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The Trump administration has frozen over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts at Harvard University after its leaders refused to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, ban masks at campus protests, enact merit-based hiring and admission reforms, and reduce the power of faculty and administrators.

“Harvard wants to have its cake and eat it too,” Dr. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, tells Liz Wheeler on “The Liz Wheeler Show.” “It wants to allow anti-Semites on campus, their students, their faculty members, it wants to continue to implement DEI policies, which is against federal law.”

“But because Harvard is so special in the eyes of its own president, evidenced by his announcement yesterday, it also wants to continue to participate to the tune of billions of dollars in federal student loans and grants,” Roberts continues.

“My advice to my college president associate at Harvard University is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Pick one or the other. Participate in the programs and abide by federal law, or decide that you don’t like what the federal government is telling you, and stop participating in those programs,” he adds.

The Trump administration is investigating Harvard further and considering freezing an additional $9 billion in student loans and research grants.

“You know, the ones that fund the labs and stuff that really the money that keeps Harvard open is what I would call it,” Wheeler says, adding, “They’d have to radically change if they lose this money.”

“For Harvard, the really big pot of money is the research grants,” Roberts chimes in. “I think the way that this is going to get resolved is that Harvard is going to be intransigent. They’re picking a fight with a president and a vice president and an administration that is ready for this fight.”

“I think the administration is going to prevail,” he adds.

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When I was a boy, my father would rouse my brothers and me — plus the dog — just after sunrise on Patriots Day. We’d walk to the bottom of our street to catch a glimpse of the men and boys marching down Strawberry Hill Road, bound for the Old North Bridge in Concord.

There were never more than a few dozen from Acton, but we heard the drums long before they appeared through the tall, thick trees that line the roads of our Massachusetts town. Now and then, a musket shot cracked the morning air. The dog hated it. He couldn’t grasp why we stood there, waiting for what sounded like an advancing army.

You can’t hold on to your inheritance if you don’t know where it came from — or what it cost.

But for us, it was unforgettable. It felt like history marching toward us. The thrill of a lifetime.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this past Saturday, there were no ceremonial shots. No crowd. No celebration. Just a grim and determined militia moving through the cold New England air, summoned by the alarm of church bells echoing across the countryside.

The British were coming. And the men of Acton walked out to meet them.

There were far fewer trees back then. As the sun rose, the men could see across the open farmland for miles.

Today, Concord is downright tony. But in April 1775, it was still rough country — 140 years old and carved from the wilderness by people who lived off the land. The forest wasn’t just scenery. It was essential for survival: fuel for fires, timber for homes, a barrier against the cold and the unknown.

Years later, the most despised man in town wasn’t a redcoat or a Tory — it was a scrawny, self-important poet who managed to burn the woods down trying to make chowder. His name? Henry David Thoreau.

But on that frozen April morning, no one had time for philosophy. As the Minutemen turned onto Barretts Mill Road, then Lowell Road, they may have glimpsed fellow militiamen assembling on the ridge above the bridge spanning the Concord River.

Ahead lay the town. Between them and it: British light infantry, armed and in formation.

In 1775, the British Empire spanned from Bengal to Bermuda. It held all 13 American colonies and, after its victory in the French and Indian War, ruled Eastern Canada as well. The British Army was undefeated, disciplined, and sharply dressed in red coats and white trousers.

But beneath the uniform, most were poor. Soldiering wasn’t seen as honorable. It was a last resort for men with no other prospects — desperate enough to take the king’s shilling.

The night before the battle, those men had been roused from their barracks in Boston, a world away from the places they called home. They boarded small boats and crossed the Charles River in silence. Seven hundred soldiers, soaked to the skin, trudged 10 miles through the dark to Lexington Green.

There, about 80 American militiamen waited. They had mustered in the night, armed but unsure. As the British columns approached, fear rippled through their line. The enemy just kept coming.

Their captain — a veteran of the war in Canada — knew the odds. He arranged his men in parade formation and told them not to fire. He wasn’t there to win. He was trying to avoid a massacre.

British officers on horseback rode past their lines, eyes cold, barking orders at the militiamen to drop their weapons and disperse. The sun was still nearly two hours from rising when a shot rang out.

No one knows who fired first — but the British answered with a volley.

They gunned down their own countrymen — eight killed, 10 wounded — shattering a small town before continuing their march to Concord.

The shock was immediate and profound. Tensions had simmered for months, but no war had been declared. The Declaration of Independence was still more than a year away. British troops had fired on an unruly mob in Boston five years earlier, but this was different. This time they opened fire on a peaceful militia. And this time, they were marching inland to seize arms and cannon — something they had done before without bloodshed.

This time changed everything.

By the time the British reached Concord, seven miles farther west, the town already knew what had happened. Colonial spies had tracked the army’s every move. Paul Revere had watched their boats leave Boston. The militia had scattered much of the weapons and ammunition into nearby fields. The element of surprise was gone.

Unlike Lexington, Concord didn’t meet the troops with defiance — at least not at first. Soldiers paid townspeople for supplies. No shots were fired. But above Barrett’s Hill, the Minutemen were watching.

They were farmers, blacksmiths, merchants, and their sons. Some had fought the French. Others had battled Indians. But most had never faced trained soldiers.

They weren’t an army — until that moment.

Now, they outnumbered the redcoats. Then the smoke rose from the town — cannon carriages, set ablaze by the British.

The sight triggered fury.

“Will you let them burn down the town?” shouted Joseph Hosmer.

The Americans didn’t answer with words. They marched down the hill to cross the bridge — and into history.

When I was a kid, “the shot heard ’round the world” was the defining story of the American Revolution. We took field trips to the battlefield, rode our bikes down to see the re-enactments with Dad, and as teenagers, we snuck beers and cigars along the quiet river after dark.

I imagined the men — some barely more than boys — who stood their ground and faced down a global empire for their rights. I thought of their strength, courage, and resolve. They suffered, bled, and died for our inheritance.

To us, they were heroes.

It wasn’t until I got older and started to travel that I realized how little of the war was actually fought in the towns where I grew up. I knew my ancestors had fought at Monmouth. Others in my family had taken up arms for the crown in the South. But in my imagination, the war was always Lexington, Concord, the Boston Massacre, and Bunker Hill.

Travel shattered that illusion.

I stood on a hill in New Jersey where my family had held the line against charging Hessian mercenaries. A few miles away, I visited a house marked with a plaque: A man had been hanged there by a mob, suspected of loyalty to the king.

The biggest battles were in the South. That’s where the war was won.

One branch of my family knew the cost of neutrality. A former officer from the French and Indian War refused to take sides when the Revolution broke out. The local townspeople tried to lynch him. Driven into exile, he joined the loyalists.

While he was away fighting, his wife fed information to the Americans — protecting the farm and their many children from reprisals. Her actions earned him a pardon. After the war, he returned from exile and served in the North Carolina State Assembly.

The Revolution wasn’t a clean myth. It was a civil war, bitter and personal. And my family, like many, lived both sides of it.

I once had a beer and a lobster roll on a quiet Connecticut beach where Long Island spies came ashore with news of British troop movements. I bent down and touched the cold water of the Delaware, where Washington’s army crossed one bitter Christmas Eve.

No book can teach what you learn by walking where history happened — by breathing the same air, listening to the same wind, standing where great men once stood.

With time, I came to see how much larger the Revolution really was. And uglier. The lines between right and wrong blurred. The deeper you go, the more complexity you uncover. That’s the price of understanding — and of growing up.

Still, Concord will always stay with me.

I know the men in red weren’t monsters. They were cold, far from home, following orders. “They came three thousand miles, and died, to keep the Past upon its throne,” reads the grave marker by the river. “Unheard, beyond the ocean tide, their English mother made her moan.”

But I know the other side, too. The farmers who stood against them weren’t radicals or rebels. They were citizens. They were noble. And when the moment came, they chose to act.

You can’t hold on to your inheritance if you don’t know where it came from — or what it cost.

That’s why I’ll take my son with me the next time I stand on that “rude bridge that arched the flood” and tell him what happened there — where embattled farmers once stood and fired the shot heard ’round the world.

Emerson’s poem: Concord Hymn

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Klaus Schwab indicated in an April 1 letter to the World Economic Forum’s board of trustees and staff that he was stepping down as chairman of the technocratic globalist organization. The 87-year-old economist did not, however, appear to be in a rush.

The WEF told the Financial Times earlier this month that Schwab — who pushed vigorously in recent years for a “great reset” of capitalism — would complete his departure by January 2027. His exit has, however, come early.

Schwab announced Monday that he was stepping down immediately.

“Following my recent announcement, and as I enter my 88th year, I have decided to step down from the position of Chair and as a member of the Board of Trustees, with immediate effect,” the technocrat said in a statement to the WEF’s board.

The board unanimously appointed WEF Vice Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe as the interim chairman and established a search committee for the selection of a future chair.

Brabeck-Letmathe is the Austrian business executive who led the Nestlé Group as CEO from 1997 to 2008 and Formula One until 2016. A notable shareholder in the vaccine manufacturer Moderna at least as of 2023, Brabeck-Letmathe has served as a member of the WEF’s foundation board as well as on its board of trustees.

“At a time when the world is undergoing rapid transformation, the need for inclusive dialogue to navigate complexity and shape the future has never been more critical,” the WEF stated. “The Board of Trustees of the World Economic Forum underlines the importance of remaining steadfast in its mission and values as a facilitator of progress. Building on its trusted role, the Forum will continue to bring together leaders from all sectors and regions to exchange insights and foster collaboration.”

‘The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies.’

Blaze News previously noted that Schwab’s exit, apparently announced on the 55th anniversary of the day he began working on the borrowed concept of a “global village,” followed in the wake of a probe into allegations of discrimination at the WEF.

The Wall Street Journal published a damning report alleging — on the basis of internal complaints, email exchanges, and interviews with current and past WEF employees — that “under Schwab’s decades-long oversight, the forum has allowed to fester an atmosphere hostile to women and black people in its own workplace.”

The report contained allegations that: multiple female employees were “pushed out or otherwise saw their careers suffer” when pregnant or coming back from maternity leave; some women were sexually harassed by senior WEF managers; Schwab “made suggestive comments to [former staffers] that made them uncomfortable”; and some black employees were passed over for promotions and subjected to objectionable racial comments.

The WEF suggested the Journal’s report was “inaccurate,” stating, “We are an organization that upholds the highest standards of governance, while working to address the most pressing challenges of our time with our high-performance teams, our diverse and global outlook, and an environment that values innovation, inclusion, and well-being.”

