Category: blaze media

Sixty-four years ago, John F. Kennedy stood on a football field at Rice University and declared space the new, permanent frontier of human ambition.

Fast-forward to today, and President Donald Trump has signed an executive order establishing a tuition-free U.S. Space Academy. This lays the groundwork for a dedicated institution to train the next generation of American space talent.

The enemy plays by total-war rules.

Critics immediately started whining about overreach, arguing that civilian science and military operations must remain strictly separated. Those pessimists are living in a long-dead era. Their thinking sounds less like 2026 and more like the 1960s, when the biggest concern was whether America would beat the Soviets to the Moon. Those days are gone. Space is now a strategic battleground. And pretending otherwise is national-security malpractice and a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

America’s chief global adversaries view space as one big battlefield. Chinese military planners at the People’s Liberation Army Strategic Support Force don’t care about Western academic debates over civilian-military separation. They view lunar orbits, communication satellites, and near-Earth reconnaissance networks as a unified target grid. Russian state operators routinely maneuver anti-satellite weapons alongside commercial broadband satellites. The enemy plays by total-war rules, understanding that crippling an opponent’s space systems could decide a war before the first shot is fired on the ground. America falls behind the moment it assumes its own satellites enjoy permanent immunity.

One giant leap

Winning this high-stakes struggle requires an interconnected defense strategy. Today’s commercial logistics networks, NASA scientific payloads, and Space Force tactical communications share the exact same orbital pathways. A modern GPS constellation guides precision artillery, syncs local bank transactions, and routes commercial cargo ships at the same time. Protecting that shared highway demands an integrated command structure. Trump’s proposal for a dedicated Space Academy aims to create a specialized officer corps in which military tacticians, space engineers, and commercial operators train together, day in and day out. You don’t have to love everything the president does to recognize a good idea when you see one.

The immediate necessity of this institution becomes obvious when you look at how China and Russia prepare for future conflict. Beijing- and Kremlin-backed cybercriminals already hack American digital infrastructure for fun, routinely stealing industrial trade secrets, military blueprints, and sensitive corporate data. Moving those exact same malicious operations into orbit gives hostile states total control over the ultimate high ground. A state with the upper hand in low-Earth orbit gains an enormous advantage in global navigation. It enjoys greater control over maritime trade and real-time military intelligence. Surrendering that control turns every terrestrial aircraft carrier, fighter jet, and armored division into a blind target in open waters.

RELATED: California dismissed them as backward. Now they’re building America’s future.

Sean Anthony Eddy/Getty Images

A Chinese or Russian monopoly on critical space infrastructure would rewrite daily life across the Western world. Hostile operators could sever global financial links with a single orbital jammer. They could plunge domestic air traffic control systems into immediate chaos and disable military command networks in seconds. Foreign state operators would effectively hold a permanent off-switch over the modern digital economy. America simply can’t afford to let autocratic regimes dictate who gets to broadcast data, launch commercial rockets, or operate lunar infrastructure. Dominance in space is nonnegotiable; it is the absolute foundation of national survival.

If an adversary manages to take over a network of satellites, it doesn’t need to launch a missile to cause serious damage. It could turn solar panels away from the sun, push satellites out of their proper orbits, or interfere with emergency communications across huge areas. A dedicated Space Academy could train the specialists needed to protect these systems and keep America’s satellites secure from relentless foreign attacks. America needs elite specialists who can defend against new and evolving threats.

But where should these specialists learn their trade?

Two cultures, one decision

Washington bureaucrats may instinctively want to put the campus near Silicon Valley or inside the government beltway around Maryland. That would be a mistake. The Gulf South is the obvious choice. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, and Florida already have much of the infrastructure America needs to build, test, and launch rockets. The academy should be close to the people and facilities already advancing America’s space industry. Placing cadet training near active launchpads ensures that future space commanders grow up surrounded by real rocket fire, rather than philosophizing from the comfort of a Bay Area beanbag chair.

The choice is clear. Train the next generation of elite patriotic space warriors, or watch the enemy turn the skies into a deadly weapon aimed directly at us. Kennedy gave America the ambition to reach the stars. Modern dangers demand that America develop the strength to dominate space and defend that achievement.

​Tech, Space academy, Donald trump, John f. kennedy, Space race 

As the LGBTQ+ movement that seeks to deconstruct gender and normalize all sexualities continues to collide with orthodox Christian teaching, many believers find themselves in a painful tension: how to love others while still honoring God’s commands about sexuality and gender.

Nobody is better at navigating these challenging situations, says Allie Beth Stuckey, than former lesbian turned Christian apologist Rosaria Butterfield.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie and Butterfield address voicemails from listeners asking for advice on personal predicaments that many Christians will find all too familiar.

In the first voicemail, a “Relatable” listener shared a predicament now common in many Christian families: a loved one leaves the faith after embracing an LGBTQ+ identity.

She explained that her nephew, who was raised in a Christian home, distanced himself from the family and the faith after coming out as gay and “marrying” his partner.

“How would you handle … loving him but also bringing him back to the Lord?” she asked.

“The first thing you always do, always do, is affirm your love for your prodigal, and you do that in every way you can,” says Butterfield.

The second order of business, she says, is to commit to “consistently praying for your prodigal.”

“One of the things you’re praying for, and especially if your nephew doesn’t live close … [is] that the Lord’s going to put many Christians in his life,” says Butterfield.

“There is no such thing as a gay marriage, and so what you’re going to do is pray that the Lord would destroy that — in fact, that the Lord would remove all unholy, ungodly influences from your nephew’s life,” she adds.

In these scenarios, a believer, says Butterfield, can also petition God for “insight” into the prodigal’s life.

“You might want to also be praying that the Lord would give you insight and wisdom to know more about how your nephew is living and see if he’d be willing to let you do some reconnaissance work with him,” she says.

“You know, find out does he have a craving to fit in, to belong? … Does he need to feel important? Are there other comorbidities and medications that might be making it really hard for him to get unstuck from harmful patterns? Or to what degree is activism involved?” she continues. “All of these things will help you know how to speak a word in season.”

But the most important thing one can do in these heartbreaking situations, says Butterfield, is to “not lose heart.”

“Because there really is no such thing as someone who has ‘left the faith’ who is in the faith,” she says.

“The concept of a faith deconstructor is a misnomer. You can’t construct your faith, so you can’t deconstruct it. Now he’s a wanderer; he’s a prodigal — and we want him back.”

To hear more, 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.

​Lgbtq movement, Christian apologist, Allie beth stuckey, Blazetv show 

After a week like this one, many Americans arrive at Sunday carrying more than they can easily name.

This past week marked one year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking to students at Utah Valley University. The following day, our nation observed the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, when 2,977 people were murdered in New York, at the Pentagon, and near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

May we draw as near as circumstances allow, sit with them in their sorrow, speak the names of those they love, and remind them that grief does not have to be carried alone.

Though different in scale and circumstance, both remind us that evil never remains theoretical. Eventually, it enters a crowd, a cockpit, an office, a home, leaving behind blood, unanswered questions, and an empty chair.

Public trauma always becomes private sorrow, one household at a time.

We understandably respond with investigations, arguments, and demands for accountability. We should seek truth and justice. Evil should be named without apology. But grief should not have to pass an ideological examination before we treat it as grief.

In 1903, a Presbyterian minister named Cleland McAfee faced a brutal week of grief when his brother lost two young daughters to diphtheria within 24 hours. Because the disease was highly contagious, the family’s home was quarantined.

McAfee was a preacher, theologian, musician, and choir director. He stayed up late, considering what he could possibly say or sing the following Sunday.

From his own sorrow, he wrote the words and music to a hymn:

There is a place of quiet rest,
Near to the heart of God,
A place where sin cannot molest,
Near to the heart of God.

The modern ear catches on the word “molest.” Today, it almost always refers to sexual abuse. McAfee used the word in its older and broader sense: to harass, disturb, persecute, or injure with hostile intent.

RELATED: Why I played ‘Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah’ at a funeral

Pressmaster/Getty Images

It is a jarring word, but it is the right one.

Sin does indeed molest. It does not knock politely before entering. It intrudes, violates, and corrupts. It turns passenger planes into weapons and political disagreement into bloodshed. Then it continues its work by tempting us to mock the dead, exploit the bereaved, turn suffering into content, and answer hatred with still more hatred.

McAfee did not write his hymn because sorrow had passed his family by. He wrote it because sorrow had come through the door. His nieces were dead, his brother’s home was darkened, and the family remained isolated by disease.

He did not attempt to explain why the children died. Instead, he pointed his brother toward the only refuge death could not breach:

O Jesus, blest Redeemer,
Sent from the heart of God,
Hold us who wait before Thee,
Near to the heart of God.

The choir learned the hymn at its Saturday evening rehearsal. Because the home remained quarantined, they could not go inside to embrace the family or sit beside them.

So they came as close as they could.

