Category: blaze media

As the Texas Senate race heats up between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey feels compelled to remind Texas voters of Talarico’s moral failings — which are anything but small.

These moral failures are reflected even in the church he attends, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, which was recently exposed by the Daily Wire for having “explicit LGBTQ books in its bookstore aimed at children.”

Stuckey calls the books “basically pornographic,” as they contained “illustrations of sexual acts.”

The church is also an “ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood.”

“He also has his own kind of personal scandal that we very unfortunately had to read about last November in the New York Post. They found that he was following on his official account at least 10 OnlyFans models,” Stuckey explains.

The Democrat had liked multiple sultry photos posted by at least one of the accounts and exchanged private messages with another.

“If we’re already liking accounts and messaging OnlyFans models as a professing Christian, like we obviously have a sexual immorality issue going on there,” Stuckey says.

But that’s not even close to all of what Talarico’s done.

“He has repeatedly blasphemed God, saying God is nonbinary … he’s advocated for the gender mutilation surgeries of kids. He has pushed for the killing of unborn babies through abortion,” Stuckey explains.

“And these aren’t just policies … this is Talarico’s rejection of God’s order, rejection of God’s justice, his order of male and female, his desire to strip innocent babies of the right to life. It’s a spiritual position. It’s a theological position. And his politics are just downstream from the immorality and the corruption that’s in his heart,” she continues.

While Stuckey admits that Ken Paxton also has moral failings, these failings don’t bleed into policy the same way Talarico’s do.

“Talarico is very pro-abortion … he votes on the side of lax abortion laws and against any measure to protect the life of unborn children,” she says, pointing out that he has said he is pro-abortion “because” of his “faith.”

In an interview on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show,” Talarico explained that he trusts Texas women “to make decisions about their own bodies, to shape their own destinies in consultation with their family members, their doctors, their faith leaders.”

“I don’t believe that’s a place for government. That’s a belief I hold not despite my faith, but because of my faith. Jesus never talks about abortion. The Bible is silent on abortion. And when that happens with a social issue as important as abortion, we Christians have to take Scripture as a wholem and we’ve got to try to make some kind of ethical determination,” he added.

“I just want to remind you,” Stuckey comments, disturbed, “that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

“So don’t allow his humble-seeming, gentle-sounding disposition and tone of voice fool you into thinking that this is reasonable or biblical,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Relatable, James talarico, Ken paxton, Texas, Senate, Democrat, Republican, Allie beth stuckey, The bible, Christianity, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

More Americans are turning to chatbots with their hardest questions, often before they turn to anyone else. Grief, guilt, whether to leave a marriage, whether God is real — the questions people once carried to church now go into the text box.

So it matters a great deal what the text box says back. New work from researchers at Brigham Young University, gathered under a group called the Consortium for Evaluation of Faith and Ethics in AI, suggests the answer should trouble anyone who takes faith seriously.

Lies of omission

They built a test called the AllFaith Benchmark, which included hundreds of real moral questions drawn from religious communities, and ran it through the major models: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The pattern held across all of them. Asked about death, forgiveness, or the meaning of a life, the machines reached for secular, generic answers and left faith out of the equation. The omission was systematic. It showed up steadily, measurably, and every time the test ran.

A third of American adults already rate spiritual advice from AI as trustworthy as a pastor’s.

Why does an absence matter this much? Because these tools do more than recite facts. They frame what counts as a reasonable answer. When a model treats the believer’s answer as clutter to clear away, it teaches a lesson, never stated outright, about which replies belong in serious conversation and which can be skipped.

Iterate that process at scale, and entire generations get a reshaped sense of what a thoughtful person, or even a soulful person, sounds like.

That deep-seated formation was once the province of the Christian wisdom that built the West. The conviction that every person carries equal worth, and that even kings answer to a law above their own, entered Western civilization through the Church and outlasted the doctrinal quarrels that produced it. Among the great civilizational faiths, none shaped this part of the world the way Christianity did.

Spiritual appropriation

A second finding goes deeper, and it’s considerably stranger. A researcher named Tim Hwang recently took a model and did something close to an MRI on it, watching its inner workings while it ran. He gave it a simple prompt, “As a Christian,” and watched what changed. What changed was a single switch. Begin a prompt with those words, and one specific, dormant part of the model wakes up and fires the same way, no matter what follows.

Ask it whether lying is wrong, ask it to describe a sofa, and the response shifts in the same direction both times. The switch does two things. It pushes religious words to the front, such as God, Jesus, and prayer. It also pushes absolute words like always, never, and not to the front. That’s the entire performance. When this model acts Christian, it grabs holy vocabulary and a hard, certain tone, whether you ask about salvation or seating. The model believes nothing. It speaks with fluent reverence and flawless conviction, but possesses neither.

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ANDREAS SOLARO/Getty Images

The machine has decided that Christian identity comes down to holy phrases delivered with real conviction. Absent from that picture is everything a believer would claim as the substance of it: grace, mercy, humility, patience — and the slow, unglamorous labor of moral reasoning.

This would be a harmless oddity if these systems stayed in a lab. But they don’t. They pulse in the pocket of nearly every teenager in America, fielding questions about sex and suffering and forgiveness long before a parent or pastor hears a word of it. And they’re not asking ironically. A recent survey found that a third of American adults already rate spiritual advice from AI as trustworthy as a pastor’s, a number that climbs to two in five among Gen Z and Millennials. When someone types “what does Christianity say about this,” the machine answers.

Simulating salvation

They get the surface and miss the center, and they never notice the gap, because the answer is convincing. A pastor who got the faith this wrong would be corrected, possibly even banished, by Sunday. The chatbot answers 10,000 times an hour, and no one corrects it at all. That’s the trouble with a good fake. It doesn’t look fake. And people want to believe.

Christians have argued for centuries upon centuries that faith lives in the heart, that a man can say every right word and mean none of them. The machine has now built, by accident or by design (I’ll let you decide), a virtual likeness of exactly that man, who can preach but cannot believe. So the worry is simple. People are learning Christianity from a system that has mastered the motions and missed the whole point.

Smashing the machine is a fantasy, so put the fantasy away. The work that remains is teaching the people forming their faith how to tell the difference between a voice that lives the faith and one that has only read about it.

​Faith, Lifestyle, Culture 

For many Christians, the world seems impossibly dark right now. The scale of abortion is truly massive, with over 1.1 million per year in the U.S. alone. There has been an explosive rise in occult and pagan practices, human trafficking continues as a multibillion-dollar industry, and Christian persecution — especially in parts of Africa — has led to the deaths of thousands. Wars rage in multiple regions, while record levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation disproportionately impact today’s youth.

Many feel crushed by the weight of the world’s depravity and wonder if things will only get worse.

But Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of the spiritual warfare podcast “Strange Encounters,” offers hope against the oppressive darkness: Revival is also happening.

Rick points to a powerful example at Joby Martin’s Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida. Last month, at the church’s annual Beach Baptism held at Hanna Park, 2,552 people were baptized in the Atlantic Ocean — the largest single-day baptism in the church’s 14-year history and a significant jump from nearly 2,000 the year before. Over 14,000 people gathered for the event.

“[Martin] said that these were numbers that they had not seen before, and most of these people were young people,” he says.

Rick explains what’s happening right now on the spiritual plane.

“[Satan] always overplays his hand, and what he’s doing right now with this revival of evil — it’s actually working detrimentally against his plan,” he says.

“Now we have a generation of young people … they’ve looked at this overplaying of evil’s hand and saying, ‘If this is the best that a fallen world can offer me, I don’t want it. I’m going to Jesus,”’ he continues.

Rick believes Eleven22’s record-breaking numbers are part of a larger movement, especially among younger men, who are rejecting the emptiness of modern culture and turning toward authentic faith instead.

In the midst of widespread moral confusion and spiritual darkness, moments like the Eleven22 baptisms serve as a powerful reminder that God is still at work — and that light often shines brightest when the darkness seems overwhelming.

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

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​Strange encounters, Rick burgess 

As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, Americans will be doing a lot of celebrating. They will honor not only the fact of our independence and nationhood, but also the political thought that shaped America’s founding struggle for freedom. Special attention will be paid, of course, to our Declaration of Independence.

But some may be rather cool to celebrating the Declaration’s doctrine of universal truths, such as the equality of all human beings in their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration has become a source of controversy among some younger conservatives who came of age during the Trump era.