After the Wall Street Journal’s report made waves, the WEF hired a pair of law firms to investigate the claims of workplace discrimination and harassment.

The law firm Covington and Burling — whose members had their security clearances suspended last month by President Donald Trump — conveniently concluded with the Swiss firm Homburger that it “did not find the forum had committed any legal violations” and “did not substantiate” the misconduct allegations against Schwab.

Time will tell if Schwab’s replacement will secure the future he long conspired to bring about.

In a June 2020 WEF blog post, Schwab noted that “the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.”

Observing that populations proved willing “to make sacrifices” during the pandemic, Schwab indicated “the will to build a better society does exist.”

“We must use it to secure the Great Reset that we so badly need,” continued Schwab. “That will require stronger and more effective governments.”

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Voters in crime-ridden Oakland, California, elected former U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat, as the city’s next mayor.

Oakland held a special election on Tuesday after former Mayor Sheng Thao (D) was recalled by her constituents over the city’s rising crime rates, which prompted many businesses to flee the area.

‘I’ve never uttered “defund the police.”‘

The FBI raided Thao’s home in June, and she was later indicted in January on bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud charges.

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price (D) was also recalled.

The successful recall efforts appeared to indicate that Oakland residents had had enough of progressive politicians’ soft-on-crime approach.

Seneca Scott, the founder of Neighbors Together Oakland, said the recalls signaled that the “phony ‘progressive’ movement is officially dead.”

However, last week, Oakland residents voted to replace Thao with Lee, a Democratic candidate who had opposed the recall effort and previously expressed support for defunding the police.

In June 2020, Lee told Politico that she was “really proud of what Minneapolis unanimously decided” after the city pulled funding from the police. Yet, Lee has insisted that she never supported the defunding movement.

“I’ve never uttered ‘defund the police,’” she told KRON-TV in January. “I never was there. Some were, some weren’t. But that’s okay. I wasn’t. Some said it was only progressives who were, doing the right thing for police reform. And believe you me, I’ve been out there on police accountability and police reform. That’s me. But, believe you me, I understand the need for public safety for everyone.”

Lee’s challenger, former City Council member Loren Taylor (D), who supported tougher police measures, held the initial lead in the mayoral race. However, Lee ultimately secured a five-point victory in the ranked-choice election.

Despite her previous comments indicating her support for yanking funding from law enforcement, Lee ran on a public safety platform in the special election.

Her “first 100 days” plan stated that she intends to address the city’s homelessness crisis and “bring together Police Department leadership and representatives from all business corridors to coordinate and improve public safety strategies.”

She also stated she would appoint a task force “to modernize Oakland’s Charter and strengthen government accountability.”

Scott referred to Lee as “Thao 2.0” and attributed her election success to her “tremendous name recognition.” He expressed doubt that she would keep her campaign promises.

“I have no confidence ‘progressives’ will actually follow thru, they just pandered as usual and will continue passing destructive anti-commerce policies,” Scott wrote in a post on X.

Lee stated on Saturday, “This morning, Loren Taylor called me to concede the race. While I believe strongly in respecting the democratic voting process and ballots will continue to be counted through Tuesday, the results are clear that the people of Oakland have elected me as your next Mayor. THANK YOU, OAKLAND!”

“I accept your choice with a deep sense of responsibility, humility, and love,” she continued. “Oakland is a deeply divided City, and I answered the call to run, to unite our community—so that I can represent every voter, and we can all work together as One Oakland to solve our most pressing problems.”

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​News, Oakland, Oakland california, California, Sheng thao, Barbara lee, Loren taylor, Seneca scott, Crime, Public safety, Politics 

Four congressional Democrats
arrived in El Salvador on Monday in hopes of pressuring the Trump administration into facilitating the return of Salvadoran MS-13 affiliate Kilmar Abrego Garcia — something the U.S. Supreme Court conditionally ordered earlier this month.

The trip comes on the heels of Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen’s (D) pilgrimage to support the suspected gangbanger — a trip critics seized upon as another damning example of Democrats’ extra-national priorities — and in the wake of new polling showing
record-low confidence in Democratic congressional leadership.

While Democratic
Reps. Robert Garcia (Calif.), Maxwell Frost (Fla.), Yassamin Ansari (Ariz.), and Maxine Dexter (Ore.) followed in the steps of Van Hollen, who traveled last week to San Salvador to both demand Abrego Garcia’s release and share an intimate moment with the MS-13 affiliate, taxpayers did not similarly pay their way.

‘You can spend your own money.’

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer refused the Democratic lawmakers’ request to let taxpayer money be wasted on the trip,
stating in an April 18 letter to Garcia and Frost, “It is absurd that you both displayed active hostility for over two years toward the Committee’s oversight of the Biden Border Crisis and the consequences of millions of illegal aliens entering the country, yet now, you are seeking travel at Committee expense to meet with foreign gang members.”

“You may be pleased to know that a Democrat Senator, Chris Van Hollen, was photographed just yesterday in El Salvador enjoying margaritas garnished with cherry slices with the foreign gang member your letter references,” continued Comer. “If you also wish to meet with him, you can spend your own money.”

Although denied the opportunity to send an official congressional delegation at taxpayers’ expense, the Democrats decided to make the trip anyway.

The four Democrats’ offices
informed Axios that they will meet with U.S. embassy officials in El Salvador.

Evidently unfazed by the credible accusations lodged against Garcia — of human trafficking and domestic abuse — as well as an immigration court’s determination that he is a “danger to the community,” the Democrats will also advocate for Abrego Garcia’s release.

“Donald Trump and his Administration are running a government-funded kidnapping program — illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting innocent people with zero due process. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is Trump’s latest victim,” said Frost.

“While Donald Trump continues to defy the Supreme Court, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is being held illegally in El Salvador after being wrongfully deported,” Rep. Garcia
said in a statement. “We are demanding the Trump Administration abide by the Supreme Court decision and give Kilmar and the other migrants mistakenly sent to El Salvador due process in the United States.”

An Obama judge
ordered the Trump administration on April 4 to bring a deported MS-13 member back to the United States, which he originally stole into without inspection in 2011.

On April 10, the U.S. Supreme Court
unanimously upheld the lower court’s ruling in part, stating, “The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”

The court noted, however, that the “scope of the term ‘effectuate’ in the District Court’s order is, however, unclear, and may exceed the District Court’s authority,” and that the lower court “should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.”

White House officials indicated that the release and return of Abrego Garcia is up to El Salvador.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us. The Supreme Court ruled that if El Salvador wants to return him … we would facilitate it: meaning, provide a plane.”

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele indicated in the Oval Office last week that doing so is not possible.

President Donald Trump made clear Friday that contrary to Democrats’ characterization of Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland man” traduced, the Salvadoran bears the markings of his gang affiliation. Rather than leave the markings to the imagination, Trump shared a picture of the gang tattoo online.

‘Americans are increasingly saying the country is on the right track when it comes to immigration policy.’

“This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such ‘a fine and innocent person,'” wrote Trump. “They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found that he was a member of MS-13, beat up his wife, etc.”

— (@)

A new Gallup poll
found that confidence in Democratic congressional leaders is at an all-time low — only 25% of respondents signaled confidence in the leftist lawmakers’ ability to do or recommend the right thing. Democrats’ lowest confidence rating was previously 34%, which was recorded in 2023.

The four Democrats’ protest in El Salvador is unlikely to improve their relationship with voters. After all, a recent Washington Post poll
found in February that the majority of Americans support deporting all illegal aliens presently in the United States.

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On April 8, Kevin O’Leary, commonly known as Mr. Wonderful, appeared on CNN to give his two cents on President Trump’s newly announced 104% tariffs on Chinese imports.

O’Leary was critical but not in the way most pundits are critical. On the contrary, O’Leary argued the tariffs weren’t even close to sufficient.

“104% tariffs in China are not enough. I’m advocating 400%. I do business in China. They don’t play by the rules; they’ve been in the WTO for decades; they have never abided by any of the rules they agreed to when they came in for decades. They cheat; they steal; they steal IP. I can’t litigate in their courts; they take product — technology, they steal it; they manufacture it and sell it back here,” he said.

When CNN host Laura Coates pushed back, O’Leary doubled down.

“I want Xi on an airplane to Washington to level the playing field. This is not about tariffs any more,” he said, noting that people can dislike Trump all they want but that standing up to China is simply the right thing to do.

Mark Levin says O’Leary’s “tough talking” is fine but that Trump’s tariff plan is already brilliant.

“What Trump is doing is he’s ratcheting, and that’s the right way to approach it,” he says, noting that the plan will cause some discomfort for Americans in the short term but ultimately will create fairer trade practices.

However, his tariff plan is much bigger than just trade.

“I think Trump is looking at — if not defeating the communist Chinese, severely damaging their economy and hence militarily, the way Reagan did the Soviet Union through economics,” says Levin.

“The truth is as big as the communist Chinese economy is, it’s not as big as ours. It’s two-thirds or so the size of the American economy. They cannot beat us economically, at least right now,” he explains.

These tariff plans are aimed at ensuring that it stays that way.

To hear more of Levin’s analysis, watch the clip above.

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Last year, as millions of Americans were preparing to celebrate the Resurrection, President Biden took the opportunity to add a new holy day to the national calendar.

March 31, 2024 — previously known as “Easter” — would now double as the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” Biden’s
proclamation declared. (This was a separate event from the Transgender Day of Remembrance, which fell on November 20.) “Today, we send a message to all transgender Americans,” the president wrote. “You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You belong.”

One year later, as Christians gathered again to celebrate one of Christianity’s most holy holidays, a new president issued a very different proclamation.

“During this sacred week, we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross,” President Trump
wrote. “In His final hours on Earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all His creation. Through His suffering, we have redemption. Through His death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through His Resurrection, we have hope of eternal life.”

What a difference one year can make.

The Trump administration’s commemoration of this Holy Week didn’t just strike a contrast with Biden. President Trump has taken Easter more seriously than any other president in modern American history. That’s a good thing. Easter is the holiest day on the Christian calendar, “celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — the living Son of God who conquered death, freed us from sin, and unlocked the gates of Heaven for all of humanity,” as the president’s proclamation put it.

This is not a radical idea. Nor is it some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, dreamed up five minutes ago in a sociology classroom.

Even more broadly, Easter is deeply rooted in the traditions and folkways of the American nation itself. Some
80% of Americans celebrate this holiday — a larger number than the nearly two-thirds of Americans who identify as Christian.

Last week, I
introduced legislation that would establish Easter Monday as a federal holiday. This is long overdue. Easter Monday is already recognized as a public holiday in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe. The United States is one of the only nations in the West that doesn’t formally recognize it as such.

