Category: blaze media

Whether it’s enforcing discipline or training our children up in the gospel, being a godly parent is incredibly difficult.

But there’s one commandment that most moms and dads would agree is harder than them all: keeping God above our children.

We love our kids so much that we desperately want to have strong relationships with them. And this is a good thing. But it quickly becomes sinful when our desire to be close with our children becomes more important than obeying God.

“The ideal, of course, is to maintain forever a loving and a close relationship with your kids and obey the Lord. … That’s every Christian parent’s hope,” says Allie Beth Stuckey.

But “if one has to give — either it’s obey the Lord or get my child to like me … then you’ve got to go with obeying the Lord. That’s the call for the Christian. That’s part of the dying to self.”

Allie admits that one of the most challenging verses in scripture is Jesus’ words in Luke 14:26, where he says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

Jesus isn’t mincing words here: True discipleship requires prioritizing devotion to Him above even the closest family relationships — not literally hating our family but elevating our commitment to following Him above all.

“I do believe in trying to maintain those relationships [with our children] as much as possible, but if something has to give … it has to be obeying the Lord, who is kinder and better and wiser than we are,” Allie reiterates.

She criticizes Georgia Pastor Andy Stanley and other progressive-leaning church leaders for encouraging parents to be LGBTQ+-affirming when it comes to their children. She condemns his decision to invite a gay married couple to speak at his church on several occasions, misleading his congregation to disagree with God on what is sinful.

This is equivalent to telling parents to “reject God’s authority when it comes to sex, marriage, [and] gender,” Allie explains.

She points to the powerful testimony of Laura Perry, whom God redeemed from transgenderism, as an example of how godly parents should behave when their children stray. Laura’s parents “never compromised,” she says.

“And because of that, because they continued to tell her God’s word … while also being kind to her … she was brought back to a place of repentance.”

She brings up Rosaria Butterfield as another powerful example. “She’s the former queer theory professor, former lesbian, who tried every way she could 20-plus years ago to unite her homosexuality with her Christianity. But the Holy Spirit, because this is what he does, he wouldn’t let her do it,” she says.

Parents need to be reminded that Jesus, once he enters a person’s heart, “kills sin,” which He alone gets to define.

“He is a king taking dominion over your heart and your mind and your soul and, yes, your sexuality,” says Allie, “and this is just as true in all of us as it is true with people who wrestle with same-sex attraction or gender confusion” — even if those people are your own children.

To hear more of Allie’s commentary, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, Blazetv, Blaze media, Christianity, Progressive christians, Progressive christianity, Andy stanley 

A whistleblower has reportedly come forward to confirm claims that the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., has been manipulating crime data, a scandal that has led the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to launch its own investigation.

In August, President Donald Trump initiated a federal surge on D.C. streets, citing high crime rates despite the MPD reporting a decline.

‘The Committee has obtained credible, alarming information that MPD leadership falsified crime data to deceptively show a decline in violent crime in the District.’

While Trump faces backlash from critics for taking matters into his own hands, a scandal is unfolding regarding whether the police department manipulated the data to make it appear as though crime rates have been declining.

The D.C. Police Union has long accused the MPD of manipulating crime data. Following the union’s allegations, the department placed Police Commander Michael Pulliam on paid administrative leave in May. The department is investigating the claims.

“When our members respond to the scene of a felony offense where there is a victim reporting that a felony occurred, inevitably there will be a lieutenant or a captain that will show up on that scene and direct those members to take a report for a lesser offense,” Gregg Pemberton, the chairman of the D.C. Police Union, previously explained to WRC-TV.

“So instead of taking a report for a shooting or a stabbing or a carjacking, they will order that officer to take a report for a theft or an injured person to the hospital or a felony assault, which is not the same type of classification,” Pemberton added.

RELATED: DC police commander under investigation for allegedly manipulating crime stats

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The allegations of underreported crime trace back to 2020 when MPD Sergeant Charlotte Djossou shared internal documents from two cases with WUSA.

The first case involved an alleged assault in which a man was accused of slashing a woman’s face and neck with an unknown object. While the alleged attack could have been classified as an “assault with a dangerous weapon,” it was instead recorded as a “simple assault.” The first offense is a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, while the second offense is a misdemeanor, carrying a maximum sentence of six months in jail.

The second case involved an incident where a man was accused of putting a knife to the neck of his partner. This also could have been classified as a felony assault; instead, it was reported as a misdemeanor “simple assault.”

The cases were not prosecuted, according to WUSA.

“It’s not OK to lie to the community about what’s going on around them,” Djossou told the news outlet during her 2020 interview. “That’s what I saw happening.”

“The commanders and the captains get promoted, and they get awards, when the crime stats are low,” she remarked.

Djossou filed a lawsuit against the MPD, claiming that she had faced retaliation for disclosing the alleged underreporting to her supervisors. The lawsuit was settled in June.

Djossou stated that reporters have contacted her since, but she “can’t talk to them until I retire” because she is “still a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Department.”

RELATED: Fact-check: Legacy media’s bogus defense of DC’s safe-streets narrative crumbles under scrutiny

Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images

The Oversight Committee announced on August 25 that it launched an investigation into allegations of manipulated crime stats, revealing that a whistleblower had come forward.

According to the whistleblower, the manipulation was “widespread,” directed by “senior MPD officials,” and potentially impacts all seven patrol districts.

The Oversight Committee sent a letter to the MPD the same day, requesting information to aid its investigation, including the unredacted settlement agreement between the MPD and Djossou.

The committee has requested transcribed interviews with Pulliam and the current MPD commanders for all seven districts.

“Building on President Trump’s successful efforts to restore law and order in the District of Columbia, the House Oversight Committee is carrying out its constitutional duty to oversee D.C. affairs and ensure our nation’s capital is safe for all Americans,” Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Blaze News.

“The Committee has obtained credible, alarming information that MPD leadership falsified crime data to deceptively show a decline in violent crime in the District. MPD has a duty under federal law to accurately report crime to the public, and the Committee is now taking action to investigate these allegations and ensure the safety of D.C. residents and visitors is never compromised,” Comer stated.

The MPD did not respond to a request for comment from WUSA.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, Washington d.c., Washington dc, D.c., Dc, House committee on oversight and government reform, House oversight committee, Oversight committee, James comer, Donald trump, Trump, Trump administration, Trump admin, Metropolitan police department, Mpd, D.c. police union, Dc police union, Crime stats, Crime data, Politics 

President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that he was federalizing the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., and deploying the National Guard there in order to “re-establish law, order, and public safety.”

While Democrats and other liberal pundits reflexively denounced Trump’s intervention, their critiques were premature. Since Trump took action, violent crime in D.C. reportedly is down 45%, and carjackings are down 87%.

‘He is CRAZY!’

Having demonstrated just how quickly order can be restored with will and determination, Trump now is looking to help other crime-ridden cities across the country.

But during a press conference last week, Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker criticized the president’s efforts to make cities safer, claiming what Trump is doing “is illegal, it is unconstitutional, it is un-American.”

“Mr. President, do not come to Chicago,” added Pritzker. “You are neither wanted here nor needed here.”

But Trump noted in a Saturday evening Truth Social post, “Six people were killed, and 24 people were shot, in Chicago last weekend, and JB Pritzker, the weak and pathetic Governor of Illinois, just said that he doesn’t need help in preventing CRIME.”

The president added, “He is CRAZY!!! He better straighten it out, FAST, or we’re coming!”

RELATED: DC Dems are furious at Mayor Bowser for admitting Trump’s troops are lowering crime

Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Underscoring Trump’s concerns, Chicago kicked off the Labor Day weekend with — you guessed it — another spate of shootings.

Police indicated that as of Sunday morning, at least 32 people had been shot in the city — three fatally — WLS-TV reported. Among the victims was a 43-year-old woman who was approached then reportedly riddled with bullets at the hands of five male suspects.

The Windy City is no stranger to bloody weekends — or weekdays, for that matter.

Chicago Police Department statistics indicate that so far this year there have been at least 266 murders, 1,141 reported sexual assaults, 4,003 robberies, 10,774 motor vehicle thefts, 11,488 felony thefts, and 3,971 burglaries.

Chicago — which has secured the top spot on Orkin’s list of America’s rattiest cities for the last 10 years — has a 5-rating on Neighborhood Scout’s crime index in which 100 is safest.

Yet while Pritzker has criticized the idea of Trump deploying the National Guard to assist Chicago, the city’s Mayor Brandon Johnson — who has an approval rating of 26% according to a recent poll by the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation and the National Opinion Research Center, both at the University of Chicago — is especially opposed.

RELATED: ‘Stop talking and get to work’: Trump blasts Democrat Gov. Wes Moore over Maryland crime

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Johnson signed an executive order Saturday “denouncing any attempts to deploy the United States Armed Forces and/or the National Guard and/or militarized civil immigration enforcement in Chicago.”

In the order, the unpopular mayor demanded that Trump and agents under his authority “stand down from any attempts” to deploy troops in the city and vowed to ensure the Chicago Police Department remains a locally controlled law enforcement agency under mayoral authority.

‘Cracking down on crime should not be a partisan issue.’

Additionally, Johnson said federal agents and troops cannot wear masks while performing their duties.

“We have received credible reports that we have days, not weeks before our city sees some type of militarized activity by the federal government,” said Johnson. “We must take immediate, drastic action to protect our people from federal overreach.”

The White House reportedly has written off Johnson’s executive order signing as a “publicity stunt.”

— (@)

“If these Democrats focused on fixing crime in their own cities instead of doing publicity stunts to criticize the President, their communities would be much safer,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to the Independent. “Cracking down on crime should not be a partisan issue, but Democrats suffering from [Trump Derangement Syndrome] are trying to make it one.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Crime, Chicago, Illinois, Pritzker, Brandon johnson, Donald trump, Dc, Winning, Law, Order, Violence, Politics, National guard, Federalizing local police, Shootings 

Christopher Wolfe’s thoughtful essay at the American Mind on Booker T. Washington, leisure, and work stirred some fond memories from years ago of making a friend by reading a book.

He was an old black man, and I was an old white man. We were both native Angelenos and had been just about old enough to drive when the Watts riots broke out in 1965. But that was half a century and a lifetime ago, and we hadn’t known each another.

If you read ‘Up from Slavery,’ you will be reading an American classic and will be getting to know a man who ranks among the greatest Americans of all time.

Los Angeles is a big place, a home to many worlds. Now we were white-haired professors, reading a book together, and we became friends. His name was Kimasi, and he has since gone to a better world.

We were spending a week with a dozen other academics reading Booker T. Washington’s autobiography, “Up from Slavery.” Washington was born a slave in Franklin County, Virginia, just a few years before the Civil War began. He gained his freedom through Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Union victory in the war. With heroic determination, he got himself an education and went on to found the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama, where he remained principal for the rest of his life.

After Frederick Douglass died in 1895, Washington became, without comparison, the most well-known and influential black American living. By the beginning of the 20th century, as John Hope Franklin would write, he was “one of the most powerful men in the United States.” “Up from Slavery,” published in 1901, sold 100,000 copies before Washington died in 1915.

It is a great American book. Modern Library ranks it third on its list of the best nonfiction books in the English language of the 20th century. But there was a reason why Kimasi and I were reading this great book when we were old men rather than when we were young men back in the riotous 1960s.

Even before Washington died, and while he was still the most famous and influential black man in America, other black leaders began to discredit him and question his way of dealing with the plight and aspirations of black Americans. These critics, whom Washington sometimes called “the intellectuals,” were led by W.E.B. Du Bois, the first black American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

So successful was this criticism that by the time Kimasi and I were in high school or heading off to college, the most fashionable opinion among intellectuals — black or white — was that Booker T. Washington was the worst of things for a black man. He was an “Uncle Tom.” (How “Uncle Tom” became a term of derision rather than the name of a heroic character is a story for another time.) And so, if Washington’s great book was mentioned at all to young Kimasi or me, it was mentioned in this negative light.

But fashions change, and, as Washington himself taught, merit is hard to resist. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address were dismissed and scoffed at by some “intellectuals” in his day; they are now generally recognized by informed and intelligent people around the world as the great speeches they are.

“Huckleberry Finn” scandalized polite opinion when it came out, because it was about an illiterate vagrant and other lowlifes and contained a lot of ungrammatical talk and bad spelling. A couple of generations later, Ernest Hemingway himself declared that “all modern American literature comes from one book” — Huckleberry Finn.

A couple of generations later still, in our own times, skittish librarians started removing the book from their shelves because it used language too dangerous for children.

