hoping longer than wisdom sometimes allows. One of the greatest gifts we can offer is the willingness to penetrate that isolation with clarity, grace, and tangible help.

Grace does not require silence in the face of danger. Love does not demand enduring abuse. Faith does not obligate someone to remain in harm’s way.

Pointing a caregiver toward safety does not abandon the person struggling with addiction. It recognizes that multiple lives stand at risk, and all of them matter.

When tragedies occur, the public asks what could have been done differently. One answer proves both simple and difficult: Stop overlooking the caregivers quietly absorbing the blast.

RELATED: The courage we lost is hiding in the simplest places

Photo by Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images

Welfare checks should not focus solely on the person battling addiction or mental illness. Families living beside that struggle often need support long before a breaking point arrives.

If you know someone whose son, daughter, spouse, or partner struggles, do not look away because you feel unsure what to say. You do not need to solve anything. You do not need to analyze anything.

Start by seeing them. Stay with them.

I see you. I see how heavy this is. You do not have to carry it alone.

Ask better questions. Offer practical help that does not depend on their energy to ask. Check on them again tomorrow.

This season reminds us that Christ did not stand at a safe distance from trauma. He came close to the wounded and brought redemption without demanding tidy explanations.

When we do the same for families living in the shadow of addiction and mental illness, we honor their suffering and the Savior who meets us there.

​Addiction, Caregivers, Drug addiction, Opinion & analysis, Rob reiner, Murder, Safety, Drugs, Mental illness 

In the recently argued Trump v. Slaughter case, most of the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to affirm what should be obvious: The president has a constitutional right under Article II to dismiss federal employees in the executive branch when it suits him.

That conclusion strikes many of us as self-evident. Executive-branch employees work under the president, who alone among them is chosen in a nationwide election. Bureaucrats are not. Why, then, should the chief executive’s subordinates be insulated from his control?

When the Roberts Court overturned Roe in 2022 and returned the issue to the states, many voters responded with fury. The electorate did not welcome responsibility. It resented it.

A vocal minority on the court appears to reject that premise. Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor warned that allowing a president — implicitly a Republican one — to control executive personnel would unleash political chaos. Jackson suggested Trump “would be free to fire all the scientists, the doctors, the economists, and PhDs” working for the federal government. Sotomayor went further, claiming the administration was “asking to destroy the structure of government.”

David Harsanyi, in a perceptive commentary, identified what animates this view: “fourth-branch blues.” The administrative state now exercises power that rivals or exceeds that of the constitutional branches. As Harsanyi noted, nothing in the founders’ design envisioned “a sprawling autonomous administrative state empowered to create its own rules, investigate citizens, adjudicate guilt, impose fines, and destroy lives.”

Yet defenders of this system frame presidential oversight as a threat to “democracy.” Democrats, who present themselves as democracy’s guardians, warn that allowing agency officials to answer to the elected president places the nation in peril. The argument recalls their reaction to the Dobbs case, when the court returned abortion policy to voters and was accused of “undermining democracy” by doing so.

RELATED: This Supreme Court case could reverse a century of bureaucratic overreach

Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call

On that point, Harsanyi and I agree. Judicial and bureaucratic overreach distort constitutional government. The harder question is whether voters object.

From what I can tell, most do not. Many Americans seem content to trade constitutional self-government for managerial rule, provided the system delivers benefits and protects their expressive preferences. The populist right may bristle at this arrangement, but a leftist administrative state that claims to speak for “the people” may reflect the electorate’s will.

Recent elections reinforce that suspicion. Voters showed little interest in reclaiming authority from courts or bureaucracies. They appeared far more interested in government largesse and symbolic rights than in the burdens of republican self-rule.

Consider abortion. Roe v. Wade rested on shaky legal ground, yet large segments of the public enthusiastically embraced it for nearly 50 years. When the Roberts Court overturned Roe in 2022 and returned the issue to the states, many voters responded with fury. States enacted expansive abortion laws, and Democrats benefited from unusually high turnout. The electorate did not welcome responsibility. It resented it.

This reaction should not surprise anyone familiar with history. In 1811, Spaniards rejected the liberal constitution imposed by French occupiers, crying “abajo el liberalismo” — down with liberalism. They did not want abstract rights. They wanted familiar authority.

At least half of today’s American electorate appears similarly disposed. Many prefer guided democracy administered by judges and managers to the uncertainties of self-government. Their votes signal approval for continued rule by the administrative state. Republicans may slow this process at the margins, but Democrats expand it openly, and voters just empowered them to do so.