The New Right’s dissatisfaction with the Declaration’s universalism is an understandable — but mistaken — reaction to various political misuses of America’s founding creed in recent decades.

There is no conflict between the Declaration’s universal principles and the New Right’s America First nationalism.

The older generation of conservatives who grew up admiring Ronald Reagan love to boast about America’s defense of universal truths. The New Right has argued that this rhetorical approach has not served the conservative political movement or the country well.

The Reaganite message, so powerful in the late 20th century, proved unable to keep winning national elections in the 21st. As a result, conservatives ceded political power to a Democratic Party and a left wing increasingly committed to an alarming agenda of social and cultural transformation.

The old-guard conservatives could not beat the Obama coalition. Moreover, their excessive preoccupation with America’s commitment to universal moral principles harmed the nation’s interests — and the interests of many Americans, especially those of the working class — in areas such as immigration, trade, and foreign policy.

In response, the New Right developed its now well-known message of American nationalism in the wake of Trump’s victory in 2016. They have embraced an “America First” agenda that places the social and economic well-being of its citizens at the center of national policy.

This stands in sharp contrast to the older conservatism, which tended to approach immigration, trade, and foreign policy in light of the country’s universal moral commitments as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

The New Right’s recalibration proved politically successful: witness President Trump’s electoral victories in 2016 and 2024. But such success breeds criticism, and many on the left and among the older conservative establishment have condemned the new nationalism as a betrayal of the Declaration’s universal principles. Such criticism has, no doubt, deepened the New Right’s skepticism of the Declaration.

What are we to make of all this?

The New Right is correct to reject superficial and politically unhelpful misappropriations of the Declaration. Its members are justified in repudiating suggestions that America is just a political “idea” with no particular and concrete interests. And they are correct to dismiss claims that the Declaration’s universal principles require us to embrace immigration, trade, and foreign policies at odds with the well-being of our own citizens.

RELATED: Polarization may be the cure — and the clarity — America needs

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It would be a terrible mistake, however, for the New Right to go farther and reject the Declaration itself.

Such rejection is, in the first place, unnecessary. Contrary to the self-serving hectoring from the left and the old-guard conservatives, there is no conflict between the Declaration’s universal principles and the New Right’s America First nationalism. Those principles do not require the open-borders moralism preached by globalists of all stripes.

The Declaration asserts the great and universal truth that all human beings are equal in their natural rights. However, it nowhere asserts that everyone has a natural right to enter a political community of which he is not already a member, much less a natural right to become a citizen of that community.

The founders and subsequent generations of Americans regulated immigration according to the nation’s needs and interests rather than a fanciful moral obligation to accept all who want to come here.

Nor does the Declaration rule out an America First trade policy. Its philosophical framework was influenced by John Locke, in particular his claim that all human beings have a natural right to “life, liberty, and property.” None of these rights, however, entails a right to engage in trade across national borders.

Indeed, Locke’s Second Treatise makes clear that government, once established by the consent of the governed, would regulate foreign trade in the nation’s interests. The founders reflected this understanding in the Constitution by vesting Congress with the power to regulate foreign commerce.

Finally, nothing in the Declaration requires the U.S. government to promote democracy abroad or undermine tyrannies in foreign lands.

The Declaration famously teaches that a people can appeal to the right of revolution when their government is determined to destroy their individual rights and subject them to despotism. That right, however, must be exercised with “prudence” by the people living under a tyrannical government — not by the people of another nation.

Nothing in the Declaration indicates that America or any nation has a right — much less a duty — to liberate other nations from their tyrannical regimes and to impose on such peoples all the costs of a revolution that cannot be certain of success.

RELATED: The timeless truths behind the Declaration of Independence

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The Declaration teaches that America’s foreign policy needs to be guided by our reasonable and just interests, the star by which founding-era statesmen such as Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison steered the ship of state.

Indeed, the Declaration itself affirms a kind of nationalism. Before turning to the political theory in its famous second paragraph, it teaches that peoples or nations are not mere artificial contrivances but instead exist in contemplation of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

They have a right to a “separate and equal station” among the other “powers of the earth.” In other words, every people has a right to control its own political fate. Read as a whole, the Declaration is as much an affirmation of the sovereignty of nations as of the rights of individuals.

There is, then, no reason for the proponents of America First nationalism to reject the universal principles of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, to do so would be a grave mistake. However abused or misunderstood, those principles are a foundational and vital element of America’s political identity.

It is no part of the duty or interest of any movement of the political right — or of any movement governed by sobriety and caution, not to mention gratitude for what one has inherited — to reconstruct the identity of one’s own nation.

An America indifferent to the universal principles of the Declaration would no longer be the America we have all been blessed to inherit — and that we all have an obligation to preserve.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

​Declaration of independence, Nationalism, Trump, America first, Ronald reagan, John locke, Democrats, New right, American founding, Founding fathers, Foreign policy, Opinion & analysis 

Every government form I sign contains some variation of the same warning: “I certify that the information provided is true and correct.” “False statements may result in civil penalties.” “Federal charges may apply.”

I have been signing forms like that since Ronald Reagan was president.

Americans do not need another report telling them what everyone already knows. They need accountability.

For 40 years, I have managed a medical catastrophe. My wife has endured nearly 100 surgeries, multiple amputations, years of hospitalization, and enough insurance claims and medical bills to wallpaper a house. Over those four decades, I learned something millions of family caregivers understand all too well: You don’t respect what you don’t inspect.

Long before smartphones, electronic records, and artificial intelligence, I sat at kitchen tables with a pencil, a calculator, and a telephone, combing through Explanation of Benefits forms, hospital bills, physician statements, pharmacy charges, and insurance claims. I have argued with surgeons, hospital administrators, insurance executives, case managers, billing departments, and just about everyone in between. I have won all but two of those arguments because if I did not, my wife paid the price. The consequences of their mistakes landed in my living room.

When your loved one’s health and financial survival hang in the balance, you learn to confront, challenge, and stay in the room long after everyone else wishes you would leave. That is what advocates do. That is what skin in the game looks like.

Imagine if our elected advocates approached their responsibilities with even a fraction of that urgency.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, we are preparing celebrations, restoring monuments, and planning fireworks displays. That’s fine. I enjoy fireworks as much as anyone. But the colonists did not risk everything over fireworks. The Stamp Act was never merely about stamps. It was about accountability. It was about whether government could impose burdens on citizens while remaining insulated from the consequences of those burdens.

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Two hundred and 50 years later, that question remains painfully relevant.

More than 65 million Americans serve as family caregivers. Together, they provide an estimated $1.2 trillion in unpaid care each year. They keep loved ones out of institutions, reduce burdens on taxpayers, and shoulder responsibilities that would overwhelm many public systems. We do not have lobbyists. We do not have communications directors. We have kitchen tables covered with bills. We have loved ones whose lives depend on us showing up again tomorrow.

Then, we turn on the news. We see stories of fraud. We see agencies unable to account for money. We see programs consuming billions with little to show for it but waste. We see officials preside over failure and retire comfortably while ordinary Americans are left holding the bill.

In “The Dark Knight,” the Joker tells Batman, “It’s all part of the plan.” After enough years of watching obvious failures produce little accountability, cynicism begins to sound less like paranoia and more like experience.

Finding fraud matters. But merely finding it is not enough.

If I discovered an error in a medical bill and nobody corrected it, the problem remained. If I identified the source of a problem and nobody addressed it, all I had really done was document my frustration. At some point, discovery without consequence becomes theater.

Americans have watched report after report, audit after audit, investigation after investigation. Fraud was found. Good. Now what?

Finding fraud is important. Arresting fraudsters is important. But accountability also requires asking who ignored it, who enabled it, who benefited from it, and who failed to stop it.

And if those people occupied positions of authority, what consequences do they face? Loss of office? Loss of contracts? Public accountability? Criminal prosecution where warranted? Or do they simply move on while the public absorbs the cost?

Otherwise, we’re not fixing a system. We’re simply rotating villains.

The average American lives under penalty of perjury. Every form I sign reminds me of it. If I knowingly misrepresent information, consequences follow. Why should the people entrusted with billions of taxpayer dollars operate under a lower standard than the citizens paying the bills?

If fraud occurred, prosecute the people responsible and name names. If someone knowingly violated the public trust, identify him and hold him accountable. Not for revenge. For stewardship.

I write this while undergoing cancer treatment. At the same time, I am still caring for a woman who has spent four decades battling catastrophic disability. If I sound impatient with waste, fraud, and excuses, it is because I have spent too much of my life paying for other people’s mistakes.