My bill, which I was proud to introduce with
Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.V.), would fix that, giving millions of Americans the chance to more fully celebrate the defining moment of the faith that shaped our nation.

This simple addition to the federal holiday calendar is pro-faith, pro-family, and pro-worker. March and April are the only back-to-back months without an official federal holiday. A federal holiday would add a three-day weekend to the two-month stretch from Presidents’ Day to Memorial Day, providing American workers and families a much-needed opportunity to gather and relax.

At the same time, it comes with its own economic benefits. Easter weekend already generates around $15 billion for our economy. A three-day weekend could boost that by an estimated 10% to 15%, adding up to $2 billion in economic activity.

This is not a radical idea. Nor is it some boutique left-wing micro-holiday, dreamed up five minutes ago in a sociology classroom, commemorating “Trans Visibility” or “Indigenous Day of Mourning.” It is a federal recognition of a tradition that is inextricably linked to our way of life itself — a tradition that already unites more than three-quarters of Americans.

For generations, many American school calendars gave students the day off for both Good Friday and Easter Monday. We already have a “National Day of Prayer,” signed into law by Missouri’s own President Harry Truman. A federal Easter Monday holiday would go a step farther, allowing Americans to celebrate one of the most extraordinary days in world history: Easter — the day of Christ’s Resurrection.

Our holidays and traditions are part of the story we tell about ourselves. This is not a partisan idea. Easter is not a “Republican” or “Democrat” holiday. Easter is an American holiday. It’s time our federal calendar recognized it as such.

​Easter, Easter monday, Christian, Christianity, Holiday, Legislation, Faith 

Pope Francis, certain of the empty tomb, went with hope to his own on Easter Monday at the age of 88. The bells of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome
began to toll at the news of the Roman pontiff’s passing. In short order, all of the bells in the Italian capital followed suit.

Hours earlier, Pope Francis — born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina —
met with Catholic U.S. Vice President JD Vance, rode through St. Peter’s Square to greet the faithful, and gave his Easter blessing “urbi et orbi” (to the city and the world).

The pope, greatly weakened by his bout with pneumonia and able only to raise his hands enough to make the sign of the cross,
noted in his Easter message, “All those who put their hope in God place their feeble hands in his strong and mighty hand; they let themselves be raised up and set out on a journey.”

‘In his eyes, every life is precious!’

“Together with the risen Jesus,” wrote the pope, those who trust in God “become pilgrims of hope, witnesses of the victory of love and of the disarmed power of life.”

Pope Francis also conveyed in his message, which was read by Archbishop Diego Giovanni Ravelli, master of pontifical liturgical celebrations of the supreme pontiff, that “God created us for life and wants the human family to rise again.”

“In his eyes, every life is precious! The life of a child in the mother’s womb, as well as the lives of the elderly and the sick, who in more and more countries are looked upon as people to be discarded,” wrote the pope.

Pope Francis condemned anti-Semitism and the “great thirst for death” seen around the world and drew attention in particular to “the people of Gaza, and its Christian community in particular, where the terrible conflict continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation.”

“I appeal to the warring parties: Call a ceasefire, release the hostages, and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace,” added the pope.

The pope underscored that Jesus “is alive and is with us always, shedding the tears of those who suffer and adding to the beauty of life through the small acts of love carried out by each of us.”

Cardinal Kevin Farrell, camerlengo of the Apostolic Chamber, speaking in Vatican City,
indicated that Pope Francis “returned to the house of the Father” at 7:35 a.m. Monday morning.

“His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and of His Church,” said Farrell. “He taught us to live the values of the Gospel with fidelity, courage, and universal love, especially in favor of the poorest and most marginalized. With immense gratitude for his example as a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, we commend the soul of Pope Francis to the infinite merciful love of the One and Triune God.”

The Vatican
noted that Pope Francis, who wrote and published four papal encyclicals, approved an updated edition of the liturgical book for papal funeral rites in April 2024.

“The renewed rite,” said Archbishop Ravelli, “seeks to emphasize even more that the funeral of the Roman Pontiff is that of a pastor and disciple of Christ and not of a powerful person of this world.”

Pope Francis — who once
stated that humility “saves us from the evil one and from the danger of becoming his accomplices” — apparently desired a simplification of the funeral rites and a focus on expressing the faith of the Catholic Church in the risen body of Christ.

After the pope’s funeral and nine days of mourning, cardinals will convene in Rome to elect Pope Francis’ successor.

Pope Francis, born to Italian immigrants in 1936, entered the Society of Jesus at age 21 and was ordained a priest in 1969. After serving as a Jesuit provincial, seminary rector, and professor, Bergoglio was appointed auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires by St. John Paul II in 1992. Six years later he became archbishop of the city, cardinal in 2001, then pope in 2013 at the age of 76, following the unprecedented resignation of his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

The Catholic News Agency
noted that he was the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, and the first to adopt the name Francis — a name he chose on account of St. Francis of Assisi’s devotion to creation, peace, and poverty.

During his papacy, Pope Francis — who suffered from lung issues for decades — created 163 new cardinals, canonized 942 saints, and issued 75 motu proprio documents.

Pope Francis often frustrated liberals and conservative Catholics alike, either going what was perceived to be too far in one direction or not far enough in the other.

‘Nobody, absolutely nobody, has managed to understand him.’

For instance, he did not depreciate the sacrament of marriage to accommodate the desires of non-straight activists inside or outside the church, and he refrained from removing barriers to female priests. But he also restricted the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass and was often critical of Western nations, particularly the United States and its policies.

Dan Hitchens,
writing for First Things, indicated that “he began the decade being hero-worshipped by the world’s media and ended it being denounced by Jordan Peterson. Books, articles, Twitter threads have poured forth from overheated brains. And yet — and I include myself in this — nobody, absolutely nobody, has managed to understand him.”

Hitchens rebuffed cynical readings of Francis’ papacy and intentions, especially since his pontificate was, at times, “the opposite of cynical: above all, when the pope has returned to his great theme of ‘the throwaway society,’ his lonely stand against a global system which, from the sweatshops to the euthanasia clinics, treats the vulnerable not as the image of Christ but as useless trash. That magnificent critique will be one of his most significant legacies.”

World leaders celebrated Pope Francis’ life and impact.

Argentina President Javier Milei
wrote, “Despite differences that seem minor today, having been able to know him in his kindness and wisdom was a true honor for me. As President, as an Argentine, and, fundamentally, as a man of faith, I bid farewell to the Holy Father and stand with all of us who are today dealing with this sad news.”

‘May God rest his soul.’

India Prime Minister Narendra Modi
said, “Pope Francis will always be remembered as a beacon of compassion, humility and spiritual courage by millions across the world. From a young age, he devoted himself towards realising the ideals of Lord Christ. He diligently served the poor and downtrodden. For those who were suffering, he ignited a spirit of hope.”

Pierre Poilievre, head of the Canadian Conservative Party,
stated, “His humility, compassion, and steadfast faith had a profound impact on millions of Canadians and others around the world from every faith background.”

Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
said in a statement, “Pope Francis’ love for humanity was powerful and profound. The memory and example of his compassion will long endure.”

“I was happy to see him yesterday,”
wrote Vice President Vance. “My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him. I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill. But I’ll always remember him for the below homily he gave in the very early days of COVID. It was really quite beautiful. May God rest his soul.”

“Pope Francis will long be remembered for his outreach to those on the margins of the Church and of society,” Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a statement. “He renewed for us the mission to bring the Gospel out to the ends of the earth and offer divine mercy to all. He has also taken advantage of the present Jubilee to call us to a profound hope: one that is not an empty or naïve hope, but one grounded in the promise of Almighty God to be with us always.”

In his first address as Roman pontiff, Francis
stated:

Now let us begin this journey, the Bishop and people, this journey of the Church of Rome, which presides in charity over all the Churches, a journey of brotherhood in love, of mutual trust. Let us always pray for one another. Let us pray for the whole world that there might be a great sense of brotherhood. My hope is that this journey of the Church that we begin today, together with help of my Cardinal Vicar, be fruitful for the evangelization of this beautiful city. And now I would like to give the blessing, but first I want to ask you a favor. Before the bishop blesses the people, I ask that you would pray to the Lord to bless me — the prayer of the people for their Bishop.

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​Catholic, Roman catholic, Pope francis, Francis, Vatican, Rome, Religion, Religious, Faith, Christian, Abide 

The University of Notre Dame may finally be on the verge of blocking access to pornography on its Indiana campus — and not a moment too soon.

When I was a student at Notre Dame in 2019, I met with then-President Rev. John Jenkins to urge him to adopt a campus-wide porn filter. Our student-led campaign had gained thousands of signatures and drawn national media attention, including coverage from Newsweek, the Daily Beast, and ABC’s “Nightline.”

With major corporations distancing themselves from the pornography industry, Notre Dame has even more reason to follow its students’ lead.

I explained to Father Jenkins, an affable priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, how pornography fuels the trafficking of women and children. But he seemed more concerned about avoiding any attempt to control the behavior of male students who watch porn. His argument? That blocking pornography would deprive students of the chance to build self-control.

Six years later, that argument feels even more out of touch. A growing consensus now recognizes pornography not as a harmless personal vice but as a driving force behind the sexual exploitation of children and the trafficking of women. It’s also bad for the brain.

That change in understanding comes as a new generation of Notre Dame students has launched another effort to convince the university to act. Last month, students introduced a petition urging the university president “to take immediate action to promote a pornography-free campus.” According to the Irish Rover, a conservative student newspaper, more than 600 students have already signed the petition — an impressive showing at a university with only about 9,000 undergraduates.

‘Infested with rape videos’

Public opinion has shifted in recent years thanks in part to a groundbreaking 2020 New York Times article by columnist Nicholas Kristof titled “The Children of Pornhub.” In it, Kristof documented how Pornhub “monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags.”

Kristof’s column shared the stories of young women whose abuse as children had been filmed and profited from by one of the most powerful pornographic websites in the world. Kristof concluded, damningly, that Pornhub “is infested with rape videos.”

The corporate world took notice. In response to Kristof’s exposé, Mastercard, Visa, and Discover all blocked payments to Pornhub to avoid liability for enabling child sexual abuse. Under pressure, Pornhub announced new age-verification policies last year. But the vast majority of pornographic websites still require no such safeguards. Child sexual abuse material remains rampant across “mainstream” platforms.

With major corporations distancing themselves from the pornography industry, Notre Dame has even more reason to follow its students’ lead. Other Catholic institutions already have.