Standing on the lawn beneath the night sky, the choir sang through the walls. They did not repair the loss or answer the family’s questions. They simply placed themselves as near to the grieving family as the quarantine allowed, and they sang.

That image has stayed with me for years: a grieving family inside, the church outside, darkness surrounding them, and a hymn passing through the walls.

Twenty-five years after September 11, families still gather to read the names of those who died. One year after Charlie Kirk’s murder, his wife, children, friends, and colleagues continue living with the chair he no longer fills.

Their persistent grief is not weakness. It is the continuing cost of love.

McAfee’s hymn does not promise that sin cannot reach our bodies, families, or country. The circumstances that produced it would disprove such a claim. The place near to the heart of God is not where Christians become immune to suffering. It is where we find refuge when suffering comes and assurance that evil does not possess ultimate authority.

RELATED: The oldest cure for doomscrolling in one lyric

CorbalanStudio/Getty Images

Christ stepped into this broken world and took its worst. The cross shows us what sin does; the empty tomb shows us that sin does not get the last word.

Most of us will never address a grieving country, but nearly all of us know someone living inside a darkened house.

The lawn may be literal, or it may be a kitchen table, a church pew, a telephone call, or a quiet visit where very little is said.

After such a solemn week, and as battles rage within and beyond our borders, may we enter the coming days looking for the brokenhearted. May we draw as near as circumstances allow, sit with them in their sorrow, speak the names of those they love, and remind them that grief does not have to be carried alone.

And when words fail, perhaps we too can stand on the lawn and sing.

​Charlie kirk, Cleland mcafee, Grief and sorrow, Christians, Church, Sin, Opinion & analysis, 911 

Blackfeet Chief John Two Guns White Calf was the warrior face of the NFL’s Washington Redskins for 48 years.

Then his heroic life story, his proud portrait, and the team’s native identity were erased from American history in 2020, following a relentless and politically orchestrated seven-year cancel-culture assault by mainstream media.

Two Guns White Calf now is collateral damage in the woke cancel-culture war on America’s multicultural heritage. He was wiped from the US history books by the very same group that purports to defend native dignity.

White Calf’s family now has a message for the owner of the Washington, D.C., pro football franchise.

“We want to meet face to face with Josh Harris and tell him our side of the story,” family spokesman Thomas White Calf said in an exclusive interview with Blaze News.

“We want the Redskins back in the NFL, and we want the image of Two Guns back with the Redskins. We want to share with Harris the true history of the Redskins and the heroic life of Two Guns White Calf.”

The NFL franchise did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

RELATED: NFL player apologizes over backlash for doing Trump dance: ‘I did not mean to offend anyone’

Thomas, Delphine, and Shawn White CalfKerry J. Byrne

The Redskins were renamed the Commanders in 2022, a year before Harris’ investment group bought the franchise. He inherited a public relations nightmare. Many fans, perhaps a majority, still call the team the Redskins. Its current image is unpopular. The Commanders ranked 29th out of 32 NFL teams in merchandise sales in 2024, according to a FinanceBuzz annual study.

And the White Calf family has been making rounds in D.C. for the first time this year, meeting with lawmakers such as Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and sharing their story with Redskins fans.

“I wanted to have the blessing of the family, to see if they’re OK with the name and logo, and now I have it,” said Redskins fan Jonathan Lynch after meeting the White Calfs in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol in May.

‘We’ve been silenced long enough.’

Two Guns White Calf was one of the most famous Americans of his era. He fought to preserve native heritage and defend tribal treaties from the Blackfeet Nation of Montana to the halls of power in Washington, D.C. His death in 1934 was front-page news coast to coast.

The New York Times obituary lauded Two Guns White Calf as an American “dignitary” who made President Coolidge a member of the Blackfeet Nation and who gained fame as the model for the U.S. Mint’s iconic 1913 Indian Head nickel.

Two Guns White Calf became the face of the Redskins franchise in 1972, at the behest of leaders of the Blackfeet Nation and with support from Native Americans around the country.

Two Guns White Calf now is collateral damage in the woke cancel-culture war on America’s multicultural heritage. He was wiped from the U.S. history books by the very same group that purports to defend native dignity: the far-left, Soros-funded National Congress of American Indians, a powerful D.C.-insider organization with deep ties to the Democratic Party.

RELATED: Trump is ‘serious’: NFL star refers to his team as the ‘Redskins’ as pressure mounts to change name

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Media outrage against the Redskins erupted with sudden ferocity in October 2013. Significant evidence indicates that it was orchestrated by the NCAI. The elite unit of cancel-culture assassins claims responsibility for erasing more than 2,000 native names and images from public display across the United States. The Redskins are the group’s trophy kill.

The NCAI put Two Guns White Calf in its crosshairs in October 2013.

President Obama became the first chief executive to publicly criticize the Redskins on October 5. Just days later, the NCAI issued an inflammatory, racially charged 29-page manifesto titled “Ending the Legacy of Racism in Sports & the Era of Harmful ‘Indian’ Mascots.”

The report was heavy on incendiary accusations but light on actual evidence. It claimed the face of Two Guns White Calf was responsible for social decay, even suicide, in native communities, and that “the term ‘Redsk*ns’ is associated with the barbaric practice of scalping.”

Mainstream media appeared to take the NCAI missive as marching orders. The Associated Press, NBC Sports, New York Times, and Sports Illustrated, among others, released scathing attacks on the Redskins in the days that followed, each dutifully parroting the dubious NCAI narrative.

NYT columnist William Rhoden wrote a shocking hit piece on October 12 that branded then-Redskins owner Dan Snyder a racist, comparing him to notorious segregationist Democrat and four-time presidential candidate George Wallace (who vied for the party presidential nod as recently as the 1976 Democratic National Convention against Jimmy Carter).

NBC Sports blowhard Bob Costas added fuel to the inferno the following night.

“’Redskins’ can’t possibly honor a heritage or a noble character trait,” Costas seethed in a “Sunday Night Football” halftime rant on October 13. “It is an insult, a slur, no matter how benign the present-day intent.”

The Redskins and team owner Snyder were suddenly tainted as racists in the public sphere, days after Obama’s opening blast, by journalists peddling an NCAI fictional account of “redskins” etymology debunked by ample scholarship.

It’s as if the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wrote a report on the legacy of Rolling Stones lead singers and forgot to mention Mick Jagger.

“The word ‘redskin’ reflects a genuine Native American idiom,” Smithsonian Institution senior linguist the late Ives Goddard wrote in 2005. He called the media narrative “fictional” in a letter sent four years later to the Washington Post. Editors deleted the world “fictional” before publishing the letter, Goddard claimed in a 2013 interview with Slate.

The Associated Press rigged the narrative, too.

“No consensus among Indians on ‘Redskins’ team name,” screamed an AP headline in a far-reaching wire story on October 8, three days after Obama’s critique.

The headline told a lie. The truth was buried in the very same story.

“In the only recent poll to ask native people about the subject, 90% of respondents did not consider the term offensive,” reporter Jesse Washington revealed far below the impactful headline in paragraph six, citing a 2004 Annenberg poll.

The AP headline suggested a Native American community torn apart over the Redskins issue. The only data the AP reported revealed a community united by overwhelming consensus.

The Washington Post conducted a similar poll of native opinion in 2016. Same result: 90% of Native Americans had no problem with the Redskins name or image.

Big-city white media elitist Bob Costas called “redskins” an “insult” and “a slur.” Nine out of 10 Native Americans disagreed.

The NCAI never offered polling data in its October 2013 media directive or in any public statements before or since. It’s obvious why. The mainstream media treats the NCAI as the sole voice of the American Indian. But its woke agenda contradicts the overwhelming opinion of American Indians.

Proof of the NCAI’s deceit is found in the October 2013 media missive. The 29-page report is devoted entirely to two topics: Native American sports logos and the history of the Washington Redskins.

RELATED: ‘MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN’: Trump threatens Washington Commanders’ stadium deal over woke name change

Photo of John Two Guns White Calf courtesy of White Calf family

Two Guns White Calf served as the face of the Redskins for 48 years, one of the most familiar sports logos in the U.S., for more than half the organization’s 95-year history.

Yet the NCAI report somehow forgot to mention the name of the Blackfeet hero at the very center of the entire controversy. The most celebrated American Indian since Sitting Bull was erased from history by the National Congress of American Indians.

It’s as if the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wrote a report on the legacy of Rolling Stones lead singers and forgot to mention Mick Jagger.

The media followed the NCAI lead. The name John Two Guns White Calf never appeared in any of the thousands of media stories bashing the Redskins that followed from 2013 to 2020. Costas and NBC Sports never mentioned him. Rhoden and the NYT never mentioned him. The AP never mentioned him. ESPN never mentioned him. The hometown WaPo never mentioned him.

“In the rush to erase a supposed stereotype, American media erased a real native man — Two Guns White Calf,” Native American scholar Andre Billeaudeaux, author of “How the Redskins Got Their Name,” told Blaze News.

