Category: blaze media

An Iowa male was convicted last week of murdering a woman who rejected his offer to “come get high” — and he said he felt disrespected by her “f**k off” response.

A Polk County jury on Wednesday convicted James Bernard Johnson, 43, of first-degree murder for shooting Nikki Loffredo, 42, last summer in Des Moines, the Polk County Attorney said.

Evidence included text messages between him and his girlfriend admitting he had ‘popped’ someone recently.

Johnson took the stand and said he saw Loffredo walking on Euclid Avenue early on July 27 and planned to approach her, officials said. Johnson saw her again at the intersection of East Ovid Avenue and Cambridge Street at 3:48 a.m., officials said, adding that he yelled at her from his GMC Yukon to “come get high” with him.

Johnson said Loffredo responded, “Who are you? Never mind, f**k off,” the attorney’s office noted.

Officials reported that “Johnson said he felt disrespected and admitted he fired a handgun four times from his Tahoe, claiming he fired at the ground to frighten her. He then sped off in the vehicle. He denied that he intended to kill her. There was no previous connection between the victim and defendant.”

Loffredo died July 29 of her wounds, officials said.

Johnson was arrested Aug. 2, officials said, adding that evidence included text messages between him and his girlfriend admitting he had “popped” someone recently.

Johnson said he had consumed cocaine and marijuana the day of the shooting, officials said, adding that he has previous drug convictions and that “he stipulated to the charge of being a felon in possession of a weapon.”

The trial lasted a week, officials said, adding that the jury deliberated on the afternoon of April 8 and a portion of the morning of April 9 before announcing its verdict.

Officials said Johnson faces life in prison when he’s sentenced June 20.

According to the New York Post, Loffredo was a bartender and a mother, and her family said she was “very kind and compassionate and was always willing to help anyone in need.”

“She loved to spoil her nephews and take them to movies and Chuck E. Cheese,” her obituary reads, the Post said.

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​Murder conviction, Iowa, Disrespected, Fatal shooting, James bernard johnson, Des moines, Nikki loffredo, Crime 

Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg is causing problems the party would rather not deal with as Democrats are still struggling with how to properly counter the fast actions of the Trump administration.

Politico reports that many Democrats in the DNC and on Capitol Hill are venting their frustration over Hogg’s decision to have his personal organization carry out his mission of supporting primary opponents of Democrats in deep-blue districts. The move is highly unusual given that the DNC does not get involved in primaries in such an overt way, even if leadership is acting in a personal capacity.

Leaders We Deserve, which Hogg co-founded in 2023, announced plans this week to spend $20 million on incumbents who LWD believes are not doing enough to meet the concerns of younger voters because they have been in office for too long. Hogg has said he is not going to go after Democrats in swing districts.

‘Many of them will be lies. Many of them will be contortions of the truth.’

“We, as the DNC, need to be seen as a body that can be trusted, that’s not putting its thumb on the scales,” a DNC member told Politico. “We have to be so strategic and careful with our resources right now. … So why are we in this circular firing squad against Democrats?”

“Engaging in an aggressive, internal type of purging of incumbents that you disagree with is counterproductive to the mission of the DNC,” said Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York Democratic Party.

When Hogg ran to be a vice chair of the DNC, many raised concerns about his far-left views, worrying that those views would cement voter assessment that the Democratic Party has gone too radical. It is because of the Democratic Party’s shift to the left on many issues that President Donald Trump was able to form alliances with historically liberal figures like Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Other Democrats point to Hogg’s history as an activist as to why his decision to go after incumbents should not be a surprise.

Hogg has taken to X to defend his decision to stoke intra-party conflict. Before Politico published its story, Hogg said because of his vision, “there are likely going to be stories in the next few days and weeks about me and Leaders We Deserve that will aim to destroy my reputation in order to weaken this effort. Many of them will be lies. Many of them will be contortions of the truth because people want to maintain the status quo even though it is not working.”

On Thursday, Hogg clarified that Leaders We Deserve is not only going to focus on Democrat primaries but also get more young candidates involved in congressional elections.

“Too many elected leaders in the Democratic Party are either unwilling or unable to meet the moment and are asleep at the wheel while Trump is demolishing the economy, challenging the foundations of our democracy, and creating new existential crises for our country by the day,” the gun control activist said.

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​Politics, Democratic party, David hogg, Leaders we deserve, Dnc, Primary 

Back in January, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University, citing rampant anti-Semitism and leftist ideological bias on campus. The administration pointed to Harvard’s poor handling of pro-Palestinian protests and argued that university administrators fostered an unsafe environment for Jewish students. The university’s DEI hiring and admissions practices were also condemned as divisive and discriminatory.

On Monday, April 14, after roughly three months of evaluating the Trump administration’s demands, which included banning face masks at protests, auditing viewpoints, and eliminating DEI programs, Harvard publicly announced that the university refuses to comply.

Harvard’s president Alan Garber stated that the university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights and argued that the Trump administration’s demands goes beyond the power of the federal government.

Trump responded by threatening to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status. In a post on Truth Social, he said, “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Glenn Beck says Trump is 100% right to freeze Harvard’s federal funding — “Absolutely no reason for us to be giving Harvard one dime. … Not a single dime!” he exclaims.

The university’s anti-Semitism is nothing new, Glenn reminds.

What Harvard has done amid the war between Hamas and Israel is “exactly what they did in the 1930s” when “they were overlooking any kind of anti-Semitism, and it was all driven by elitism.”

In 1934, Harvard invited Ernst “Putzi” Hanfstaengl, a Harvard alumnus and a high-ranking Nazi official and close friend of Hitler, to campus. When protests broke out, the university suppressed them, even going as far as arresting some of the demonstrators.

In 1945, after the end of World War II, the U.S. government launched Operation Paperclip, a secret program aimed at recruiting German scientists, engineers, and technicians, many of whom had worked for the Nazi regime, to work for the United States and share their expertise in fields like rocketry, aviation, and medicine. Ivy League schools, as elite research hubs, capitalized on Operation Paperclip’s tainted science, advancing fields like space medicine built on Nazi experiments.

Glenn points to Hubertus Strughold — “the father of space medicine” — as an example.

“He was the guy here in America that advanced all of our space medicine” using the knowledge he acquired from doing barbaric experiments on Jews, says Glenn. But despite his horrific experiments that resulted in the gruesome deaths of Jewish prisoners, “He has an award named after him.”

Then, you have the Surgeon General of the Third Reich Major General Dr. Walter Schreiber, who was also part of Operation Paperclip.

“He’s the guy who supervised all of the medical experiments, including typhus and plague weaponization. He approved all the tests exposing the prisoners to lethal pathogens in camps,” says Glenn. “He just came over and was just doing stuff with our medicine.”

Kurt Blome, a high-ranking Nazi scientist, was also heavily involved in the program.

“He helped us make aerosol bioweapons,” says Glenn. “Isn’t that great?”

All these years later, and Ivy League universities “haven’t changed,” he continues. “They’re exactly the same people, and they keep reintroducing the same pathogen — anti-Semitism — over and over and over again.”

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

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Harvard, Trump, Anti-semitism, Ivy league, Blazetv, Blaze media 

Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen is among the Democrats who decided that bringing a deported MS-13 associate — found by more than one immigration court to be a “danger to the community” — back to the United States is somehow a worthy cause.