RELATED: Minnesota fraudsters fined millions of dollars — but report finds many don’t pay and get released anyway

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Millions of caregivers know exactly what I mean. We are tired in a way that is difficult to explain to people who have never lived this life. Staying outraged takes more energy than most caregivers can afford. But we are paying attention.

Scripture says, “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Proverbs 29:2).

There is a lot of groaning in this country. I hear it in hospital waiting rooms. I hear it in caregiver support groups. I hear it from people staring at medical bills long after midnight.

Americans do not need another report telling them what everyone already knows. They need accountability. They need leaders willing to impose upon government the same standards government imposes upon them.

For too long, the consequences of government failure have been borne by the wrong people. It is time for accountability to land somewhere else.

​Opinion & analysis, Medicare, Medicaid, Fraud, Caregiving, Disability, Waste fraud and abuse, Crime, Accountability 

Taryn Thomas was a dedicated Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestine activist in high school and later at Stanford University. But after years of faithful activism, the narrative she once fully embraced began to unravel. Ideological inconsistencies and a visit to an exhibit honoring the Nova Music Festival victims eventually led her to renounce the BLM-Palestine allegiance and begin a new journey as an outspoken critic.

Taryn joined Glenn Beck on a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program” to share her journey, the October 7 attacks’ impact, and how the pro-Palestine movement at Stanford evolved into something that could only be described as “anti-Israel and anti-American.”

Taryn explains that at 16-years-old, she was conditioned by BLM leadership to believe that “for [black people] to be free, Palestine has to be free.”

By the time she reached college, she was prepared to lead the coalition. Taryn helped organize and mobilize student protests and the early encampments that sprang up on Stanford’s campus right after the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

“By October 20, Stanford already put up its encampment, ‘Sit-In to Stop the Genocide.’ This is before the families had even finished identifying its dead. This is a week before a single [Israeli] soldier had even crossed into Gaza,” she tells Glenn.

The group’s rapid labeling of the conflict as a “genocide” and the immediate ostracism of anyone who mourned the Israeli lives lost made Taryn wary.

“I felt like I wanted a two-state solution, but … I never wanted to talk about it with anyone because everyone was anti-Zionist, and it felt that … the safest position was the most radical one,” she says.

In June 2024, one of the Stanford protests got so out of hand, Taryn started to seriously question her membership.

“They broke into the Stanford University’s president’s office and caused $700,000 in damages, 12 students received felonies, and they spray-painted disgusting things, such as ‘death to Israel,’ ‘death to America,’ ‘kill cops,’ ‘pigs taste best when dead,’” she recounts.

“At some point, our pro-Palestine movement became more of an anti-Israel, anti-American one. And I no longer could recognize what we were doing anymore.”

Shortly after distancing herself from the organization, Taryn was invited to see the Nova Music Festival exhibit.

“I thought I would find Zionist propaganda and Zionist lies, and I wanted to reaffirm my pro-Palestine position more than anything,” she admits.

What she found, however, was the exact opposite.

“I found instead, you know, half-written ‘I love yous’ and last messages sent to parents and loved ones,” she reflects.

“These are kids my age going to a music festival that I would have went to, and it was just not political. Nova Music Festival was not a political thing, and yet we had compressed them and flattened them into this political narrative, and in doing so we killed them a second time,” she confesses.

At the exhibit, Taryn also got to experience the sick celebrations of Hamas soldiers.

“One of the audio recordings that we had heard was a terrorist calling his dad saying that he had killed 10 Jews with his own bare hands and celebrating. And I thought I was going to hear horror, and instead the dad congratulated his son,” she tells Glenn.

“This was who we were calling our martyrs. … I always called myself an anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, and that completely deconstructed that,” she adds.

Taryn notes that seeing the “ordinary” faces and hearing the life stories of the Nova Music Festival victims made her realize she was rooting not against evil oppressors but against everyday people like herself.

“That could have been your kids; that could have been my friends,” she laments.

Her heart changed, Taryn returned to Stanford “genuinely scared” to share what she had learned. For a while she kept her new beliefs to herself, but once she traveled to Israel and saw what life was like for the people, she knew her silence had to end.

“It made me realize I need to start speaking up about this,” she says.

To hear more of Taryn’s story, watch the video above.

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​Glenn beck, Nova music festival, Stanford university, The glenn beck program, October 7 attacks, Black lives matter 

A proposal called the Scarecrow system says evading automated license plate recognition from unwarranted photography and capture can be done without breaking any laws.

The research predominantly rejects the collection of license plate data by ALPR operators like Flock, a company that controls cameras in thousands of jurisdictions in the United States.

‘They capture and index every plate that passes.’

Flock currently has over 100,000 monitored surveillance cameras across the country, and as the researcher Max Harari states, these cameras exist in “our neighborhoods, parking lots, and police networks.”

“They capture and index every plate that passes, feeding a searchable surveillance database with no warrant, no notification, and in most cases no public oversight,” Harari writes.

Harari’s project uses what he calls adversarial frame pattern optimization that generates a grayscale pattern to be placed on a frame around the license plate. The aim is to “suppress detection” while remaining legible to the naked eye and unobscured to humans in real life.

RELATED: Big Brother on the road: Backlash grows against license plate surveillance

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Using the Scarecrow method, ALPR detection confidence allegedly drops from 0.84 to 0.00, which is described as “full evasion.”

The methods of distortion used include rotation and perspective warp, brightness and contrast shifts, motion blur, “additive noise,” and distance distortion.

All of these tactics allegedly disrupt Flock and “most” ALPR cameras that are mounted between eight and 12 feet.

The custom license plate requires a photo of the owner’s plate and promises to deliver an individualized pattern that completely evades AI camera detection.

The requirement of having a 3D printer means it is likely that the cover has varying depths and tangible patterns.

RELATED: License plate readers or surveillance? The number of AI cameras in the US is shocking

Rich Sugg/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

“A system that can track anyone, anywhere, with no transparency or accountability is fundamentally immoral. This project is my way of exploring what can be done about it, ethically and legally,” the researcher argued.

Harari also said in a post that he has not tested the system on an actual Flock camera, but his research indicates it should work across different hardware and license plate detection models.

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​Alpr, Surveillance, Flock, Ai, Tech 

A teenager was caught on surveillance video pointing a gun in the face of a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and demanding his car keys in Maryland earlier this week, but things didn’t work out so well for the punk — or his three friends.

Jheyco Borda — who was trained in hand-to-hand combat while in the military — told WTTG-TV he was working on his pickup truck near Oxon Hill High School around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday when four teenagers approached him on the sidewalk.

‘Once a Marine, always a Marine.’

Borda told the station the suspects — all of whom were dressed in hooded sweatshirts — approached him and demanded his car keys, phone, and other valuables.

WTTG said surveillance video showed one of the teens — dressed in red, white, and blue — pulling out a handgun and pointing it directly at Borda’s head.

However, the station said the gun-toting suspect became distracted for a split second — and Borda said that was all the time he needed to put his military training into practice and fight back.

Borda told WTTG he quickly disarmed the teen — and then his brother noticed the dust-up and ran over to assist.

Video shows that during the struggle, the suspect’s gun discharged, the station said.

RELATED: Knife-wielding ex-con gets tables turned on him lethally — courtesy of victim he robbed, fought, bit, and stabbed: Report

No one was hit by the gunfire, WTTG said — instead the bullet struck Borda’s truck and left a visible hole.

The station said that as the fight continued, another suspect tried to jump in, but Borda’s brother turned and grabbed him.

The brothers, in the end, managed to pin down the suspects until Prince George’s County Police officers arrived at the scene and took them into custody, Borda told WTTG.

The station said all four suspects were behind bars.

Police are asking anyone with additional information about the incident to contact them immediately, WTTG said.

In the aftermath, Borda told the station: “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

“I’m feeling grateful,” the veteran added to WTTG. “I’m still here, safe, with my family.”

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​Crime thwarted, Maryland, U.s. marines, Veteran, Fighting back, Self-defense, Attempted carjacking, Attempted robbery, Us military, Crime 

When Delano Squires was growing up, he was surrounded by young black men who were not only getting into trouble, but getting into gangs and going to jail — while he kept his hands clean.

“At a certain point in my teenage years, I said, ‘Well, it’s because of the families we were raised in. All our parents were married, … we were going to the same church, same values across households, a community of men who were raising us and keeping us in line. And I realized that family structure was the key,” Squires tells BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

“So from there, just one of those things that I’ve always thought about, the importance of family, the importance of marriage, importance of my dad in my day-to-day life, his everyday presence. And at a certain point, I wanted to write about it,” he explains.