The NCAI did dirtier than erase Two Guns White Calf from American history. It dehumanized him. The NCAI labeled the proud portrait of the most famous Indian of his era a “savage and clownish caricature.”

It did so with brazen audacity. The entire time the NCAI was at war with the image of Two Guns White Calf, Chief Illiniwek of the University of Illinois, the Fighting Sioux of North Dakota, and so many others, it represented itself with a cartoonish caricature far more “savage and clownish” than any of those it attacked.

To this day, visitors at NCAI headquarters in Washington, D.C., wipe their dirty shoes on a floor mat featuring the cartoon-clown native image of its organizational logo.

The White Calf family has suffered in the same anonymity, ignored by the NFL, the NCAI, mainstream media, and the Washington, D.C., pro football franchise.

“We’ve been silenced long enough,” Thomas White Calf told Blaze News. “We’re proud of Two Guns. The Blackfeet Nation is proud of Two Guns. We want to meet with Mr. Harris to tell him why.”

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​Washington redskins, Woke agenda, Indians, Native american, Politics 

Born in 1979, the year Julian Assange called “Year Zero,” I am an Xennial, a member of that most exclusive of microgenerations.

These days, it’s fashionable to see yourself — or your troubles — as too unique or complex for anyone else to really understand, perhaps in reaction to how digital life seems to reduce everyone to the same kind of matter: interchangeable and insignificant.

‘Some people confess guilt to claim credit for the sin.’

But for an Xennial, it is surely a fair reaction to actual circumstances. Pure Gen Xers are trapped in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Pure Millennials are stuck in the ’00s and early ’10s. Xennials came of age in the late ’90s, a dark, captivating, dangerous, mysterious, seductive, shimmering, incalculable, and irreducible moment that quietly began sometime in 1996 and ended, with a bang, on September 11, 2001.

Xennials slammed into this moment as teens who had already gotten a front-row seat to the cosmic unfolding of a shadow world with no clear name, a world that transformed rubes, naifs, thrift-store hippies, emo suburbanites, grunge enthusiasts, and bumbling nerds into dark elves, goth gfs, enfants terribles, rock stars, cyberpunks, supermodels, posthumans, celebrities, millionaires, assassins, spies, sex objects, and, yes, even terrorists.

In the blink of an eye, the world of Rusted Root, Pearl Jam, Barenaked Ladies, “Dazed and Confused,” corduroy pants, “Legends of the Fall,” hacky sacks, kegs, and road trips became the world of Aphex Twin, Massive Attack, “The X-Files,” Smashing Pumpkins’ “Adore,” “Fight Club,” “The Matrix,” black leather everything, “Glamorama,” martinis, “The Anarchist’s Cookbook,” “Faces of Death,” chilled vodka shots, VIP booths, and jet-setting.

For many, all too many years, I have written here and there about all this. Regular readers will know I actually wrote a whole book about it — “I Know This Sounds Crazy.” I bring it up again only to establish, for the uninitiated, some proof that the Xennial perspective on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 is uniquely important in what and how it perceives.

So it gives me a real out-of-body, quintessentially Xennial feeling to observe — and, it seems, to be the first to observe — that this week, the 9/11 generation is the one that might just 9/11 the world.

Hyperbole?

Not according to the AI insiders now warning that the systems they are building could become uncontrollable.

RELATED: Now they’re saying the AIs built ‘secret civilizations’ — the truth is far worse

Ole_CNX/Getty Images

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week after working at both OpenAI and Anthropic, accusing the companies of “gambling with our lives” in a race toward self-improving superintelligence. Coxon said people building these systems sincerely believe they could kill everyone by the end of the decade. Another Anthropic researcher, Evan Hubinger, publicly said his team “earnestly believe AI could kill all humans” and put the probability above 10% within the next decade.

The people atop the two most prominent closed frontier labs are overwhelmingly members of the 9/11 generation: Dario Amodei, born in 1983; Daniela Amodei, 1987; Sam Altman, 1985; and Greg Brockman, 1987.

And Millennials are unusually enthusiastic about the technology. McKinsey found that workers ages 35-44 reported the highest levels of AI expertise and comfort of any age group it surveyed: 62% described themselves as highly familiar with generative AI, compared with 50% of workers ages 18-24.

Millennials are also the largest generation since the Boomers, a record that seems increasingly difficult to beat as birth rates around the world crater.

But something more than quantity is at work in the eerie double bind consciously imposed on the world by Millennials: incredibly overclocked anxiety and incredibly overclocked idealism.

It is a shame that so few saw it coming, but as a whole it can now be said without a shadow of doubt that Millennials are … Millenarians.

As Wikipedia — the Millennial Encyclopedia — explains, millenarianism is the belief in a coming fundamental transformation of society after which “all things will be changed.” Millenarian movements expect radical transformation, often through or after catastrophe.

I haven’t asked around, but I’m pretty sure not many Xennials, in either absolute or relative numbers, are millenarians — certainly not of the Millennial variety. As far as I can tell, and as far as I would describe myself, Xennials simply don’t move, think, feel, dream, or overwhelm themselves like that.

The stunning tendency of millenarian Millennials to crash out through excessively recursive self-reflection is particular. And for Xennials — ahem — with an interest in the intersection of technology and theology, that tendency is strikingly analogous to the breakdown of the cybernetic control systems Millennials are driving and fearing as they lead on AI.

RELATED: Mark Zuckerberg wants AI to save America from itself

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

It is sobering indeed to stare into this abyss of their own creation — one utterly bereft of the glamour, seductiveness, mystique, and dark authority of the abyss the Xennials bore secret witness to as it conspicuously consumed their cultural, artistic, and spiritual worlds.

The difference may be that this abyss actually works.

Anthropic itself has warned that AI may soon be capable of accelerating its own development with declining human involvement. Coxon’s resignation came amid growing concern about recursive self-improvement — systems helping to create more capable systems, which then accelerate the next generation in turn.

And so these curious, unfortunate creatures go on cursing and praising themselves in equal measure, with their over-the-top comparisons of themselves to Robert Oppenheimer.

That brings to the Xennial mind nothing so much as the clapback Oppenheimer supposedly received from his brilliant Manhattan Project colleague John von Neumann: “Some people confess guilt to claim credit for the sin.”

For a generation relentlessly taught to celebrate itself and be part of something bigger, the prize for sharing in the blame for blowing up the world may be irresistible: The ultimate — and final — participation trophy.

​Digital life, Julian assange, Xennial, Year zero, Gen x, Gen z, Millenials, Ai, Anthropic, Jacob coxon, Openai, Wikipedia, Oppenheimer, Opinion & analysis 

Finance guru Dave Ramsey made waves recently when he advised a caller on his show to withhold her daughters’ inheritances because they’ve become socialists.

“I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t want to give either of them any money. I feel like I’ve worked so hard my whole life. I paid for college for them. I’ve paid over half a million dollars for college for them, and they’ve turned into socialists,” the caller said, noting that she felt “terrible” for wanting to withhold her daughters’ inheritances.

“You shouldn’t,” said Ramsey.

“My children have been instructed since they were small that in order to get the opportunity to manage the money that God gave me to manage … they will have to be people of character. Socialists are not people of character. They’re parasites,” he continued.

“If [my kids] aren’t walking with God, they don’t get to manage God’s money,” Ramsey concluded.

The clip of the call went immediately viral, with many people, including some Christians, angry at Ramsey’s advice.

But is he right? Should parents write their children out of their wills if they go astray?

On this episode of “Live Free with Josh Howerton,” the Lakepointe pastor reacts to the viral Ramsey clip and asks whether Christian parents should ever disinherit a rebellious child.

After unpacking all the ways socialism is incompatible with Christianity, Howerton dives into the scenario of disinheriting rebellious children — whether that rebellion is rooted in socialism or other sins.

“In the Bible, you’ve got three institutions: family, church, and state,” Howerton says, explaining that there are specific penalties for “high rebellion” within each of those institutions.

“The ultimate penalty for the church is outlined in 1 Corinthians 5, and it’s excommunication. If you are a member of a church that’s living in open rebellion against God … the Bible commands the leaders of a church to remove that person from the church,” he explains.

“In the state, the ultimate penalty for rebellion is the death penalty,” he continues, noting that “the death penalty is biblical” according to Romans 13’s instructions for the government not to bear the sword in vain.

But what about families? What’s the biblical penalty for children who engage in “high rebellion and open unrepentant sin”?

Many theologians, says Howerton, have arrived at the conclusion that “disinheritance” is a “biblically permissible response from parents.”

Based on evidence in both the Old and New Testaments, Howerton agrees.

“I have decided I am not going to fund rebellion against my Lord,” he says frankly.

However, there are other parts of Scripture, Howerton argues, that must be factored in — most notably the father’s decision to give the prodigal son “part of his inheritance” (a reflection of Christ dying for us “while we were yet sinners”); Romans 2:4 that says “it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance”; and Deuteronomy’s instructions not to “revenge-disinherit kids.”

To find out how Howerton and his wife are threading this difficult needle when it comes to their children and their will, watch the episode above.

Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH40 to get $40 off your subscription.

​Josh howerton, Dave ramsey, Socialism, Christianity, Blazetv show 

Dear America, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re not OK.

Our boys are very, VERY angry. To the point they want to kill each other, hit women, and hurt their teachers.

Like a fat person at an all-you-can-eat buffet, we keep stuffing ourselves but are never nourished.

Our young women are depressed, lonely, and barren. Those who aren’t — well, many of them are still unhappy and mentally fragile, to the point they will take the lives of their own children. And other women will applaud it.

Women can also kill an unborn child up through birth.

Compulsive displays

Violence and murder seem to be acceptable under almost any circumstance. Again, to the accolades of other Americans.

We shamelessly display bouts of irrational and hyperemotional behavior and videotape it for the world to see. Once again, the masses applaud.

Nothing is managed or dealt with in private. The world must know of all our pain and innermost thoughts, because supposedly, sharing helps others with their pain and suffering.

It does not. It merely spreads pathologies until the pathologies become the norm.

Everybody thinks they have something important to say so everyone is talking — all the time.

It is noisy, and it is distracting. I think about how much better the world would be if we all just agreed to share a little less. To “tweet” or “chime in” a little less.

Simulation sickness

Lindsay Clancy and Karmelo Anthony may have broken from reality, with devastating consequences, but in some ways, we all have. We are living in a simulated world of thoughts and ideas with no contact with the created order.

We need to, once again, commune with the physical world. In Orthodoxy, we say that God “is everywhere present and fills all things.” Not all thoughts, for He certainly is not. Not in all tweets or photos. In all things. The less we interact and engage with those things, the less we are tethered to Him and His order, for it is “good” (Genesis 1:31).

We need to build beautiful things like furniture and clothing, grow abundant gardens, or tame wild animals. Or we need to simply touch grass, a tree, or dirt. Anything that has God at its source.

We need to make and kiss and care for babies. They are also “good.”

RELATED: Gratitude is not perspective. It is remembering mercy.

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Empty calories

Manufacturing useful goods is superior to yelling into the echo chamber. Cameron Schiller, founder of hard tech start-up Rangeview, had this to say about physical things:

If all you do is shuffle papers and change numbers in an excel sheet, what connection do you feel to your neighbor? What responsibility do you feel to your country? People that can feel the product of their labor have a different sense of pride.

Not only do we need to commune with the physical world, but we also need to exhibit restraint and discipline in its use. We have not been good stewards of our bodies, our land, or the many resources God has bestowed upon us.

We have squandered the most important things — family, friendships, community, health, and yes, God — for the fleeting pleasures of temporal desires. Desires that are insatiable by food, money, convenience, sex, or any other thing humans chase that leave us feeling empty.

Like a fat person at an all-you-can-eat buffet, we keep stuffing ourselves but are never nourished.

Hospital for the soul

Don’t get me wrong — I love the conveniences of this modern world. But they require judicious use and above all, gratitude, both of which seem to be in short supply these days.

We are so free and so liberated we are lost. Lost in a never-ending maze of sickness – physical, mental, and spiritual.

We need to admit we are weak. That we require help from God to recover our compass and find our true north once again. Truth is not subjective, and it is found in God and His creation.

The church is the hospital for the soul. Our souls need true healing. Healing that can only be found in the sacramental life that God calls us to every day. Not just in thoughts and prayers, but in communion with the real.

Until then, nothing gets well.

​Depression, God, Online, Christianity, Reality, Christian living, Faith 

Mark exited his family group chat after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election and, shortly after, stopped speaking to his family entirely. He knew his mom and siblings were conservative and pro-life, and though they didn’t really talk politics, his suspicions about their votes were confirmed when he pressed them. They had made a choice, and now he would too.

Mark had taken to social media the day after the election to rant about half the country, but there was little he could do with anger at that scale. His family offered something more manageable: a localized target for a generalized grievance. He couldn’t control how millions of Americans voted, but he could control whether the few he knew who voted for Trump remained in his life.

For anyone seeking a controlled, frictionless existence, cutting people off offers a deceptively clean solution: eliminate the point of contact.

His mother, recently widowed, is heartbroken by her son’s decision to go no contact. She tries to focus her attention on the rich relationships she still has. Mark’s siblings vacillate between annoyance and deep hurt, bewildered that something so distant from the ordinary life of their family — national politics — could enter their intimacy and overwhelm it.

The no-contact phenomenon is one manifestation of a deeper spiritual jaundice. We’re estranged from ourselves in a way that makes the risk and friction of other people difficult to bear. Politics gives that interior unease somewhere to go. It can be particularly potent as a repository for discontent because it supplies both a diagnosis and a culprit. Diffuse dissatisfaction is difficult to metabolize.

Ideology offers a simplistic answer for why you feel bad and who did it to you. And once the culprit is someone you know, you can do something about it.

Obvious forces are contributing to the rise of this phenomenon, a topic I explore in my new book, “No Contact.” Social media is an accelerant driving estrangement in a couple of ways. We habituate ourselves to a curated “community” and proceed to block, unfollow, and mute voices that introduce friction into the seamless zombie scroll. Social media also spawns what I call TikTok psychologists, whose endless short-form videos invite you to examine your workplace, family, or childhood for the hidden toxicity, narcissism, or trauma.

For a fee, you can sign up for courses that will help you “break the cycle.”

The promise is seductive: Excavate your past, locate the wound, identify its author, and your present unhappiness begins to make sense. Pundits and politics offer the same explanatory relief in the present tense, supplying villains and catastrophes with enough regularity to keep us perpetually activated. Past or present, the gaze remains trained outward. We will go surprisingly far down rabbit holes to discover what someone else did to us or is doing to us while avoiding the much more frightening journey down the rabbit hole of our souls.

The accelerants, however, presuppose something already combustible. Social media can supply the siloes, pundits the villains, and therapists the permission, but none fully explains the strange zeal with which we have embraced the promise that amputating even our most primordial relationships can make us well. And we’ve been amputating them at a rapid pace. According to recent polling, 38% of Americans are estranged from a family member, with political and ideological disagreement accounting for a significant share of these ruptures.

While it can be entirely healthy and prudent to distance oneself, even permanently, from an abusive or dangerous friend or relative, the hundreds of estranged parents I’ve encountered across the country — and those I interviewed for the book — testify to a different phenomenon: a diminishing willingness — particularly among young people — to endure the risks and friction that durable relationships require.

And nowhere are the risks higher, the friction more unavoidable, or the returns less certain than in family life.

RELATED: The myth of the ‘good person’

Sylverarts/iStock/Getty Images

Weighing the costs

By our current calculus, family is a fool’s bet. It’s a long-term investment in other human beings, with few variables or outcomes under our control. We choose a spouse without knowing who they will become in 30 years. We have children knowing they will suffer and make us suffer, without knowing what kind of people they will become, what they will believe, what they will make of their lives, or ultimately what they will make of us.

Besides the risk, there is relentless friction along the way: competing needs, irritating habits, misunderstandings, disappointments, heated political disagreements, and obligations that arrive at the most inconvenient times. Family continually frustrates our preferences and interferes with our plans. The people closest to us are those with the greatest opportunity to disturb our peace. The friction is certain, but the return on investment is not, as the no-contact phenomenon makes painfully clear.

For anyone seeking a controlled, frictionless existence, cutting people off offers a deceptively clean solution: eliminate the point of contact. And there is good reason to think its justifying logic metastasizes easily. Colleges that implemented no-contact orders to protect students from predation now report demands for such orders because a roommate ate their bagel or someone looked askance at them in the cafeteria. Avoidance pays an immediate dividend.

But the costs of avoidance compound. First, avoidance makes us more brittle. The more accustomed we become to eliminating friction rather than navigating it, the less friction we become capable of bearing. Avoidance trains us in avoidance. What begins as relief from a difficult encounter can become an increasing dependence on controlling the conditions of encounter.

Second, avoidance keeps us stuck. Friction is a form of contact with reality. Once contact ends, we lose one of the most powerful correctives to our grievances: the encounter with the actual person. In memory, the mother who wounded us can remain frozen in our minds at the moment of injury. In person, she is harder to reduce so neatly. She is irritating and funny, selfish and generous, capable of the same old failure and suddenly vulnerable in some way we hadn’t expected. The living person keeps interfering with the story we tell about her.

There is a third cost: Avoidance can become a means of avoiding ourselves. Rehearsing the reasons for a cutoff can be a vital reminder to stay away when estrangement is necessary. Persons escaping abuse may need to remember clearly what happened, particularly when guilt or loneliness threatens to draw them back imprudently.

But when the relationship was merely difficult but not dangerous, that same rehearsal can work against us. Avoidance invites us to recount our grievances continually, quieting the dissonance that might otherwise invite us to question our narrative. It’s far easier to rehearse our righteousness than it is to wrestle and reckon honestly with a more complicated account that might in part implicate ourselves.