After failing to secure a meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele during his visit to Washington, D.C., on Monday, Van Hollen declared that he was headed to El Salvador to visit with alleged gangster Kilmar Abrego Garcia, “show solidarity” with the Salvadoran national’s family, and possibly bring about his return.

Van Hollen’s trip — which came amid the release of more damning information about the MS-13 affiliate whom he seeks to liberate from accountability — has been a complete bust.

The Democratic junior senator indicated during a press conference in San Salvador Wednesday that Vice President Félix Ulloa decided not to let him visit Abrego Garcia in the Terrorism Confinement Center where Abrego Garcia is presently detained. The foreign leader apparently noted that if Van Hollen wants to arrange a tour of the prison, he will “need to make earlier provisions.”

“I asked him if I came back next week whether I would be able to see Mr. Abrego Garcia,” said Van Hollen. “He said he couldn’t promise that either.”

The Democratic senator said that Ulloa suggested that a video call with the MS-13 associate was similarly out of the question.

‘This is an unsustainable and unjust moment.’

The Salvadoran vice president apparently also rebuffed Van Hollen’s request for Abrego Garcia’s release.

Van Hollen had trouble handling the rejection and for good reason — he has vowed not to stop fighting and not to rest until El Salvador relinquishes custody of its gang-affiliated citizen.

“Why is the government of El Salvador continuing to imprison a man where they have no evidence that he’s committed any crime and they have not been provided any evidence from the United States that he has committed any crime?” Van Hollen told reporters. “So they should just let him go, and they should let him go, and we will find a way to get him from El Salvador to Maryland.”

Van Hollen noted that other Democrats are making their way to El Salvador, apparently in hopes of succeeding where he has failed.

“I may be the first United States senator to visit El Salvador on this issue, but there will be more, and there will be more members of Congress coming,” said Van Hollen. “This is an unsustainable and unjust moment, so it cannot continue.”

Democrats’ preferred narrative concerning Abrego Garcia — where he is a traduced “Maryland man,” a hardworking father unjustly separated from his home and family by a callous Trump administration — has collapsed under the weight of mounting details about the Salvadoran’s past.

Abrego Garcia stole into the U.S. illegally and without inspection in 2011.

He was summoned eight years later to appear in removal proceedings. During a bond a hearing, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stated that a confidential informant flagged Abrego Garcia as an active member of MS-13. The illegal alien’s bond was denied, with the court reportedly finding “that Abrego Garcia was a danger to the community.”

The Salvadoran MS-13 associate — whose lawyers claim the gang label is false — appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, where an immigration judge reasoned in April 2019 that “the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record.”

While the court found that Abrego Garcia was removable, he ultimately secured withholding of removal on the basis of the claim that he might face violence back home in El Salvador.

While good news for the Salvadoran national, this may not have been good news for his wife.

Court documents show that the alleged gangster’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, petitioned a Maryland court for a domestic violence protective order against Abrego Garcia in 2021. Vasquez also filed and received a protective order the previous year.

According to the documents, Abrego Garcia allegedly grabbed, punched, bruised, and scratched his wife, as well as ripped off her shirt in front of their then-infant.

Vasquez told the New York Post Wednesday that she asked for protection from Abrego Garcia in 2021 because she was “acting out of caution” “in case things escalated” and that their marriage has since grown stronger.

— (@)

The Tennessee Star revealed in a bombshell report Wednesday that the alleged wife-beater Van Hollen is trying to bring back to Maryland may have been involved in human trafficking.

Tennessee Highway Patrol reportedly pulled the Salvadoran national over on Dec. 6, 2022, and discovered that he was transporting seven passengers from Texas to Maryland.

The THP officer realized that Abrego Garcia, who did not have a valid driver’s license at the time, was on a terrorist watch list but not on a deportation list. One of the alleged gangster’s passengers also was apparently on a terrorist watch list.

The officer, concerned that Abrego Garcia was engaged in human trafficking, reportedly notified the Biden FBI, which instructed him to take pictures of Abrego Garcia and his passengers, then to release them.

While Van Hollen has gone far out of his way to bring the alleged domestic abuser and potential human trafficking gangster back to the United States, the mother of Rachel Morin indicated that the Democratic Maryland senator did not bother to reach out to her when her daughter was raped and murdered in Maryland by an illegal alien from El Salvador.

Unlike Van Hollen, the Trump White House has shown interest in Morin’s tragic story.

The White House gave Patty Morin an opportunity Wednesday to speak to the nation about her daughter. The Angel Mom expressed confusion about why Van Hollen, “who didn’t even acknowledge or barely acknowledged [her] daughter and the brutal death that she endured,” would waste “taxpayer money to fly to El Salvador to bring back someone that’s not even an American citizen.”

“I don’t understand this,” said Morin.

— (@)

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​Chris van hollen, Kilmar abrego garcia, Ms-13, Terrorist, Terrorism, Maryland man, Maryland, Democrats, Illegal alien, Illegal immigration, El salvador, Bukele, Salvador, Van hollen, Rachel morin, Politics 

Another bombshell report bolsters the Trump administration’s claims that Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was simply an innocent and peaceful “Maryland man” before he was flagged for deportation.

The report from the Tennessee Star claims that Garcia was detained in a traffic stop in Dec. 2022 and was suspected of human trafficking but the Tennessee Highway Patrol followed a request by the FBI to release the man.

The report says the THP requested guidance from the FBI and they responded two hours later to request that Garcia be released along with the other seven passengers.

The deportation of Garcia from Maryland to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador by the Trump administration has become a flashpoint in the debate over the president’s mass deportation policies. While the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with a court ruling the administration must try to release Garcia, President Donald Trump says it is out of his power.

Garcia’s lawyers and some in the media have portrayed him as a peaceful migrant and claimed that he had no criminal past after he entered the U.S. in 2014. The Tennessee Star report casts further doubt on that claim after police said he was found to be in a vehicle transporting 7 other people.

The report says the THP requested guidance from the FBI and they responded two hours later to request that Garcia be released along with the other seven passengers. The THP complied with that request. Garcia was reportedly transporting them from Texas to Maryland, according to the Star.

A separate report on Wednesday said that Garcia’s wife had obtained a restraining order against him and accused him of domestic violence in 2021.

Critics of the president have accused the administration of violating the balance of powers after he refused to follow the order to “facilitate” the release of Garcia from the infamous foreign terrorist prison.

Sitting beside Trump at the White House, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele scoffed at reporters who suggested he could order the release of Garcia, and mocked them for asking him to smuggle a terrorist into the U.S.

“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. How could I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course, I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous,” he said.

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​Kilmar abrego garcia, Traffic stop kilmar garcia, Tennessee star kilmar garcia, Deportation of kilmar garcia, Politics 

We either make illegal immigration illegal — or we stop pretending.

For years, we’ve claimed to oppose illegal immigration while offering taxpayer-funded benefits to those here unlawfully. If life in the United States became less accommodating, many would choose to leave on their own. A logical first step: Stop offering free public education to those who entered the country illegally. That policy has flooded our schools with linguistic chaos, cultural fragmentation, and administrative strain.

Denying free education to those in the country illegally is not a punishment — it’s a refusal to provide benefits to people who have no legal claim to them.