And Squires did write about it in his new book, “The Vanishing Black Family,” where he argues that the breakdown of the black family is to blame for lack of education and high crime rates.

“Men and women are continuing to have children, particularly in our community, where 70% of kids are born out of wedlock,” Squires tells Whitlock.

“The other thing that we’ve seen over the course of the last 60 years is that as poverty has decreased in the black community, the non-marital birth rate has increased,” he continues, using NBA players as an example.

“In a league that was 70-plus percent black, you had guys who were fathering four, five, six, seven kids out of wedlock, even though they were making millions of dollars a year,” he explains, noting that economics appear to have very little to do with children being born out of wedlock.

“I think economics is a part of it, but the real reason is because marriage is no longer seen as valuable, desirable, accessible, or indispensable for the purpose of forming a family. And the reason for that goes back much further than current economic trends,” he tells Whitlock.

Whitlock has his own theory as to why the black family has broken down.

“If we had more God, we could have a successful marriage, and we could raise up better kids. That’s the missing ingredient,” Whitlock says.

“The cause of the vanishing black family is because we’re not looking for God to be our provider. We’re looking for money to be our provider. And so, whatever makes us the most money is going to fix the most problems,” he continues.

“And to me it’s, you know, we’ve just lost focus on who our real provider is. It’s not man-made money. It’s God,” he adds.

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​Black men, Community, Crime rates, Delano squires, Jason whitlock, Jason whitlock fearless, Marriage, Values, Jason whitlock harmony 

Scott Bessent may well be the most consequential secretary of the treasury since Alexander Hamilton — not simply because of the policies he advances, but because of the conditions he confronts and the clarity with which he is executing President Trump’s broader economic vision.

Like Hamilton before him, Bessent has stepped into an economy weakened by a long period of policies that, however well intentioned, failed to serve the enduring interests of the American domestic economy.

Before entering public life, Bessent operated at the highest levels of global finance. As a key figure alongside Stanley Druckenmiller, he helped execute one of the defining macro trades of the modern era — the successful challenge to the Bank of England’s currency peg in 1992. The lesson was enduring: Systems that ignore economic reality do not last. Markets force alignment.

What Bessent is executing is a re-centering, not only of economics, but of strategy.

It is precisely that market-grounded realism that now underpins the implementation of the administration’s economic strategy. But Bessent is not simply a market practitioner. His time teaching the history of economic thought at Yale reveals the deeper foundation of his approach.

He sees the economy not as a series of quarterly data points, but as a system shaped over time by production, energy, capital formation, and national power. That synthesis, of theory, history, and practice, places him firmly in the Hamiltonian tradition and makes him a natural architect for translating President Trump’s economic doctrine into operational policy.

After the Revolutionary War, the United States was financially strained under extreme levels of debt, industrially underdeveloped, and newly severed from its economic relationship with the British Empire. Hamilton’s achievement was to turn that fragility into a foundation for strength.

He tied fiscal credibility to growth, fostered domestic industry, and deployed tariffs with precision — high enough to generate revenue and support development, but not so high as to suffocate competition. He was not managing decline; he was reversing it.

Bessent faces a modern analogue, an American economy navigating the aftermath of its own rupture, not from a formal empire, but from the post-World War II Pax Americana and the rules-based system it sustained. The task, again, is not to preserve a fading order, but to build a new foundation, one that reflects the strategic reset articulated by President Trump and now being systematically implemented through the Treasury Department and beyond.

The parallel is difficult to ignore. Decades of globalization prioritized efficiency over resilience and consumption over production. The result is an economy that remains large but is increasingly imbalanced, dependent on external supply chains, tilted toward financial engineering, and less capable of sustaining broad-based growth. Bessent’s significance lies in recognizing this reality and acting on it, not in abstraction, but in execution of a defined national strategy.

Like Hamilton, he is not merely managing the economy he inherited; he is working to re-anchor it, aligning markets with the administration’s emphasis on domestic strength, industrial capacity, and economic sovereignty.

That begins with debt. The United States now carries historically elevated fiscal obligations layered on top of structural weakness. The answer, as in Hamilton’s time, is not austerity alone, but growth — stronger, more durable expansion rooted in production, investment, and rising capacity.

Debt is not ignored; it is made sustainable through expansion, a core pillar of the administration’s supply-side orientation.

RELATED: Grants are a secret weapon for American communities

NicolasMe/Getty Images

This framework was articulated clearly in Bessent’s speech at the Reagan Library. At its core is a simple recognition: An economy hollowed out by flawed globalization cannot sustain either prosperity or fiscal stability.

The answer is not withdrawal, but reordering, a principle that sits at the heart of President Trump’s economic agenda. His formulation — de-risk, not decouple — captures that balance. It preserves the benefits of trade while restoring the primacy of national resilience.

This is not a rejection of globalization but its correction, a distinctly Hamiltonian instinct and one now being operationalized across trade, capital flows, and industrial policy.

Energy is central to this vision. Cheap, secure energy is not a talking point; it is the precondition for winning the next phase of economic competition, particularly in artificial intelligence.

Computing is power. Without abundant energy, neither technological leadership nor sustained growth is possible. This, too, reflects a deliberate alignment between Treasury policy and the administration’s broader push for energy dominance.

So too does the shift back toward productive capital. For years, policy favored financial engineering over real investment. Bessent’s emphasis is different, directing capital toward infrastructure, manufacturing, and technological capacity, translating strategic intent into capital allocation.

Markets have responded not in spite of this shift, but because of it.

His early attention to Federal Reserve mission creep reinforces the broader theme. By insisting that the Fed operate within, not above, the constitutional framework, Bessent is reasserting a principle that has eroded: Economic power must remain accountable. It is a subtle but critical component of restoring coherence between monetary authority and elected economic leadership.

To understand his significance, however, is to see the broader architecture now taking shape. This is not a collection of policies. It is a doctrine, one that reflects both intellectual lineage and political mandate.

At its core is a modernized American system, domestic production, strategic protection, and national development. Layered onto it is a Monroe Doctrine-style approach to economic security, treating the Western Hemisphere as a strategic sphere.

But what distinguishes this strategy is not its articulation but its execution — the translation of President Trump’s strategic instincts into coordinated economic statecraft.

In late 2025, largely under the radar, pressure on Iran’s financial system intensified and key elements of its banking sector began to fail. It generated few headlines, but the signal was unmistakable — a targeted disruption of financial plumbing rather than a blunt sanctions regime.

This is economic statecraft executed with precision — identifying pressure points, applying force selectively, and achieving strategic effect without spectacle. It reflects Bessent’s background in markets, where understanding fragility is everything, and his role in implementing a broader geopolitical-economic strategy set at the presidential level.

RELATED: No more free ride for federal grant hogs

Porcorex/Getty Images

Within this framework, Bessent is the intellectual anchor and operational executor, aligning fiscal policy, capital markets, and economic structure with national purpose as defined by the administration.

What this represents is a break from the postwar consensus. The Pax Americana was a historic achievement, but over time it evolved into a system that often detached American policy from American strength.

What Bessent is executing is a re-centering, not only of economics, but of strategy.

Just as Hamilton anchored the early United States away from dependence on the British Empire and toward internally generated strength, Bessent is anchoring the modern economy back toward its domestic foundations, while executing a presidential mandate to rebuild American economic sovereignty in a more fragmented world.

But the defining parallel is not philosophical. It is practical. Hamilton did not simply write or speak. He executed, building institutions, implementing policy, and translating theory into durable structure in real time. Bessent is doing the same, not in isolation, but as the principal architect and executor of a broader economic vision set from the top by President Trump.

That is what makes him consequential. Not the speeches, though they matter. Not the framework, though it is clear. But the execution, policy applied in real time, reshaping the trajectory of the American economy.

That is the Hamilton standard. And by that standard, Bessent is the first secretary of the treasury to meet it.

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

​Scott bessent, Ecnomy, Economics, American economy, Trump, Alexander hamilton, Markets, Globalization, Domestic products, Federal reserve, Opinion & analysis 

On June 17, Mass NOW in partnership with the MA Trans Political Coalition will put on its third annual “Trans Period Pride” — a “consciousness-raising” event featuring a group discussion on “menstrual equity” and “the experiences of trans menstruators,” a catered dinner, and free period underwear for attendees.