The study of the past should shed light on what deserves praise, what deserves blame, and the grounds on which such judgments should be made. Americans being as fallible as the rest of mankind, as long as we are free to air opinions, there will be different opinions among us. Some of them may actually be true. And they will change from time to time, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for no reason at all.

RELATED: Why can’t Americans talk honestly about race? Blame the ‘Civil Rights Baby Boomers’

Photo by Graphic House/Getty Images

In recent years, several scholars have helped bring back to light the greatness and goodness of Booker T. Washington. Even fashionable opinion is capable of justice, and no one wants to be deceived about what is truly good and great, so I hazard to predict that it will sometime become fashionable again to recognize Booker T. Washington as one of the greatest Americans ever.

Washington never held political office. But his life and work demonstrated that you don’t have to hold political office to be a statesman and that the noblest work of the statesman is to teach. The soul of what Washington sought to teach was that we, too, can rise up from slavery. It is an eternal possibility.

This was the central purpose of Booker T. Washington’s life and work: to liberate souls from enslavement to ignorance, prejudice, and degrading passions, the kind of slavery that makes us tyrants to those around us in the world we live in.

Washington saw that this freedom of the soul cannot be given to us by others. Good teachers and good parents and friends, through precept and example, can help us see this freedom and understand it, but we have to achieve it for ourselves. When we do, our souls are liberated to rule themselves by reflection and choice, with malice toward none, with charity for all.

If you read “Up from Slavery,” you will be reading an American classic. You will be getting to know a man who, in the quality of his mind and character, and in the significance of what he did in and with his life, ranks among the greatest Americans of all time — even with the man whose name he chose for himself. When we read this great book together in the ripeness of our years, Kimasi, who always winningly wore his heart on his sleeve, wept frequently and repeated, shaking his head, “I lived a life not knowing this man.”

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

​Opinion & analysis, Race, Racism, Booker t. washington, Up from slavery, Literature, Memoir, Race relations, Slavery, Autobiography, W.e.b. du bois, Naacp, Equality, Uncle tom, Frederick douglass, Mark twain, Huckleberry finn, Library, History, Truth 

For decades, numerous people declared clinically dead have miraculously awakened with vivid descriptions of the heavenly realm. Stories of being enveloped by brilliant, warm light, strolling through indescribably beautiful landscapes, and reuniting with deceased loved ones (and even Jesus) are the subjects of many books written by people who have had near-death experiences. Many Christians view these heavenly visions as either true or at least plausible, believing that scripture corroborates such experiences.

But what about the opposite? What about visits to hell?

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” a podcast that explores spiritual warfare from a biblical perspective, Rick dives into a wild story that’s gone viral: A woman named Queen Okeoma who claims to have seen the pits of hell — and the most iconic, influential rapper in history, Biggie Smalls, consumed by flames in a cell guarded by giant demons.

Okeoma is an author who has gained significant attention for her book, “Testimony: Life Changing Encounters in the Supernatural,” in which she claims to have experienced multiple out-of-body visits to heaven and hell.

On a recent podcast that’s gone viral, Okeoma shared one of her out-of-body experiences in which, she said, Jesus took her into hell and told her several things — that “the darkness is alive and it is its own separate evil entity,” that the flames of hell are “20,000 times hotter than the fire on the earth” and “are fed with brimstone night and day,” so “they will never go out,” and finally, that if she did not follow Him, He would “use [her]” to save others but that she would “die and go to hell.”

“I was physically out of my body in hell, standing beside Jesus Christ himself. It was pitch-black, and these demons had to be 13, 14, 15 feet tall, and they were standing in front of a jail cell. … And Biggie was holding the bars, but he was on fire from the inside,” she said, adding that Jesus told her that the rapper had rejected Him and instead “went to a fetish priest and got charms he carried around in his pocket to become famous.”

“When [the demons] put him back in his cell and closed the door, [Biggie] exploded on fire. And when my feet was an inch, maybe two inches, from that fire, I was back in my body,” she concluded, sobbing in gratitude that Jesus “let [her] live.”

Okeoma’s testimony has spurred much controversy. Some write her off as a kook, while others are driven to their knees in prayer.

Rick, who admits he doesn’t know anything about Okeoma or her faith, evaluates her harrowing testimony with biblical truth. “I don’t hear anything in what she’s saying that is now giving us some new revelation,” like “there are many ways to heaven,” which would automatically disqualify her story as false, he says.

“What she takes away from [her alleged divine encounter] is that Jesus is real, Jesus is the only way we can be redeemed, and hell is a very real place” — all truths confirmed by scripture. Further, Okeoma was driven to repentance following her experience — another factor that adds credibility to her account.

On top of that, her testimony has sparked significant online discussion and engagement, with many viewers sharing that either they or their friends and family have repented and professed faith in Jesus Christ after hearing her story.

“When I look at that, I’m not sure I’m ready to be so critical as some people have been,” says Rick.

To hear Okeoma’s first-person account and join Rick as he explores several other topics in the realm of spiritual warfare, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Strange encounters, Rick burgess, Heaven hell, Biggie, Biggie smalls, The notorious b.i.g., Queen okeoma, Christianity, Spiritual warfare, Angels and demons 

Is the idea of a Christian nation the definition of “absolute absurdity”? According to one Christian magazine, the answer is yes.

Earlier this month, the supposedly thoughtful Plough magazine published a breathtaking exercise in intellectual cowardice, dismissing the very foundation of Western civilization as “absolute absurdity.” The essay in question tackles the subject of Christian nationhood, but it reads like a surrender document, abandoning two millennia of proven governance for faddish defeatism.

To deny the role of Christian truth in Western greatness is like denying oxygen’s role in breathing.

What lunacy drives this thinking?

The greatest civilizations in human history — medieval England’s common law, America’s founding principles, Wilberforce’s abolition movement — all emerged from Christian bedrock. These weren’t theocratic nightmares but flourishing societies that elevated human dignity precisely because they recognized divine authority above earthly empires.

History is a series of patterns, and one of them keeps repeating in America.

Forged in faith

In the 1700s, the colonies rose against the monarchy not for the sake of godless liberty, but because they believed their rights were God-given, written into creation itself. Sermons rang from meeting-houses declaring that no king could overrule the King of kings.

In the 1800s, churches formed the backbone of abolition and reform. Preachers thundered that slavery was a sin before heaven. Abolitionists carried Bibles alongside petitions. And hymns like “Amazing Grace” became anthems of emancipation.

Their message was simple: Every man was equal because every soul bore the image of God.

In the 1900s, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in that same tradition, speaking from pulpits with scripture as his shield. His call for justice was never detached from his faith. He quoted Amos and Isaiah as readily as the founders, grounding civil rights in the authority of the Almighty.

Every advance in American freedom came wrapped in Christian conviction.

Wings, not shackles

But today we’re told these foundations are obsolete, that “Christian nation” is a dirty phrase, and that the values that guided our forefathers must be disavowed like toxic waste. The elites sneer that faith in the public square is “exclusionary,” as if the alternative — soulless secularism — has produced anything but despair, drugs, gender-bending, and fractured families.

But the truth couldn’t be any clearer.

Christian ideals were never shackles; they’re wings. Justice tempered by mercy. Individual worth regardless of station. Care for the vulnerable, not because it wins votes, but because it reflects the imago Dei. Moral accountability to a higher law that no king, no president, and no bureaucrat can erase.

RELATED: The left’s new anti-Christian smear backfires — exposing its deepest fear

jokerpro/iStock/Getty Images Plus

These principles are humanity’s highest aspirations. They built cathedrals that still tower when kingdoms fall. They gave birth to parliaments instead of pogroms, hospitals instead of hangings, and constitutions instead of cults. The entire Western canon — from Augustine’s “City of God” to Aquinas’ natural law, from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights — rests on this sacred scaffolding.

Every liberty we prize today was planted in soil first tilled by faith.

Secularism’s harvest

This is what the Plough party misses. If America forsakes its Christian roots, it doesn’t drift into neutrality. It falls into the hands of new lawgivers, those who craft commandments for commerce — not for conscience.

Already we see this counterfeit creed: Banks cancel customers for thought crimes, corporations peddle ESG as ersatz salvation, Silicon Valley preaches virtue while addicting children and dismantling families, algorithms determine who can speak, credit scores determine who can buy, bureaucrats determine whose children are taught what is right and what is wrong.

From there, the descent is undeniable. When a boy is told he can become a girl by fiat, when schools scrub scripture but sanctify drag shows, when fentanyl fells more Americans than any war ever fought — this is the harvest of secular rule. A culture that once exalted discipline and faith now exalts indulgence and self-invention, producing generations unmoored, medicated, and utterly miserable.

Of course, critics will raise straw men.

“Do you want to stone adulterers?”Is this an attempt to ban other religions?””Are you trying to enforce Levitical law?”

No serious Christian makes such claims. The point isn’t theocracy. It’s renewal.

The true absurdity

A society shaped by Christian morality has always been freer than one governed by the cold calculus of power. The founders knew it. John Adams said it plainly, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Remove the moral compass, and the machinery of liberty grinds into tyranny. Without Christian restraint, power consolidates, rights vanish, and man becomes a cog in someone else’s machine.

Plough may shrug and call that “absolute absurdity.” But the absurdity is Plough’s.

To deny the role of Christian truth in Western greatness is like denying oxygen’s role in breathing. We can’t cut out the heart and expect the body to live. Every triumph of the West was animated by Christian conviction. To sneer at that inheritance is to sneer at the very civilization that grants these critics the freedom to sneer in the first place.

The blood of martyrs and the ink of reformers didn’t flow so we could trade a living faith for lifeless ideologies that serve only the state and the market.

America’s survival depends not on importing ideologies from Davos or Silicon Valley, but on returning to the well that never runs dry.

​Plough magazine, Christian nationhood, Christianity, Jesus, God, Bible, Jesus christ, Christian, Christian nation, Faith 

In Sugar Land, Texas, a giant statue depicting the monkey-faced Hindu deity Hanuman was erected in August 2024. Officially titled “Statue of Union,” many Texans and Americans elsewhere have found this monument to be an aberration. For some, it is the aesthetic unsightliness. For others, it is a religious aversion to having a pagan idol being raised to such heights. And for others, it is a demonstration of just how many foreigners now live in Texas.

I see each of these points as pins on a board that, when connected, reveal a fault line in American civic life: We are divided culturally — and the divide is widening.

If citizenship is only a piece of paper that protects you from deportation and allows you access to our material goods and services, then we have devalued it to the point of being worthless.

America is not an abstract, universal idea that anyone can adopt, as a former Obama-appointed global citizen opined recently in his chiding of Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award dinner this summer. America requires Americans. No, we don’t all need to look and sound identical, but we do need to be specific about what makes an American an American.

American culture, with its Christian civil religion, is required to maintain this union of states and their self-governing peoples. You cannot take people from any other civic, commercial, or cultural context, drop them within American borders, and expect that you will get the same results as from those who are fully assimilated to our country’s historic way of life.

Indians are from an old civilization that is distinct from the one built in Europe, globalized by Britain and Spain, that America currently is an inheritor and torchbearer of. While many Indians have successfully adopted the Western way of life, many more carry an apprehension toward American culture.

Many of the Hindu Indians I live around in the suburbs north of Dallas will freely admit that they moved here merely for higher-paying jobs and the availability of nice things they were unable to obtain in India. “We had a farm. I was happy. But my son wanted a better job,” one sweet matron told my wife with a resigned sadness. “My family is here, so I must be here.” Another has remarked how she loves to sit at her window and watch my six children playing outside, as she only has one grandchild who has been raised in America — and her children want no more, as it would interfere with their work.

I feel a certain sympathy with these immigrants who are struggling with culture shock. They may have nicer homes in America — but they are not at home. This is a strange land to them, just as India would be to me if I lived there. And the American is a stranger to them. They do not consider themselves Americans, and they are worried that their children and descendants will become like the strangers they live among.

The Sugar Land statue, or “murti,” along with other religious displays such as celebrations of Diwali, are not simple public practices of faith; they are cultural statements meant to pacify fears among Hindus that their native culture and its religion will be lost to America’s material excesses and its Christian religion. Large numbers of Hindu Indians living in proximity to each other enable them to speak their native language, eat their traditional foods, and practice their religion.

In essence, Indian culture is kept intact, and Indians remain insulated from and unassimilated to American culture. Many do not become American — they remain Indians who just happen to live in America.

RELATED: How woke broke the country

Photo by Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

I regret that I must use Indian immigrants as my example of unassimilated America. They are merely responding to what has become commonplace in America, England, Canada, and the West more broadly — and therefore what they believe to be the norm.