RELATED: The real reason 1 in 3 Americans are cutting off their family

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Strangers to all?

A culture organized around minimizing risk and friction will eventually find family difficult to justify, because family is a long-term wager on goods that cannot be secured in advance and a daily encounter with people we can’t control.

Before deciding to go no contact, consider that you may be losing far more than you gain by cutting ties. Risk and friction are prerequisites of life and love. Family is indeed a bad bet if we prize control and an untroubled life, but it might be our best bet if we want a more human one.

Mark can eliminate the friction his family creates. He cannot make them cease to be his family. Nor can he know what might have happened had he stayed in contact long enough for all of them to become again something more than the worst thing he believed about them.

There is a terrible risk of remaining. But there is a risk in leaving too: that in protecting ourselves from the people who disturb our peace, we slowly become people incapable of loving and knowing anyone — and will secure one terrible result: remaining a stranger to all and to ourselves.

Editor’s note: This article is adapted from Noelle Mering’s new book, “No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them“ (Forum Books), and appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Opinion & analysis, No contact, Family, Donald trump, Politics, Psychology, Estrangement, Friction, Risk, Safe spaces 

Some parents pour years into raising their children in faith and still are forced to watch them walk away. And as a homeschool mother of seven is watching her youngest become a prodigal, she reaches out to BlazeTV host Steve Deace to ask whether she had failed.

And his answer was unequivocal: The story isn’t over.

“None of the stories of your children are finished yet,” he responds. “And for those of you that have prodigal kids, you’re maybe in the most trying time of that story. But the story isn’t written yet.”

Deace uses St. Augustine and his mother, Monica, as an example, explaining that she prayed for her son for “17 years.”

“And he would go on to eventually become arguably the most formidable mind the church has produced in the post-canon era, even to this very day, nearly 2,000 years later,” he explains.

“So that’s I think the most important thing that I could say,” he continues. “Do not quit. Do not give up. Their stories aren’t written yet. They’re not finished yet. So keep that perspective for as long as you can. The story is not over yet.”

“Many of the social pathologies and contagions that are acute in this era have their mustard seeds in the era that you and I grew up in. But even despite that, you and I both agreed emphatically it was still … simpler,” he adds.

Deace explains that it was “simpler” because there “was not an expectation when you sent your kids off to school on the first day of school that you were going to have to deprogram them every single night when they got home.”

“Going to college was considered a rarity and a reward as opposed to smart kids that now are like, ‘I’m never going there because I don’t want to become a gay race communist,’” he says.

“So it’s never easy to raise kids. But it was certainly simpler in the era that you and I grew up in compared to the era we’ve been raising our own kids in,” he continues.

“Their stories aren’t finished yet, either … so if you’re in that prodigal era, do not give up on the Lord. Do not give up on prayer, even till your dying day,” he adds.

Want more from Steve Deace?

To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Biblical advice, Children, Church, Faith, Homeschool, Parents, Prayer, Raising kids, St augustine, Steve deace, Blazetv show 

Most of today’s Gen Zers are criticized for the same list of bad traits: laziness, lack of discipline, social awkwardness, no sense of purpose. So it’s a rare thrill to meet someone like Mary Bowen, who not only defies each of these traits, but lays waste to each and every one of them.

Alongside her parents and nine younger siblings, Mary, just 25 years old, has spent the last 12 years building a vertically integrated independent movie studio — Industrious Family Films — which specializes in wholesome family entertainment for Christian viewers.

‘Most of what’s coming out is really — it’s base. And we’re made for more than that.’

In that time, she has produced seven feature films and nearly 20 additional productions. Her studio has recently launched its own subscription-based streaming platform. And now, Mary is directing the studio’s most ambitious project yet: “Fabiola,” a historical drama set during the final persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Mary and discuss her unique upbringing, the growth of Industrious Family Films, and how she and her family approach filmmaking against the backdrop of today’s increasingly hollow entertainment culture.

Faye Root: Could you start by telling a little about yourself, your background, and what you do?

Mary Bowen: I’m the oldest of 10 children, and we are all homeschooled. Growing up, we actually didn’t watch any movies. We’d gotten rid of the TV, DVDs, and VHSs. No Saturday morning cartoons or anything. That really gave us an opportunity to grow up without screens. We did a lot of animals, gardening, some instruments.

But in 2012, for the first time in about four or five years, we watched a movie — a film made by a homeschool group in Connecticut. And it inspired us to work on making movies and populating the industry with Christian films that anybody can sit down and watch.

And of course, we watch movies now. But having that break really gave us this “aha” moment because it was not a normal Hollywood mainstream film. So that’s kind of where our love of filmmaking came from.

FR: What’s it like working with your family on your films? Does everybody have an area of expertise?

MB: Many hands make light work for sure. And yes, we all can do it, but we all do have our little areas of expertise.

I’m the creative director, so I’m in charge of camera angles, and I run the camera. I do the costumes, sets, props, editing — the visual stuff. And then my sister kind of runs the show as far as organizing schedules, getting people where they need to be, making sure everything’s streamlined.

My dad does a lot with set decorating and construction, and then my brothers help do that. I have one brother who’s “the tech,” so if something’s not working, he gets it to work. And then another brother who really does everything. He’s especially good at lights.

FR: Your lighting in the “Fabiola” scenes was excellent.

Yeah, we spent two weeks just working on lighting for that — the prison scene. I was really glad with the way it turned out. My brother and my mom did most of that, and then my sister and I stood in as the actors because we were getting all the lighting set up before [the actors] got there.

My mom and dad help a lot with everything. Especially my mom. She’s definitely an assistant director in a sense. She’s also really good at makeup. Some of my brothers can do makeup too, though. And then my sisters, they help with everything.

FR: Can you talk more about your mom and dad and how they influenced your path in life?

MB: They are adventurers in their own sense. We live on a homestead. A dream of my mom’s was to live in a yurt, and they did it. They bought a 30-foot yurt, and that’s what they live in. All 12 of us were in there at one point.

My dad’s a manager at a tire shop. My mom’s always been a homeschool mom. She has seven students in school right now. Three of us are graduated. My youngest brother is five.

They’ve definitely encouraged any reasonable whim or hobby we’ve ever wanted to do and helped us along the way. But they were hands-off enough that we were able to try things. And ruin things. I’ve ruined sewing machines. I’ve ruined cameras. Eventually your mind adjusts, and you think, “My mom and dad bought a $300 camera, and I dropped it.” That generosity … as you grow, you get more of an understanding and respect.

FR: Making a film is such a complicated challenge when compared to most other art forms. But rather than emphasize the need for film school, for instance, I’ve heard you speak about the importance of the deeper skills needed to undertake such an endeavor — hard work, stick-to-itiveness, etc. Could you speak more about that?

MB: Yeah, I think even that came out of just the fact that we were gardening and taking care of animals and things at home. You learn responsibility at a young age.

For example, we had a milk cow, and I was at 10 or 11 when it was my job to take care of the milk cow in the morning — my sister and I. And now, looking back at my younger brothers and sisters who are that age, that’s actually a lot to expect of a kid! But it’s so doable if they’re given the opportunity.

And this translates to film, where yes, it’s super complicated. But you can do it if you’re given the tools and allowed to make mistakes. Your first project doesn’t have to be perfect. Things can happen — just like the cow can get out. But it’s not the end of the world.

So I translate that to film where, actually, if you stick to it, even if it’s hard to do, if you see it through, you have a sense of accomplishment. It’s surprising that you can even do it at a young age. We made our first movie when I was 14.

But that’s the biggest challenge for some people is seeing a project to the end. That’s where a lot of discouragement comes from. It’s hard, and you get in the thick of it, and it’s like, “This is a mess, and I don’t want to ever do this again!” But then you complete it, and you show it, and you have a party, and then you’re like, “Oh, this is so addictive.”

FR: What do you think of the mainstream films coming out of Hollywood today?

MB: I don’t watch a whole lot of movies that come out right away. Most of what’s coming out is really — it’s base. And we’re made for more than that. We’re made to love beauty and to aspire to nobleness. And we need to provide that for each other, actually. We need to give that to each other so that we can all be good and wholesome people and pleasing to God.

And when you’re constantly being given base entertainment, society slowly declines. And so I don’t consume a lot of modern films.

Angel Studios has really filled a hole for a lot of Christian families who don’t watch mainstream movies. And that’s great because they’re missing a part of our culture not having the experience of going to the theater, getting popcorn. Going to see a movie is like going to a baseball game — everyone should experience it. Having a pagan society creating entertainment has made it so we can’t just go enjoy a film.

Pure Flix — they don’t do theatrical runs — but the same thing. I really hope that our studio can be as big as those names just to help populate more films that people can go watch without worrying about covering their eyes.

FR: You’ve said that when making your films, you try to follow the moral censorship regulations, which were pretty universally followed in Hollywood in the 1930s to 1960s.

MB: Yes. The fact that we don’t even have a decency code for what we show each other today shows how bad our society has sunk. In some senses, a code like this would need to be updated because it’s missing things that should be a problem now that weren’t a problem then. It would be interesting if some group would get together and make one.