Tennessee is the first state in recent memory to move in the direction of sanity.

Last Thursday, the Tennessee Senate passed SB 836, sponsored by state Sen. Bo Watson (R). The original bill would have required school districts to verify legal residency before enrolling any student. The amended version gives school districts the option to deny enrollment to illegal immigrants or charge a base tuition of $7,000 per student.

The bill passed 19-13 but not before seven Republicans joined all six Democrats in voting to continue free tuition for illegal aliens.

A companion bill, HB 793, is making its way through the House. That version is tougher. It gives districts the authority to deny admission outright and requires them to report undocumented students to the state. Both bills allow families to stay enrolled while appealing a denial. But critically, both also include an opt-out provision — meaning districts with large illegal populations, like Memphis and Nashville, will likely choose not to enforce the law at all.

Target: Plyler v. Doe

This should be an easy one. It’s a disgrace that we continue offering free tuition to the children of illegal immigrants — all because of a flawed 43-year-old Supreme Court ruling. The public would have demanded action decades ago if not for the court’s intervention. Texas, in fact, did act — until Justice William Brennan invented a constitutional right to taxpayer-funded education for illegal aliens in the 1982 decision Plyler v. Doe.

That ruling flatly contradicts a long line of Supreme Court precedents dating back to the 1880s. For more than a century, the court consistently held that illegal aliens stand outside our legal boundaries until they are granted lawful status. In other words, they are not entitled to constitutional protections reserved for citizens or legal residents.

Even if we accept the dubious logic of judicial supremacy, states have every reason to mount a fresh challenge. The Supreme Court has shifted rightward since the days of Brennan’s activist bench. It’s time to put Plyler back on the chopping block.

If Republicans truly believe illegal immigration must end, they should act accordingly. That means removing the incentives to stay here unlawfully. Cutting off free benefits should be the first step, not the last.

Yet, too many Republicans still treat education as a separate, sacred category. Senate Speaker Pro Tem Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin, voted against the Tennessee bill and tried to justify his position by misapplying Ezekiel 18:19: “The child will not share the guilt of the parent nor the parent share the guilt of the child.” He said, “I believe that we are punishing children for the wrongdoing of their parents.”

Haile’s reasoning is flawed. Denying free education to those in the country illegally is not a punishment — it’s a refusal to provide benefits to people who have no legal claim to them. If the goal is deportation, why should we subsidize their continued presence? No one is proposing to imprison children for their parents’ actions. We’re proposing to send them home.

Republicans claim to support President Trump’s immigration agenda. But if we intend to remove illegal aliens from the country, it makes no sense to pack public schools with hundreds of thousands of noncitizens who require costly language and academic support. The only children being punished under this system are the children of American citizens — the ones to whom our elected officials owe their allegiance.

An uncertain fate

If Haile and other lukewarm Republicans in red states feel so strongly about educating illegal aliens, they are free to open schools overseas and fund them privately. But they have no right to do it at the expense of American families.

So far this year, only Texas, Indiana, Idaho, and Ohio have introduced similar legislation. None of those bills appear likely to pass. Other red states, like Florida, face constitutional hurdles that make it difficult to deny public school admission to anyone living in the state — regardless of legal status.

Even in its watered-down form, the Tennessee bill’s fate remains uncertain. Gov. Bill Lee (R) has yet to signal whether he’ll sign it. Like many Republican governors, Lee often talks tough but governs soft. He’s not known for favoring strong immigration enforcement.

If he vetoes the bill, conservatives likely won’t have the two-thirds majority needed to override him, thanks to multiple GOP defections. He has remained silent while the legislative session barrels toward its end next week. Time is running out for the House to pass its version and reconcile it with the Senate’s.

With federal mass deportation efforts stalled, red states need standing deterrents. The next time a Democrat takes the White House and unleashes a fresh wave of illegal immigration, we need policies in place to keep that flood away from inundating states that still value sovereignty.

That starts with ending incentives — especially taxpayer-funded benefits like public education. Letting illegal aliens tap into the same resources as citizens sends exactly the wrong message.

​Illegal immigration, Public schools, Tennessee, Illegal aliens, Rino republicans, Bill lee, Supreme court, Plyler v. doe, Punishment, Benefits, Ferrell haile, Ezekiel, Opinion & analysis 

Americans have been struggling through daylight saving time their entire lives, but President Donald Trump is now considering putting an end to it.

“The House and Senate should push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day. Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!! DJT,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

In a report from 2016, it was estimated that daylight saving time cost the United States more than $430 million a year.

However, there are many others who disagree with the president on the basis of public health and safety.

In a previous report on PBS, experts — like Dr. Karin Johnson from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine — claim that darker mornings are horrible for sleep. The Academy recommends permanent standard time for sunnier mornings and darker evenings.

And in the same report from PBS, Dr. David Harkey of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety explains that a darker morning commute would result in more accidents.

“I mean, I don’t care one way or another if I’m being completely honest,” Eric July tells Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.” “I’m pretty sure it’s very important, them up there debating whether or not we should move the clock back a f**king hour.”

“It really pisses me off,” he continues. “Because every year this pops up, and I’m like, ‘We’re really going to do it or don’t.’”

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​Camera phone, Upload, Sharing, Free, Video phone, Video, Youtube.com, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze originals, Truth social, President donald trump, Donald trump, Daylight saving time, Daylight savings time, The trump administration 

Since the Enlightenment, liberalism has aimed to remove politics from the political. Given that human history is largely defined by clashing worldviews and violent conflict, the impulse to tame this dynamic is understandable. Liberalism, grounded in secular neutrality and rule of law, sought to suppress the passions that drive men to war. Its answer was to distribute power widely enough so that no single leader’s rage or charisma could lead a nation into chaos.

This project has reached its apex in today’s managerial neoliberal regime, where secular humanism serves as the ruling creed and experts, housed in supposedly impartial institutions, are tasked with determining truth. But the cracks in this foundation began forming long ago.

In the liberal order, the collapse of institutional credibility marks a crisis of truth. And so far, the only answer from the ruling class has been to scream, ‘Shut up!’

Our ruling class members have willingly torched the credibility of the very institutions they rely on for legitimacy — all in pursuit of temporary political advantage. That destruction has accelerated a collapse that now feels inevitable. Liberalism faced an epistemological crisis and failed to meet the challenge. Like every tradition that cannot defend its intellectual ground, it is watching its authority erode into dust.

Neutral governance comes with clear benefits. It claims to free society from bitter conflicts over religion and identity. It promises a greater scale of cooperation by stripping away regional particularities — traditions, customs, prejudices — that make governing diverse populations difficult.

Even technical differences tied to nationhood, like currency, units of measurement, or contract law, obstruct trade. But by creating institutions that claim neutrality in matters of faith, culture, and commerce, liberalism increased the scale of possible coordination. It built what amounts to a “minimum viable morality,” a lowest common denominator that allowed incompatible systems to function together.

The problem? That same minimum morality now appears insufficient to hold anything together.

Instead of serving specific peoples with particular needs, modern institutions — staffed by credentialed experts — aim to impose rational, universal standards on everyone. The promise is simple: equal treatment under a neutral system. The administrators of this system are chosen not for their biases, but for their supposed objectivity.