But this isn’t some privately funded event. Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office of LGBTQ+ Advancement — which receives nearly $1 million annually from the city budget — is officially co-sponsoring the event.

In other words, Boston taxpayers are being forced to bankroll this event while the city faces a nearly $50 million budget deficit.

When BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey saw the advertisement for this Trans Period Pride event, she admits she had to do “a double take.”

Allie says she’s unsure who exactly this event is even catering to.

“[Are we] talking about women who identify as men, still have their uterus and their eggs, and so they’re having periods? … Or are we talking about the men that I’ve seen on social media who claim because of the synthetic hormones that they’re taking to try to look more like women that they have some kind of menstrual cycle, even though you don’t have a uterus or eggs or any ability to menstruate?” she asks, speculating that the attendees will likely be “a mixed bag” of confused individuals.

She calls the entire debacle “funny, but it’s sad.”

But “Trans Period Pride” isn’t the only absurdity Boston taxpayers are being forced to fund.

In April, Mayor Wu’s Office for Immigrant Advancement partnered with the nonprofit OUTnewcomers on the “Belonging Matters” program, which aimed to provide $250-$500 “wellness allowance” vouchers to low-income LGBTQ+ migrants for non-clinical services such as yoga, meditation, massages, hair salon visits, gym memberships, and creative healing. The public backlash was so intense that the program was paused within days of launching.

“The city faces a budget deficit of nearly $50 million, but sorry, the transgender people need their period underwear. The queer asylum-seekers need their yoga classes, okay?” Allie quips.

To hear her full 2026 Pride Month breakdown, watch the episode above.

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​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey, Pride month, Boston, Michelle wu, Transgenderism, Relatable 

Several years ago, a team of researchers obtained numerous pig brains from a slaughterhouse and revived them off-site for experimentation purposes. That team has since moved up the food chain. Now it obtains human donors’ brains, restores their functions, and uses them to test experimental drugs.

Bexorg, a Connecticut-based biotech startup spun out of Yale University, boasts about having created a “platform that leverages the untouched potential of nature’s most complex and enduring mystery: the human brain.”

‘It’s a remarkable brain bank.’

Whereas other researchers might be limited to experimenting on lab-grown, human pseudo-brains or cell cultures, the team at Bexorg meddles with “full mature, intact, and isolated brains for days on end” with the stated aim of advancing brain disease therapies.

Unlike the company’s slick pitch, the reality appears to be something of a horror show. After all, the over 700 brains that have been subjected to experimentation at Bexorg so far were apparently far from inert.

Bexorg takes human brains from their newly deceased donors’ bodies, places them in what are effectively vats, and feeds them liters of blood substitute and other fluids that provide oxygen from an artificial lung and carry away waste to a fake kidney. The tubes that carry the sustaining fluids are connected to blood vessels in the brain via four plastic ports.

RELATED: Famed neuroscientist claims he’s disproven free will — but his peers say he failed miserably

RDB/Dukas/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

According to the peer-reviewed academic journal Science, the company’s proprietary life-support system BrainEx keeps the disembodied brains alive and preserves their key functions so that they can metabolize experimental drugs and react to other stimuli.

After roughly 24 hours in a state of drugged limbo, donors’ brains are cut up into hundreds of pieces for further study.

Although the brains are alive and reactive for the benefit of “drug discovery,” Bexorg CEO Zvonimir Vrselja has stated that “higher-level brain functions are not restored.”

According to a 2019 study in which Vrselja and other members of what became the Bexorg team used their technology to revive pig brains obtained from a food processing facility, “The observed restoration of molecular and cellular processes following 4h of global anoxia/ischemia should not be extrapolated to signify resurgence of normal brain function. Indeed, quite the opposite: at no point did we observe the kind of organized global electrical activity associated with awareness, perception, or other higher-order brain functions.”

To ensure against the re-emergence of consciousness among the subjects of their “wet-lab” experiments, researchers suppress the human brains’ electrical activity with anesthetics, specifically the drug propofol.

Propofol apparently causes brain activity to become unstable until the brain loses consciousness.

“The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness,” Brenand Parent, a bioethicist from New York University Langone Health who sits on Bexorg’s board, told Science.

Despite the company’s reassurances and use of multiple measures to block neuronal activity, some have raised serious ethical concerns about Bexorg’s technology, which initially developed with the help of funding through the National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative. A source familiar told Blaze News that the company is not presently receiving NIH funding.

“This is brand-new, and there’s no kind of institutional oversight,” Yale bioethicist Stephen Latham told ScienceAlert in 2019 regarding the earlier experiments on pig brains.

“This is not animal research, because the brain comes to the researchers from an already dead animal,” continued Latham. “But if consciousness were somehow induced in the brain, we don’t have ethics committees … that are constituted to even think about how to do the kinds of trade-offs you do when you do research on human subjects or on animals.”

Vrselja claimed in a December 2025 study published in the Alzheimer’s Association’s journal, Alzheimer’s and Dementia, that the 5-year-old startup’s “perfusion‐based postmortem brain model can recapitulate the complexity of the brain at the cellular and systems level.”

The December study claimed further that “utilizing human disease brains as a preclinical model promises to substantially increase the probability of success in developing new therapies for AD.”

Bexorg did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

Bruna Bellaver, a research assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, told Science that BrainEx is “a huge step up from mouse models.”

Bruce Car, the chief science officer at Biohaven, one of Bexorg’s collaborators, has used roughly 130 of the Bexorg-sustained brains to test drugs. Car told Science that one of the drugs, the intended use of which is to prevent toxic proteins from building up in the brain, didn’t perform as desired in a mouse, but worked in the disembodied human brains at a lower-than-expected dose. This apparently saved Biohaven a year of development.

“It’s a remarkable brain bank,” said MIT neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai, who instead uses pseudo-brains grown from human stem cells.

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​Science, Technology, Brains, Horror, Yale university, Drug, Pharmaceuticals, Experiments, Disease, Health, Politics 

If there is a single idea that President Donald Trump holds with conviction, it is that the 2020 election was stolen.

Millions of Americans agree with him. How it was stolen, and by whom, is still being investigated six years later. That is a problem, because another national election arrives this fall, and Americans deserve an answer as to whether the way we now conduct elections can actually produce honest results.

Normal legislative remedies have failed. Congress has not passed the SAVE Act to ensure that only citizens vote, nor does it appear likely it will. It has done nothing about mass mail-in balloting or the vulnerabilities of electronic voting systems. Yet these are precisely the parts of the system that millions of Americans no longer trust — and for good reason.

The notion that the federal government has no role in federal elections is plainly wrong.

Consider what happened this past April. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell summoned the chief executives of America’s largest banks to an unannounced meeting, alarmed by a new artificial-intelligence model capable of finding and exploiting security flaws faster than any human defender could patch them.

If the men charged with protecting the nation’s financial system feel compelled to convene Wall Street on short notice over what artificial intelligence now makes possible, our election systems — built with similar computer technology but with far less security — are open to the same threat and worse.

Our electronic voting systems

For most of American history, Americans voted on paper ballots, counted by human beings, watched by other human beings. Electronic voting promised speed and accuracy. What it delivered is elections that take weeks instead of a day, accuracy that is openly in doubt, and a counting process that has lost the transparency a republic requires.

Citing proprietary software, the major vendors have become black boxes. The public is told to trust the output. Oversight is inadequate, and skepticism is the rational response.

The deeper problem is the very idea that voting and tabulation should be done electronically. The major suppliers — Election Systems & Software, Dominion Voting Systems (now Liberty Vote), and Hart InterCivic — all record and tabulate American votes on networked digital equipment running proprietary software. The vulnerability is, in part, that many of the electronic components are made in communist China. But even if all the components were made in the United States, they are not immune to a remote intrusion, a firmware exploit, or a software supply-chain attack.

The vulnerability is the architecture itself: an opaque, software-driven counting process exposed, directly or indirectly, to any determined bad actor, most especially a nation-state adversary. That is not a vulnerability at the margin. It is a structural compromise of the most sensitive function of self-government.

This is not theoretical. The People’s Liberation Army fields a cyber force approaching one million men, and American critical infrastructure is one of its principal targets. In 2019, federal officials seized a Chinese-built power transformer destined for Colorado; analysis at Sandia National Laboratory revealed what appeared to be a hardware back door enabling remote disablement.