But yes, there are even little things, which don’t seem like they’re as big of an issue now. For instance, it was very rare to show two people in a bed together, whether they were married in the film or not.

But these guidelines were important. And it wasn’t only about promiscuity or modesty issues. In the storytelling, good vs. evil had to be resolved. Evil always had to be presented as evil. It had to be overcome by good; it couldn’t just be left with loose ends. The bad guys couldn’t get away.

Just the fact that moral censorship regulations existed in Hollywood at one point is actually kind of amazing — whereas now, I mean, Steven Spielberg just made a movie where he said you will question the existence of God.

We almost need a parallel society — and we’ve talked about this: actually having parallel entertainment. Likening it to “Fabiola,” those early Christians almost had to live underground and have a parallel society. And history repeats itself. Things have gotten so base, so disgusting, so low.

FR: Can you tell me about your streaming platform?

It started as a subscription-based app, and all of our films were there. Unfortunately, we found that the phone thing wasn’t clicking with our audience. So then we transitioned to a streaming service more like Pure Flix, and it has taken off really well. It’s been one of the most successful things we’ve done, so we’re really excited about it.

We’ve also got other filmmakers with films of a similar quality as ours, and they’re able to put their films on our streaming service, so we can share them with new audiences.

It’s just $24 a year, and there are around 40 films available.

RELATED: ‘The Faithful’ puts focus on Bible’s female figures

Fox Broadcasting Company

FR: Could you tell us a little more about “Fabiola” and what inspired you to make it?

MB: So the story is set during the last Christian persecution, and Fabiola is a pagan Roman noblewoman — kind of a philosophical pagan. But when her dad dies, she has to wrangle with this thought of, “Do I believe in an afterlife? What is the point of existence?” She’s trying to answer these questions that didn’t really come up before, and in her search, she gathers around her many smart, content people who she later learns are Christians.

And they are executed. Persecuted and martyred. And she has to decide whether she’s going to continue to play this happy pagan or she’s going to take the stand and become a Christian — even though it might cost her her life. Several well-beloved Catholic saints like St. Sebastian and St. Agnes are portrayed and weaved into the story as well.

It’s based on a novel we read [in school], and when I read it, I thought, “When we’re ready to make an epic, this is going to be our dream project.” And so here we are working on it. We’ve filmed three scenes so far. Two will be in the end film. We’re working on completing our fundraising this year. Then we’ll be filming in 2027 and set to release in the fall of 2028.

FR: What advice would you give to homeschoolers — or any young person — who’s looking to build a business of their own?

MB: I would say just do it. Get started. Just start it, and you’ll figure it out as you go along. But definitely don’t wait for a better time or a better situation or a better opportunity. If you have an idea and it’s a dream, get started right away. Don’t be scared.

I run into that even just among people my own age. Some people are like, “I want to go to film school and then I’ll start making movies.” I made my first movie on an iPad. Just do it. With what you’ve got. Do it right now.

Industrious Family Films is currently fundraising for “Fabiola” to meet its production cost goal of $1.25 million. If you would like to support the film, you may contribute by heading to the official film website.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

​Entertainment, Filmmaking, Catholic, Christian living, Fabiola, Christian martyrs, Roman empire, Industrious family films, Mary bowen, Angel studios, Pure flix, Lifestyle, Interview 

A viral TikTok showing a daughter berating her mother over her support for Donald Trump has struck a chord with Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck — but not because of the political disagreement itself.

Instead, Glenn sees something larger at play.

“You made a wrong decision,” the daughter yells in the video. “And if you apologize to me for taking away my rights and the rights of everybody who can relate to me on these videos, then we would be fine. I told you in that text when you apologize for what you’ve done to this whole country, what you’ve had a hand in doing — you had a hand in this.”

“You and your people did this to my country — to all of our countries,” she added.

“That is the problem. You think it’s your country and there’s my way or the highway,” her mother responded.

“Murder is wrong! Racism is wrong! You know, he was sued over seven times for not serving black people,” the daughter yelled. “What do you have to say? What do you have to say to that?”

The daughter then called her mother “racist” and “hateful.”

“If there’s not a man in the house, then she needs to say, ‘Get out of the house. … You can have different opinions, but you are not going to speak to me that way in this house. Period,’” Glenn says.

“Show some respect. But we don’t do that any more. And the reason why is we’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve completely forgotten who we are. … We’ve lost our story as a nation; we’ve lost our story as a people,” he adds.

Glenn notes that this problem stems from people no longer knowing who they are.

“When you can actually be silent for 20 minutes and just be alone with your own thoughts, you’re comfortable with knowing who you are. But I don’t think most of us even know who we are any more or why we’re here or what life is really for,” he explains.

“We are beginning to think we’re all here for politics. We’re not here for politics, gang. We’re not. We’re not fighting politics. We are fighting the collective versus the individual,” he says. “And that is a God thing.”

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.

​Daughter, Donald trump, Identity, Mother, Politics, Tiktok, God, Glenn beck, Blazetv show 

The fiancée of a 45-year-old man said he accidentally bumped into a teen at the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday — after which he was punched, and then a gang of as many as a dozen “kicked and stomped” on his face.

As a result, the victim’s jaw reportedly was fractured in multiple places, which required emergency reconstructive jaw surgery, according to the Pioneer Press.

‘It was just an absolutely senseless act of violence.’

Heather Hoffman told the paper that her fiancé, Sammy Kimbrough, was walking with two friends when he accidentally bumped into another person, “which is inevitable when you’re in a crowd.”

The Pioneer Press said attendance at the Fair throughout Saturday was 198,842.

“This young man ended up getting into a verbal conversation with Sammy, becoming aggressive,” Hoffman added to the paper.

“That bump … from my fiancé to a teenager escalated,” Hoffman told WCCO-TV.

She told the Pioneer Press that “Sammy had tried to say ‘excuse me,’ ‘back up,’ when he then got punched.”

That’s when others “kicked and stomped on his face,” Hoffman added to the station.

She told the paper that the youth was with a group of about eight to 12 people, “and once one of them punched him hard enough and knocked him down, others came and stomped his face into the pavement when he was already unconscious, causing his jaw to be fractured in multiple places, ending up in emergency reconstructive jaw surgery.”

The Minnesota State Fair Police told the Pioneer Press that no one had been arrested as of Wednesday morning.

Kimbrough was released from the hospital after two days, the paper said, adding that his mouth is bandaged shut and — because one of the fractures in his jaw was so high — there are bands to hold his jaw in place with the other side where surgical plates were placed.

“Once that that fracture heals enough for him to open his mouth, he then will have very extensive dental surgery as he has a whole lot of broken, knocked-out and loose teeth …” Hoffman noted to the Pioneer Press.

Kimbrough works for a construction company as a mason tender and has insurance, the paper said, but Hoffman said she expects his medical bills will be expensive.

RELATED: Blaze News original: 19 nauseating times cowardly thugs ganged up on — and savagely beat up — lone victims

“He is still in excruciating pain,” Hoffman also told the paper.

“It was just an absolutely senseless act of violence.”

She added to the Pioneer Press that Kimbrough works summer security during Friday night car shows at Roddy’s Bar & Grill in North St. Paul and knows how to de-escalate situations, which is what he was trying to do Saturday.

Hoffman also told the paper that she wants arrests and prosecutions in the case; the Minnesota State Fair Police Department said anyone with information about the incident can contact them at 651-288-4500.

She added to the Pioneer Press that they go to the Fair every year and usually feel safe there, but Kimbrough has “already mentioned that he’s done with the Minnesota State Fair for the rest of his life.”

Roddy’s Bar & Grill is planning a raffle for Kimbrough on Oct. 10 to raise money for his medical bills and lost wages, the paper said, adding that Hoffman is a bartender at Neumann’s Bar & Grill in North St. Paul, where they’re collecting money.

“Many of you know Sammy and our amazing bartender Heather. They are wonderful people who are always there when anyone needs, right now they need us,” the bar posted on social media, according to the Pioneer Press.

“We have a donation bucket going behind the bar, and it will keep going as long as it needs to be!”

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​Physical attack, Minnesota, Brutal beating, Surgery, Crime 

In the book of Genesis, the rainbow symbolizes God’s covenant never again to destroy all living creatures in a global flood.

Then came the 1970s, when artist Gilbert Baker created the rainbow flag that became an enduring symbol of gay rights and, eventually, the broader LGBTQ movement.

Athletes reach audiences traditional religious institutions often struggle to reach, particularly young men.

Now some Christian athletes are beginning to reclaim the symbol — and something larger along with it.

A recent episode of A.J. Rice’s “Dangerous Laughter” podcast featured sports journalist Steve Eubanks discussing his new book, “Godball: How Athletes Are Saving Christianity.” Eubanks’ central argument is that professional and college athletes are increasingly using their platforms to express Christian faith openly and that this may reflect a broader religious revival, particularly among young men.