These institutions soon become more than arbiters — they become the final authority on truth. In the liberal order, they are the only legitimate source of knowledge. If it isn’t institutional, it isn’t real.

The economic benefits of this arrangement are obvious. Large-scale cooperation yields immense material gains. Yes, traditions and religious customs may erode in the process, but who can argue with abundance? Prosperity silences most dissent.

As long as the ruling class preserves the credibility of the institutions, the system works. Managerial liberalism turned experts into a new priestly caste — with one crucial difference: This priesthood could actually make it rain. As long as the economy grew and the promises were kept, no one questioned the myth of neutral expertise. All the boats were rising. Why complain?

Unfortunately for the liberal order, human beings are predictably flawed. The institutions were never truly neutral, and the experts were never infallible. Over time, the ruling class got greedy. They stretched their credibility to justify wars and push social engineering — even when it clearly wasn’t in the public interest.

As their grip on power tightened, they grew bolder. Those who ran the system began treating institutional trust as a political currency to be spent. They traded legitimacy for short-term advantage, eroding the very foundation that kept their authority intact.

This trend hit its apex during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Across the board — from the World Health Organization to local physicians — experts promoted obvious falsehoods to maintain power. The betrayal was staggering.

After watching that coordinated institutional collapse, the public started asking uncomfortable questions. If medical professionals — the most trusted experts in life-and-death matters — could lie, what else has the system lied about? Elections? Wars? Economics? History? Suddenly, everything is up for re-examination.

This moment terrifies the ruling class. Its members’ entire strategy relied on institutional consensus to shape truth and steer public opinion. This is why disillusioned liberal voices like Sam Harris or Douglas Murray, once celebrated for challenging orthodoxy, now beg the public to get back in the box and stop asking questions.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with how we know what we know. Under managerial neoliberalism, experts — and the institutions they populate — became the foundation of knowledge itself. Truth was whatever the expert consensus declared it to be.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (no relation) argued that the survival of any tradition depends on its ability to confront and resolve an epistemological crisis. In the liberal order, the collapse of institutional credibility marks just such a crisis. And so far, the only answer from the ruling class has been to scream, “Shut up!”

MacIntyre also insisted that resolving a crisis requires more than adopting a new framework. It demands understanding why the old one failed. But the current elite show no capacity for that kind of reflection. Instead of humility, we get hysteria — mockery, censorship, and cancellation from experts who should be asking how they got it so wrong.

The global neoliberal order has hit an epistemological wall, and its expert class members lack the wisdom or self-awareness to break through it. They will continue screeching and lashing out in defense of a collapsing worldview. But the truth is unavoidable: The era of rule by experts is ending.

This crisis brings danger, yes — but also opportunity. A new paradigm is emerging. And whatever comes next, it will not be governed by the priests of consensus.

​Opinion & analysis, Deep state, Administrative state, Managerial state, Elites, Experts, Crisis, Credentials, Covid-19, World health organization, Epistemology, War, Institutions, Trust 

The Department of Justice asked the Internal Revenue Service to escalate President Donald Trump’s war against Harvard University by revoking the institution’s tax-exempt status.

CNN reported that two sources familiar with the matter said the IRS was looking into the possibility after the Trump administration froze billions in federal funding to Harvard on Tuesday. Fox News then confirmed that the DOJ had asked the IRS to follow through.

‘Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges.’

Harvard has been resisting orders from the president to take action against anti-Semitism and other discriminatory practices on campus. University officials said the orders are unconstitutional, and they refused to accept the command from the president.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” said legal counsel on Monday. “Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.”

The president has been lobbing insults at Harvard from his social media account.

“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders.’ Look just to the recent past at their plagiarizing President, who so greatly embarrassed Harvard before the United States States [sic] Congress,” read a post from the president.

“Many others, like these Leftist dopes, are teaching at Harvard, and because of that, Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges. Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.”

Some Trump critics pounced on the report to further harangue the administration.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time an administration has tried something like this,” said R. William Snyder, a professor at the business college of George Mason University. “The whole purpose of higher education is to educate the masses. Just because they educate in a way that you don’t like, is that grounds to terminate their tax-exempt status? I’d say no.”

“This would not only be blatantly unconstitutional, it would once again represent the Trump right behaving in a way that it said the hard left would behave if it gained power,” responded New York Times columnist David French.

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​Trump vs harvard, Harvard tax exempt status, Harvard on antisemitism, Harvard irs status, Politics 

Washington state police said that a child molester handyman is a person of interest in the death of an elderly woman whose remains were found in concrete beneath a shed.

82-year-old Marcia Norman had been reported missing since April 1, and the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office said that her remains were found partially encased in concrete in the newly built shed in Olympia.

The man had once been a pastor at Calvary Chapel of North Thurston before he was charged in 2021 with nine counts related to child molestation.

Detectives quickly identified 47-year-old Jeffrey Zizz as their primary suspect because he was the last person who reportedly saw her. Zizz, a convicted child molester, had dinner with Norman before she went missing, according to police.

The handyman had been interviewed by police and had some personal items seized as part of their investigation, including his car.

Police said that he tried to flee from the state in a friend’s car but was later arrested in Missoula, Montana. Leaving the state was a violation of a previous sentence related to a child molestation case. He is being extradited to Washington state.

Investigators said they found the remains after discovering that Zizz had built a shed in Olympia after her disappearance. When they excavated the concrete, they found her body.

The man had once been a pastor at Calvary Chapel of North Thurston before he was charged in 2021 with nine counts related to child molestation. He pleaded guilty to two counts. He has not yet been charged in the death of Norman.

Images from the case can be viewed on the news report from KOMO-TV on YouTube.

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If you want to make a movie about Jesus, the Bible is a great place to start — and end.

So it was an odd choice for Mofac Studios, a South Korean production company, to use Charles Dickens’ work “The Life of Our Lord” as the basis for its new animated children’s movie, “The King of Kings.”

Emotional moment aborted, unless you count the emotion of annoyance, which I experienced in abundance.

Dickens appears to have had a great deal of respect for Jesus because “The Life of Our Lord” is a work he wrote for his children to understand Jesus’ life. He never intended for the book to be shared outside his own family.

Nevertheless, this is the route the filmmakers decided to take with this retelling of scenes from Jesus’ life — through the eyes of Charles Dickens. Or rather, through the eyes of one of his young sons, Walter. And this route ends up being a confusing journey, especially for the audience of children the film targets.

An ode to gentle parenting

I first must address the movie’s opening scene, which is jarringly not Dickensian, but seems to have been conceived by a gentle-parenting influencer.

Here is how it unfolds: Charles Dickens is giving a dramatic reading of his work “A Christmas Carol” at a packed theater. Backstage, his wife and three young children (he actually had 10 kids, but who’s counting?) are noisily wreaking havoc as son Walter and his pet cat playact scenes from “King Arthur,” who is Walter’s hero.

The mayhem interrupts father’s performance so much that he has to ask the audience to wait while he goes behind the curtain. Walter is portrayed as a cherubic-looking but straight-up disrespectful and petulant brat. Somehow, Dad not appreciating his child wrecking his performance makes him the bad guy, as mom pleads for his understanding (um, why wasn’t she keeping them quiet, for heaven’s sake?). Even the cat is shown to be ticked at dad.