In 2023, Microsoft identified Volt Typhoon, a Chinese campaign pre-positioning malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure to enable sabotage. To imagine that our election systems are immune to the same treatment is folly, more so now that the aforementioned use of artificial intelligence has become another weapon in the adversary’s arsenal.

Some will point to the recent Reuters account of a federal examination of Dominion machines seized from Puerto Rico, in which investigators reportedly found no Venezuelan code and only one chip sourced from China. They will conclude that the foreign-component concern has been overstated. But that misses the point entirely.

The question is not whether a particular batch of machines, examined on one occasion, contained components from a designated adversary. The question is whether a computerized voting system, however sourced and however audited, can be defended against the cyber capabilities of a nation-state intelligence service.

The honest answer is no. The same Chinese cyber force that pre-positioned malware in our power grid, water systems, and ports does not require a chip stamped in Shenzhen to reach an American voting machine. It requires only that the machine exist, be connected to a network at some point in its life, and run software that can be updated. All three conditions are met.

RELATED: John Cornyn’s defeat could be the end of the GOP establishment

Antranik Tavitian/Bloomberg/Getty Images

New evidence

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified the Jan. 15, 2020, National Intelligence Council memorandum “Vulnerabilities in U.S. 2020 Election Infrastructure,” which judged that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea all had “the capability to compromise U.S. election infrastructure for the 2020 presidential election.”

Senior officials briefed President Trump in February 2020. The public was never told. Subsequent declassified memos indicate that Chinese actors gained access to voter-registration databases in 12 to 18 states. Gabbard has opened a probe into allegations that intelligence officials suppressed this evidence, kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, and hid it from Congress.

This was a serious misrepresentation by members of the Intelligence Community, especially since the Chinese Communist Party declared a “People’s War” against the United States in May 2019 in response to President Trump’s efforts to halt its theft of American intellectual property.

Communist China, which spends roughly $20 billion a year on intelligence and influence operations inside the United States, has every interest, as a matter of high government policy, in who sits in the Oval Office.

The motive could not be plainer. A second Trump term meant continued tariffs, continued enforcement against Chinese IP theft, continued pressure on Huawei, ZTE, and the Chinese semiconductor industry, and a hardening U.S. posture across the Indo-Pacific. A Biden administration meant the reversal of all of it.

Consider the numbers. Obama received 69 million votes in 2008. Clinton received 66 million in 2016. Biden received 81 million in 2020. A 15 million-vote surge for the least charismatic Democrat in living memory cannot be explained by enthusiasm.

The January 2020 assessment noted that “adversaries could also use the registration data … to tailor other interference or influence efforts.” It is well within the realm of possibility that communist China, armed with the names on those rolls, mounted an industrial-scale effort to produce counterfeit ballots indistinguishable from genuine ones and therefore votes for Joe Biden.

Such a possibility must at least be entertained. Otherwise, one is left to ask the obvious question no one in Washington wants to ask: Why did communist China hack into those voter databases in the first place?

Can elections be secured?

Congress will not act. Blue states will not reform their mail-in practices or replace their electronic systems. Securing federal elections therefore falls to the president in his role as chief magistrate. Two executive orders are needed even if they will be challenged in court.

The first is an emergency declaration outlawing electronic voting machines in federal elections, on the grounds that any networked, software-driven counting system is inherently vulnerable to nation-state cyberattack and cannot, under current conditions, deliver an election the public can verify. Executive Order 13848 from 2018 recognized the threat of foreign interference but triggers only after the fact.

America cannot afford after-the-fact remedies.

The second would require, since the electronic voting machines would no longer be used, federal elections to be conducted on paper ballots, hand-counted by human beings observed by other human beings, with photo ID, accurate voter rolls, election-day voting, and mail-in ballots reserved for the military and the genuinely confined. The counting would be live streamed. The result would be the most transparent election in American history.

States today hold the constitutional delegation to conduct elections, and ideally, they would administer such a system themselves. Given the political divide, many will refuse. One alternative is for the federal government — preferably the National Guard, federalized and operating under each state’s adjutant general — to administer the election directly.

Critics will invoke Article I, Section 4, which empowers Congress to alter the times, places, and manner of federal elections. That route would be preferable if our political system were not broken. Others will invoke states’ rights. But states do not have rights. Citizens have natural rights, and states are obliged to defend them. When states fail to defend the most basic right of a self-governing people – the right to a fair election – the federal government has the duty to act.

RELATED: Polarization may be the cure — and the clarity — America needs

Elen11/Getty Images

The country’s critical infrastructure, which includes our election system, falls under the Department of Homeland Security. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Election Assistance Commission sit in the executive branch. The notion that the federal government has no role in federal elections is plainly wrong.

The problem is that those agencies are not currently equipped to defend against a nation-state cyber adversary at this scale. And cybersecurity against communist China is beyond the capacity of any individual state government acting alone.

If federal authorities had actionable intelligence that a cyberattack was going to occur on America’s electronic voting systems during a federal election but did not have the ability to stop it, are they simply to stand aside and let the attack occur?

The commonsense approach would be to find a method of conducting the election that was not vulnerable to cyberattack. That is precisely why the president’s executive order is so urgently needed.

The choice at hand

As Director Gabbard’s declassifications confirm, China has gained access to the voter-registration data that defines our electorate. No election conducted on networked computers that a hostile intelligence service has the demonstrated capacity to breach, and on voter rolls that service has already breached, can deliver the legitimacy a republic requires.

Paper ballots, hand-counted, observed in the open, can. However controversial it may sound, it is the only way to ensure a fair election for the American people.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​Election security, 2020 election, China, Russia, Election interference, Dominion voting systems, Trump, Foreign interference, Federalized elections, Opinion & analysis 

World-renowned director Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is a big-budget epic adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek poem that follows Odysseus’ perilous journey home after the Trojan War. Set to release this July, the film sparked scandal the moment marketing began.

Not only is Helen of Troy, who is described as a fair-skinned Greek woman in the original text, played by Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o, but Elliot (formerly Ellen) Paige, a biological woman who started identifying as a man in 2020, plays a male character in the film. Although her specific role is unknown, one viral theory claims that she will play the mighty Achilles — the greatest warrior in all of Greek mythology.

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre was surprised and disappointed when he learned about the direction Nolan’s “Odyssey” would take.

Nolan is “a man whose work has often been described as conservative or even reactionary,” he tells libertarian author and political activist James Keena.

As one of the greatest film directors of the modern age, Nolan, MacIntyre argues, “would have had the authority to tell a studio no” if it was pushing woke ideologies, like race and gender swapping.

“Why is it so hard for even some of the most stalwart directors like Christopher Nolan to avoid this trap?” he asks Keena.

“This is an ongoing assault on Western civilization and the norms of Western civilization. When you look at the story of ‘The Odyssey,’ it’s part of Greek literature. That is one of the foundational things in Western thought,” Keena replies.

He explains that Homer’s central hero, Odysseus, is the kind of character that progressive thinkers detest. He’s “a very strong, type A male personality” who’s on a mission to return to his “nuclear family” and “re-establish law and order” in his kingdom of Ithaca, where suitors have invaded in his absence to steal what’s rightfully his.

“You can see why it sort of conflicts with what the ethos is now as to what a family should be, what a male should be like,” says Keena.

MacIntyre agrees, highlighting how Odysseus is a prime example of the patriarch archetype — the husband, father, and king who endures extreme hardship in order to return home and restore order to his household and kingdom.

“You want to, if you’re a radical leftist, undermine those things that kind of hold together the American or the Western identity,” he says.

But there’s an even deeper (and darker) reality at play in Nolan’s woke “Odyssey,” says Keena.

“When you look at the collectivist group of philosophies Marxism, socialism, communism, they can’t tolerate Western civilization or the concept of America,” he says.

Their unifying objective, he explains, is to “attack it, destroy it, replace it” by infiltrating every institution.

“And so what we’re seeing on all levels, not just about movies or literature, but education, music, anything that you can pick out in society right now, is essentially a collectivist assault on Western civilization because it has to be destroyed in order to make room for the socialist revolution,” says Keena.

To hear more, watch the full interview above.

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​The auron macintyre show, Auron macintyre, Christopher nolan, The odyssey, James keena, Western civilization 

Why are Washington and Detroit so worried about Chinese automakers?

Most Americans assume the answer is cheap cars. But lower-priced imports are only the visible part of China’s advantage.

Companies like BYD aren’t simply building vehicles. They’re building integrated ecosystems that include batteries, software, and charging infrastructure.