RELATED: Stop letting courts and consultants shrink Trump’s signature promise

Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

I anticipated this outcome decades ago. In “After Liberalism” (1999), I argued that democracy as a universal ideal tends to produce expanded managerial control with popular consent. Nineteenth-century fears that mass suffrage would yield chaos proved unfounded. Instead the extension of the franchise coincided with more centralized, remote, and less accountable government.

As populations lost shared traditions and common authority, governance shifted away from democratic participation and toward expert administration. The state grew less personal, less local, and less answerable, even as it claimed to act in the people’s name.

Equally significant has been the administrative state’s success in presenting itself as the custodian of an invented “science of government.” According to this view, administrators form an enlightened elite, morally and intellectually superior to the unwashed masses. Justice Jackson’s warnings reflect this assumption.

I would like to believe, as Harsanyi suggests, that Americans find such attitudes insulting. I am no longer sure they do. Many seem pleased to be managed. They want judges and bureaucrats to make decisions for them.

That preference should trouble anyone who still cares about constitutional government.

​Supreme court, Trump vs slaughter, Administrative state, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Democracy, Constitution, Article ii 

The prime minister of Australia vowed to take whatever action is necessary to prevent more horrific terrorist attacks but immediately turned to gun control as the answer.

He also revealed that one of the two suspects in the massacre had been previously investigated over Islamic terror ties to a cell in Sydney.

‘What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism.’

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made the comments Monday after two gunmen opened fire at a Jewish celebration at Bondi Beach and massacred at least 15 people.

“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” he said.

Among the proposals to further restrict gun ownership is a limit on the number of guns a person can own as well as a review of gun permits held over a period of time.

The two gunmen were shot by police during the attack and were identified as a father and son. The 50-year-old father died of the gunshot injuries, but the son survived and is in custody. He is hospitalized in serious condition.

Albanese went on to confirm that the Australian Security Intelligence Organization had previously investigated the younger suspected gunman for six months in 2019 over ties to an Islamic State cell in Sydney.

“He was examined on the basis of being associated with others, and the assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence,” Albanese added.

About 25 people are being treated at hospitals from the attack, and about 10 people are in critical condition.

RELATED: Chuck Schumer gives stunningly tone-deaf remarks following Australia attack

Video from the attack showed a brave man tackle one of the suspects and wrestle away his weapon. He was identified as Ahmed al Ahmed, a father of two girls and the son of refugee parents from Syria.

He was later shot in the incident and is recuperating at a hospital. A donation page set up for the heroic man has raised over $1.9 million.

“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location, Bondi Beach, that is associated with joy, associated with families gathering, associated with celebrations, and it is forever tarnished by what has occurred last evening,” Albanese said.

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​Australian attack, Australian prime minister, Bondi beach attack, Antisemitic massacre, Politics 

Comedienne and actress Leslie Jones opined that the proper way to set things right is to send every employee of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to jail.

The former Saturday Night Live cast member made the comments while being interviewed by Nicolle Wallace on “The Best People” podcast.

‘I just want a reckoning. I want a reckoning. Y’all know y’all did wrong stuff. You know some of the stuff you did was so wrong.’

Jones said there should be a reckoning after the midterm elections.

“Girl, I’m hoping, this is what I’m hoping, that midterms, people come out and vote like crazy to switch it over, and then the reckoning comes,” Jones said to a laughing Wallace.

“That’s why I want all, everybody that work for ICE, I want them in jail,” she added. “I just want a reckoning. I want a reckoning. Y’all know y’all did wrong stuff. You know some of the stuff you did was so wrong. I need a reckoning. Because that’s, to me, that’s the only thing that’s gonna make it right.”

She also called for some accountability for others involved in politics.

“You see somebody that’s doing something completely terrible, like some of these influencers, these crazy folks, and we let them go because freedom of speech, of course, but there should be accountability,” she added.

“Gravity, like things should fall,” Wallace chimed in.

Video of Jones’ comments were widely circulated on social media.

RELATED: Conservative writer posts same Tweet as ‘Ghostbusters’ actress — see what happened

Mass deportations have been a large part of President Donald Trump’s agenda in order to combat the influx of illegal aliens after four years under the Biden administration. Some of those efforts have been stymied by legal challenges.

Fox News said ICE did not respond to a request for comment about Jones’ wishes.

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​Leslie jones, Celebrities vs republicans, Put ice in jail, Liberal celebrities, Politics