Inspired by our 2019 efforts at Notre Dame, the Catholic University of America passed a student government resolution asking administrators to “prohibit access to the top 200 pornography websites through the campus network.” President John Garvey agreed and honored the request. Franciscan University of Steubenville and Christendom College also maintain similar pornography filters.

Overcoming resistance

Now, with new leadership at Notre Dame, the odds of real action have improved. The Rev. Robert Dowd took office as university president in June.

When I was a student, I had the privilege of learning from Father Dowd. Unlike professors who treat students as interchangeable, Father Dowd made time to meet individually with everyone. His compassion wasn’t confined to the classroom — he also founded the Ford Program in Human Development Studies and Solidarity, which supports research aimed at alleviating poverty in the developing world. Standing against child sexual exploitation would be entirely consistent with both his academic and moral commitments.

But Father Dowd will face institutional resistance. Some administrators fear that blocking porn might make Notre Dame look provincial — unfit to compete with elite secular institutions. Others worry a filter might somehow impinge upon academic freedom.

Both fears are unfounded.

First, Notre Dame can lead the nation by taking a principled stand against an industry that fuels exploitation and abuse. Second, academic freedom can be preserved with basic accommodations. If faculty or students require access to pornography for legitimate research, they can ask Notre Dame’s IT department to lift the filter on their account.

And the technical hurdle? It’s minimal. John Gohsman, Notre Dame’s former vice president for information technology, told Students for Child-Oriented Policy that installing a filter “would be neither technologically difficult nor costly.”

I hope — and fully expect — that Father Dowd will heed today’s students and take meaningful action against the evils perpetuated by the pornography industry.

I’ll end where I began. In 2019, when Father Jenkins refused our request, I said this:

Pornography propagates sexual assault, contributes to the objectification of women, and advances the sexual exploitation of children. I call on Notre Dame to instead stand as a champion for women and children by enforcing the university’s official policy against using pornography on the campus Wi-Fi network.

That call is still waiting for a response. Now is the time.

​Opinion & analysis, Notre dame, Pornhub, Pornography ban, Students, John jenkins, Robert dowd, Internet, Child sexual abuse, Academic freedom, Catholic university of america 

Jesus is coming back — to the walls of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

In a sharp reversal of the Biden administration’s campaign to scrub religious symbols from public institutions, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week that a painting of Jesus covered up in 2023 would be restored to public view. The announcement drew cheers from merchant mariners gathered at the academy.

Under the previous administration, erasing Jesus from the walls was just the beginning. But that all changed the moment President Trump took office.

The painting, titled “Christ on the Water,” dates to the 1940s and was created to honor mariners lost at sea during World War II. But in early 2023, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter to then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, calling the artwork a “sectarian painting illustrating the supremacy of Jesus Christ” and demanding that it be removed as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

Naturally, Buttigieg complied. Joanna Nunan, the academy superintendent — whose biography boasted of her efforts to expand “diversity and inclusion” in the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine — ordered the painting covered.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then-Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) slammed Nunan for her “flawed understanding” of the First Amendment and called on the academy to keep the painting on display. At the time, academy midshipmen warned that “woke” ideology had “seeped into the school” — and that its spread had only accelerated under Biden and Buttigieg.

Duffy’s announcement marks a clear break from that era and shows just how dramatically things have shifted under President Trump.

Last week’s announcement isn’t the only recent move by the administration to defend America’s religious heritage.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins announced that his office intervened to stop a speech code threatening chaplains at a Pennsylvania VA hospital.

The action came after First Liberty Institute and the Independence Law Center sent a letter to Collins on behalf of Chaplain Rusty Trubey. An Army Reserve chaplain, veteran, and former missionary, Trubey has served at the Coatesville VA Medical Center for nearly a decade.

In June 2024, as part of his regular duties, Trubey led a chapel service and preached from the first chapter of Romans. After the service, while cleaning up, he was approached by a VA police officer who said complaints had been filed about his sermon.

After the incident, the VA removed Chaplain Trubey from his duties, launched a months-long investigation, and threatened to mark his permanent record. Though the VA eventually dropped the reprimand, his supervisor pushed to impose a sermon review process and revise the Chaplain SOP and Performance Plan to limit what topics chaplains could preach on. Had those changes taken effect, chaplains could have faced punishment for preaching in accordance with their religious convictions.

Secretary Collins reversed course, stating clearly: “There is no national or local policy or standard operating procedure which inhibits Chaplain sermons. To the extent that there have been any proposed changes to any existing policy, those proposals will not move forward and have been rescinded.”

He emphasized, “It is undisputed and well-settled law that constitutional protections and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act safeguard statements made by all VA chaplains while delivering sermons in line with their ecclesiastical endorsers.”

Under the previous administration, erasing Jesus from the walls was just the beginning. Erasing faith from the pulpit soon followed. We can only imagine what the landscape would look like if the November election had gone the other way.

But that all changed the moment President Trump took office.

In his first days, Trump issued executive orders to restore religious liberty and end the weaponization of the federal government against political dissent — a tactic increasingly common in the left’s push to enforce its woke ideology. From the start, the administration made clear that faith would not be silenced.

That mission hasn’t let up. The fight to restore our first freedom has been relentless.

And to that, many Americans say amen.

​Opinion & analysis, First amendment, Religion, Freedom of religion, Establishment clause, Sectarian, Pete buttigieg, Merchant marine academy, Sean duffy, Department of transportation, Ted cruz, Jim banks, Joanna nunan, Woke ideology, Woke military, Christ on the water, Romans, Chaplain, First liberty institute, Rusty trubey, Religious freedom restoration act 

Here’s a fun Bible trivia fact: The word “remember” (and its variants) appears over 8,000 times in the Bible.

As we celebrate Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection this weekend, remembering calls us to a more intimate relationship with God. I’m currently reading through the Old Testament, and the amount of times God commands the Israelites to “remember” or “do not forget” seems countless.

No matter what waves come, God calls us to give thanks and to recount all that He has done for us.

And yet, God’s chosen people endlessly turned their backs on God, forsaking Him to worship false gods.

Within an hour of learning something, research shows we forget about 50% of the information. As someone who is currently pregnant, I forget things even quicker.

But unlike being forced to recall information from a college-hall lecture, God isn’t calling us to remember random facts for the sake of regurgitating them. On the contrary, when He commands His followers to “remember,” there’s a specific purpose behind it — and it’s ultimately for our good and His glory.

To stay grounded in truth

Remembering helps us stay connected to what God has done — His promises, faithfulness, and guidance. Forgetting leads to drifting away or repeating mistakes like the Israelites did over and over again.

Throughout their 40-year journey, running in circles around the wilderness, the Israelites continued to doubt God and His goodness. God rescued them from the harsh grip of the Egyptians, miraculously parted the Red Sea, rained down manna from heaven, provided quail by a strong wind, supplied water from a rock, and ensured their clothes never wore out.

And yet, despite these incredible miracles and provisions, the Israelites turned to idolatry.

When Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Israelites grew tired of waiting for him during those 40 days and 40 nights, so they turned back to their pagan practices. Instead of Moses’ brother, Aaron, reminding them of God’s truth and His unchanging character, he succumbed to their request and directed them to gather up gold. Aaron not only built an altar in front of the calf, he announced a festival to take place. Consequences ensued upon Moses’ return, which included people dying and a plague.

It can be easy for us to think how ridiculous it is that the Israelites couldn’t wait for Moses to come down the mountain because the timing didn’t suit them. But how many times do we immediately doubt God because He’s not doing something on our timetable and turn to anything but God and His truth?

To build faith

Looking back on past seasons where God showed up for us can strengthen our trust in Him when we’re facing hardship and uncertainty. One way we can do this is by setting up visual reminders of God’s faithfulness: creating our own ebenezers.

In Hebrew, “ebenezer” means “stone of help.” The great prophet Samuel created the first one to commemorate God’s incredible provision for the Israelites. Many are familiar with the word because it’s in the well-known hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” written by Robert Robinson, a Baptist minister. The renowned line goes: “Here I raise my Ebenezer, Here by Thy great help I’ve come.”

It’s by God’s great help and undeserving mercy that the Israelites defeated the Philistines when the Philistines had planned to attack them. After 20 years of infidelity along with the Ark of the Covenant being in pagan possession, the Israelites repented of their sin and pleaded with Samuel during this pivotal moment of history: “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines” (1 Samuel 7:8).

When the Israelites faced an impossible situation, they came back to the living God, humbly asking for help. God “thundered” against the Philistines and threw them into “confusion,” giving the Israelites a resounding victory over their enemies. Samuel didn’t want them to forget God’s supernatural intervention, so he set up a stone of remembrance and called it “Ebenezer” because “the Lord has helped us” (1 Samuel 7:12).

Similarly, years earlier after God had parted the Jordan River for the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land, God commanded that 12 stones representing the 12 tribes of Israel be set up to commemorate God’s unwavering faithfulness.

To give thanks and teach future generations

Remembering can be a form of worship. It helps us remain grateful and humble, recognizing that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves. God often told people to remember and tell — to pass on stories of deliverance so others could learn, believe, and trust in the one who is unchanging.

The apostle Paul calls us to “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). No matter what waves come, God calls us to give thanks and to recount all that He has done for us.

It strengthens my faith when I read miraculous biblical accounts, looking back on His faithfulness in my own life, and hearing modern-day stories of how God provided when situations looked bleak. God healed my mother-in-law from cancer; God opened my friend’s womb after seven years of waiting; God provided a husband for me in the most wild, unexpected way; God answered three specific prayers when my dad was dying of an incurable disease; and so much more.

We must share these kinds of stories with others to encourage them, to tell of God’s faithfulness, and ultimately to give God the glory for the great things He has done. These miracle stories are to point others to Him and build upon our own ebenezer.

More importantly, God commands us to pass the faith along to the next generation, teaching our children of His wondrous deeds.

In Psalm 78, we are instructed not to “hide” these stories from our children. The Psalmist says, “But tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.”

This recurring theme of teaching our children about God can be found throughout the scriptures. As God relays His commandments to Moses in the wilderness, Moses instructs the Israelites saying: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Here’s my practical suggestion for this solemn yet celebratory weekend: Instead of scrolling social media for a new nugget of truth, listening to podcasts for a new perspective on Easter, or expecting your pastor to preach a new angle on the resurrection, look back at what God has done in your life.