Athletes pray publicly, talk about Jesus in interviews, and use social media to communicate directly with fans. They no longer depend entirely on sportswriters or television networks to interpret what they believe.

That matters because athletes who embrace fashionable political causes are often celebrated, while those who express traditional Christian beliefs can encounter a different response.

Chicago Bulls guard Jaden Ivey learned that lesson this year. The Bulls waived him for “conduct detrimental to the team” after he criticized the NBA’s embrace of Pride Month and described LGBTQ celebration as “unrighteous.”

Jonathan Isaac drew criticism in 2020 when, citing his Christian faith, he stood for the national anthem and declined to wear a Black Lives Matter shirt. Tim Tebow became one of the most polarizing athletes in America more than a decade ago, largely because of how conspicuously he displayed his Christianity.

Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker faced enormous backlash after a 2024 commencement speech at Benedictine College defending traditional Catholic teaching on marriage, family, and gender roles.

RELATED: The WNBA’s identity crisis is bigger than basketball

Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Yet Eubanks argues that the cultural resistance may actually strengthen the phenomenon. Athletes reach audiences traditional religious institutions often struggle to reach, particularly young men. Sports reward discipline, sacrifice, teamwork, perseverance, delayed gratification, and submission to something larger than oneself — virtues naturally compatible with Christian teaching.

The most literal example of Christians reclaiming the rainbow came earlier this summer in San Francisco.

During the Giants’ Pride Night, pitchers Landen Roupp, J.T. Brubaker, and Ryan Walker wrote Bible verses on their rainbow-themed caps. Roupp cited Genesis 9:12-16 — the passage describing God’s covenant with Noah and the rainbow as its sign. A fourth pitcher, Sam Hentges, declined to wear the Pride cap altogether. MLB issued formal warnings to the three players who altered their caps.

The episode contained an irony almost too perfect to invent. The rainbow began in Scripture as a sign of God’s covenant. Christian ballplayers invoked that meaning and found themselves in trouble for altering a rainbow symbol adopted by the modern gay-rights movement.

Commissioner Rob Manfred later acknowledged another wrinkle: Giants players had not been properly informed that wearing the Pride caps was optional.

Eubanks sees these episodes as part of something larger.

There is evidence for at least part of his thesis. Gallup reported this year that the share of young American men who say religion is “very important” in their lives rose from 28% in 2022-23 to 42% in 2024-25. Young men also reached roughly the same level of religious service attendance as young women.

Sports may be one conduit for that renewed interest.

Consider Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever. Cunningham has described herself as a “woman of God” and this summer publicly opposed transgender women competing in women’s sports, saying young girls “shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” The comments brought predictable backlash, but Cunningham refused to retreat.

RELATED: MLB’s Pride police strike out against Christian players

Blaze Media Illustration

That willingness to speak plainly is central to what Rice and Eubanks describe.

Young athletes do not need to become theologians. They need only refuse the increasingly strange proposition that Christianity belongs safely in private while every other moral and political creed may be displayed at center court, midfield, or home plate.

This is where “Godball” becomes more interesting than another collection of inspirational sports stories.

Athletes occupy an unusual position in American culture. They embody physical excellence, discipline, competition, loyalty, and sacrifice. Millions of young people watch them, imitate them, and listen when they speak.

If even a fraction of those athletes begin speaking openly about Christ, marriage, family, sex, sacrifice, and moral order, they create a cultural influence far beyond the stadium.

And perhaps the rainbow is the perfect place to begin.

Christians never needed permission to remember what it meant first.

Let the Godballers become the new heretics — and reclaim the rainbow.

​Athletes, Covenant, God, Baseball, Christians, Book of genesis, Harrison butker, Jaden ivey, Benedictine college, Pride night, Mlb, Nfl, Rob manfred, Sophie cunningham, Indiana fever, San francisco giants, Steve eubanks, Jonathan isaac, Opinion & analysis 

A man was arrested by San Francisco police after he allegedly picked a fight with the “wrong person” — a U.S. Marine veteran who is also a martial arts teacher.

The video of the altercation was captured at Crissy Field public park on Sunday by KRON-TV and showed a man brawling with James Hidalgo.

‘The guy was a built guy, and he knew that he could intimidate 90% of the people today. … He just ran into the wrong person.’

Hidalgo spoke to KRON and gave his side of the story, which began when he was simply walking his dog Argis at the beach at about 12:30 p.m.

“I saw this guy being loud; I didn’t pay no mind. I thought he was trying to get someone’s attention,” Hidalgo recalled.

“I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Just kind of put my hands up and was like, ‘Hey, man, OK, and then he came in and tried to punch me,” he added.

The video shows the man punching at Hidalgo while his dog hops around them.

“So then I pinned him down to the ground until the cops got here,” Hidalgo said.

He held the man down for a few minutes while bystanders called 911 and the United States Park Police responded. They put both in handcuffs and questioned them.

“According to witnesses, the suspect physically assaulted a stranger. The suspect was arrested,” read a statement from the USPP.

The other man was arrested and taken away. Hidalgo said he understood the police had to follow through with their investigation.

“I was in the United States Marine Corps, so I understand that there’s protocol for all this, and you have to let the professionals deal with what they do,” he added.

The KRON camera crew was in the area for a different story and just happened to capture the fight as it began.

RELATED: San Francisco cops injured after ‘Trans March’ mob tries to stop them from arresting suspects

Hidalgo was checked by paramedics and released. He said he was glad he had to deal with the man rather than someone else.

“Imagine a nanny with her kid here. What is she going to do? The guy was a built guy, and he knew that he could intimidate 90% of the people today,” Hidalgo said. “He just ran into the wrong person

He said he plans on pressing charges against the suspect, who was not identified.

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​San francisco, Martial arts, Us marines, Viral video, California, Crime 

Quick — what’s the most ridiculous relic of the woke era, the one even the most liberal of liberals would probably rather forget?

For our money, it’s the land acknowledgment.

Sweeney caught holy heck last year when she dared to playfully blur the line between genes and jeans for American Eagle wear.

You remember those. When every award show or ribbon cutting had to start with someone pretending to feel bad about “stealing” the country from Native Americans (although not bad enough to give it back).

The ritual has mostly faded from view — aside from Billie Eilish’s recent cringeworthy attempt to bring it back.

And after that awkward moment, we’re all ready to move on, right?

Not Adam Carolla.

During his remarks at the first-ever GOP midterms convention, the comic brought down the house with a caustic callback to peak 2021:

“All right. I would like to start tonight with a land acknowledgment. … This is the greatest land in the history of mankind. And if that bothers you, you, your communist and hippie buddies, should get the hell off it!”

Too late? Not by our lights. Sorry, libs. Some things are so embarrassing you never get to live them down.

Whoopi 101

It’s like they never left.

“The View” is back and just as disassociated from reality as ever.

The ABC chat-fest returned from its late-summer vacation and proved the hosts hadn’t used the downtime to catch up on their reading … or thinking.

Never change, ladies.

Here’s Whoopi Goldberg recoiling in horror over Sen. John Fetterman making a guest appearance at this week’s GOP midterm convention. Seems she has other plans for the Pennsylvania moderate.

You could be, you know, helping us block this idea that we’re taking votes away from people. You could stand for that. That would be a good thing. You could stand for bringing back education, real education to our kids in the schools and fight for all the things that we have grown up with and make them better.

Goldberg followed this rant with a detailed, point-by-point criticism of Republican policy.

Just kidding!

As for “real education,” does she mean far-left indoctrination like Colorado high schoolers committing violence at anti-ICE protests? Sorry, Whoopi. That’s on your party …

RELATED: ‘Do me the biggest favor’: President Trump keeps the crowd laughing as he makes the case for Republicans

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Ghoulish groupthink

Few things are as insufferable as film festival “standing ovations.”

There’s nothing wrong with celebrating an outstanding performance, especially in a live setting like the theater. Once awards season hits, however, what brings an audience to its feet is more likely to be adherence to Hollywood groupthink than artistic excellence.

And they tend to go on and on. Remember: The longer you clap, the more virtue you signal.

Take the new documentary “NAZA,” which argues that Israeli forces are systematically targeting and killing innocent Palestinian civilians.

That’s one way to spin October 7.

The movie has earned rapturous reviews to date and is a likely Oscar contender in the Best Documentary field. The screening also sparked a record-setting 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

We’ll have to wait and see if the filmmakers turn their artistic sights on Iran next, a country where the government slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens …

Male call

Sydney Sweeney is making America male again.

The actress is back with a new, provocative ad campaign for Novig, a sports trading app. Sweeney uses a series of sports items to cover up select portions of her figure, all the while promoting a product that doesn’t go near politics.

Triggering.

Sweeney caught holy heck last year when she dared to playfully blur the line between genes and jeans for American Eagle wear.

She survived that cancel culture attack and is now shoving it in the left’s face. Here’s betting leftists won’t look away when the ad comes on their TV sets …

Old time rock ‘n’ roll

Rock stars behave themselves better than they ever did.