English is unwritten and unspoken in increasing numbers of our cities and towns, with residents unable to speak our nation’s language and being offered the choice to vote for a foreign-born Marxist in New York City. Dueling demonstrations carrying Palestinian and Israeli flags have become almost commonplace in our streets, just as residents of California wave Mexican flags in protest of their forthcoming deportations.

Somalis in Minnesota celebrate their native country’s independence day en masse together with local officials — then vote them out in favor of alternatives they consider their own. When I asked one recently naturalized immigrant from Colombia if she considered herself an American now that she is a citizen, she said bluntly, “No. I am Colombian.”

What would have been thought of as egregious foreign incursions a hundred years ago is the message America now sends: Becoming an American is not akin to living in America or being a citizen of America. It is completely optional. If citizenship is only a piece of paper that protects you from deportation and allows you access to our material goods and services, then we have devalued it to the point of being worthless.

No hyphenated Americans

When thinking of small ethno-religious minorities in America like Hassidic Jews (180,000) or the Amish (395,000) who have historically kept mostly to themselves, this point may seem trite. But it is consequential when the sheer number of Hindus — and the potential for many, many more — is truly understood.

The last U.S. census posits that over 450,000 Hindus reside in Texas alone, doubled from a decade ago. In 2022, Indians composed the largest share of international homebuyers in Central Texas, according to an Austin Board of Realtors report. Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) has gone to India twice on diplomatic missions, touting mutually beneficial financial arrangements and “common values of family, faith, compassion, and hard work.”

Economics aside, these are supposed cultural values that the governor is identifying. While all the words Governor Abbott used are perhaps debatable, the biggest equivocation is “faith.” Quite obviously in contradiction to the governor, the historic faith of Texans, Christianity, is not held in common with the vast majority of Indians, who are Hindu.

Though I have no flat objection to the arrival of specific individuals from elsewhere in the world who wish to become unhyphenated Americans in order to better themselves and the United States, the construction of a foreign idol by a rapidly expanding minority population of newcomers underscores the loss of what used to be a requirement to live in America: assimilation into its culture, of which its civil religion — Christianity — is a cornerstone.

In a post for the Institute of Religion and Democracy’s blog “Juicy Ecumenism,” Mark Tooley rebuked me and others for expressing the desire for a shared American culture and dismay at literal pagan idols being raised in our homeland. Tooley asks what “Christian nationalists” (a label I’ve rejected as an inaccurate pejorative used by militant anti-Christians) think the government should do in this matter?

We can debate specific proposals, but my wish is for those in government and our nation’s institutions to be conscious of the part a homogenous culture plays in a stable, civilized society. The thought that “government might do something!” to curate or protect the dominant and preferred culture of its historic people is apparently beyond the comprehension of some. So to help fire the imagination, let us look at another people who came to America — and to Texas: the German people.

German assimilation

In his book, “Turning Germans into Texans: World War I and the Assimilation and Survival of German Culture in Texas, 1900-1930,” Matthew D. Tippens offers an instructive case study in assimilation and the formation of civic identity. He traces the journey of German immigrants who arrived in Texas in the mid-19th century, with their own language, customs, religion, and ethos.

Lutheran, Catholic, or freethinking, these settlers had formed a broad but still insular group, slow to integrate into the already established fabric of American and regional Texan life. Tippens’ narrative is sympathetic (as am I) to the losses of ethnic distinctiveness, but it provides a compelling portrait of how cultural assimilation, often aided by state policy, forged a cohesive national character.

A nation’s people and their governing bodies have both the right and the duty to demand that newcomers conform to the nation’s cultural and religious norms.

Germans in Texas preserved their linguistic and institutional separateness into the 20th century. They published German-language newspapers, conducted German-speaking services in German churches, maintained German schools that taught in the German tongue, and established community halls and festivals that reinforced their communal boundaries. Tippens documents this with care, noting how these practices kept the “German-Texan” identity distinct from the “Anglo-Texan” majority. But the arrival of World War I marked a decisive rupture.

Amid rising national insecurity over split loyalties among the public, the government of the state of Texas, and in some cases the federal government in Washington, moved swiftly to eliminate internal doubts. The German language was prohibited in public schools. Pastors were pressured to preach in English. Local officials even began treating private speech in German as potentially seditious. In short, the state, backed by public sentiment, enforced a program of assimilation with remarkable efficiency. Tippens, while critical of its harshness, acknowledges its efficacy: Within a generation, German cultural institutions in Texas collapsed.

But the German people did not. They endured — not as a separate ethnos, but as Americans. They married across ethnic lines, adapted to prevailing civic norms, and ceased to think of themselves as Germans first. In place of a hyphenated identity, they adopted a national one.

RELATED: ‘Paperwork Americans’ are not your countrymen

Blaze Media Illustration

This transformation of Germans into Americans may have been jarring while it was taking place, but it stands as a triumph of political formation and moral cohesion. It demonstrated that assimilation is not merely possible, but necessary, and that cultural inheritance need not be lost in the midst of it — it can be transformed and incorporated into a higher unity.

Tippens and some Americans of German descent still feel a sense of sadness over the loss of their distinct traditions and language inherited from the old country — but not a single one would prefer to go back to Europe or transform America into Germany. They are Americans. Not German-Americans. Just Americans. America is their home. And they love it. Though they may hold aspects of their peculiar subculture near and dear in food, songs, and stories, they have submitted that culture to this land’s particular culture, the American culture.

Is the history of this forced assimilation a tragedy? Perhaps, to a degree. But it was politically and morally justified. And those who care for national unity should view it as a welcome precedent.

A nation’s people and their governing bodies have both the right and the duty to demand that newcomers conform to the nation’s cultural and religious norms. Without a shared group identity, no nation can survive. The American nation, particularly in moments of strain, has always exercised this prerogative. It was this principled assertiveness that transformed a continent of European colonists and later immigrants into a single people.

In our present moment, we have reversed that logic. To insist that immigrants adopt our language, mores, and civic ideals is now seen not as patriotic, but as prejudicial. Not only do we not hold recent immigrants to this standard, but we’ve reversed course on historical minorities who were on their way to full assimilation by decrying “whiteness” (another word for American cultural norms) as something that should be scorned, rejected, and outright rebelled against — the invisible hand of bigotry and oppression we all must condemn without reservation. You could say, “It is not enough to not be an American; you must be anti-American.”

Without a unifying identity — what makes the “pluribus” an “unum” — pluralism will rapidly dissolve into tribalism. Americans less than a hundred years ago understood this. Why should we play dumb now?

Refusing to worship the ideal of another

The present-day case of Sugar Land, Texas, where a towering Hindu idol has been erected, should be unacceptable to Americans (especially Christians), and doubly so to those of Indian heritage who see this land as their own and this people as their people.

Unlike a German store or Lutheran school of the 19th century, which could be and were quickly subordinated to American norms, a monument to a god from a distinctly foreign civilization proclaims a parallel order that makes no pretense of assimilation. It is not a gesture of integration, but of presence — and an intention of permanence. This goes for any statue, temple, campus, mural, or other declarations of occupation.

What you elevate in the public eye is what you encourage the people to idealize in their hearts. Do we want immigrants to be looking backward at what they left? Or looking forward to what they now are privileged to inherit?

Tooley says this is simply the cost of pluralism. But pluralism is not an end in itself. It is the fruit of a Christian order that’s confident enough to tolerate minority views, because it assumes its own cultural hegemony. If that majority is disregarded and that confidence eroded, pluralism becomes its opposite: a Babel of conflicting gods and moralities, doomed to be abandoned and fall.

Without a shared group identity, no nation can survive.

No one is advocating deliberate government persecution of American citizens who observe certain religious tenets or have recent ancestors from foreign nations. The First Amendment guarantees religious liberty. But let’s be honest about our founders’ intentions: The purpose of that liberty was to protect dissenting Christian sects within a Christian moral framework — not to permit the importation of rival civilizational orders.

The crux of the issue is not that there exists private practice of Hinduism in some form, or even simply that an offensive statue to one of the Hindu deities stands against the Texas sky. The statue itself is a public manifestation of an under-examined reality: that unassimilated cultures exist in America.

Beyond that, it is a declaration of intent to remain unassimilated. For the idol to be excused and dismissed shows a resignation to this reality and a toleration for this intention — and it is this nihilism that is unprecedented in our history and fundamentally un-American, not my protestations or the protestations of anyone who would refuse to bow to it.

RELATED: New immigrants struggle to assimilate — and we all pay for it

Photo by Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

As Kevin D. Williamson recently noted, America is a Christian nation not by legal fiat but by cultural fact — just as it is an English-speaking nation without a statute requiring it. Christianity shaped our institutions, our conception of law and liberty, our ethos of charity, and our traditions of self-rule. The civic peace that Tooley praises is not sustained by diversity for the sake of itself, but by the cultural cohesion that Christian norms and people who valued that culture once ensured.

The deeper question, then, is not whether non-Christian Americans have a right to worship, or if immigrants can hold to elements of their historic culture, but whether Americans retain the right to shape their own nation’s future. Are we permitted to determine whether the foundation we build upon remains a distinctly Western, Christian civilization that assimilates outsiders into its mold? Or is becoming a polyglot holding pen for mutually exclusive, competing cultures the only acceptable answer?

This land is our land

Germans were made into Americans not because they were coerced by mobs. The government prevented such unrest by heeding the concerns of the citizenry. By understanding the requirements of cohesion and acting decisively to incentivize the transformation, America avoided the dangers of sectarian strife when international affairs came to the forefront.

Through intentional public policy and community expression of displeasure, clear expectations were conveyed that immigrants were required to become Americans. And the Germans, to their credit, responded. They quite rapidly entered the civic mainstream after years of delay.

If the United States of America is to endure, we must raise our expectations for citizenship, which is a precious thing.

What we face now is more intractable. The newest arrivals — not only Indians but many others as well — are coming in greater numbers than any prior groups and do not believe they need to change for America. To the contrary, America must change for them.

They establish communities that replicate the political and cultural norms of their homelands. They vote as blocs. They see the issues of their native countries as taking pre-eminence over their present states. And they raise monuments to foreign gods — not in private devotion, but in public affirmation of the lands, lives, and loyalties they were supposed to have left behind.

This is not assimilation. It is colonization. And it is too often encouraged by Americans who have lost the sense of what this country is and ought to be. In an insipid diatribe railing against Vance and the pro-American tone of the government, a blogger for the Los Angeles Times wrote, “I learned in high school that people come here not because of how Americans live, but because they have the freedom to live however they want.” He speaks truthfully, as this lie is taught in our education system and preached by formerly elite institutions. The message is loud and clear: Come to America, live in America — but do not become an American.

If a distinctly American identity undergirded by a Christian civilization is no longer asserted, what shall replace it? A thousand shrines? A hundred languages? No common law, no common culture, no shared moral grammar?

Is this what you want for America? Perhaps you do, or you do not care. But for those of us who love it, we want an America that holds to its roots and maintains our constitutional order and our civilization. To do so, we must not shy away from reasserting a distinctly American identity and setting the conditions for acceptance into its culture, not just our borders.

Regaining the ‘Leitkultur’

Pluralism rests on the center trunk of a dominant culture, a Leitkultur, not the absence of one. Subcultures can be preserved when there is a monoculture that all can live in accordance with.

We must find again the will to expect — not merely invite — assimilation from any and all who wish to call this land their home. And we must recognize that the choice before us is not a specter of the “Christian nationalism” of secularist smear campaigns versus perfect tolerance, but a distinctly American nation built on a Christian civilization versus fractious, tribal chaos.

If the United States of America is to endure as one indivisible nation under God, we must take these signs seriously and raise our expectations for citizenship, which is a precious thing. It should not be portrayed as just a piece of paper awarded for correctly answering multiple-choice questions on a test and meeting some material preconditions. It must resolve the question of loyalty. It must involve a pledge of allegiance to the republic. For it is a sacred oath that symbolizes the bond with your fellow citizens.

It is as a baptism, where the old man and his old loyalties to his old nation and its old laws, his old people, and their old gods die with him. But a new, better man rises. One who gives loyalty to a better nation, with better laws, a better people, and a better God.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Hanuman statue, Assimilation, Immigration, Citizenship, Texas, Naturalization, Duty, English, Hindu, Sugar land, Religion, Culture, Nationalism 

Atheists believe the universe is made up of only physical material. Souls, spirits, divinity, the afterlife — it’s all fiction.