Reflect — and then take action:

Grab a pen and write three clear answers to prayer you’ve experienced in your life.
Open a new “notes” page in your phone app and make a list of at least 15 things you are grateful for.
Find a Sharpie and write down any major struggles that Christ has freed you from — then tear the sheet up and throw away the pieces.
Set aside time with your spouse, close friend, and/or children and reminisce about the details of how you came to know the Lord and how He has changed your life through His work on the cross.
Set up your own ebenezer to commemorate the miracles God has done in your life and how He has worked faithfully to provide for you.

​Remember, Christianity, Christian, God, Ebenezer, Prophet samuel, Easter, Faith 

The apostle Peter describes false teachers: “And in their greed they will exploit you with false words” (2 Peter 2:3).

The Bible describes false teachers in several ways, but one of the most consistent characteristics of a false teacher is that his or her life is marked by greed.

In the prosperity gospel, Christ is not the end, but merely a means to an end: the accumulation of more and more wealth.

Serving as the head of the recently established White House Faith Office, “pastor” Paula White is
one of the leading proponents of Word of Faith theology, otherwise known as the “prosperity gospel.” The Word of Faith movement is an aberrant form of Christianity. It asserts that all Christians should enjoy financial prosperity and physical healing provided they have sufficient faith and sow enough “seed” (i.e., monetary offerings) in a preacher’s ministry. Sow enough “seed” to reap a “harvest.”

Prosperity preachers misuse biblical texts to promise parishioners as much as a “hundredfold return” on their offerings. Mark 4:8, for example, states, “And other seeds fell into the good soil, and as they grew up and increased, they were yielding a crop and produced thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.”

Just a little logic makes the prosperity interpretation laughable.

If you give $100 and receive $10,000 in return, then sow that $10,000 and receive $10,000,000 in return, it would not take many “harvest” cycles before you could pay off the national debt. The seed mentioned in Mark 4:8 is not even about money. The seed is the word of God that yields a spiritual harvest in the hearts of those prepared to receive it. But Word of Faith preachers never let the Bible get in the way of their lucrative theology.

Paula White is no stranger to such manipulative Bible twisting.

In videos posted before her recent appointment, White has told people to sow $133 based on Proverbs 1:33 and $91 based on Psalm 91 or even $1,144 based on John 11:44. She promises her followers that if they sow these specific dollar amounts in her ministry, they will receive the corresponding blessings mentioned therein.

This is utter foolishness. Chapter divisions and verse numbers were not added to the Bible until the Middle Ages to facilitate easy navigation of the scriptures. The written text is inspired, but the chapter divisions and verse numbers are not. Besides Paula White and countless other prosperity preachers using them to fleece their followers, they have no spiritual significance whatsoever.

One might think that Paula White’s elevated profile from her appointment by President Donald Trump might cause her to be more cautious about shamelessly exploiting people for money.

But one would be wrong.

In late March, White generated controversy once again because she appeared to promise followers the “7 Blessings of Passover.”

These seven blessings are:

An angel assigned to you.
God will be an enemy to your enemies.
Financial prosperity.
Healing from sickness.
A long life.
Increase.
A special year of blessing.

She suggested sowing varying dollar amounts: a minimum of $50 and a maximum of $1,000.

Though White never
explicitly said that these seven blessings would be yours in exchange for money, it was certainly implied. At one point a narrator quotes Deuteronomy 16:16, “None shall appear before the Lord empty-handed,” before urging viewers to sow their “best Passover offering.” The narrator then states, “Don’t miss your moment to release seven supernatural blessings and provision into your life.” White follows up, saying, “I believe when you honor God on Passover … you can receive these seven supernatural blessings for you and your house.”

Despite White receiving significant backlash on social media for her video, she posted an almost identical one on April 13. “I believe God for miracles during this time because God is faithful to His word. So get ready to experience the supernatural blessing of this time as we honor God,” she
says in the video.

In other words: You “honor God” by giving money to Paula White.

If you sow financial seed to Paula White, God will give you these seven blessings. Need money? Give what you have to Paula. Need healing? Give your money to Paula. Do you or a family member — possibly one of your own children — have a serious physical condition like cancer? Well, you’ll need to sow a
big seed for that. The bigger miracle you need, the bigger monetary seed you better sow.

Like all Word of Faith and prosperity gospel preachers, Paula White tries to disguise her greed. She says, “Now we’re not buying a miracle; we’re not doing any of that ‘Jesus junk.’” But her attempt is in vain. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is obvious to everyone observing that it is still a pig.

The Bible says much about how we should care for the poor and the widows. Prosperity preachers like Paula White exploit them and, to add sin upon sin, do so in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus reserved His most blistering rebukes for false teachers who distort scripture and “devour widows’ homes” (Luke 20:46-45).

Paula White takes the most sacred Christian holy day, Resurrection Sunday, and turns it into an opportunity for her to stuff her already bulging coffers.

In the prosperity gospel, Christ is not the end, but merely a means to an end: the accumulation of more and more wealth.

Please do not misunderstand: There is nothing inherently wrong with being wealthy, nor is there anything inherently honorable in being poor. There is nothing wrong with adequately compensating men who serve as pastors — this, in fact, is biblical (1 Timothy 5:17-18).

But it is completely wrong to twist scripture and exploit the poor and the sick to fund a lifestyle of luxury. It is wrong when Paula White tells people to give her money before they even pay their light bill because you can’t expect the electric company to heal your child.

Jesus did not come to this earth to put an end to financial poverty. He plainly stated, “The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11). Jesus did not even come to put an end to sickness and disease — that will only be realized for believers on the other side of heaven, not here. Jesus came to this earth to put an end to sin and the wrath of God that it incurs.

God the Son, uncreated and fully God from eternity past, took on a human nature at Bethlehem. Jesus Christ was one person with two distinct natures: He is truly God and truly man. As the God-man, Jesus gave His perfect life on the cross as a perfect sacrifice to perfectly satisfy God’s wrath that burns against sin.

Jesus did not die on the cross so that we can have a perfect life, but so that we can be saved from God’s perfect wrath (Romans 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:10). Then on the third day, He was bodily raised from the dead, proving Himself to be who He said He was: God in human flesh. The only way to have the wrath of God removed is to turn (i.e., repent) from sin and place your full trust in Christ and what He accomplished with His one-time, never-to-be-repeated sacrifice on Calvary’s tree (Hebrews 10:10, 12).

False teachers have been a problem in the church since its inception. In fact, of the 27 books in the New Testament, 26 of them directly warn about false doctrine and/or false teachers. Not only are false teachers marked by greed, but scripture also describes them as “caring only for themselves” (Jude 12).

Greed combined with a lack of care for others is a dangerous combination indeed.

​Easter, Paula white, Prosperity gospel, Word of faith, Christianity, Christians, Trump faith office, False teacher, God, Jesus, Faith 

The Gospel of John can be seen as a “New Book of Exodus,” emphasizing Jesus’ ministry and its profound connection to the Passover. While the synoptic Gospels highlight the Passover meal at the Last Supper to frame Jesus’ crucifixion, John’s Gospel uniquely ties Jesus’ death and mission to the themes of Passover and the Exodus.

These eight points illustrate how John presents Jesus as the true Passover lamb and the fulfillment of the Exodus story.

1. Barabbas and the cross as a vicarious sacrifice

All four Gospels link Jesus’ death with the sparing of Barabbas, but John presents this act with deeper theological implications. Barabbas, whose name means “son of the father,” was spared execution, while Jesus, the true Son of the Father, took His place on the cross. This exchange vividly portrays the cross as a vicarious sacrifice of atonement.

The sparing of Barabbas parallels the Passover, where the blood of a lamb on the doorposts caused the angel of death to pass over the firstborn sons of Israel.

Just as Barabbas was spared through Jesus’ substitutionary death, humanity is spared from judgment through the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

2. The centrality of Passover in John’s Gospel

John’s Gospel emphasizes the Passover more than any other New Testament book, mentioning it repeatedly to frame Jesus’ ministry and mission. Passover is referred to in John 2:13, 2:23, 5:1, 6:4, 11:55, and 13:1. These mentions underscore the centrality of Passover to understanding Jesus as the fulfillment of its themes.

For instance, John 6:4 introduces the feeding of the 5,000 within Passover, foreshadowing Jesus as the true bread of life, whose flesh provides eternal sustenance. Similarly, the events leading to His crucifixion are explicitly tied to Passover, reinforcing Jesus’ role as the lamb, whose sacrifice brings redemption.

3. Jesus, the lamb of God

John introduces Jesus with a profound declaration by John the Baptist: “Behold, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).

This identification of Jesus as the lamb of God ties directly to the Passover lamb, whose blood spared Israel’s firstborn in Egypt. The imagery of Jesus as the lamb is later echoed in Revelation 5, where He is worshiped as the lamb who was slain and worthy to receive power and glory.

John’s Gospel thus bridges the Old Testament Passover lamb, Jesus’ crucifixion, and the ultimate victory of the lamb in Revelation, presenting a cohesive vision of redemption.

4. His bones were not broken

John 19:31-37 notes that the soldiers did not break Jesus’ legs, fulfilling the requirement of the Passover lamb: “You shall not break any of its bones” (Exodus 12:46). This detail is unique to John and serves to confirm Jesus as the perfect Passover lamb.

The unbroken bones also symbolize Jesus’ unblemished sacrifice. Unlike the animal sacrifices of the old covenant, Jesus’ sacrifice was once for all, perfect, complete, and sufficient to atone for sin.

This fulfillment of the Passover law for John underscores Jesus’ divine purpose as the lamb of God.

5. The timing of the crucifixion and the Passover lambs

John carefully sets the timing of Jesus’ crucifixion to coincide with the slaughtering of the Passover lambs. According to John 19:14, Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation, just as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed.

This timing is not coincidental; it reveals the theological significance of Jesus’ death. Just as the blood of the lambs protected Israel during the first Passover, Jesus’ blood provides eternal protection and deliverance from sin.

John’s emphasis on this timing reinforces Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover sacrifice.

6. The mention of hyssop

In John 19:29, Jesus is offered sour wine on a hyssop branch during His crucifixion. This detail carries significant Passover symbolism. In Exodus 12:22, hyssop was used to sprinkle the lamb’s blood on the doorposts, marking the homes of Israel for deliverance.

John connects Jesus’ crucifixion to the original Passover by including this detail. Just as hyssop was used to apply the lamb’s blood in Egypt, it is present at the cross, where the blood of Jesus is applied to the doorpost of the heart of believers.

This imagery underscores Jesus as the true Passover lamb, whose blood brings deliverance.

7. Eating the Passover lamb and Jesus’ zeal for God’s house

In John 2:17, Jesus is described as having a zeal for God’s house, a reference to Psalm 69:9: “Zeal for Your house will consume me” (consume is literally “eat”).