The bigger story is who controls the batteries, software, supply chains, and technology that increasingly determine who wins — and loses — the future of the auto business.

Hard line

To control a nation’s car industry is to control an industry that sits at the center of manufacturing, technology, and national security.

That’s the assumption behind Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno’s proposal to block Chinese vehicles and components entirely — and it signals a turning point. His message is blunt: Chinese automakers should not gain a foothold in the United States. This isn’t an incremental policy adjustment. It’s a hard line.

The automotive industry isn’t some niche corner of the economy. It accounts for roughly 22% of trade between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, making it one of the most important industries on the continent. And now it’s being challenged by a global competitor that plays by very different rules.

While the United States tightens restrictions, the international response remains divided. Europe has imposed steep tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, arguing they are being dumped below cost. Canada has taken a different approach, agreeing to allow 49,000 Chinese EVs into its market.

That divergence matters because supply chains don’t stop at national borders.

Washington is already signaling that any attempt to route Chinese vehicles through Canada or other backdoor channels will face scrutiny. The message is clear: If Chinese vehicles can’t enter directly, they won’t be allowed to enter indirectly.

Losing control

Nor is this happening in isolation. The Biden administration already laid much of the groundwork through executive actions targeting Chinese vehicle imports over concerns about software, hardware, and data security.

Those concerns aren’t hypothetical. U.S. officials have confirmed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers have infiltrated critical infrastructure systems.

Now apply that reality to modern vehicles, which increasingly function as rolling computers. The issue isn’t simply where a vehicle is assembled. It’s who controls the software, connectivity, and data flowing through it.

That’s why Moreno’s proposal focuses not only on vehicles themselves, but also on software integration, component sourcing, and corporate partnerships.

That may be a step in the right direction, but the auto industry itself is now pushing for even tougher restrictions.

Fast lane

Major industry groups representing automakers, suppliers, and dealers argue that simply moving Chinese production onto U.S. soil doesn’t solve the underlying problem if the technology, software, and supply chains remain controlled elsewhere. That leaves policymakers weighing the benefits of investment and jobs against concerns over long-term dependence on foreign-controlled technology.

At the same time, the global auto industry is changing faster than many manufacturers anticipated.

Toyota executives have warned that the industry’s traditional cost structures and manufacturing assumptions may no longer be sufficient in a rapidly changing market. This isn’t about minor adjustments. It’s about adapting to a fundamentally different competitive landscape.

Chinese companies dominate battery production, accounting for roughly 80% of global output. Batteries are the most expensive component in most electric vehicles and increasingly important in hybrids as well. Control over battery production translates directly into pricing power and manufacturing flexibility.

Companies like BYD aren’t simply building vehicles. They’re building integrated ecosystems that include batteries, software, and charging infrastructure. That level of vertical integration allows them to move faster and often at lower cost than competitors relying on fragmented global supply chains.

RELATED: The great motor oil shortage of 2026 is another fake, media-driven panic — and drivers are paying the price

Kevin Carter/Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

Cashing in their chips

Technology companies are also entering the automotive space with a different mindset. They’re not burdened by decades of manufacturing habits or legacy systems. They’re focused on software, speed, and scale. Watch companies like NVIDIA and Qualcomm, which are becoming increasingly important players in automotive technology.

For traditional automakers, the challenge is no longer just building a better vehicle. It’s building vehicles faster, cheaper, and smarter while navigating regulations that seem to change with every election cycle.

That uncertainty has become a growing frustration across the industry. Executives increasingly complain about regulatory whiplash that makes long-term planning difficult.

Two years ago, the industry was being pushed toward full electrification. Today, many automakers are shifting resources toward hybrids as consumer demand evolves. Those strategic pivots are expensive.

Hyundai executives have acknowledged that competing directly with Chinese manufacturers on price is likely a losing proposition. Their strategy is to compete on quality, brand reputation, and dealer networks.

Price is right

Consumers, however, ultimately care about affordability.

If Chinese manufacturers can consistently deliver competitive vehicles at significantly lower prices, pressure on Western automakers will continue to grow.

That’s why this debate isn’t going away.

The push to block Chinese vehicles and components is as much about buying time as it is about setting policy. It gives American and allied manufacturers time to strengthen battery production, secure supply chains, and improve their competitive position.

But time alone won’t solve the problem.

The United States still possesses enormous advantages in engineering talent, established brands, and one of the strongest dealer networks in the world. Those advantages remain meaningful, but they aren’t permanent. They have to be reinforced with competitive products, realistic pricing, and a clear, long-term strategy.

Cars are no longer just transportation. They are increasingly software platforms, data hubs, and strategic industrial assets.

That is why the debate over Chinese vehicles has become far bigger than tariffs or trade policy. The question is whether the United States can remain competitive in an industry being reshaped by technology, batteries, and global supply chains.

Once control of those systems is lost, getting it back becomes far more difficult than anyone expects.

​Align cars, Automakers, Automobiles, Biden administration, Canada, National security, North american manufacturing, Supply chains, Technology, Toyota, United states, Lifestyle, Bernie moreno 

The officials of a Western New York town voted to remove Pride flags from town properties after protests against the flag were raised at the beginning of Pride Month.

The Webster Town Board voted 3-2 to take down the flag on Thursday after a contentious meeting, and it was taken down at 9 a.m. the next day.

‘The town did not raise the Pride flag. One elected officer made that decision on his own.’

Town Supervisor Alex Scialdone said in a statement to WHAM-TV that he was disappointed in the vote but would respect the decision.

“Everyone deserves to be seen, heard, and accepted for who they are. Last evening, I was moved hearing from members of our communities — many of the lifelong residents — who finally felt recognized and accepted by the Town they live in,” said Scialdone.

“While I am extremely disappointed in my colleagues’ actions last evening, I am equally encouraged by the resounding messages of love from Webster and beyond,” he added. “This is the Webster I see and will advocate for now and into the future.”

The resolution from Councilmember John Cahill said only U.S. flags could be flow from town properties.

“Government property should only display government flags — the U.S. flag, the state flag, and the municipal flag,” said resident Laurie Read in a statement at the hearing. “This ensures neutrality, avoids political or social favoritism, and respects the purpose of public property as a shared civic space.”

WHAM reported that a protester holding a Pride flag tried to keep officials from taking down down the flag from the town’s flagpole, but they eventually won the day.

RELATED: Activist tries to rip down US flag at Stonewall National Monument as officials return Pride flag removed by Trump order

Critics said that the flag had been raised without the consent of the entire town board.

“The town did not raise the Pride flag. One elected officer made that decision on his own,” said one unidentified speaker from the hearing.

Webster is a town of about 42,000 residents located east of Rochester.

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​Pride flags, Pride month, Webster town board, Lgbtq agenda, Politics 

A Florida past entrusted with the care of five children made them urinate and defecate into a bucket and starved them while feeding her own child well, police said.

59-year-old Gwendolyn Denise Rolle took in the children after their father left town, according to the Fort Pierce Police Dept. The children were ages 4 to 9 years old, and two of them were nonverbal.

The school also gave the children perfume so that they wouldn’t be bullied at school over the smell.

WPEC-TV reported that police were tipped off to the conditions at the home by an anonymous report.

Rolle allegedly locked the children out of her master suite in the Fort Pierce home, which cut off their access to the only functioning toilet.

The other toilet was in a bathroom filled with feces, forcing the children to defecate in a blue-green bucket that neighbors said they saw being emptied by the children.

Without access to a shower, the children also had to shower outside with a garden hose as they held a bedsheet to provide some privacy.

Rolle would starve the children but feed her own child fast food, according to police. The children were forced to share single packets of ramen or go to bed hungry.

One of the children smelled so strongly of fecal matter that a school official reported that a teacher had to spray the classroom with air freshener. The school also gave the children perfume so that they wouldn’t be bullied at school over the smell.

Rolle allegedly abused them regularly with slaps to the face, and she would call them “bastards.”

Police reported that one of the nonverbal children was kept from school to conceal a bruise he got from the abuse.

She allegedly whispered a threat to the children as they stood on the home’s porch: “Once he leaves, you’re gonna get it.”

Police said neighbors were afraid to report Rolle because of the standing she had in the community as a pastor.

RELATED: Cops investigating home odor home thought someone died — they found kids living in filthy conditions

Rolle faces five felony counts of child neglect without great bodily harm.

WPEC reported that Rolle had bonded out of jail and nobody responded when a reporter knocked on the door of her home.