This whole interaction takes too long, considering that hundreds of people who paid to attend are just waiting on the other side of the curtain. I thought maybe the filmmakers forgot they left them out there. Eventually Walter pouts and says he’s going home. His parents are dismayed at this. Go figure.

I’m always a little uncomfortable with depictions for children that normalize or even elevate selfish, bratty behavior. So in a movie theater full of children, I was uncomfortable with this opening — and it was not the only discomfort I was about to experience.

The odd filmmaking choices just keep coming

That scene sets the stage for the rest of the film, in which (back at home that night) Charles Dickens narrates his entire manuscript for “The Life of Our Lord” to Walter by way of proving to him that there is a king even more impressive than “King Arthur.”

Many familiar Bible scenes come to life as the tale unfolds, and I expected a kind of “Princess Bride” experience, where the action would return to the narrator telling the story to a child. Instead, the child and the narrator (Walter, his dad, and the cat) are transported into Bible scenes.

Sitting in the movie theater full of children, I couldn’t help but think how confusing these Bible stories would seem when the Dickens family is suddenly a part of each one — not only witnessing action but also interacting with it.

One of the most egregious examples is when Walter and his cat are following Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Walter loses his cat, which his dad finds (also in the scene), but then Jesus is holding the cat while looking lovingly at Walter. Weirdly, Jesus then turns into Walter’s dad again. Good grief.

The kid also follows Jesus to the cross, attempting to take him a container of water, but he trips and the container rolls toward Jesus, who looks at it while he’s collapsed under the cross, exhausted. This mixture of sacred and silly is hard to stomach.

My personal opposite-of-favorite, however, was the scene where Peter hears the cock crow at dawn and sinks to his knees, realizing the weight of what he has done. The animation in that scene is beautiful, and I felt tears coming — that scripture always gets me — but then the kid and his cat walk into the scene to comfort Peter.

Emotional moment aborted — unless you count the emotion of annoyance, which I experienced in abundance.

But how did they do with the Bible stories?

Other than a couple of figures (with a cat) from the 1800s repeatedly showing up in first-century Israel, the Bible stories are mostly accurate. Mostly.

For example, though it is commonly believed, the film perpetuates the myth of “no room at the inn.”

Jesus’ words are subtly changed a few times, and not for the better. When at age 12 his parents find him in the temple, the Bible says he told them, “Did you not know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But in the movie, he tells them he feels like he needs to be there.

That’s not the only time Jesus seems to be using present-day language. When he tells the people who want to stone the adulterous woman that they can do so if they’ve never sinned and they start backing away, he seems to taunt them with a “that’s what I thought” comment.

There is also language that doesn’t seem to acknowledge that Jesus was always God, including a remark about how he was able to do something because “his faith was so strong,” as if he was just a man with extraordinary faith — instead of God himself.

How the film looks

Some of the big panoramic scene shots are beautiful, cinematic, and richly detailed. However, the animation is hit-and-miss because many of the Bible characters look cartoonishly grotesque — and not just the bad guys. Peter and John are pretty ugly; Jesus, though, is much better looking.

I appreciated that in deference to its target audience, the filmmakers managed to depict the cruelty to Jesus with considerable discretion.

For instance, his flogging is shown, but he is not shown receiving it. The crucifixion is hard to watch, although not gory. But the crucifixion should be hard to watch.

How it all ends

Strangely, the resurrection gets short shrift here. The empty tomb is shown and the fact that Jesus is alive is made very clear, but it’s almost glossed over.

Back at home, Walter is so excited about his new favorite king that he wakes up his brother and sister in the middle of the night to tell them the story. Then the credits roll with an awful song by Kristin Chenoweth that includes lyrics about how if you just believe, anything can happen.

Not the “just believe” message again! This wasn’t a “Grinch” movie, for heaven’s sake. Ugh.

After the credits, there’s a “special message” in which a group of kids who’ve seen the movie talk about how great it is and how you can pay for more kids to see it by using a QR code.

Should I have used that QR code?

No. I wouldn’t recommend this as a good use of money or time for your kids.

However, if your kids are at least later-elementary age and already conversant with the Bible’s depiction of Jesus, and you are willing to take them out after the movie to talk about it with the goal of building up their discernment skills, then “The King of Kings” is a great parenting opportunity.

Editor’s note: “The King of Kings” and distributor Angel Studios are sponsors of BlazeTV. The independent views of the author do not necessarily represent the views of Blaze Media.

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There’s a movement on the right that’s been growing in momentum: that men and women are becoming proud of building the traditional nuclear family — despite decades of propaganda urging both men and women to put their careers first.

However, while the movement is strong, the increase of women who self-identify as liberal and men who self-identify as conservative appears to be stronger. This has made it harder for those who want a traditional family unit to find those ideologically aligned partners who want to build that family unit.

“A growing political divide between men and women has compounded the challenges of finding love. Around 39% of women ages 18 to 29 identified as liberal in 2024, according to Gallup, compared with 25% of their male peers. This gap has more than tripled in a decade: 32% of women and 28% of men called themselves liberal in 2014,” claims a recent report from the Wall Street Journal.

“So it was a gap of four points; now it’s a gap of 14 points,” Stu Burguiere of “Stu Does America” comments. “And you think about when we were going through the election time. All the stories of women who would not date a man who had a MAGA hat on or had some conservative indicators in their profile.”

“We saw it the other way around, too; women who would be like, ‘I’m proud of being a Trump supporter,’ would get boycotted essentially by all the men that they would be matched with because they didn’t want anything to do with it,” he continues.

While politics is making it harder for single men and women to find eligible partners, Stu doesn’t believe it’s all bad.

“Having massive disagreements about core issues of humanity is not the worst reason to not get with someone,” Stu says, “That being said, when more and more people are of one persuasion or the other, and especially with white women in particular, they’re becoming more and more liberal by the day for whatever reason, that makes matchmaking a little bit more difficult.”

Want more from Stu?

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I don’t throw around the word “masterpiece” lightly. In fact, I’ve developed something of a reputation for being hard to impress. I don’t think that’s unfair. My standards aren’t unusually high — contemporary standards are just too low.

So when I find something that deserves real praise, I won’t hold back. And the new animated film “The King of Kings” comes about as close to a masterpiece as anything I’ve seen in a long time.

Sola scriptura doesn’t mean solo scriptura. Artistic license is perfectly legitimate — so long as it serves, rather than subverts, the gospel message.

The latest release from Angel Studios is the most compelling telling of the gospel for children I’ve ever encountered — and I’ve seen plenty as a homeschool dad. Honestly, it’s one of the best animated films I’ve seen in years, period.

Framing the story with Charles Dickens as narrator was a brilliant decision. Dickens, arguably the greatest storyteller in the Western canon, guides the audience through the life of Christ by telling it to his young son for the first time. That structure — Dickens’ son imagining the gospel story and entering the narrative — creates a vivid, emotionally immersive experience.

It works. In fact, it’s what makes the whole film so powerful.

To witness the gospel again, this time through a child’s innocent eyes, restored my own “faith like a child.” I choked up more than once, as did my wife. The film’s depiction of the great exchange — Christ’s life for ours — comes through in a way that a child can grasp and can move adults to tears.

The animation is exceptional. Multiple visual styles blend seamlessly. The voice cast includes familiar names, many with
more major awards than Ralphie’s old man. This isn’t just Christian entertainment — it’s top-tier craftsmanship. The filmmakers took excellence seriously. They treated the source material with the respect it deserves.