The context of this statement in John’s Gospel is cleansing the Temple, which occurs during Passover (John 2:13). This timing ties Jesus’ zeal to consuming the Passover lamb in Exodus 12.

In the original Passover, the lamb was sacrificed and eaten as a sign of covenant participation. Similarly, Jesus calls His followers to partake of His body and blood, symbolized in the Eucharist, as a means of entering into the new covenant. This connection highlights the participatory nature of redemption through Christ, the true Passover lamb.

8. The Passover reinforced by allusions to the Exodus

Throughout John’s Gospel, numerous allusions to the Exodus reinforce Jesus’ role in a new and greater deliverance. For instance:

Water into wine (John 2:1-11): This miracle echoes Moses turning water into blood in Exodus 7:14-24, but instead of a sign of judgment, Jesus’ miracle signifies blessing and the inauguration of a new covenant.Jesus’ “I am” statements: Jesus repeatedly declares “I am” (e.g., John 8:58), identifying Himself with Yahweh, the God who revealed His name to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14).Manifesting God’s name: In John 17:6, 11-12, Jesus says He has manifested God’s name to His disciples, paralleling the Exodus theme of God revealing Himself to Israel.The deliverance of the Jews from Egypt through the Red Sea coincides with the Exodus of believers from sin through the sea of Jesus’ (red) blood.

Just as the Exodus revealed God as redeemer, the new Exodus through Christ reveals God as Father. The Gospel of John masterfully portrays Jesus as the fulfillment of the Passover and the Exodus.

Through vivid imagery and theological insights, John reveals Jesus as the lamb of God, the ultimate Passover sacrifice, whose blood brings deliverance and redemption. Moreover, John’s allusions to the Exodus remind us that Jesus’ mission is to deliver Israel and to inaugurate a new and greater Exodus for all humanity.

During this sacred season of remembering Jesus’ passion, let us realize that Passover is not merely an event to remember; it is a reality to live as we partake in the redemption offered through the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

This article was originally published on Joseph Mattera’s website.

​Exodus, New exodus, Passover, Passover lamb, Easter, Jesus, Christianity, Christian, God, Faith 

My suburban town has a waste drop-off center where residents can take items that don’t belong in the regular trash — things like chemicals, corrugated cardboard, and certain recyclables. I gladly hand over my aluminum and metal cans, which actually have some raw material value, in exchange for unloading the mountain of cardboard boxes I seem to collect.

The center also runs a moving-box exchange: new arrivals can drop off their flattened boxes, and anyone is free to take what they need. It’s one of those small civic gestures that, in theory at least, make a town feel like a community.

‘I think you might be an angel,’ she said. ‘Ma’am,’ I laughed, ‘I can assure you I’m not. You can call my wife and confirm.’

It’s also where I witnessed two moments I’ll never forget.

The first came just after my wife and I had moved from another state. We’d been through an ugly incident — one that left her physically hurt, shaken, and furious. I tried to console her, though I was rattled myself. More than anything, she felt afraid. She didn’t know a soul in our new town. She felt alone.

Still, life had to go on. We were setting up our new home, and on that Saturday afternoon we loaded the car with flattened moving boxes and headed to the drop-off center. After unloading the last one, I placed my hand gently on her back as we turned toward the car. Her face was heavy with sorrow, her body slack with grief.

As we neared our vehicle, a man and woman — both around 60 by my guess — walked toward us. The woman gently placed her hand on my wife’s arm and asked, “May we pray for you?”

The man explained that they had noticed her pain and wanted to offer her comfort through prayer. My wife, still shaken but open, nodded yes.

They each rested a hand on her shoulders. Without knowing a single detail of what had happened, they prayed. They asked God to bring her peace. They prayed for strength to carry the weight she was bearing. They asked that she feel God’s presence — that she know she wasn’t alone.

And then my wife began to cry.

These two complete strangers embraced her while she wept. In that moment, something shifted. Her healing had begun.

Afterward, my wife and I reflected on that moment. If angels walk among us, we agreed, they must look something like that couple.

About a year later, we had new neighbors whose garage was overflowing with empty boxes. As they unpacked, I offered to take the pile to the waste station while running errands. They accepted, and we broke the boxes down and loaded them into my SUV.

At the drop-off station, I noticed an elderly woman struggling with a single flattened moving box, trying unsuccessfully to wedge it into the back seat of her small Nissan. I approached and joked that she either needed a smaller box or a bigger car.

I offered to fold the flaps or crease the cardboard to help it fit, but she waved me off — it wasn’t worth the trouble, she said.

She explained that she’d heard about the moving box exchange and came to see what she could find. But she didn’t need just one box — she needed dozens. She was moving out of the home she’d lived in for decades, the house where she and her late husband had raised their children. They were all grown now and had moved out of state. It was time, she said, to downsize and move closer to one of them.

“It’s all so overwhelming,” she said. “I don’t even know where to begin. But I know I’ll need a lot of boxes — so much is being given away or won’t be packed by the movers.”

I nodded toward my vehicle, packed with dozens of flattened moving boxes, and said, “Let’s skip the middleman. I’ll bring these straight to your house.”

She hesitated with the usual “I hate to impose,” but eventually accepted. I followed her a couple of miles to her home.

As I carried the boxes inside and stacked them in a corner, her tone turned serious.

“Why were you at the waste station?” she asked.

“To drop off these boxes,” I replied.

“No, I mean why were you there at that exact moment? And why did you approach me?”

“Just timing,” I said.

“I think you might be an angel,” she said.

“Ma’am,” I laughed, “I can assure you I’m not. You can call my wife and confirm.”

She handed me some strapping tape, and I assembled a dozen boxes, showing her how to do it easily.

Before leaving, I scribbled my name and number on a slip of paper.

“Call if you need more boxes,” I said, “or help with anything else.”

As I walked out, she asked again, “Are you sure you’re not an angel?”

“I promise you I’m not,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure they hang out at the waste drop-off center. That’s where my wife and I met a couple of angels once.”

​Easter, Angels, Kindness, Moving, Prayer, Community, Opinion & analysis 

For centuries, debate has roiled over the true location of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and death. I had the privilege of visiting the sites at the center of the controversy on a trip to Israel in mid-March, just before fruitless hostage negotiations ended the ceasefire in Gaza.

The first site has been revered by Catholics and Orthodox Christians since 326 A.D., when it was identified by Constantine’s mother, Saint Helena. Constantine then ordered the construction of a towering memorial, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, there within the city walls. It is the cornerstone of the Christian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City, situated between its Muslim, Jewish, and Armenian counterparts.

My strong suspicion is that we’ll never know where the cross was raised and Christ drew his final breaths — because He doesn’t want us to.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Muezzin droned Muslims into prayer as we stepped inside. During Holy Week, the Church is packed with Christians on pilgrimage — Copts, Syrians, Franciscans, Greeks, on and on — waiting for hours in winding lines to kneel for seconds in the Edicule. More than a month before Easter, the church was nearly empty, save for the locals.

The interior was sacrosanct, decorated with pomp and circumstance befitting the King of the Jews. Arms of light stretched through incense clouding the rotunda. I watched as shrouded elderly women on hands and knees massaged precious oil into the Stone of Anointing with their palms, dragging their rosaries over it and grazing it with their lips before struggling to stand.

They brought to mind the women I had seen earlier that week at the Western Wall on Shabbat (coinciding with Purim, a blood moon, and Ramadan), pressing themselves against the meleke limestone and tucking folded papers into its cracks, desperate to be heard in the inner room, the holy of holies. I sat on a plastic lawn chair and counted hundreds, thousands of pleas suspended in purgatory.

In the late 1800s, Protestant scholars and travelers began to question the placement of the Holy Sepulchre, pointing out that the area had been inside the city walls by Constantine’s time, whereas the Gospels specify that Jesus was crucified outside the city. In 1867, a tomb discovered in a garden area near a rocky outcrop became known as the Garden Tomb and is run by a small British charitable trust.

The Garden Tomb

Entering the garden, which is done through a back road near Damascus Gate, is like an exhale, like slipping from a tourist-laden New York City street into the Elizabeth Street Garden. There are gentle chirps, a breeze through the foliage, and, as you meander toward the back, the whir and mechanical sigh of a bus station built under a pockmarked cliffside.

This rock, they say, is Golgotha, the “place of the skull,” where Mark (15:22) writes that Jesus was brought for crucifixion. Atop is a cemetery for Islamic mujahideen (jihadist holy warriors), guarded by a wall with a prominent inscription of the Shahada: “No God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”

“The cross,” said our volunteer tour guide, “would’ve been there, on the main road.” She pointed toward the buses. “Not on a hill, like in your children’s books, but low, where travelers might see him suffer face to face.”

“Why don’t they move the bus station and excavate?” asked a skeptical Catholic in our group. “Seems easy enough.”

The tour guide shook her head and said in her lilting British drawl, “Ask the Waqf.” The station, which opened in 1953, serves as the primary transportation hub to Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and the West Bank, with routes to cities like Ramallah, Nablus, and Bethlehem. It can’t (won’t?) be moved.

The true vine and the vineyard

Back through the garden and deeper in is a small sitting area and a cobbled winepress, which, in Christ’s day, would have been lined with hay to catch seeds and skins as workers pressed grapes beneath their feet. The garden is believed to have been a vineyard, a hub of agricultural activity.

Just beyond it is the main event — a rectangular entrance to a tomb, sealed with a wooden door that reads, “He Is Not Here, for He Is Risen.” Further description is almost unnecessary; inside, there’s not much to see. It’s cool and dark, and on the right, two resting places for bodies are carved into the stone.

I am not a historian. I don’t claim to have a scoop (or any strong opinion, for that matter) about the real location of Jesus’ death. The true site is lost to us, unmemorialized due to the persecution of early Christians and the city’s destruction in 70 A.D.

But how like our subversive Savior would that be? To suffer where we might draw near and to bleed and die in a humble garden whose entrance is easily missed. The true vine, entombed in a vineyard, His flesh split and blood pressed out for us beneath our own feet.

He has undermined our expectations from birth, just like that — this was no military leader or politician, but a child, swaddled in humility and sleeping in a feeding trough in the dirt. As Timothy Keller said in “The Reason for God,” meditating on the subversive paradox of Christ’s life: “Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he had a life filled with the experience of poverty, rejection, injustice, and even torture.”

And there is no more subversive message than His gospel.

No location found

His promise offers a radical redefinition of identity, not based on performance or societal status but on grace. As Keller notes in “The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith,” the gospel of Jesus is not only different from those ideas, but diametrically opposed to them. “I’m fully accepted in Jesus Christ,” Keller said, summarizing, “and therefore I obey.”