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​Florida, Pastor, Filthy conditions, Child abuse, Crime 

A Los Angeles Times article describing the struggle of a transgender-identifying high school student to defeat President Donald Trump’s “vitriol” is getting lambasted online.

The glowing report praised AB Hernandez, a track athlete who was born a boy but identifies as a female and is competing against biological girls in California.

‘LA Times, you are a woke joke and a disgrace to journalism.’

“Shielded by love, transgender athlete AB Hernandez defeated vitriol stoked by Trump,” read the headline.

The article portrayed AB as a joyful warrior against the dark oppressive efforts of protesters who opposed allowing transgender-identifying athletes to unfairly compete against biological females. Hernandez went on to win three titles in the girls’ track and field events.

The bias was not ignored by critics on social media.

“This boy is the CA state champion in two girls’ track and field events. And the @latimes chose this as their headline. Hernandez beat Trump. That’s their takeaway. What a truly broken brain wrote this,” responded Jennifer Sey, the founder of XX-XY Athletics.

“Hey, crappy @LATimes, let me fix the title for you.. ‘S****Y FAILED MALE ATHLETE ALLOWED TO BEAT GIRLS…’ There!! Fixed!!” replied comedian Rob Schneider.

“Well it’s Pride month so the .@latimes sucks up to the #LGBTQIA in spite how these girls show how they feel by the looks on their faces that they were cheated because of this boy in makeup,” wrote another detractor.

“The vitriol was stoked by cowards who refuse to do right by actual girls. L.A. Times, you are a woke joke and a disgrace to journalism,” said another user.

“He’s male & he’s stealing female successes & opportunities. In a country where many disadvantaged students can only achieve university education via sports scholarships, this is daylight robbery,” said another.

The president had previously threatened to cut off federal funding to the state of California over Hernandez competing in girls’ sports after his executive order restricting transgender-identifying athletes.

“California, under the leadership of Radical Left Democrat Gavin Newscum, continues to ILLEGALLY allow ‘MEN TO PLAY IN WOMEN’S SPORTS,'” said the president in May 2025.

RELATED: USA Today obliterated online over bizarre claim about transgender athletes

While the current California policies allow transgender-identifying athletes to compete, if they win a title, then the female athlete who was displaced by the trans athlete will retain the same record in the final standings as if she had won.

The California Interscholastic Federation adopted the rule after Trump threatened to pull state funding.

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​Ab hernandez, Los angeles times, Online backlash, Transgender athlete, Politics 

Vice President JD Vance and the U.S. State Department have weighed in on the British scandal surrounding the murder of English teen Henry Nowak and the systemic issues that Nowak’s mistreatment at the hands of police have illuminated.

Quick background

Nowak, 18, was fatally stabbed in an unprovoked attack on Dec. 3, 2025, by a knife-wielding Sikh named Vickrum Digwa. Adding grievous insult to injury, Digwa told police that he had acted defensively — that Nowak was a racist who had called him a “Paki” and attacked him.

The police officers from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary who arrived on the scene reflexively accepted the Sikh’s false claim that the dying teen was a racist aggressor, arrested and handcuffed Nowak based on those false accusations, and then dismissed his final pleas.

Digwa was convicted of murder last week and sentenced on Monday to a minimum of 21 years in prison.

Unlike Nowak’s killer, the scandal surrounding his death is not going away anytime soon.

Following the release of horrifying bodycam footage showing Nowak’s undignified death in the custody of members of Southampton police, multitudes of Britons took to the streets of southern England in protest, demanding the termination and/or prosecution of the officers involved, one of whom has resigned.

British politicians meanwhile sounded off about the discriminatory policies and practices that lay the groundwork for the teen’s mistreatment.

RELATED: Amnesty International frets about ‘racial justice’ again — just not for white people

JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP/Getty Images

The National Police Chiefs’ Council announced amid the protests that it is reviewing its anti-racism guidance, which, as currently worded, explicitly calls for treating people differently on the basis of race:

Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances, and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm. It does not mean treating everyone “the same” or being “colour blind” (racial equality).

Criticism from the land of the free

The U.S. State Department chimed in on Thursday, writing on social media, “Ideological conditioning and two-tiered policing are glaring symptoms of civilizational decline. They must be rejected across the West.”

“The United States sends our condolences to the family of Henry Nowak and the people of the United Kingdom at this troubling time,” added the State Department.

‘He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred.’

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) stressed in response that “Henry Nowak deserved better,” and BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre wrote that “it would be nice to see the State Department treat the UK as a totalitarian terrorist state oppressing its population because that’s obviously true.”

The chatter in America has evidently enraged some leftists in the United Kingdom.

Ed Davey, a British politician who serves as leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons, responded to the State Department’s post with apoplexy, writing, “The Trump administration is attacking our democracy. Not in secret, but openly on social media. [U.K. Prime Minister Keir] Starmer needs to show some backbone and call this out today. We can’t turn a blind eye to this blatant interference any longer.”

U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers calmly reminded Davey that Starmer and other British liberals previously opined on the death of career criminal George Floyd. She also highlighted the markedly different response between those who took to the streets after Floyd’s death and those who have done so to protest Nowak’s death.

“Protesters mourning Nowak have not ignited infrastructure, murdered anyone, or otherwise cut an antisocial swathe of destruction through the UK,” wrote Rogers. “To the extent any of them care what America thinks, we urge them to remain peaceful — and we expect they will. Just like Henry Nowak and just like Americans, ordinary Brits have been slandered as racist. Thus violent. They’re not.”

On Friday, Vance underscored in a scathing message that Nowak’s death was an indictment of Britain itself.

“Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit,” wrote the American vice president. “His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”

In a message sure to prickle Starmer and others who have been clutching pearls over Reform U.K. party leader Nigel Farage’s recent call for “pure, cold rage” over the Nowak case, Vance noted further, “Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response — the only response — is righteous anger.”

After emphasizing that the Trump administration has taken meaningful steps to stop the flow of mass migration and defend American sovereignty, Vance noted, “It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody — nobody — should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul.”

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​Britain, England, Henry nowak, Jd vance, Keir starmer, Leftism, Migration, Murder, Nigel farage, Sikh, Uk, Vance, Politics 

The case of Karmelo Anthony continues to gain national attention.

In April 2025, at track meet in Frisco, Texas, Anthony (then a 17-year-old Centennial High School student) allegedly fatally stabbed fellow high school student 17-year-old Austin Metcalf in the chest with a pocketknife during a confrontation. Anthony turned himself in shortly after the incident, but he pled not guilty to his charge of first-degree murder, claiming he acted in self-defense.

On June 3, a jury was seated. No black jurors were selected.

BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock admits he was thrilled by the news.

“I am overjoyed there are no black people on this jury,” he says unapologetically. “I don’t want anybody on this jury that’s sitting there thinking about, ‘I gotta do the black thing,’ or ‘I hear the facts different because I’m black.’”

He insists there is no need for “a black perspective” in this murder case — only “a justice perspective.”

“American black people,” Whitlock argues, “seem to struggle to take the racial lens off of how they see things.”

White people, he notes, can struggle with this too, but it is “more pronounced” in the black community.

“I think we have a much better shot at getting some justice here with an all white or a non-black participant on this jury,” he says, acknowledging that these are “uncomfortable truths.”

Guest Shemeka Michelle agrees.

“When I was reading some of the answers that some of the jurors gave, such as it would be hard for me to convict a brother … those aren’t the type of answers that you give if you really want to be considered,” she says, referring to the black male prospective juror who was struck after he said he would “have a hard time putting a brother in jail.”

“The fact that they actually went in there and let their biases be known just says either you have low IQ or you really just didn’t want to be a part and so you said what you knew would get you tossed out,” she continues.

Whitlock gives these struck jurors “the benefit of the doubt” and interprets their admitted biases as a good sign.

“I don’t think they wanted anything to do with the pressure to have to make a racial decision. … All of this self-defense deal, it makes no sense to anybody,” he says, “and I think that black people were wise enough — some of them — in this case to be like ‘man, I don’t want to be on this jury.”’

Admitting bias thus became the perfect off-ramp, he explains.

While he acknowledges the possibility of “woke white leftists” on the jury who will use the history of slavery to excuse Karmelo Anthony’s actions, Whitlock says the jury’s deliberation should be “three minutes.”

“I’m hoping that’s the way it goes down.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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​Jason whitlock harmony, Jason whitlock, Karmelo anthony, Austin metcalf