Audiences noticed. “The King of Kings” became
the top new release in the country.

There’s a message here — one Hollywood and faith-based filmmakers alike would do well to hear.

To Hollywood: Enough with the agitprop. Stop desecrating beloved stories with political sermons. Honor the source material. The audience will show up.

To faith-based creators: Make something
great first. Let its moral or religious value emerge from its quality — not the other way around.

A final word to my fellow believers: I know it’s easy to nitpick. I do it myself. But don’t become the kind of person who’d complain about being hanged with a new rope. The Gospel of John ends with this:

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

The Bible never claims to include every word or deed of Christ. And telling a story for modern audiences sometimes requires creative choices. That’s not heresy. That’s storytelling. Sola scriptura doesn’t mean solo scriptura. Artistic license is perfectly legitimate — so long as it serves, rather than subverts, the gospel message. That goes for more than just “The King of Kings.”

Soapbox dismounted. Time for you to get off the couch and go see this movie.

Editor’s note: “The King of Kings” and distributor Angel Studios are sponsors of BlazeTV. The independent views of the author do not necessarily represent the views of Blaze Media.

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The American Civil Liberties Union announced Tuesday that it filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense’s school system for removing books that reference “race and gender” from its libraries.

President Donald Trump previously signed executive actions banning diversity, equity, and inclusion from the federal government, resulting in the removal of woke gender ideology books from the Department of Defense Education Activity’s schools.

‘I assume the ACLU will now support school choice for military families, so the federal government won’t get to dictate what is or is not in military kids’ education.’

A presidential action titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” argued that the American school system has “indoctrinate[d]” students with “radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight.”

In February, the DOD distributed a memo to parents of children within the school system explaining that the agency was reevaluating library books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics.”

The DOD and the Department of Education released a joint statement earlier this month announcing the creation of the Title IX Special Investigations Team, tasked with protecting students “from the pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”

The ACLU’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of a dozen students, accuses the DODEA of violating students’ First Amendment rights by removing the materials.

“Since January, their schools have systemically removed books, altered curricula, and canceled events that the government has accused of promoting ‘gender ideology’ or ‘divisive equity ideology,'” the ACLU claimed. “This has included materials about slavery, Native American history, LGBTQ identities and history, and preventing sexual harassment and abuse, as well as portions of the Advanced Placement (AP) Psychology curriculum.”

Natalie Tolley, a parent with three children in DODEA schools, stated that Trump’s executive orders were “a violation of our children’s right to access information that prevents them from learning about their own histories, bodies, and identities.”

“I have three daughters, and they, like all children, deserve access to books that both mirror their own life experiences and that act as windows that expose them to greater diversity,” she continued. “The administration has now made that verboten in DODEA schools.”

Neal McCluskey, the director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Education Freedom, reacted to the lawsuit, stating, “I assume the ACLU will now support school choice for military families, so the federal government won’t get to dictate what is or is not in military kids’ education.”

A spokesperson for the DODEA told the Associated Press that the school system does not comment on ongoing litigation.

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A federal judge says there is probable cause to hold President Donald Trump in contempt for refusing to end deportation flights from a previous ruling.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg had issued the emergency order on March 15 against the flights of illegal immigrants that were ordered by President Donald Trump. The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act from 1798, which critics say is being improperly applied to the immigration crisis.

‘The president is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.’

Boasberg, who has been criticized by many accusing him of political bias, said Wednesday that he found probable cause that Trump had showed a “willful disregard” for the order.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” he said Wednesday.

“The Court ultimately determines that the Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt,” he added.

The emergency order was meant to allow the court time to fully consider the merits of the case. Boasberg said all flights must be canceled and those on the way must return to the U.S., but that did not happen.

Boasberg called on the administration to make declarations by April 23 or face a referral for prosecution.

White House communications director Steven Cheung responded to the order in a brief statement on social media.

“We plan to seek immediate appellate relief,” he said. “The president is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.”

Boasberg has lambasted Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign for failing to fulfill his requests for information about the flights.

“If you really believed everything you did that day was legal and would survive a court challenge, you would not have operated the way that you did,” said the judge to Ensign.

The Trump administration had previously responded by saying the judge was mounting a “massive, unauthorized imposition on the Executive’s authority to remove dangerous aliens.”

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An American pastor who was kidnapped by armed men while preaching a sermon in South Africa last week was rescued days later as part of a remarkable mission, according to law enforcement.

As Blaze News previously reported, Josh Sullivan was preaching during a Thursday evening service at the Fellowship Baptist Church in Motherwell — a township outside Gqeberha in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Suddenly four armed men abducted Sullivan, who is from Tennessee, in front of his wife and six children.

‘Thank you for your support and prayers. Please do not stop praying for the Sullivans.’

The Hawks — a specialized police unit that investigates organized crime, economic crime, corruption, and other serious crimes — reportedly tracked down the kidnappers. On Tuesday, law enforcement engaged in a “high-intensity shoot-out” with alleged kidnappers at a safe house and rescued Sullivan.

The South African Police Service said in a statement, “As officers approached the house, they observed a vehicle on the premises. The suspects inside the vehicle, upon seeing law enforcement, allegedly attempted to flee and opened fire on the team.”

“The officers responded with tactical precision, leading to a high-intensity shoot-out in which three unidentified suspects were fatally wounded,” police stated.

Law enforcement officers rescued Sullivan from the vehicle, who reportedly was unharmed and in “excellent condition.”

The Fellowship Baptist Church in Tennessee stated, “Praise the Lord!” Tom Hatley, the church’s pastor, said that “Josh has been released. Thank you for your support and prayers. Please do not stop praying for the Sullivans.”

Church secretary Heather Shirley told the Christian Post that God “was the one protecting him and taking care of him. And that’s what we were praying for all along, that He would take care of him and bring him home.”

Shirley added, “We want to let Josh tell the whole story as he wants to or give us something to give to our people so that they understand exactly how he felt. I don’t think any of us can understand how he felt in that situation. I mean, there had to just be a hedge of protection around him, provided by God; that’s the only explanation for it.”

Sullivan — a self-described “church planting missionary” — arrived in South Africa in 2018 with plans to “finish language school … and plant a church to the Xhosa-speaking people.”

Missionary Mark Coffey said of Sullivan, “Josh’s love for the Xhosa people is evident in everything he does. He doesn’t just serve them — he walks with them, learns from them, and pours his life into building lasting relationships rooted in the love of Christ. He often says that learning the Xhosa language wasn’t just about communication — it was about connection.”

There were an average of 51 kidnappings every day in the country in 2023, according to the government.

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Since the earliest times, the Catholic Church has commemorated the Wednesday of Holy Week as Spy Wednesday, the day Judas Iscariot slipped away to negotiate the traitor’s price to turn Jesus Christ over to the chief priests in Jerusalem.

The betrayal of Judas deserves plenty of attention as we prepare to recall Christ’s Passion and death on Good Friday. The remembrance of Judas’ treachery serves as a warning to all, important enough to have its own commemoration on a weekday traditionally associated with bodily mortification.

‘They weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver.’