“When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not just being good,” Keller continues, “you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything: how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue.”

Scholar Christopher Watkin makes a similar point in his book “Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.” Watkin emphasizes that Jesus — in his incarnation, choice of disciples, and ultimate sacrifice — turns upside down the societal norms that prize power, control, and prestige. He writes, “The cross of Jesus is not merely a means of salvation, but also a disruption, a radical subversion of the very way we understand the world and our place in it.”

My strong suspicion is that we’ll never know where the cross was raised and Christ drew his final breaths — because He doesn’t want us to. He’s not there. The tomb, wherever it was, is empty, and so is the holy of holies. Instead, He lives and dwells in every heart that will offer Him room.

Muddy waters

Early in the trip, we were baptized at a sterile location in the Jordan River, created specifically for believers on pilgrimage. The water was clear and cool. We wore white robes. Our pastor wore a pink diving suit to keep warm.

The reality of Christ’s baptism was much different. The water was low and dirty, and yet He came. And the heavens opened, and the Spirit of the Lord descended upon him, saying, “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.” He emerged both muddy and clean.

We can’t avoid the mud. Our best good days won’t cleanse us. Luckily, our subversive Savior does not come to the sacrosanct. He comes to dwell with us, not in spite of the mud but because of it.

​Abide, Easter, Christianity, The church of the holy sepulchre, The garden tomb, The holy land, Grace bydalek, Jerusalem, Faith, Pilgrimage 

It’s no exaggeration: On Easter morning, the world changed forever. At dawn, a tomb sat empty — evidence that death had been defeated.

Outside that tomb stood stunned women. A messenger of the Lord spoke to them: “He is not here; He has risen, just as He said” (Matthew 28:6). Those words echoed across time and space. They are the bedrock of the Christian faith, just as true today as they were 2,000 years ago. If the cross was the cost of sin, the resurrection and empty tomb are the receipt.

Death conquered. Victory secured.

The resurrection is a royal announcement: The King is alive and He reigns now.

But Easter isn’t just a historical event. It’s a true and present reality.

Wherever you find yourself on this Easter morning — carrying burdens, lost, confused, and exhausted or joyous and content — Easter meets you right where you are. The empty tomb isn’t just a sentimental symbol. It’s a defiant declaration: Christ reigns now. Sin is defeated. Death has no power.

The apostle Paul writes, “If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). But Christ is risen — and that changes everything.

The resurrection secures us these four promises.

1. Sins are forgiven

Before Easter comes Jesus’ endurance on the cross, a sacrifice that reconciles us to God.

Paul reminds us, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (Ephesians 1:7). Because of the cross and resurrection, we don’t have to wonder if God accepts us. There’s no guilt left to carry and no shame left to hide.

“Now there isn’t any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

On this Easter day, we celebrate that Jesus is alive. We give thanks for the redemption that he secured for us, rescuing us from the control of darkness and bringing us into the kingdom of God (Colossians 1:13-14).

2. Death is defeated

The resurrection proves the grave is powerless. Death no longer has the final say. For those in Christ, we follow Jesus through death into eternal life.

Paul rejoices, “Death has been swallowed up by a victory. Where is your victory, Death? Where is your sting, Death?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Jesus tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will live, even though they die. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).

3. Hope is alive

Our world feels uncertain. But Easter reminds us that our hope is not tied to the doldrums of human leaders, the stock market, or headlines.

Instead, our hope is anchored to the empty tomb and the living Christ.

Hope, in fact, is alive because the tomb is empty, sin is conquered, death is defeated, and Christ is risen — and still reigning. Hope is resurrection reality.

The apostle Peter reminds us, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).

4. Kingdom is coming

Easter, the resurrection of the living Christ, is not the end of the story — it’s only the beginning.

Resurrection is not only the declaration of death defeated, but it reminds us that God has launched his kingdom and inaugurated His new creation. Jesus is the firstfruits of what is to come (1 Corinthians 15:20). When Jesus exited the tomb, he was launching a new world order: the kingdom of God, breaking into the here and now.

The resurrection is a royal announcement: The King is alive and He reigns now.

The kingdom is coming, and through Christ’s empty tomb, it has already begun. And although we live in the “already but not yet,” we know that the King is alive and He will return to finish what he started on Easter morning.

As Jesus our Lord taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done — on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

This Easter, remember the empty tomb isn’t something we merely celebrate — it’s something we live from and cling to. We are not alone. The victory has been won.

Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah!

​Easter, Jesus, God, Christianity, Christian, Bible, Faith 

So, the tomb is empty. Just as he said he would, Jesus rose from the dead in victory. What happened in the days that followed? The ascension wasn’t immediately after the day of resurrection. Forty days stood between the resurrection and the ascension. And those days mattered for the disciples and for many others.

In 1 Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul gives us a list of bodily appearances: “he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Corinthians 15:4-7).

There were bodily appearances of Jesus to his disciples on the day of his resurrection. Generally speaking, these appearances countered the fear in the disciples. He said, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19). The appearances also confirmed his bodily risen state, for he showed them his hands and side (20:20). And his appearances involved instruction for the days to come (20:21-23).

What a unique and precious period of their earthly lives to have such encounters with the risen Christ during that 40-day period.

Some of the instruction Jesus gave during the 40 days was about the Old Testament. He taught his disciples how to interpret this prior revelation in light of what he had accomplished. “Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’” (Luke 24:45-48).

In one of the most profound and memorable post-resurrection scenes, Jesus was in Galilee with his disciples and gave them the Great Commission. He said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).

More than one of his bodily appearances involved having food with his disciples. In Luke 24:41, Jesus asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” And he ate some broiled fish in front of them (24:42-43). Eating this fish showed that he was truly present in the flesh. “For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have,” he said (24:39). John 21 reports another scene with fish, this time beside the Sea of Galilee. Hauling in a miraculous catch of fish, the disciples ate with Christ, who said to them, “Come and have breakfast” (John 21:12). He gave bread and fish to them (21:13).

During the episode with the fish by the shore, Jesus restored Simon Peter with three questions — “Do you love me?” — because Peter had denied him three times (John 21:15-17). Peter indeed proclaimed his love for Christ, who then told him, “Feed my sheep” (21:17).

The Gospel accounts do not give us a record of what happened every day between the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. We only know a small selection of appearances and events and teachings and meals. In Acts 1 we read a summary of what those days involved: “He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).

Ponder the powerful effect that these proofs and teachings would have had on the disciples. What a unique and precious period of their earthly lives to have such encounters with the risen Christ during that 40-day period. He shared meals with them, built up their faith with instruction and fellowship, and commissioned them to take the good news far and wide.

Jesus’s final words to them, while he was physically with them, are found in Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This essay was originally published at Dr. Mitchell Chase’s Substack, Biblical Theology.

​Bible, Christianity, Easter, God, Jesus, Resurrection, Faith 

The latest inflation report is in — and for the first time in nearly five years, the Consumer Price Index has dropped.

According to data released April 10, gas prices led the decline, falling 6.3% from February to March and nearly 10% year over year. That’s real relief for working families.

It’s easy to claim every success as earned and every failure as someone else’s fault. But that’s not leadership — it’s childishness.

But don’t expect Joe Biden to credit Donald Trump. That would mean acknowledging the obvious: These results aren’t from Biden’s policies — they’re from Trump’s.

Psychologists call it the “locus of control.” People with an internal locus believe they shape their own destiny. People with an external one think they’re at the mercy of circumstance.

Most people pick one or the other. But Democrats? They flip depending on who happens to sit in the Oval Office.

When inflation stayed low under Trump, they called it luck. When inflation hit a 40-year high under Biden, they blamed Vladimir Putin. And landlords. And grocery stores. And payment processors. Anyone but Biden.

That spin didn’t pay the bills — especially in minority communities hit hardest by inflation.

Federal Reserve data shows that black and Hispanic households spend a higher share of income on gas, groceries, and rent than white households. In cities like Atlanta, Detroit, and Charlotte, black renters saw double-digit rent hikes between 2021 and 2023.

What did we hear from the White House? Excuses. Deflection. “We’re building back better” — but for whom?

Trump gave us the answer. On day one, he signed executive orders to fast-track energy permits, cut red tape, reopen federal lands for drilling, and establish a new National Energy Council.

The results are clear. Energy prices are dropping. Inflation is cooling. And Americans — at long last — are catching a break.

Biden took the opposite approach. He vowed to “end fossil fuel,” killed the Keystone XL Pipeline, blocked offshore drilling, and even sold oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — to China.

When energy prices surged, he pointed fingers. Biden blamed the war in Ukraine. But by January 2022 — before the invasion — gas prices were already up 40% year over year, and inflation had hit 7.5%.

The “Putin price hike” was a convenient distraction from Biden’s failed energy agenda.

And the scapegoating didn’t stop there.

When inflation hit every corner of the economy, Attorney General Merrick Garland pointed at Visa, accusing debit card fees of fueling the crisis. The fees in question? Fourteen cents on a $60 purchase.

Never mind that businesses willingly pay those standard fees. If they had a real problem with them, they could easily switch to any number of alternative companies or payment methods.

If Garland wanted real answers, he should have looked at Biden’s regulatory agenda. One study estimates those rules will cost the average family $47,000 over a lifetime.

When rents spiked, Biden and the Justice Department pointed fingers at landlords and pricing algorithms. They ignored the real drivers: millions of illegal immigrants increasing demand and federal mandates that jacked up compliance costs for builders. And the algorithms they blame? Those same tools recommend lower prices when inflation and demand cool down.

As grocery bills climbed, Biden blamed “shrinkflation” and greedy grocers and meatpackers. He ignored the real culprits: trillions in wasteful spending from the American Rescue Plan and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

This is the pattern: Jack up costs, then blame someone else. Spin doesn’t fill a gas tank in Jackson or put groceries on the table in Memphis. A press release won’t pay the electric bill in Columbia.

It’s easy to claim every success as earned and every failure as someone else’s fault. But that’s not leadership — it’s childishness. No kindergarten teacher would tolerate it. Voters shouldn’t either.

And they aren’t. Democrats are polling at 29% for a reason.

While the media tracks the stock market, Main Street is what matters. When gas prices jump 60%, hedge fund managers don’t suffer. It’s the single mom in Detroit, the delivery driver in Atlanta, and the grandmother in Baltimore stretching her Social Security check.

This isn’t academic. It’s survival.

Americans are done with excuses. They want results — and President Trump is delivering.