But how do they reckon with phenomena — those hair-raising moments that shatter physics and turn our brains inside out? How do they make sense of miracles, like the terminal cancer patient who’s healed after prayer or the clinically dead person who wakes up with knowledge impossible for him to have?

The hardened skeptics will clutch their materialist beliefs even tighter, insisting there must be some scientific explanation. The more curious ones who allow themselves to venture down mystical rabbit holes, however, often find themselves in the position where disavowing the supernatural takes more effort than acknowledging its existence.

That was Lee Strobel — famous Christian apologist and author of the beloved book “The Case for Christ.” He set out to debunk Christianity, but his rigorous investigation into miracles and the veracity of biblical claims shattered his atheist beliefs and led him to the feet of Jesus.

In this fascinating interview with Glenn Beck, Lee shares several documented cases of miracles and wild stories that will challenge even the most committed atheist.

Proof of the soul

“There are 900 scholarly articles published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals over the last 40 years on the topic of near-death experiences. These are cases where a person is clinically dead — generally, no brain waves, no respiration, no heartbeat. Some of them have been on the way to the morgue. … But then they’re revived,” Lee says.

“And when they come back, they say, ‘I was conscious the whole time. I was watching them try to resuscitate my body in the hospital.”’

Glenn and Lee revisit the spine-chilling story of a Hispanic woman named Maria, who suffered a severe heart attack in the 1970s and was resuscitated at a hospital in Seattle. When she regained consciousness, Maria reported having an out-of-body experience, claiming her spirit floated around the emergency room while she was being operated on.

Skeptics dismissed her initially, but then Maria told them there was a sticker on the top of the ceiling fan blade in her hospital room — a detail invisible from the ground. Hospital staff brought in a ladder and beheld the sticker exactly as Maria had described it.

Lee shares another story of a young girl who drowned in a YMCA swimming pool.

“[The doctors] just were keeping her body basically alive until they figured out what to do,” he says.

But three days later, she was miraculously revived. She told hospital staff that she was “conscious the whole time,” Lee recounts. But they scoffed at the girl until she began sharing confirmed details about what her parents were doing at home while she was clinically dead in the hospital.

The girl knew that her mother made chicken and rice for dinner; she knew what specific clothes her family was wearing and that her little brother had played with his G.I. Joe toys while alone in his room — “things she could not have known unless her body, unless her spirit really did follow them home.”

Documented miracles

In his recent book “Seeing the Supernatural,” Lee shares the story of a woman who was blind from birth due to an incurable condition.

“She married a pastor. And one night they’re getting ready to go to bed, and he comes over. … He puts his hand on her shoulder, and he begins to cry and begins to pray, and he says, ‘God, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can do it, and I pray you do it tonight.’ And with that, she opened her eyes with perfect eyesight,” Lee says, adding that her vision was perfect for the remainder of her life.

“How do you explain that?” he asks.

He then shares another “well-documented case” of a woman named Doris, who had a deathbed vision.

“She sees the heavens open up, and she sees angelic beings, and she sees her father, who had died a couple years earlier. … And then she gets this puzzled look on her face, and she said, ‘Wait a minute. What’s Vita doing there?”’ Lee recounts.

Vita was Doris’ sister, who had died a couple of weeks earlier. However, Doris’ family hadn’t told her the news for fear that it would worsen her waning condition.

Doris is one of many documented cases of people who “see something in the realm to come that they could not have known about.”

Radical redemption

Evel Knievel — the American daredevil and stunt performer famous for his death-defying motorcycle jumps in the 1960s and 1970s — radically encountered God at the very end of his life.

“He was a drunk. He was a womanizer and once beat up a business associate with a baseball bat and went to jail for assault,” Lee says, retelling the icon’s incredible conversion story.

Just a few months before his death, Knievel was “on the beach in Florida, and God spoke to him and said, ‘Robert … I’ve saved you more times than you’ll ever know. Now, you need to come to me through my son, Jesus.”’

Freaked out by this profound spiritual encounter, Knievel called Frank Gifford, a renowned sportscaster and Christian, to ask about Jesus and Christianity. Gifford pointed him to Lee’s famous book “The Case for Christ,” and he came to faith in Jesus after reading it.

Knievel had a “180-degree change — more than anybody I’d ever seen in my life,” Lee says, noting that he and Knievel became friends as a result.

He was baptized in California’s Crystal Cathedral, and after he gave his powerful testimony, roughly 700 people spontaneously came forward to be baptized during the same service.

Angelic and demonic encounters

Well-known psychiatrist Dr. Richard Gallagher, who’s also a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College and a psychoanalyst on the faculty of Columbia University, has a hair-raising story about his first demon encounter that set him on a 25-year journey of studying the demonic.

He and his wife had two cats, who had never had an issue getting along with one another. One night, however, they randomly began to savagely attack each other, shocking Gallagher and his wife, who had to put the cats in separate rooms to stop the fighting.

The very next morning, Dr. Gallagher had an appointment to psychiatrically examine a woman named Julia, who claimed to be the high priestess of a satanic cult.

“She looks up at him, and she sneers, and she says, ‘How’d you like those cats last night?’” Lee says.

Later that day, Dr. Gallagher was speaking to a Catholic priest about Julia on the phone, and during their call, a “satanic voice” interrupted and said, “You let her go. She’s ours.”

After years of studying the demonic, Dr. Gallagher has accumulated many terrifying stories of demon possession. He’s documented a case where “a petite woman … picked up a 217-pound Lutheran deacon and threw him across a room” and a case where “eight eyewitnesses saw a demon-possessed person levitate off a bed for half an hour.”

But there are just as many stories of angelic encounters too. One, which was documented in a doctoral dissertation, tells the story of a young girl in the hospital asking her mother if she could see the angels. “They’re so beautiful. Listen to their singing,” she told her mother, who was skeptical but played along.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I see them. Look at their big wings,” she told her daughter, who confusedly responded, “Oh Mommy, you don’t have to lie. They don’t have big wings.”

“She went on to describe these angels in great detail. You would think if this was just something coming from the subconscious mind of a little kid, they would imagine what an angel would look like to them from a cartoon,” Lee says, but “that’s not what they see.”

To hear more documented cases of miraculous occurrences, as well as Glenn and Lee’s personal experiences with the supernatural, watch the interview above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck podcast, Glenn beck, Lee strobel, Case for christ, Atheism, Soul, Spirit, Angel, Demon, Angels and demons, Demonic encounter, Demon possession, Near death experiences, Blazetv, Blaze media, Afterlife, Christianity, Heaven, Hell, Miracles 

Every August, California’s Monterey Peninsula becomes the heartbeat of the automotive world. For one week, collectors, manufacturers, historians, and enthusiasts gather to celebrate the past, present, and future of the automobile.

Monterey Car Week isn’t just another car show — it’s the most prestigious stage in the automotive calendar, capped by the legendary Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

What makes the story remarkable is that Lauren raced this Cobra while pregnant with Paul Fix III. Few cars carry such a direct family connection to both racing and legacy.

It’s an event where everything matters: the way cars are presented, the records set at the auctions, the new models unveiled by global brands, and even the charitable contributions that flow back into the local community.

But beyond the headlines and the glamour, this year carried a special personal moment. We went to Monterey Car Week to see one car — a Shelby Cobra with a family story unlike any other.

Something for everyone

The week is structured around multiple events that together define the global automotive scene.

Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance: The crown jewel, where the rarest and most historically significant automobiles in the world are judged with meticulous detail.Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion: Historic racing at Laguna Seca, where legendary cars aren’t just displayed — they compete at speed.Exotics on Broadway: A massive public showcase of modern supercars that turns the streets into rolling sculpture galleries.Motorlux: The kickoff celebration at the Monterey Jet Center, blending elite hospitality with a major collector car auction.

Each of these events appeals to a different audience, but together they define what Monterey Car Week has become: part automotive history lesson, part marketplace, and part celebration of innovation. This is the world’s largest car week.

Revving up with Motorlux

Motorlux is the kind of event that sets the tone for the week. Hosted at the Monterey Jet Center, it combines high-stakes auctions with an immersive cultural experience.

The curated displays this year were divided into four themes:

200 MPH Club – From the Ferrari F40 to the new Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale.From Stuttgart with Love – A Porsche showcase anchored by the unique Penske 963 RSP prototype.America’s Wild Horse – Sixty years of the Mustang, ranging from early fastbacks to the all-new 2025 Mustang GTD.The Mercedes Maestro – A tribute to designer Bruno Sacco, with cars like the iconic 190E 2.3-16.

But Motorlux is also about hospitality. Guests were treated to culinary offerings from Michelin-starred chefs, regional wine houses, and luxury spirit tastings. It’s as much about lifestyle as it is about horsepower, a signal of how broad the appeal of Monterey Car Week has become.

It also hosts the Broad Arrow Auctions, which features some of the finest assemblies of collector cars across virtually every niche of collecting within the grounds of the Monterey Jet Center kicking off Monterey Car Week in grand style.

New kids in town

Carmakers have realized that Monterey offers a unique mix: prestige, media attention, and a passionate audience. So what better place to debut some of their biggest new models?

Acura RSX: Revived as an electric crossover coupe, a departure from the affordable sports coupe that earned a loyal following decades ago.Rolls-Royce Phantom Centenary: All eight generations of the Phantom displayed together for the first time, marking 100 years of the model.Mercedes-Benz “Stargaze Theatre”: The U.S. premiere of the Concept AMG GT XX, Vision V luxury limousine concept, and a special-edition Maybach.BMW Heritage Debuts: The 2026 BMW 8-Series M Heritage edition (limited to 500 units) and the 2026 M2CS, a compact performance car boasting 523 horsepower.

These debuts highlight how Monterey has become as critical to automakers as traditional international auto shows.

Auctions: Ferrari races ahead

The auctions are more than just sales — they are a live barometer of the collector car market. In 2025, combined totals from all auction houses reached $414.2 million by Saturday, with an average sale price over $515,000 per car.

Once again, Ferrari dominated. The top sale was a 2025 Ferrari Daytona SP3 Coupe charity lot that sold for $26 million through RM Sotheby’s. A 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Competizione brought in over $25 million at Gooding Christie’s. Ferrari claimed eight of the top 10 sales across all auctions.

Highlights by auction house

Mecum: $45 million overall; top sale was a 1969 Lamborghini Miura P400 S Coupe at $1.98 million.Broad Arrow: $49.8 million, highlighted by a 2005 Maserati MC12 Spyder at $5.2 million.Bonhams: $44.2 million; standout was a 2020 Bugatti Divo Coupe at $8.55 million.RM Sotheby’s: Nearly $111 million in sales, led by the 2025 Ferrari Daytona SP3 Coupe charity lot at $26 million, a 1993 Ferrari F40 LM GTC Coupe at $11 million, and a 1995 Ferrari F50 at $9.2 million.Gooding Christie’s: $163.8 million, with multiple world records, including the $25 million Ferrari California Spider Competizione.

These results confirm two things: Ferraris remain the most desirable investment cars, and modern supercars are beginning to command nearly the same attention as classics.

Overall top 10 auction sales (through Saturday)

2025 Ferrari Daytona SP3 Coupe – $26,000,000
(RM Sotheby’s, charity lot)1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Competizione Alloy Spider – $25,305,000
(Gooding Christie’s)1993 Ferrari F40 LM GTC Coupe – $11,005,000
(RM Sotheby’s)1995 Ferrari F50 Coupe – $9,245,000
(RM Sotheby’s)2020 Bugatti Divo Coupe – $8,557,500
(Bonhams)1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Competizione – $8,145,000
(Gooding Christie’s)1957 Ferrari 250 California Spider – $7,265,000
(Gooding Christie’s)2017 Ferrari LaFerrari Aperta Spider – $6,715,000
(RM Sotheby’s)1935 Mercedes-Benz 500K Sindelfingen Special Roadster – $5,340,000
(RM Sotheby’s)2015 Ferrari LaFerrari Coupe – $5,230,000
(RM Sotheby’s)

Torpedo takes Pebble Beach

The 74th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance delivered its trademark blend of elegance and precision. The Best of Show went to a 1924 Hispano-Suiza H6C Nieuport-Astra Torpedo, a car that represents the artistry of early coach-built automobiles.

This year’s field included 229 cars, with 55 international entries from 22 countries. I had the honor of judging the 427 Cobra class, a category that resonates deeply with me both professionally and personally.

Yet, Pebble Beach isn’t only about recognition. It raised more than $4 million this year for nearly 100 nonprofits focused on youth education, directly benefiting over 10,000 children in Monterey County.