The chief priests were actively looking for a means to seize Jesus without triggering a riot. As they deliberated, suddenly Judas appeared, seeking an audience.

“The chief priests and the scribes sought how they might put Jesus to death; but they feared the people,” wrote Dom Prosper Guéranger, the late French abbot and author of the comprehensive 15-volume series “The Liturgical Year.”

“And Satan entered into Judas, who was surnamed Iscariot, one of the twelve; and he went, and discoursed with the chief priests and the magistrates, how he might betray him to them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money. And he promised; and he sought opportunity to betray him in the absence of the multitude.

“They admit him and he says to them, ‘What will you give me and I will deliver him unto you?’” (from Matthew 26:15) Guéranger wrote. “They are delighted at this proposition and yet, how is it, that they, doctors of the law, forget that this infamous bargain between themselves and Judas has all been foretold by David in the 108th Psalm?

Judas Iscariot settled for 30 pieces of silver, the price of a slave, to betray Jesus Christ.P. Molnar/Wikimedia Commons

“They know the Scriptures from beginning to end — how comes it,” Guéranger wrote, “that they forget the words of the prophet, who even mentions the sum of thirty pieces of silver?”

Thirty pieces of silver was typically the price of a slave. The amount of this shameful bargain is mentioned in Zechariah 11:12, “And they weighed for my wages thirty pieces of silver.” The words of the prophets, which would have been clear to these men who plotted against Jesus, did not give them pause as they prepared to carry out the gravest crime in history.

“On this day, Judas leaves his Master, and takes the devil for his guide,” Guéranger wrote. “The love of money blinds him. He fell from the light, he became darkened; for how could he be said to see, who sold the Light for thirty pieces of silver?”

According to the Jewish historian Josephus, there were about 2.7 million people in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. The people had welcomed Jesus as a king on Palm Sunday, laying their cloaks and palm branches along the path as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

Jesus was determined to eat the Passover alone with his apostles. So he frustrated Judas’ scheming by the way he selected the place to eat the Passover meal.

‘This sort of talk is hard to take. Who can stand it?’

“Our Lord knows that Judas had sold him and is about to betray him and Judas therefore is laying plans,” said Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in one of his Holy Week discourses. “Our Lord now begins to thwart his plans.”

How does our Lord do it? He says to some of his disciples, go into the city and you will find a man with a water pot on his head. Ask him, where has he prepared the house for the Passover meal? The disciples went into the city. They found a man with a water pot on his head. Why did our Lord use that particular sign?

Well, because men never carry water pots on their head. Women carry water pots on their head. That would be just like saying, go into the city and find a man who’s carrying a pink parasol. So the disciples then found the man who had prepared the upper room. Judas therefore did not know where he was being led. Our Lord wanted the last meal alone with his apostles, and Judas would now have to come with him and no one would know except the disciples who met the man with a water pot on the head.

The Agony in the Garden.Giovanni Bellini, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Why did Judas go on his spy mission, scheming to betray his Redeemer? Sheen said a popular theory was that Judas had succumbed to avarice. But despite some evidence for this in Scripture, Sheen said the downfall of Iscariot’s faith came when Christ introduced the Holy Eucharist while teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.

“In truth, in very truth I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you can have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood possesses eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. My flesh is real food; my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells continuously in me and I dwell in him” (from John 6:52-57).

This core mystery of the Catholic faith became an insurmountable stumbling block for Judas and other followers of Christ, according to Fr. William Patrick Casey of the Fathers of Mercy.

“Jesus said this over and over again, and the Jews heard him,” Fr. Casey said in a popular audio talk on the Holy Eucharist. “They knew what he was saying, but it was just too much for them. It was too much even for some of his own disciples. They just couldn’t believe it. They said, ‘This sort of talk is hard to take. Who can stand it?’ He said, ‘If you don’t eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.’”

Archbishop Sheen places the start of Judas’ fall on this day in Capernaum.

“Where is the first mention of the fall of Judas?” Sheen asked in one of his audio talks. “The day our Lord announced the Eucharist. When did Judas leave? The night our Lord gave the Eucharist. He broke at the announcement of the Eucharist. As a matter of fact, that was the critical moment in the life of our blessed Lord. When he announced the Eucharist, he lost the masses, because he refused to be a bread king.”

At the Last Supper, Jesus asked Judas to sit near him.

Engraving of the Last Supper.Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

“Christ chose Judas to be an apostle,” Sheen said. “He did not choose him to be a traitor, but to be an apostle.”

Judas had worked out a sign with the brigands who would seize Jesus in the Garden of Olives: a kiss.

“How shall they, who are sent to seize him, be able to distinguish him from his disciples?” Guéranger asked. “Judas will lead the way; he will show them which is Jesus, by going up to him and kissing him!”

Judas thought Christ to be a coward who would retreat into the olive grove when soldiers came to seize him. But when death came for Christ that night, He went out to meet it face to face.

Judas’ betrayal was no kiss of peace or friendship.

“The Lord came forward and Judas reached out his arms and threw them around the Lord’s neck,” Sheen said. “And the Greek word in the Gospel is καταφιλέω; he smothered him with kisses. Divinity is so sacred, it is always betrayed by some sign of affection. And our Lord says, ‘Friend, would you betray the Son of Man with a kiss?’”

On the traditional calendar, the Church keeps a penitential fast on Spy Wednesday as a reminder of Judas’ betrayal of Christ, according to Dom Benedict Baur, the late German Benedictine theologian.

“What a spectacle! Christ betrayed by one of His own apostles and handed over to His enemies,” Dom Baur wrote in a reflection published in the Mass companion “Benedictus.” “That act sounded the depths of ingratitude, hypocrisy, and baseness. The act was made more despicable by the fact that it was performed for money.”

Baur said the stakes are high for all Christians who neglect and lose their faith or chase after worldly gains.

“Often they forsake religion and neglect the sacraments,” he wrote. “What remains to them from all the temporal advantages they may gain? They soon prove empty; this discovery drove Judas to despair.”

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President Donald Trump’s administration appears to have amplified its efforts to crack down on radical college campus protests, revoking visas for more than 1,300 foreign students, according to an analysis from Inside Higher Ed.

The publication reported that as of Wednesday morning, it verified that 1,321 students have had their legal status changed by the Department of State.

‘Visiting America is not an entitlement.’

A chart on the outlet’s website showed a breakdown of how many foreign students at each university were affected.

According to the chart, the University of Texas System had the greatest number of impacted students. A Monday article from the Austin American-Statesman stated that 176 students within the school’s system had their visas revoked.

Randa Safady, the UT System’s vice chancellor of external relations, told the news outlet, “UT institutions learn of the revocation of student visas or immigration status changes by checking the Federal Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), a federal tracking system for exchange visitors.”

“As of Friday, April 11, the UT System learned that 176 students have been affected by the action,” Safady added.

Northwest Missouri State University was listed second among those most affected, with 43 students losing their legal status. A local report from WDAF-TV found that five of the individuals were current students, and 38 were optional practical training students who had already graduated but remained in the U.S.

Dr. Lance Tatum, the university’s president, stated, “Please know this situation continues to evolve and Northwest’s International Involvement Center is working directly with the impacted students to offer guidance. However, these students also are being advised that they depart the U.S. immediately to avoid accruing unlawful presence.”