He didn’t just talk tough. He cut gas prices, cooled inflation, and restored energy independence. For communities crushed by elite policy failures, those results aren’t just political. They’re life-changing.

​Donald trump, Joe biden, Economy, Consumer price index, Inflation, Shrinkflation, Gasoline prices, Grocery prices, Merrick garland, Credit card, Rent, Bidenflation, Federal reserve, Keystone xl pipeline, Energy prices, Democrats, Elections, Public opinion poll, Opinion & analysis 

Every nation has a story. Recently, the Washington Post described the Smithsonian Institution, with its 21 museums and 14 educational and research centers, as “the official keeper of the American Story.” What kind of story have the Smithsonian museums been telling about our country?

On March 27, President Trump issued an executive order arguing that there has been a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history” and promote a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” This “revisionist movement” casts American “founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.” A White House fact sheet calls for “revitalizing key cultural institutions and reversing the spread of divisive ideology.” Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, will lead the administration’s efforts.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity).

Critics of the executive order responded quickly. They maintain that the Trump administration wants to “whitewash the past and suppress discussion of systemic racism.” The Smithsonian, the critics contend, is led by nonpartisan professionals whose aim is to be truthful and inclusive and tell the whole story of America, including groups that have been neglected in the past. Professor David W. Blight of Yale, president of the Organization of American Historians, complained that the executive order is a “laughable thing until you realize what their intent actually is and what they’re doing is trying to erode and then obliterate what we have been writing for a century.”

Is there a divisive ideology being taught, as the Trump administration maintains, and if so, what is it? What have university professors been writing about America, if not “for a century,” for at least the past decade? Professor Blight’s OAH revealed its ideology by embracing the New York Times’ 1619 Project, declaring:

The 1619 Project’s approach to understanding the American past and connecting it to newly urgent movements for racial justice and systemic reform point to … the ways in which slavery and racial injustice have and continue to profoundly shape our nation. Critical race theory provides a lens through which we can examine and understand systemic racism and its many consequences.

What do we call the ideology that, as the OAH explains, “acknowledges and interrogates systems of oppression — racial, ethnic, gender, class — and openly addresses the myriad injustices that these systems have perpetuated through the past and into the present”?

As most are aware, the ideology expressed by the OAH is dominant in universities today. It views American history negatively through the lens of “oppressors” (white males) versus “oppressed” and “marginalized groups.” This ideology has been variously called political correctness, identity politics, social justice, and wokeness. We could use Wesley Yang’s term “successor ideology,” meaning it is the new, radical, left-wing ideological successor to the old patriotic liberalism of politicians like Walter Mondale and historians like Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

Not surprisingly, given its pre-eminence in America’s universities, this divisive “successor ideology” is at the heart of the worldview propounded by the leaders of the Smithsonian.

Something rotten in the Smithsonian

The current secretary of the Smithsonian is Lonnie G. Bunch III, who is adept at dealing with donors, stakeholders, and Republican congressional appropriators. His language is mostly measured and reasonable. He talks in terms of truth, nuance, complexity, and nonpartisanship. But in reality, Bunch is a partisan progressive, a skilled cultural warrior, and a promoter of the leftist “successor ideology.”

Bunch partnered with and promoted the biased 1619 Project, which asserts that slavery is the alpha and omega of the American story and that maintaining slavery was a primary motivation for some American colonists who joined the revolutionary cause. The architect of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, bragged that it “decenters whiteness,” and she denounced her liberal academic critics as “old white male historians.”

Nevertheless, Bunch proclaimed, “I want the Smithsonian to legitimize important issues, whether it’s 1619 or climate change.” Of the Smithsonian’s participation in the 1619 Project, he declared, “I was very pleased with it.” Bunch proudly noted that people “saw that the Smithsonian had fingerprints on [the 1619 Project]. And that to me was a great victory.”

Bunch pictures America as a nation in which systemic racism is pervasive. During the George Floyd riots, Bunch told the Atlantic, “It is really about systemic racism throughout, not just the police department, but many parts of the American system.”

Further, he made excuses for the violence in the summer of 2020, which resulted in more than a dozen Americans killed and between $1 and $2 billion worth of property damage:

How dare they loot. Well, that kind of protest is really one of the few ways the voiceless feel they have power. And while I am opposed to violent protests personally, I understand that frustration sometimes pushes you over the edge. I think what’s important for us to recognize is, let us not turn attention towards looting in a way that takes away what is the power of these protests.

Three years ago, the Smithsonian assisted in the creation of a new College Board AP course on African American Studies. Ethics and Public Policy Center scholar Stanley Kurtz has revealed how APAAS is a radical neo-Marxist, anti-American project that calls for the socialist transformation of the United States. APAAS is soaked in the tenets of critical race theory, flirts with supporting violence, and implicitly advocates dismantling the American way of life, including free-market capitalism. It is a curriculum where students learn from Frantz Fanon that America is a “monster” and from Aimé Césaire that Stalin’s Soviet Union was a model society. Nevertheless, the APAAS curriculum is promoted on the Smithsonian’s Learning Lab.

Under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida legislature passed the Stop Woke Act that bars APAAS from the state’s K-12 schools because it promotes the divisive concepts manifest in CRT. Lonnie Bunch and his close ideological ally Elizabeth Alexander, president of the Mellon Foundation, falsely accused DeSantis of ignoring African-American history. On the contrary, DeSantis created a new black history curriculum based on serious and accurate scholarship. In response to DeSantis’ opposition to APAAS, Bunch complained to Alexander:

I am upset because you know we were involved in helping [APAAS] and the notion that somehow simply having a course that forces us to understand complexity, nuance, and ambiguity is a problem, that’s a problem for all of America.

In truth, there is very little “complexity” and “nuance” in the Smithsonian-promoted APAAS. It is one-sided, partisan propaganda. Kurtz notes that APAAS is not in fact inclusive, ignoring the work of black conservatives “like Glenn Loury, Shelby Steele, or Robert Woodson” or even “liberal black intellectuals, like Randall Kennedy or John McWhorter.”

Bunch often talks in terms of “nonpartisanship” and promoting the best of historical and cultural scholarship. But at the same time, he promotes the progressive left agenda, stating that the “job” of the National Museum of African American History and Culture is “really to create new generations of activists,” and “for me it really is about how … museums play a social justice role.”

Our story

To use one of Lonnie Bunch’s favorite terms, what is the “context” in which President Trump issued his executive order? It recognizes that a left-progressive cultural revolution (the “successor ideology”) has marched through our universities, schools, foundations, and museums, transforming the story of America into a tale of oppression and exploitation. The woke revolutionaries aim to “fundamentally transform the United States” from a nation based on a natural rights concept of the equality of citizenship to “equity,” a system of racial-ethnic-gender group quotas and group consciousness.

The debate over the Smithsonian is only one front in a wide-ranging, ongoing conflict over first principles and concepts of justice (equality versus equity). If the cultural revolutionaries are “transformationist,” in the sense that they aim to deconstruct the American way of life, the position articulated by Trump’s executive order is “Americanist,” in the sense that it represents a cultural counterrevolution that affirms America’s past and principles.

Are the Organization of American Historians and the current leadership of the Smithsonian right that America is a nation built on “slavery, exploitation, and exclusion”? Or is the American story what British writer Paul Johnson described as one of “human achievement without parallel,” the story “of difficulties overcome by skill, faith, and strength of purpose, and courage and persistence”? Was Johnson right when he wrote, “The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures” and that Americans “thrown together by fate in that swirling maelstrom of history” are “the most remarkable people the world has ever seen”?

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

​Opinion & analysis, Us history, 1619 project, Donald trump, Executive order, Smithsonian, American founding, Declaration of independence, Jd vance, Justice, Liberty, Equality, Ap african american history, Stop woke act, Ron desantis, Glenn loury, Shelby steele, Randall kennedy, John mcwhorter, Robert woodson, Stanley kurtz, Lonnie bunch, Elizabeth alexander, Black history, Slavery, George floyd riots 

Nvidia, the AI chip manufacturing giant, recently announced plans to build new AI factories in Dallas and Houston. These plans represent a significant advancement in the production of AI supercomputers entirely within the United States.

In its announcement, Nvidia revealed plans to partner with Wistron in Dallas and Foxconn in Houston. Other partners include TSMC, Amkor, and SPIL. Wistron is a Taiwanese information and communications technology company headquartered in Taipei, while Foxconn is the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, focusing on research and development.

This announcement marks Nvidia’s latest step in its long-term plan to produce half a trillion dollars’ worth of AI infrastructure in the coming years. The move underscores a growing push to relocate critical high-tech manufacturing back to U.S. soil, amid rising global tensions and increasing demand for secure, domestic supply chains.

Nvidia’s AI supercomputers, billed as “the engines of a new type of data center,” are anticipated to serve as the hub of AI manufacturing, all based in the United States. While the TSMC factory in Arizona is already producing the Blackwell chip, these new factories are the first of the “tens of gigawatt AI factories” expected to be built in the near future.

Nvidia’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, said, “The engines of the world’s AI infrastructure are being built in the United States for the first time.” He continued, “Adding American manufacturing helps us better meet the incredible and growing demand for AI chips and supercomputers, strengthens our supply chain, and boosts our resiliency.”

As Huang explained in his keynote address at the GTC 2025 conference last month, the next step in AI manufacturing is scale and efficiency. One solution to the massive logistical challenges that accompany this type of manufacturing in these “AI gigafactories” is the “digital twin” model: “We use the digital twin to communicate instructions to the large body of teams and suppliers, reducing execution errors … ensuring a future-proof AI.” Essentially, the digital twin is a computer copy of the factory and its millions of parts, allowing for clear communication across the supply chain and for readily available “what if” scaling experiments.

Huang also announced that the next generation of chips will play an increasingly important role in the rollout and scaling of these new U.S.-based gigafactories and AI supercomputers. This chip is called the Vera Rubin super chip, named after the astronomer who discovered dark matter. As he demonstrated in his address, this chip is dramatically more efficient and inexpensive to produce. It also represents a leap in sustainability, consuming far less energy than its predecessors — critical for powering the next wave of generative and reasoning AI and machine learning applications across industries.

In a statement, the White House claimed credit for this onshoring trend in manufacturing: “It’s the Trump effect in action.” The statement said, “Onshoring these industries is good for the American worker, good for the American economy, and good for American national security — and the best is yet to come.” The administration emphasized that such investments are laying the groundwork for a new industrial revolution, centered on American technological dominance.

​Tech, Artificial intelligence, Supercomputer, Nvidia, Dallas, Houston, Ai manufacturing, Trump