RELATED: 9 reasons we (still) love America — and you should too

GraphicaArtis/Getty Images

The one car that brought us back

For all the prestige of Pebble Beach, the spectacle of the auctions, and the global debuts, there was one car that drew us to Monterey more than any other: the Shelby Cobra CSX2051.

This particular Cobra has a history intertwined with our own. It was displayed at SAAC-18 at Watkins Glen in July 1993 and then raced by Lauren Fix at the Lime Rock Fall Vintage Festival in 1993. That same year, the car earned an SVRA Historic Medallion, recognizing its authenticity and period correctness.

What makes the story remarkable is that Lauren raced this Cobra while pregnant with Paul Fix III. Few cars carry such a direct family connection to both racing and legacy.

After 32 years, we were reunited with CSX2051 at Pebble Beach. It wasn’t just a reunion with a historic Shelby — it was a reunion with a moment in our own lives, one that made history and even found its way into the rule books.

Monterey Car Week 2025 once again proved why it is the pinnacle of the automotive world. It’s where collectors measure markets, automakers reveal the future, and enthusiasts celebrate the past.

For most attendees, the highlights were the record-setting Ferraris, the global debuts, or the Best of Show Hispano-Suiza. But for us, it was something more personal — the return of the Shelby Cobra CSX2051, a car that connected past and present in a way no auction result ever could.

It was a reminder that at the heart of Monterey Car Week are not just machines, but the stories they carry and the people they connect.

For the full story behind this remarkable Cobra and how it became part of racing history, listen to our latest podcast where we share the details firsthand.

​Monterey car show, Shelby, Ferrari, Classic cars, Align cars 

Cooler cars at better prices? America’s new trade deal with the EU could mean just that.

Traditionally, manufacturers have had to produce two different versions of the same vehicle to meet U.S. and European requirements. Even small differences in pedestrian safety regulations, emissions rules, or lighting standards have required costly redesigns, duplicate testing, and extensive certification processes. These expenses are ultimately passed down to consumers.

Billions of dollars in development, certification, and testing costs could be avoided, allowing automakers to focus on innovation, quality, and design.

But in July 2025, the United States and the European Union unveiled a landmark trade framework that could reshape how vehicles are manufactured, certified, and sold on both continents.

Meeting halfway

At the heart of the agreement is mutual recognition of vehicle safety and emissions standards, a policy shift that promises to simplify cross-Atlantic auto sales and significantly cut costs for manufacturers.

For drivers and car enthusiasts, the deal has the potential to expand choices and lower prices for the EU and the U.S. Yet behind the exciting headlines lie complex questions about market dynamics, regulatory oversight, and the long-term implications for American automakers.

By aligning standards, the agreement allows a vehicle certified in Europe to be sold in the U.S. without additional modification, and vice versa. The economic potential of this alignment is substantial, offering billions in savings across the auto industry.

Tariff relief

Here’s why this could be a game changer. Tariffs were a significant factor in the negotiation with the EU. The U.S. had previously threatened duties of up to 30% on European vehicles, which could have dramatically increased costs for consumers and disrupted supply chains.

The framework caps tariffs at 15%, contingent upon reciprocal reductions on U.S. exports. In addition, Europe has agreed to expand energy imports from the United States, including LNG and oil, while committing to purchase U.S.-made AI chips and other strategic products. These provisions illustrate that the deal is as much about geopolitical and industrial strategy as it is about cars.

RELATED: Tariffs vs. free trade: Which is BETTER for the American auto industry?

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Monster trucks in Paris?

Consumers could see tangible benefits quickly. European models, which were previously unavailable or expensive due to regulatory barriers, could enter U.S. showrooms at more competitive prices.

Conversely, American trucks and SUVs could gain greater access to European markets, potentially increasing competition and variety. Automakers are poised to save significant amounts on development and testing costs, which could also be passed on to buyers.

Different safety standards have been a major issue for decades. European critics initially raised concerns that this “mutual recognition” could end up lowering European safety standards, which tend to be stricter. However, a joint U.S.-EU statement pledges that the agreement requires the alignment of standards rather than a lowering of them — and that both parties “intend to accept and provide mutual recognition to each other’s standards.”

Cars sold in Europe must meet U.S. safety rules, and vehicles sold in the U.S. must comply with EU requirements. In practice, this likely means that more advanced safety technologies, such as automated emergency braking, intelligent speed assistance, laser headlights, and pedestrian detection systems, could become more widely available in the U.S.

Where there’s smog

Environmental standards are another issue to be sorted out. Europe has long pursued stricter emissions regulations, including the Euro 7 standards targeting exhaust emissions and particulate matter from brakes and tires.

The U.S. enforces its own rigorous emissions frameworks, though they differ from European rules in focus and measurement. Mutual recognition does not lower environmental standards. This needs to be sorted out. Automakers will need to maintain compliance with both U.S. and EU protocols, which could encourage innovation in cleaner technologies and more efficient designs.

This is concerning to me because it could increase costs for all vehicles.

Unintended consequences

Despite these assurances, the deal is not without potential challenges. American automakers must remain competitive while meeting both sets of regulations, and smaller manufacturers could struggle to adapt to a more integrated market.

Consumers could also see unintended consequences if automakers prioritize efficiency and cost savings over other vehicle features or options. The political landscape adds another layer of complexity, as both regions must maintain regulatory cooperation while navigating domestic pressures. This could potentially end the deal if they can’t come to an agreement.

From an economic perspective, the deal offers a rare opportunity to reduce redundancy in the global automotive market. Billions of dollars in development, certification, and testing costs could be avoided, allowing automakers to focus on innovation, quality, and design.

A win for consumers

For consumers, this means more models to choose from, potentially lower prices, and access to vehicles equipped with the latest safety and emissions technologies. The competitive environment may shift as European manufacturers expand into U.S. markets and American companies seek to gain market share in Europe.

The historical context is important. Past trade initiatives, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, often stalled over regulatory disputes. This agreement, by contrast, represents a concrete framework with enforceable mutual recognition of standards, making it a landmark step in global automotive trade. Industry observers and consumer advocates will likely scrutinize compliance, safety, and environmental outcomes.

More than cars

Ultimately, this deal is about far more than cars. It is a test case for whether two major economic powers can harmonize regulations in a way that benefits manufacturers, consumers, and the broader economy without compromising safety, environmental integrity, or market sovereignty.

Drivers may enjoy greater freedom and lower prices at the dealership, but the long-term implications for regulatory alignment, labor markets, and competitive dynamics remain significant.

As this agreement moves from framework to full implementation, the stakes for automakers, policymakers, and consumers are high. Its success will be measured not just in economic efficiency but in the ability to maintain rigorous standards for safety and emissions while navigating a more integrated transatlantic market.

For Americans and Europeans alike, the coming years will reveal whether this deal truly delivers on its promise of choice, affordability, and innovation — or whether it introduces unforeseen challenges in one of the world’s most critical industries.

​Align cars, Eu 

Chances are that you’ve disagreed at least once with a family member, friend, or co-worker about what counts as “true” or “real” art.

This usually plays out as a right vs. left divide. People on the right are often suspicious of art that pushes too far beyond familiar social boundaries. The left, on the other hand, embraces innovation and art that breaks with what’s traditionally accepted. In reality, these attitudes share the same nontraditional view of art. The tension has been unfolding for the last 500 years. It’s the story of modern art, born from a fundamentally disordered relationship to art itself.

A modern art museum looks less like a celebration of art and more like a graveyard.

Imagine you and a friend are on a trip, and you decide to visit the Guggenheim art museum. There, you both see “Comedian,” a piece by artist Maurizio Cattelan that sold for $6 million at auction. Before you is a banana duct-taped to a wall — that’s it.

Unable to suspend disbelief, you say, “How is that art?”

Your friend replies, “Art is subjective. Who are you to say this isn’t art?”

Simply all you can say is, “I cannot see beauty or skill in this.”

So your friend rejoins you in a vacuous, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But you wouldn’t understand. Anyway, this is a commentary. It’s about the concept of the artwork.”

Critics beat the “Comedian” to death not because of its unique absurdity but because of its recency. The Dadaist art movement has pulled stunts like this one for more than 100 years. It reminds me of the infamous “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp: a urinal with a signature. It was exhibited 108 years ago.

But how did we get here?

To understand how we arrived at this predicament in Western art, we must examine our relationship to it, how we receive art, how we engage with it, and its history.

A new understanding

The modern period marks a departure from the pre-modern world (i.e., year 1500 A.D.). It’s a turning point in history unlike any before. Everything changed, including the ways in which people perceive reality. Gone are the days of enchantment. Now we have rationality. A Faustian bargain was made.

“What is art?”

When someone asks that question, what immediately comes to mind? Most people think of painting, drawing, sculptures — things that belong in a museum. But this modern way of thinking about art is novel, foreign to people in the pre-modern world. Calling that era “pre-modern” is misleading because it makes up the vast majority of human history. The real anomaly is the modern period.

Seen from this perspective, a modern art museum looks less like a celebration of art and more like a graveyard.

For the ancient and medieval person, art was integrated into life itself — not separated from it. Art was less a noun than a verb, something one did. People didn’t create art; they “art-ed” or were “art-ing.” Art was a process of participation. Put simply: There was no distinction between “art” and “craft” as we think of it today.

Modern people haven’t abandoned this concept entirely, but it no longer sits at the forefront of how we think about art. It survives in words like “artisan,” referring to bakers, tailors, and other craftsmen. It lingers in expressions like “the art of watchmaking” or “the art of conversation.” Even commercial marketing borrows it. Products marketed as “artisan” purport to distinguish craftsmanship from mass-produced commodities.

In the pre-modern world, everyday life was shaped by art. Daily clothes, a dining room table, the family home, the local church — from the lowliest object to the most sacred — all were made with care and beauty. On one level, this is easy to explain: Everything was handmade, and because possessions were less numerous, people valued and cared for them, passing them down through generations.

RELATED: How modern art became a freak show — and why only God can fix it

skynesher/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Naturally, if you own something that long, you want it to be beautiful.

But more fundamentally, all of these objects fit into the same pattern that we call “art”: the gathering and ordering of particular items in a way that speaks to human perception. A finely crafted dining table binds a family together more than a folding card table ever could. The liturgical cup used for the Eucharist is fashioned from precious metals and decorated with deliberate symbols, while the wine glasses at the family table, though well made, are more austere.

Each object bears an artfulness appropriate to its purpose, something obvious to the pre-modern mind.

This older way of living with art is not completely lost on us today. It still exists, though less prominently and increasingly in decline. Yet one demotion of art is almost extinct in the modern world, surviving only in tight-knit communities, ethnic traditions, and older generations. It may not immediately register as “art” at first glance, but folk dances, dinner parties, storytelling, and other forms of social ritual are actually higher forms of art than material objects. They are art as shared life.

Material art matters, too, but it mainly points us toward the deeper loss.

A transformative transition

One simple historical fact makes the difference clear: Pre-modern artists didn’t sign their work.

The transition to modernity was, as in so many areas of life, a pact with the devil. Technical mastery was gained, but the spiritual core was left void. The Enlightenment promised reason, science, and progress, so it seemed that humanity could finally cast off the shadow of the past and secure its future. But the human condition didn’t change.

What convenience gave with one hand, it robbed from the soul with the other.

Industrialization, mass production, plastics, and now the digital age each dealt successive blows to our once-integrated relationship with art. In the pre-modern world, art was an integrated part of life. Modernity replaced this with self-consciousness. Art became not a relationship but a category. Crafts were dissected under the microscope of science, refined to new levels of technical brilliance. The results were often dazzling: new techniques, perspectives, and ways of depicting the world.

But the cost was steep.

As long as people exist, art will exist. But the toothpaste is out of the tube. There is no going back.

This story unfolds in art history. By the late medieval era, traditional iconography, steeped in centuries of sacred meaning, was being reshaped by artists like Duccio and Giotto. The Renaissance largely abandoned these forms, with titans like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci leading the way. By the 1570s, El Greco was embedding sexually transgressive and even blasphemous subtleties into his work.

This trajectory continued, sometimes slowly and other times all at once. But the pattern was clear: identity fragmented, transcendence severed, innovation pursued for its own sake. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the seeds had fully flowered. Soviet brutalism imposed tyranny through pattern and abstraction, while Dadaism dissolved meaning altogether until art and non-art were indistinguishable.

The result? Today, we argue with friends about whether a banana duct-taped to a wall is “art.” Art has become commentary on commentary, detached from human experience, and reduced to little more than propaganda.

Today, modern art is defined by its fixation on individual idiosyncrasies. At its extreme, it becomes nothing more than the subjective whims of the isolated self disconnected from reality.