Ashley Mowreader, the author of the Inside Higher Ed report, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, “It’s very unclear what is driving these revocations.”

“The government has provided little to no explanation,” she said. “What we’ve heard from campus officials is that some of the students affected weren’t involved in campus protests.”

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the agency had already pulled at least 300 student visas in response to Trump’s January executive order vowing to combat anti-Semitism. The action pledged to cancel student visas and “deport Hamas sympathizers.”

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before,” Trump stated.

Last week, Rubio penned an op-ed for Fox News in which he said that “visiting America is not an entitlement.”

“It is a privilege extended to those who respect our laws and values. And, as secretary of state, I will never forget that,” he wrote.

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Over the past decade, the once universally loved “Saturday Night Live” has become a clear propaganda tool of the left — consistently pushing left-wing issues while poking fun at the right.

However, that may be changing after one April 12 “SNL” skit shockingly mocked gay surrogacy.

The sketch took place at a chaotic dinner party where guests shared bizarre personal updates. One gay couple at the dinner party had a newborn baby, and the other guests then begin asking questions as to where and how they acquired a baby — even asking if they stole it.

The skit took it so far as to ask the gay couple how just the other night they were going to a gay rave called “Bulge Dungeon” when there was a baby on the way.

“There are two different ways to see this,” Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” says. “Either you can see it as using comedy to normalize two men purchasing a baby, or you can see it as a big vibe shift that we are actually starting to mock and deride something that deserves our mockery and derision.”

“Because it is a legitimate question. How could two men, who do not have the genetic material nor the wombs to create and bear children, have a child?” Stuckey asks.

While Stuckey is skeptical that the skit was pointing out the gay couple’s purchase of a baby as a bad thing, she did think one line from the skit was a home run.

“That line about ‘last night you were talking about going to Bulge Dungeon and now you have a baby and we’re just wondering how to square that circle,’ that was a good one. That was the best line, because if you see a lot of these men who are purchasing children, you do have some questions, like, ‘Do you know the first thing about raising a child?’” Stuckey says.

“And so I appreciate that whatever the motive is, that we are in the mode right now of mocking something that is absolutely depraved and destructive,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

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The Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the U.S. State Department that was
credibly accused of working with domestic and foreign organizations to silence conservative voices, was supposedly shuttered on Dec. 23, 2024. This closure was, however, a sleight of hand.

In the final weeks of the Biden administration, the censorious practices undertaken by the agency established by Barack Obama in 2011 and the officials who executed them were
migrated to a new outfit called the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
announced the closure of the State Department’s R/FIMI, which reportedly had 40 employees and a budget of over $51 million.

“Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions. That ends today,” wrote Rubio. “I am announcing the closure of the [State Department’s] Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference, formerly the Global Engagement Center (GEC), which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year and actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving.”

‘American taxpayers through the State Department were paying groups to attack Americans.’

Rubio discussed the birth and death of the censorship outfit in a live conversation Wednesday with Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, alluding to the GEC’s origins: a
pair of Obama executive orders aimed at reducing radicalization by Islamic terrorists and extremist violence threatening the interest and national security of the United States.

“Who’s going to be against that? That sounds normal,” said Rubio. “By 2020, it had grown into this movement of … actually going after individual American voices.”

Rubio noted that money from the program was being directed to supposedly “impartial” NGOs, which were “tagging and labeling voices in American politics — Ben Shapiro, the Federalist, others — tagging them as foreign agents.”

“American taxpayers through the State Department were paying groups to attack Americans and to try to silence the voice of Americans,” continued Rubio. “And there were consequences. These weren’t just a label they put on people. Some of these people got deplatformed; they got taken down; they couldn’t communicate.”

A lawsuit
filed against the State Department in December 2023 by Texas, the Daily Wire, and the Federalist accused the Biden administration of actively intervening in the news media market through the GEC “to render disfavored press outlets unprofitable by funding the infrastructure, development, and marketing and promotion of censorship technology and private censorship enterprises to covertly suppress speech of a segment of the American press.”

The lawsuit alleged that the GEC had, for instance, backed the Disinformation Index Inc., the American component of the British think tank
Global Disinformation Index, and NewsGuard Technologies.

Blaze News
previously reported that both GDI and NewsGuard Technologies generated blacklists of supposedly risky or misleading news outfits with the aim of getting them demonetized and directing funds to news organizations that parrot approved narratives.

The GDI’s fall 2022 report, for instance, labeled NPR, the Washington Post, HuffPost, and a number of other liberal news outfits with troubled relationships with the truth as the “least risky sites.”

Meanwhile, Blaze News, Reason, the Federalist, the Daily Wire, the New York Post, and other conservative publications made the top-10 list of “riskiest sites” and were smeared as having the “greatest level of disinformation risk.”

Gabe Kaminsky then of the Washington Examiner — a publication that also appeared on the GDI blacklist — reported in 2023 that GDI would compile a “dynamic exclusion list” and provide that list to corporate entities such as the advertising company Xandr. Xandr and other recipients subsequently declined to place ads on websites flagged by the GDI.

Matt Taibbi, an investigative reporter who
helped expose some of what the GEC was up to, previously told Blaze News, “The GEC was turned into a key actor in the narrative-control bureaucracy.”

“It was outrageous,” Rubio said Wednesday regarding the GEC’s work and impact.

The secretary of state noted that the GEC, which was
deemed the “worst offender in U.S. government censorship & media manipulation” by Elon Musk in the wake of the Twitter Files and found to be internally dysfunctional in a 2022 State Department Office of Inspector General report, was technically disbanded in December but really just rebranded before President Donald Trump took office.

‘Trump administration is smashing the censorship cartel.’

“Over the last few months, we’ve worked on it and just taken it down,” said Rubio.

Rubio noted in an article Wednesday on the Federalist — a publication chosen on account of its targeting by a GEC-backed organization — that “whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.”

Last month, Rubio and Darren Beattie, acting under secretary for public diplomacy, apparently terminated over 100 contractors who worked with the agency.

The MIT Technology Review
reported that employees at R/FIMI received an email Wednesday inviting them to a meeting with Beattie, who notified them their office and jobs were no more.

Rubio
noted his Federalist piece that “Obama’s man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel” once said to the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, “I’m not against propaganda. Every country does it, and they have to do it to their own population. And I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

“All too many abuses of trust that occurred at the GEC seemed to reflect Stengel’s dark founding vision,” wrote Rubio.

The secretary added:

Ultimately, the problem wasn’t that our government picked the wrong people and NGOs to police “disinformation.” The problem is that they were picking anybody to do this at all. The entire “disinformation” industry, from its very beginnings, has existed to protect the American establishment from the voices of forgotten Americans. Everything it does is the fruit of the poisoned tree: the hoax that Russian interference, misinformation, and “meddling” is what caused President Trump’s victory in 2016, rather than a winning political message that only he was offering.

“This travesty has gone on long enough,” Rubio declared.

He told Benz, “The best way to counter disinformation is free speech — is to make sure that what’s true has as equal or greater opportunity to communicate as what’s not true. We’ve learned that the hard way.”

Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission,
called Rubio’s final blow to the censorship outfit a “very important action,” adding that the “Trump administration is smashing the censorship cartel and restoring free speech rights to Americans.”

Benz
wrote, “R-FIMI is R-FINISHED.”

— (@)

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