What can be done?

Does this mean that culture and beauty itself have reached their end? Thankfully not.

As long as people exist, art will exist. But the toothpaste is out of the tube. There is no going back. We cannot rewind the clock to some imagined golden age. That sentiment is not only impractical, but it’s impossible.

We are where we find ourselves today because of the past, so such a return would lead us back to today. The path forward, then, must connect the present to the past, the new and the old, weaving together the modern and the pre-modern.

The case of Tarkovsky

One bridge across the divide is found in the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors and screenwriters of all time.

Unbeknownst to him, his life was a crossroads: Raised in the Soviet Union under militant atheism and the revolutionary spirit of modernism, yet he was an Orthodox Christian, steeped in the traditions of the pre-modern world. His father was a poet, and his mother was a lover of literature. Tarkovsky was perfectly positioned to bring the old and new into dialogue.

His art is a call to repentance, an offering and pleasing aroma to the Lord.

Tarkovsky saw modernity clearly: “Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored.”

The heart of Tarkovsky’s vision was simple: art as prayer. He admitted that Dostoevsky — another Russian and Orthodox Christian who wrestled with the sacred and the existential — was the greatest artist. Tarkovsky wore this influence on his sleeve. His films probe life, death, suffering, and the search for the miraculous and meaning. He once wrote, “The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

In his films, Tarkovsky magnifies the specific experiences of the individual, yet he always frames them in transcendence. He gathers the unique and lifts it upward. But he does not erase human subjectivity. Rather, he redeems it.

As he put it:

When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the “dirt” of the world. On the contrary! The artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution … the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.

In this way, Tarkovsky reverses modernity’s desecrations and successfully connects the modern and pre-modern. He uses the individual to orient us toward God, a spiritual transcendence of sorts. Where the modern world has made the holy profane, Tarkovsky, in a Christ-like reversal, makes the profane holy.

His art is a call to repentance, an offering and pleasing aroma to the Lord.

“The artist is always a servant and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice,” he once said.

The way ahead

What does this mean for us? It means embodying art in our daily lives.

You don’t need to be a professional artist. Do things deliberately and with care. A mother preparing a meal gathers the fruit of local soil into the higher good of uniting her family. A father telling a bedtime story practices one of the most ancient and enduring arts.

But the key is purpose. When art is done for its own sake — or worse, for the sake of self — it collapses and is degraded. A meal made not to bind the family but only to satisfy hunger soon degenerates into the TV dinner. A story rushed through without care decays into mass-produced entertainment stripped of substance.

If this is true of everyday arts, how much more of the fine arts? A painter who works only from private interiority — detached from a holy purpose — quickly drifts into solipsism, creating images disconnected from reality. An iconographer, by contrast, paints for veneration, anchoring a community’s worship in something beyond themselves. One isolates; the other binds together. One closes in on the self; the other points beyond it.

Art created for no other purpose than for the self is disconnected from all and devoid of any real power or meaning.

There are signs of hope. Traditional religious communities, specifically liturgical Christian traditions (like the Orthodox Church), maintain and produce work of depth and beauty: the ritualistic, iconography, music, homiletics, and so on — all built around a sincere Christian framework. The Orthodox Arts Journal showcases this revival. And in addition to liturgical arts, it has begun integrating beauty into popular art forms like graphic novels, fairy tales, literature, and clothing.

Revival, however, can’t remain institutional. The hard work of beauty must be done in your own home and life.

Modern technology allows anyone to become an artist in any field. But the burden of self-awareness requires you to carve out time and put in real effort. And it’s not enough to create beauty yourself. You must also reject the cheap slop offered to you and choose real craftsmanship.

The road is narrow and hard. But if you want to be delivered from the hell of modern art, go make a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord.

​Andrei tarkovsky, Art, Beauty, Comedian, Duct-taped banana, God, Christianity, Christian, Prayer, Worship, Faith 

On January 28, 2017, in the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s first travel ban, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent out a tweet that would reverberate far beyond social media:

To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”

Migrants and asylum-seekers in the United States took Trudeau at his word, and within weeks, illegal crossings over the Quebec-New York border surged, centered on a rural stretch known as Roxham Road.

The majority of the border-crossers are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian ‘refugees.’

The surge was driven by a quirk in the Safe Third Country Agreement, a treaty between Canada and the U.S. dating back to 2004. Under the deal, asylum-seekers are supposed to file their claims in the first safe country they arrive in.

But the STCA applied only at official checkpoints. Those who walked across back roads like Roxham were exempt — and once on Canadian soil, they were entitled to have their cases heard. This loophole transformed Roxham into the busiest irregular crossing in the country.

Invite revoked

What began as symbolic anti-Trump signaling had become a full-blown crisis by the time Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Quebec’s shelters and reception centers filled beyond capacity, municipalities complained of mounting costs, and national polls showed Canadians increasingly skeptical of how the border was being managed.

The issue also spilled across the border. Even as Biden faced criticism for presiding over border chaos in Texas and Arizona, his administration quietly pressed Ottawa to rein in irregular migration to the north. In March 2023, Trudeau and Biden announced an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement that closed the Roxham Road loophole, giving Canadian officials authority to turn back asylum-seekers anywhere along the border if caught within 14 days of entry.

Smuggle session

The irony was hard to miss: Washington was leaning on Canada to tighten a rural crossing in Quebec at the very moment its own southern border remained mired in crisis. Trudeau’s lofty promise of welcome had ended, six years later, in a deal to keep more people out.

But Roxham Road is very much open today — thanks to organized crime groups making a tidy profit from smuggling people across the border.

A recent investigation by Rebel News confirmed reports of rampant human trafficking after Churubusco, New York, resident Jerry Miller contacted the conservative news outlet about an escalation in activity at the border.

According to Miller, the vast majority of those being surreptitiously moved across the border are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian “refugees.”

Haitians head north

Why are they heading north?

Their motivation to come to Canada could certainly be linked to Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 500,000 Haitians living in the U.S. A Rebel News reporter found Haitian ID cards at the scene, along with discarded backpacks, clothes, and food.

In one night, a Rebel News reporter using an infrared camera caught 23 people crossing.

Hunter Robare, who lives on the same street as Miller, described the situation. “It’s every day.”

“It can be pretty nerve-racking,” Robare added. “Just being at home and you have a group of people walking down the road; you don’t know their intentions.”

RELATED: Blaze News investigates: Springfield sees lives saved, Haitian exodus thanks to Trump’s deportation threats

Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Legal increase

Of course, this is just illegal immigration. Under Trudeau and continuing under Prime Minister Mark Carney, legal immigration increased at rates not seen in over a century.

The combination of chronic illegal immigration and lax legal immigration is producing a potential economic catastrophe for Canada, prompting Alberta Immigration Minister Joseph Schow to demand that the federal government accurately assess the illegal immigrant population.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We believe there’s 500,000 illegal immigrants currently spread across Canada, and these individuals are benefiting from taxpayer-funded services,” said Schow.

Meanwhile, more than eight years after Trudeau’s fateful invitation, the human traffickers at Roxham Road continue to thrive.

​Justin trudeau, Mark carney, Donald trump, Illegal immigration, Legal immigration, Roxham road, Quebec, Border, Joe biden, Culture, Canada, Letter from canada 

For some, politics is about power. For others, it’s about service. But for President Donald Trump, recent words and actions suggest it is about something more — a higher calling.

In a recent interview, Vice President JD Vance lightheartedly said the priest who baptized him said he might “put in a word with the big guy” if President Donald Trump could broker peace in Ukraine. President Trump, speaking on Fox News, expressed his own aspirations, saying he “wants to try to get to heaven.”

President Trump is advancing what many see as God’s work: fostering global peace, domestic security, and economic opportunity.

As a Christian, I know that faith in Jesus Christ as Lord is what ultimately secures our eternity, not earthly deeds. Yet, as an American, I’m grateful for leaders like President Trump, whose actions reflect a commitment to grace, truth, and courage — values that align with what I believe God calls us to embody in public service.

President Trump’s pursuit of peace exemplifies this grace in action.

His round-the-clock efforts to end the bloodshed in Ukraine have brought key players to the table, including meetings with Presidents Zelenskyy and Putin, paving the way for security guarantees without deploying U.S. troops. He has backed plans for lasting resolutions, emphasizing European involvement to ease the burden on American taxpayers. He has also secured peace frameworks between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and many more.

Many of the nations with which President Trump has worked have in fact nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is well deserved. Between his two terms, Trump stands as the only 21st-century president to secure multiple peace deals while avoiding any new wars.

This America First foreign policy echoes the gracious resolve of Ronald Reagan, prioritizing diplomacy over endless conflict and protecting our troops.

Restoring truth to our institutions has been another hallmark of the president’s leadership. By dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates in federal agencies and protecting religious and economic freedoms, he has countered the leftist corporate bullies and ideologues who once wielded power to silence dissent.

No longer can saying the “wrong” thing — whether rooted in politics or faith — cost Americans their livelihoods through de-banking or cancellation.

America thrives on equality of opportunity, not forced equity; on economic freedom, not government overreach. President Trump understands that dwelling on past scars divides us, while celebrating our shared values unites the nation. Our schools, culture, and even our museums should reflect this forward-looking spirit.

RELATED: The DC nobody talks about — and Trump finally did

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Organizations like the State Financial Officers Foundation, of which I am honored to lead, have been instrumental allies. Comprised of free market-supporting state treasurers, auditors, and comptrollers from across the United States, SFOF fights against environmental, social, and governance criteria, DEI policies, and discriminatory de-banking that stifle innovation and fairness. These state financial officers have helped shape and advance policies that support the president’s agenda, promoting economic freedom and fiscal responsibility to improve lives for all Americans.

In short, we stand with the president because his vision fosters prosperity and American exceptionalism.

President Trump’s courage shines brightest in his dedication to American safety and workers. By taking decisive action in Washington, D.C. — a majority-black city plagued by crime — he has overseen a significant drop in violent incidents, with rates falling by about 35% since his administration’s interventions.

His crackdown on illegal immigration has slashed border crossings by over 90%, reaching historic lows not seen in decades. Deportations have surged past 300,000, prioritizing public safety and rule of law.

Economically, Trump’s policies have attracted trillions in pledged investments from foreign allies, while tariffs have generated over $100 billion in revenue since April alone. These efforts have created hundreds of thousands of jobs, from manufacturing to construction, putting American workers first in a way no president in my lifetime ever had.

President Trump is advancing what many see as God’s work: fostering global peace, domestic security, and economic opportunity. Yet, his critics persist in opposition that often seems politically shortsighted and morally misguided.

I urge them: Do not let disdain for the man overshadow the good for our people. This moment calls for unity, not division.

I believe divine intervention spared Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last summer, seemingly deepening his faith and resolve. America and the world are stronger for it.

To Donald Trump, I say: Keep leading, Mr. President. Your nation supports you, and history is on your side.

​Donald trump, Heaven, Christian, Jd vance, Faith, Dc crime, Ecnonomy, Immigration, Opinion & analysis 

Extraordinarily effective Hamas propaganda has delegitimized Israel’s right of self-defense by confirming for a world that scorns Israel that its demon is engaged in genocide. It is not, but the same cannot be said of Hamas — the aggressor that has largely avoided that opprobrium.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 5.5 million Palestinians live in the Palestinian territories, principally the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The bureau estimates that in the last 12 months, Gaza’s population declined by 15,423 to 2,114,201. Meanwhile, “Palestine’s” total population grew by 1.17% in 2024 and is projected to grow by another 1.75% in 2025. According to the bureau, the principal factors in Gaza’s population decline were emigration, war casualties, and a declining birth rate.

If leftists prevent Israel from fighting an aggressor who has pledged to destroy it, targets civilians, and takes and murders hostages, who is complicit in genocide?

Though the Gaza Ministry of Health’s war casualty reports are statistically implausible and quietly rejected by the United Nations, the world’s media uncritically repeat the lies. Most recently, the media disseminated the ministry’s claim that war deaths exceed 60,000, reducing Gaza’s population by 10%. The actual comparison was to “projected growth”; 60,000 represents a 2.6% decline.

Peddling lies

Many outlets presented the ministry’s disinformation and malinformation as their objective reporting. For example, PBS explained:

The ministry is staffed by medical professionals. The United Nations and other independent experts view its figures as the most reliable count of casualties. … Israel’s offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza, displaced around 90% of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with experts warning of famine.

The report added:

Israel’s offensive and its blockade have also gutted Gaza’s health system, with several hospitals having shut down and others only partially functioning as they receive waves of war-wounded.

Jaundiced by radical ideologies and anti-Semitism, and empowered by Hamas’ misdirection, at least 38 countries, the European Union’s second-ranking official, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, 14 members of Congress, and many others accuse Israel of genocide.

If Goebbels had Hamas propagandists on his side, we might all be shouting “Heil Hitler!”

In November, a U.N. special committee found Israel’s operations in Gaza “consistent” with genocide, including its alleged use of “starvation as weapon of war.” In July, the U.N. dishonestly announced that Gaza met two of the three criteria for famine. To reach that conclusion, the U.N., which has battered Israel for years, rigged the numbers.

On July 27, the World Health Organization warned that “malnutrition is on a dangerous trajectory in the Gaza Strip,” with 74 malnutrition-related deaths so far in 2025, most occurring in July. According to the WHO, “The crisis remains entirely preventable. Deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives.”

But just one week later, a U.N. agency reported that Palestinian mobs and terrorists are stealing 89% of aid shipments. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee added that “Hamas made half a billion dollars last year stealing food [and] selling it on the black market in order to finance their activities.”

Rigging stats

On August 22, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a partnership of 25 organizations including U.N. agencies, announced that “reasonable evidence” exists of famine in Gaza since August 15. An Israeli response observed that “the declaration was issued not only without evidence that would justify it under the IPC’s own criteria, but also in contradiction to more recent data that was publicly available.” Although the IPC report cited the interception of aid, it justified that as the “desperation” of residents.

Other studies (including the U.N.’s) have not found widespread famine, a deliberate starvation strategy, or systematic attacks by Israel on civilians. Severe pre-existing medical conditions cause most deaths attributed to malnutrition.

RELATED: Why does the mainstream media keep blaming Israel for Gaza’s humanitarian crisis?

Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images

Hamas propaganda deceives with pictures that are staged, taken in other countries, taken years ago, or taken of children with genetic defects. It also promotes fabricated claims of Israeli attacks on Gazans seeking aid, including the untrue tale of a Gazan boy allegedly killed by the IDF at an aid distribution site.

Except for an approximately three-month blockade, Israel has facilitated aid. It warns civilians of pending attacks, set up hundreds of food distribution centers and aid packages, and supports airdrops of up to 130 tons of food per day. Last month, Israel announced additional actions, including lengthy combat pauses to coordinate aid delivery with the U.N. and other organizations.

The U.N. charter guarantees the “inherent” right of defense. The U.N. Genocide Convention defines “genocide” as killing “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” If Israel wanted to destroy the Palestinian people, it would have done so.

Instead, the claimed dead, including Hamas’ human shields and those executed by Hamas, total under 1.1% of Gaza’s population, which continues to grow. According to West Point’s John Spencer, the leading expert on urban warfare, no military has ever done more than Israel to avoid civilian casualties. Israel’s increasingly precise targeting of combatants has achieved a lower civilian death rate than most wars over the last 100 years.

Double standards for Hamas

The Hamas charter states that Israel must be “obliterated” and that “Moslems must fight Jews and kill them.” Hamas targeted civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and has launched thousands of rocket attacks since then.

If leftists and anti-Semites prevent Israel and Jews from fighting an aggressor who has pledged to destroy them, targets civilians, and takes and murders hostages, precisely who is complicit in genocide?

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

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Gaza, Gaza invasion, Gaza attacks, Gaza strip, Gaza genocide, Israel, Israel gaza, Israel palestine conflict, Israel hamas war, Israel invades gaza, October 7, October 7 terror attack, Oct 7 terror attack, Oct 7, Hamas, Hamas attack, Un, Lies 

In 2021, Deborah Conrad, a physician assistant from Rochester, New York, was fired from her role at Rochester Regional Health’s United Memorial Medical Center.

Deborah’s crime?

Doing her job.

When she noticed adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination in her patients, she reported it to VAERS — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Federal regulations, including Emergency Use Authorization requirements for COVID-19 vaccines like Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, mandate that health care providers report specific adverse events to VAERS.

But when Deborah fulfilled her lawful duty, she was terminated.

Today, she is neck-deep in a landmark False Claims Act lawsuit against her former employer, challenging institutional suppression of reporting. Her case has thankfully reached the discovery phase, where evidence will be gathered to expose potential violations and seek justice for her retaliatory dismissal.

On a recent episode of “Back to the People,” Nicole Shanahan sat down with Deborah to hear a story that demands national attention.

In December 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccines hit the market, but they were initially reserved for high-risk individuals, especially the elderly, as that was considered the most vulnerable group.

Deborah immediately began noticing that several of her geriatric patients experienced deadly falls shortly after receiving the vaccine. “They would pass out and fall, hit their head, develop brain bleeds, strokes, acute mental status changes, heart attacks, sudden heart failure. I mean, the list just goes on and on, and the proximity to which they received the vaccine and then the onset of these symptoms often was within sometimes minutes to overnight,” she tells Nicole.

She explains that she and the staff at United Memorial Medical Center “did not receive any education about any possible side effects or what to do if [they] saw them happening,” nor were they trained to use the VAERS system, despite it being a legal requirement. Even their formal training ignored vaccine side effects.

“We are basically told they are safe and effective and to memorize the childhood vaccine schedule and that’s it. And so it’s ingrained in us from our training to never look at vaccines in any negative light,” she says.

Not knowing what to do about the obvious issues she was seeing in her patients, Deborah set out to find answers. “I went online and found the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and read all about it and taught myself how to file reports. … I then went and volunteered to be the reporting liaison and the educator for our system,” she says.

Initially, Deborah was rewarded for her above-and-beyond efforts. She was even “nominated by the New York State Society of Physician Assistance to sit on the board for professional misconduct for the state.”

But then things took a sharp turn.

Even though it required hours of her time to dig into medical records, take calls back from the CDC, and fill out pages of information for each case, Deborah continued to faithfully file VAERS reports for the sake of her patients and the millions of people across the country taking the vaccine.

“I’ve probably filed … close to 300 reports. I certainly think I am the person in the country that has filed the most VAERS reports at this point — really,” she says.

Sadly, none of Deborah’s reports have resulted in her patients receiving compensation — even the most well-documented and clear-cut cases.

Over time, Deborah started getting pushback from superiors who accused her of being anti-vaccine. They pelted her with questions, like “How do you know this is due to the COVID vaccine?” even though VAERS requires medical providers to report serious side effects that accompany vaccine administration, even if they think the events are unrelated.

“We’re just mandatory reporters, as we are in child abuse situations, right? We’re not there to judge who’s abusing the child or determine that. That’s not our job,” says Deborah.

But even though she explained the legal requirements and stressed the pre-eminence of patient safety to her supervisors, “the gaslighting just kept continuing.” They repeatedly labeled her “an anti-vaxxer” and told her to “toe the company line.”

But Deborah didn’t ease up. Having no support in the hospital, she began filing reports on her days off for both her own patients and the patients of other staff members, all while continuing to pressure supervisors to put a system in place.

One of her supervisors eventually elevated her concerns to higher-ups at Rochester Regional Health. “That’s when the suppression really started,” says Deborah. Her VAERS reports were silently audited, and she was reprimanded for “over-reporting,” even though every report she filed matched “the exact criteria on VAERS.”

As a punishment, her supervisors limited the number of reports Deborah could file to just her own patients. When she demanded confirmation that other staff members were filing VAERs reports for their own patients, reminding her supervisors that failing to do so was “committing fraud,” she was met with resistance.

“They basically said, ‘It’s not your business,”’ she recounts.

“And I said, ‘No, it is my business. … This is a criminal problem here — like you are billing for these vaccines, you are saying you are completing VAERS reports and you’re not, and if I know about it and I do nothing about it, then I’m just as guilty.”’

When it was clear that she would get no support from her supervisors, Deborah contacted the CDC, the FDA, the New York State Department of Health, and the New York State accrediting body and was finally able to get some legal help. She even went public with her concerns.

If anything, this only expedited her termination. After months of being called an anti-vaxxer, accused of spreading vaccine misinformation, and receiving threats to file a petition for her license removal, Deborah was surrounded by HR reps from Rochester Regional Health during the middle of her shift on October 6, 2021, and fired.

“I wasn’t allowed to get my things,” she says.

“My health insurance was canceled. I couldn’t apply for unemployment. They even fought me in being able to get my benefit time off that they owed me.”

Today, Rochester Regional Health is claiming the corporation fired Deborah for refusing to get the vaccine, which was required for medical staff, but its case is shaky, as she was in the process of obtaining “a valid and approved religious exemption” when she was fired.

Thankfully, with her case now in the discovery phase and strong evidence of institutional suppression, Deborah has a promising chance of proving that her termination was retaliatory for her whistleblowing efforts to uphold patient safety.

To hear the most shocking details and stories from inside Deborah’s hospital, watch the full interview above.

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

To enjoy more of Nicole’s compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Back to the people, Back to the people with nicole shanahan, Nicole shanahan, Blazetv, Blaze media, Deborah conrad, Vaccines, Covid 19, Covid 19 vaccine, Vaccine injury, Rochester new york, Rochester regional health 

With the 2026 primaries fast approaching, there are three U.S. Senate seats onlookers should keep an eye on.

Republicans are currently enjoying a supermajority after sweeping the 2024 elections, controlling the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

The freshman senator narrowly won his seat in 2020 by just one point.

After November, Republicans flipped four seats: Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Montana. These victories flipped the Senate and put Republicans in a comfortable 53-seat majority while Democrats fell back to just 47 seats.

Although the GOP has a healthy majority, there are some more potential pick-up opportunities — and losses — for Republicans going into next year’s primaries.

RELATED: Exclusive: GOP lawmaker introduces bill barring illegal aliens from ‘sabotaged’ census

Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images

One of the most contentious Senate races will be for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia. Several prominent challengers have emerged in recent months, most notably with Republican Rep. Mike Collins throwing his hat in the race back in July. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has also been floated as a potential candidate, but she has not formally moved to run for the seat.

The freshman senator narrowly won his seat in 2020 by just one point against Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue. Given this razor-thin margin, Republicans have set their sights on taking back Ossoff’s seat, and early polling suggests it’s within reach.

The Cook Political Report currently rates Ossoff’s seat as a toss-up, and some polls mirror this rating. In a hypothetical race between Ossoff and Collins, the Democratic incumbent has polled with an average three-point advantage, according to RealClearPolitics. Another recent poll shows Collins trailing Ossoff by just one point, according to findings from TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics.

RELATED: Republican senator relishes ‘cray-cray’ Mamdani’s success: ‘We’ve gotten lucky’

Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Another pick-up opportunity for Republicans emerged in Michigan after Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced his retirement in January. Several Democratic candidates, like Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, have since launched their own campaign bids, but the future nominee will inevitably have to put up a fight against Republican challengers.

Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers is considered the frontrunner among the GOP candidates in the Michigan Senate race. Rogers previously ran and narrowly lost against Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024, but he has since relaunched his Senate campaign with the hopes of flipping the swing-state seat.

Slotkin managed to defeat Rogers by just 0.3% in November, signaling the support behind the Republican challenger. Earlier in the year, Rogers was polling several points ahead of his Democratic counterparts, and Cook Political Report has rated the Senate seat a toss-up.

RELATED: Ex-Clinton adviser warns Democrats of dire midterm season: ‘Elections have consequences’

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Although Republicans are poised to potentially flip some seats, there may be some warning signs in the Midwest.

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) reportedly will not seek re-election in 2026, leaving a vacancy in the deep-red state. The Cook Political Report has rated the seat as leaning Republican, and the GOP has maintained a prominent presence in Iowa at both the local and national level.

Despite the success Republicans have enjoyed in the Hawkeye State, Democrats have begun to secure their own electoral victories. Most recently, Democrat Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch for an open state Senate seat, flipping the GOP’s supermajority for the first time in three years.

Steve Deace, a native Iowan and host of “The Steve Deace Show” on BlazeTV, told Blaze News that this swing in favor of Democrats is taking place because Iowans are not energized by any Republican candidates they have to choose from.

“There are danger signs, because if it can happen in Woodbury County, Iowa, this can happen anywhere in America,” Deace said.

“Our people are just not motivated, by and large, to vote for the Republican Party brand as a brand anymore. So you’ve got to prove to them you’re worth their time and effort for them to show up, and I think that this is a wake-up call for the next midterm.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Primaries, 2026 primaries, Senate, Senate republicans, Senate democrats, Senate race, 2026 senate race, Midterms, Jon ossoff, Georgia, Mike collins, Marjorie taylor greene, Cook political report, Real clear politics, David perdue, Michigan, Swing state, Gary peters, Battleground state, Elissa slotkin, 2024 election, Mike rogers, Midwest, Iowa, Joni ernst, Catelin drey, Christopher prosch, Steve deace, Woodbury county, Politics 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested MS-13 associate Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Monday and set the stage for his deportation to Uganda.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to Blaze News, “President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator, to terrorize American citizens any longer.”

‘The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart.’

But Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland — a judge former President Barack Obama nominated — swiftly intervened to prevent the removal of the Salvadoran national. Xinis told the Trump administration it was “absolutely forbidden” from deporting Garcia, then issued a temporary restraining order to this effect.

On Thursday, the MS-13 associate asked a different Obama judge to prevent Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and all of the officials in their respective agencies from discussing his sordid history.

“Since Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was released from pretrial custody last Friday, officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security — and even the White House — have attacked Mr. Abrego in the media in numerous highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements,” Garcia’s attorneys noted in the request to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, an Obama-nominated judge who sought Abrego’s release in July.

Garcia and his legal team were especially prickled by the suggestion that he is “a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, wife beater, and child predator.”

While Garcia’s attorneys complained that such claims were “baseless,” it’s clear the Trump administration did not create the allegations out of whole cloth.

RELATED: Exclusive: ICE targets illegal alien who allegedly assaulted a pregnant woman

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Justice Department attorneys indicated earlier this year that in March 2019, Garcia was summoned to appear in removal proceedings. During a bond hearing, ICE stated that a confidential informant flagged 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.”

When Garcia appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, an immigration judge determined 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.”

As with Garcia’s MS-13 link, the domestic abuser claim also did not appear out of thin air.

Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez, sought domestic violence protective orders against him in 2020 and 2021. Vasquez alleged in her 2021 protective order petition that Garcia punched her, ripped off her shirt, and both scratched and bruised her.

— (@)

The human trafficking allegation that Garcia wants DHS and DOJ officials to refrain from publicly mentioning is fleshed out in his federal grand jury indictment which accuses him of conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.

The indictment alleges that Garcia conspired to bring illegal aliens — adults and children alike — into the U.S. from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere from 2016 until this year. He allegedly made over 100 trips over the course of this alleged human smuggling campaign.

“Over the course of the conspiracy, the co-conspirators knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no known authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 member and associates,” said the indictment.

RELATED: Homeland Security plays games while deportations fall flat

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

As for the “child predator” allegation, Bondi told reporters in June that one of Garcia’s alleged co-conspirators claimed that he not only “abused undocumented alien females” who were “under his control while transporting them throughout our country” but allegedly “solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor.”

Bondi, Noem, and the White House’s repeated references to these and other skeletons in Garcia’s closet evidently infuriated him, but Garcia’s attorneys said in their Thursday request that the “pièce de resistance” was the DHS’ repost of this White House meme:

— (@)

Garcia’s attorneys claimed in the request that “if the government is allowed to continue in this way, it will taint any conceivable jury pool by exposing the entire country to irrelevant, prejudicial, and false claims about Mr. Abrego.”

His attorneys asked for a gag order prohibiting all DHS and DOJ officials involved in Garcia’s case — and all officials in their supervisory chain — “from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding.”

A DHS official told the Hill, “If Kilmar Abrego Garcia did not want to be mentioned by the Secretary of Homeland Security, then he should have not entered our country illegally and committed heinous crimes.”

The DHS official continued, “Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend this criminal illegal MS-13 gang member who is an alleged human trafficker, domestic abuser, and child predator. The media’s sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story.”

The Hill indicated that the DOJ declined to comment.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Kilmar abrego garcia, Garcia, Illegal alien, Ms-13, Obama judge, Uganda, Salvadoran, El salvador, Terrorist, Domestic abuse, Illegal, Deportation, Deport, Immigration, Criminal noncitzen, Politics 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. noted in August 2024 that a major factor behind his decision to endorse President Donald Trump was the opportunity to help “Make America Healthy Again” in a future Trump administration.

“Don’t you want healthy children?” Kennedy said in a speech. “And don’t you want the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? And that’s what President Trump told me that he wanted.”

Since his hotly contested confirmation as Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary in February, Kennedy has worked ardently to deliver on the promise of MAHA.

Already, HHS under his tutelage has secured numerous victories on the health front, including the:

cancellation of mRNA vaccine development contracts; elimination of the Biden-era vaccine-reporting requirement and corresponding incentive system for hospitals; termination of thousands of bureaucrats along with senior establishmentarians such as Christine Grady, the wife of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci;removal of retarding fluoride drug products for children from the market;requirement that Pfizer and Moderna add new safety warnings to their COVID-19 vaccines; andremoval of the COVID vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended vaccine schedule for healthy pregnant women and children.

Although the Trump administration has delivered many MAHA wins, three in particular stand out as particularly consequential.

Fresh start at the ACIP

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is the federal panel whose vaccine recommendations become official policy at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and apply to the entire American population once adopted by the agency’s director — a position which, at the time of writing, was vacant thanks to Susan Monarez’s firing on Wednesday.

RELATED: Big shake-up at CDC: Director gets the boot; gay vax chief resigns, attacks RFK Jr. on way out

Photographer: Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Kennedy fired all 17 members of the ACIP in June.

While every member of the ACIP was a Biden administration appointee, the health secretary’s principle concern was not the panelists’ politics but rather their cozy relationships with some of the organizations they were tasked with scrutinizing.

For instance, data provided on OpenPaymentData.CMS.gov, a site managed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, indicated that Edwin Jose Asturias, one of the ACIP members whom Kennedy fired, collected around $54,000 from pharmaceutical companies, including $20,705 in what appear to be consulting fees.

Blaze News previously reported that among the companies that paid Asturias what appear to have been consulting fees were Pfizer and Merck Sharpe & Dohme LLC, a bio-pharmaceutical subsidiary of the company whose pneumococcal vaccine Capvaxive the committee voted to recommend in October. Asturias also apparently netted millions in research support from Big Pharma, including over $3.1 million from Pfizer and over $730,000 from the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline LLC.

Like Asturias, Kennedy noted “most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines.”

Kennedy indicated that the individuals he appointed to the newly cleared panel were “highly credentialed physicians and scientists who will make extremely consequential public health determinations by applying evidence-based decision-making with objectivity and common sense” and had “each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”

Nuking gender ideology

Pursuant to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14168, the HHS has taken a wrecking ball to gender ideology.

For starters, the department released guidance to the U.S. government, to the public, and to external partners that sex is an immutable biological classification and that there are only two sexes, male and female.

The department has applied this standard to civil rights enforcement, health care policy, and sports eligibility; launched federal civil rights investigations into whether various states violated Title IX by allowing men in women’s sports; canceled funding for related programs and activities; and scrubbed its websites of messaging, guidance, and language that advanced gender ideology.

The HHS has also conditioned federal funding for states’ Personal Responsibility Education Program grants on the removal of all references to gender ideology.

California learned the hard way and had its PREP grant terminated on Aug. 21. The HHS’ Administration for Children and Families noted in a release that the agency would not tolerate funding “curricula that could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body … through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.'”

Axing artificial food coloring

The HHS outlined a plan in April to phase out all petroleum-based synthetic dyes from America’s food supply.

Vani Hari, a critic of the food industry who founded Food Babe, told Blaze News in November that the brighter artificial colors, which are helpful with sales and attractive to children, are harmful to their health.

“The science shows that these dyes cause hyperactivity in children, can disrupt the immune system, and are contaminated with carcinogens,” said Hari.

Red dye 40, for instance, has been linked in some studies to hyperactivity disorders in children, and, according to the Cleveland Clinic, has various potential side effects, including depression, irritability, and migraines.

A 2021 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Nutrition noted that blue dye 1 has been found to cause chromosomal aberrations and “was found to inhibit neurite growth and act synergistically with L-glutamic acid in vitro, suggesting the potential for neurotoxicity.”

In short order, the U.S Food and Drug Administration kicked off the process of revoking authorization for Citrus Red No. 2 and Orange B in the short term and to eliminate another six synthetic dyes — FD&C Green No. 3, FD&C Red No. 40, FD&C Yellow No. 5, FD&C Yellow No. 6, FD&C Blue No. 1, and FD&C Blue No. 2 — by the end of next year.

RELATED: RFK Jr. torches vaccine panel to make consequences count again

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The FDA also requested that companies move up their timelines for the removal of FD&C Red No. 3.

“These poisonous compounds offer no nutritional benefit and pose real, measurable dangers to our children’s health and development,” Kennedy said in a statement. “That era is coming to an end. We’re restoring gold-standard science, applying common sense, and beginning to earn back the public’s trust.”

Numerous food manufacturers and fast-food chains have fallen in line or taken big steps in the right direction, including General Mills; Kraft Heinz; Starbucks; PepsiCo; Danone North America; TreeHouse Foods; Tyson Foods; and In-N-Out Burger.

In addition to tackling synthetic dyes, the HHS has paved the way for the use of food coloring from natural sources. In May, the FDA granted new color additive petitions for galdieria extract blue, butterfly pea flower extract, and calcium phosphate.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Robert f. kennedy jr., Rfk, Maha, Make america healthy again, Health, Science, Medicine, Vaccines, Vax, Acip, Kennedy, Donald trump, Winning, Politics 

In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Architects and operatives

At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.

James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

The funding networks behind the machine

The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Federal funding pipelines

Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

Not just domestic — but global

What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network’s architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

Want more from Glenn Beck? Get Glenn’s FREE email newsletter with his latest insights, top stories, show prep, and more delivered to your inbox.

​Chuck grassley, Deep state, Deep state explained, Deep state exposed, Durham annex, George soros, Hillary clinton, Ngos, Obama, Odni, Office of the director of national intelligence, Open society foundations, Opinion, Opinion & analysis, Russia collusion hoax, Tulsi gabbard 

Language, religion, and culture can be barriers that prevent people from different backgrounds from understanding one another. But time — the ongoing flow of moments from the past, through the present, and into the future — is something that unites us in its universality, right?

Not necessarily.

It turns out that time is also subject to interpretation.

“What if I told you that for many African societies, the concept of the future doesn’t exist and that instead of time moving forwards, time actually moves backwards,” said Instagram user @mumbipoetry in a viral August 18 post.

Quoting Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti, she says, “time is a two-dimensional phenomenon with a long past, vibrant present, and virtually no future,” where the present encompasses “the now, the recent past, and the immediate future,” while “the vast endless past [is] where all events eventually go on to live forever.” But because “time is made up of events” and must be “experienced in order to be real,” the future “cannot constitute part of time” because it has neither events nor experience to legitimize it.

A year isn’t measured by Earth’s rotations around the sun; it’s measured by events. “A year is only over when those four seasons have taken place, so a year could take 365 days, 390 days — it doesn’t matter,” she explained, contrasting it with the Western world’s concept of time, where it’s treated as a “commodity” that can be “spent, saved, wasted, or lost.”

This two-dimensional understanding of time is why many African languages “don’t have a word to describe the distant future,” she explains.

The African notion of time is a real head-scratcher for Westerners, who are constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future.

This difference, says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, is “so radical it makes cooperation basically impossible.”

Could this dismissal of the future be one of the reasons why much of Africa continues to face significant economic and social challenges? Could it be evidence that our two worldviews are incompatible?

“If you do not have a future, how do you understand planning for something? How do you understand a lower time preference that would allow you to build civilization? How do you understand denying yourself today so that you can thrive tomorrow?” Auron asks.

Having no concept or language for the future has sprawling implications that impact the individual person and the entire civilization, he explains. From contracts that establish future obligations to time zones, delivery schedules, and business deals, how does anyone thrive if their notion of time is that it only exists once an event takes place?

“People who do not have a word to describe this phenomenon [of the future] are going to have a very, very hard time working inside our system, adopting our customs, and they’re going to lose out in the larger global economic picture — the geopolitical picture,” says Auron, pointing out that liberals often whine that this view is “imperialistic.”

“Yes, it is Western-centric. It is ‘racist’ to the extent that it favors people of European descent who understand the world in this way,” he adds. “But that’s also why it works.”

“Maybe it’s the way [Africans] want to live, but it will fall behind people who have a different conception of reality, a different understanding of time. Again, you don’t have to hate people or make fun of people … because they have this different understanding, but you definitely need to factor that in when you’re deciding who should be in your country and whether or not your system can be applied to other people.”

To hear more of Auron’s analysis, watch the episode above.

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The auron macintyre show, Auron macintyre, Time, Africa, Western civilization, Westerners, Blazetv, Blaze media