Remember all the tales of groupies gone wild, trashed hotel rooms, and other flights of debauchery? Now, rockers beg for forgiveness after stepping out on their spouses.

That’s progress, but the headlines are a little less fun to chew over.

Enter Van Halen. Or more specifically, Alex Van Halen and Sammy Hagar. The two once rocked the world after Hagar took over for David Lee Roth in the mid-1980s. These days, the rockers don’t see eye to eye.

“In my opinion, Sammy Hagar is a complete idiot,” Van Halen said when a Brazilian interviewer brought up Hagar’s 2011 memoir.

Hagar responded with the 2026 version of drunken fisticuffs at Whisky a Go Go: a stern Instagram post.

“This comment and post is so unnecessary at this time in our lives, but I guess the truth hurts sometimes. Peace already.”

Sounds like there’s only one way to settle this AARP-approved altercation: on the pickleball court.

​Adam carolla, Cancel culture, Hollywood, Land acknowledgment, Whoopi goldberg, Billie eilish, Gop midterm convention, Movies, Tv, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Toto recall, John fetterman 

On July 24, timed to WNBA All-Star Weekend, Mattel launched Atlanta Dream All-Star forward Angel Reese’s signature Barbie doll.

Reese, ironically nicknamed the “Bayou Barbie,” now has a miniature lookalike that wears a pink basketball uniform with her No. 5, signature headband, leg sleeve, plus miniature Reebok Angel Reese 1 sneakers.

All of this is well and good, but where BlazeTV’s Sara Gonzales draws the line is Reese’s comments about the why behind her Barbie doll.

While the three-time All-Star confessed to some selfish motives — “I told [Mattel] I really wanted to have a Barbie doll one day and to have a Barbie is like you got to be iconic,” she said in a press conference — she also justified the doll as representation.

When asked what kind of dolls she played with as a child, Reese answered, “I didn’t have a lot of dolls because I didn’t have dolls that really looked like me much. And that’s why I kind of really wanted to make sure this was super intentional.”

Sara immediately throws the flag.

Reese, she points out, was born in 2002 and is 24 years old — well after Mattel’s long push to put more than one kind of girl on the shelf.

“We looked it up and between 2002 and 2014, Mattel … released between 250 to 350 unique black Barbie dolls,” says Sara. “So I don’t know where Angel Reese was, but there were plenty of black Barbie dolls to choose from.”

“In fact, Barbie has been making black dolls since the ’60s. So I guess Angel Reese would rather just play the victim … than just play with your black dolls,” she adds.

Sara doesn’t dispute a young girl’s desire to have a doll that looks like her.

“I totally get it,” she acknowledges. “It’s just that [Reese] already had them.”

“As much as they complain that they’re underrepresented … when they do get representation, it’s never good enough, or they have to erase it,” she sighs.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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

​Sara gonzales, Angel reese, Wnba, Barbie, Mattel, Blazetv show 

When news broke that Charlie Kirk had been assassinated while speaking on a college campus, British podcaster Zuby was thousands of miles from home, recording podcast interviews in California.

A year later, he can still remember the shock of seeing the reports and reactions flash across television screens and social media feeds — especially the negative ones.

“I couldn’t believe it was real. It kind of felt like a weird dream. Now, reflecting back one year on from that, it’s still incredibly sad. I mean it was a massive loss. I wouldn’t say just for the USA. I wouldn’t say just for the West. I wouldn’t say just for the conservative movement or whatever you want to call it,” Zuby tells BlazeTV host Pat Gray on “Pat Gray Unleashed.”

“But I think it was a massive loss for the world,” he says.

“And then there was a sort of a secondary wave of upset and anger when you saw some people’s response to it, which just showed just how dark some people’s hearts are,” he recalls.

“It’s one thing for one person to do something awful, but when that happens, and it seems like hundreds of thousands or potentially millions of people may feel like, ‘Oh, that was justified,’ or whatever. And obviously these people are a minority, but in this day and age of social media, they’re a very loud minority,” he continues.

“It’s not a majority of people who think that that is acceptable. But it’s far more people than it should be,” he adds.

However, because Charlie was largely seen through social media, those disrespecting him in the wake of his assassination simply “see people as avatars.”

“People forget that there’s a living, breathing human being with friends and family and relationships and their own troubles and problems and so on. They just kind of see this avatar,” he tells Gray.

“They’re a liberal, or they’re a progressive, and they don’t like conservatives or they don’t like MAGA or they don’t like Trump or whatever, and they just see whoever’s in that bucket, whoever is in that box, this is how I feel about it right,” he continues.

“They’re just not really rooted in reality,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Charlie kirk, Zuby, Reactions, Assassination, Conservative, Liberal, Pat gray, Blazetv show 

A Democrat candidate in North Carolina is forcing her party to run the other way after she appeared to defend resurfaced comments calling for political violence.

The website for Shelly Headen’s campaign says she is a mom, a neighbor, and an advocate, but on social media she advocated for a military strike against many of those neighbors.

When asked about the extremist insults, Headen compared herself to Jesus Christ.

Headen is running for North Carolina’s state House District 62 without the support of her party after the comments went public.

“I think our only hope is an attack on US Soil … preferably Alabama, Louisiana … where the stupid people live,” Headen wrote in one post, according to the Carolina Journal.

Another comment said the “MAGA cult may be more destructive and evil than the Nazis” and also accused President Donald Trump of “getting close to surpassing Hitler.”

When asked about the extremist insults, Headen compared herself to Jesus Christ.

“I’ve sacrificed myself just like Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross, and Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln and all the people that put themselves out there to sacrifice for our country,” Headen said in a statement to the Assembly.

“If a few angry moments on social media are the end, then so be it,” she added. “MAGA will keep winning if we continue with not standing up for what’s right.”

The North Carolina House Democratic Caucus appeared to disagree with Headen that she was acting like Jesus Christ, and the organization stripped its support from her campaign.

“Shelly Headen’s posts are unacceptable and do not reflect the values we expect of our candidates,” claimed Sam Lozier, the communications director for the caucus. “The North Carolina House Democratic Caucus condemns these comments without qualification and will not support Shelly Headen’s candidacy.”

RELATED: 14 times ‘unhinged’ Democrats have called for political violence

Republican state House Speaker Destin Hall condemned the “absolutely disgusting” comments.

Headen is running against incumbent Republican state Rep. John M. Bust.

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​North carolina, Political violence, Social media, Politics 

The national debate over criminal responsibility and postpartum depression got somewhat derailed after the jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial revealed more details about the lone holdout.

The defense never denied that Clancy strangled her three young children to death in the case that caused a nationwide battle. The defense argued that she sought help for mental illness and postpartum depression but did not get the treatment she needed.

‘For people who revel in identity politics, they certainly fit the most awful stereotypes of white liberals.’

There were nine women and three men on the jury. One lone juror, a male, held out against the 11 others who wanted to acquit Clancy of the charges by reason of insanity.

Some jurors have gone to the public to plead their case that the lone juror was obstinate and refused to listen to the others, but their arguments have only led to more support for the holdout.

An interview with one juror in the case led to the revelation that the holdout was a black man.

On “CBS Mornings,” juror Paula Devlin was asked by Gayle King to describe the racial makeup of the jury, and Devlin revealed that only one member was not white.

“One person of color. Was the person of color a woman or a man?” asked King.

“A man,” she replied.

“A man. Is the holdout juror a black man?” she asked.

“Yes,” Devlin said.

“A black man is the holdout juror?” King repeated.

“Yes,” Devlin said.

“Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second,” King replied.

Video of King’s stunned reaction was posted to social media.

Devlin went on to say that two jurors initially believed Clancy was guilty, two were undecided, and eight said she was not guilty.

She believes that the lone juror felt personally attacked, and for that reason, he refused to go along with the rest of the jurors after they deliberated and 11 were ready to find Clancy not guilty.

Critics online saw the irony in the demographic revelation.

“The liberal white women who tried to lecture him and shame him into acquiescing literally knew better than him,” said one critic.

“Holy heck, for people who revel in identity politics, they certainly fit the most awful stereotypes of white liberals.”

“This is AMAZING! Why didn’t the black man listen to the white priveledged [sic] saviors!?? How dare he not bow down and submit to their supremacy?!?” said another sarcastically.

“So there was a gaggle of white Karens hectoring a black man. Who didn’t care about all the other s**t, only that the mother had strangled her children,” said another.

RELATED: Hundreds of women rally outside courthouse show support for mother who killed 3 children

Devlin went on to explain her own process of arriving at a not-guilty verdict.

“I was leaning towards not responsible, from all the evidence I had heard,” she said. “And I had certain things I wanted to look at when we got into deliberation. Everything that we talked about and every point that everybody in the room made just kind of reinforced that more and more.”

The case ended in a mistrial and may go to trial again.

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​Lindsay clancy, Mental illness, Postpartum depression, Race politics, Politics, Gayle king 

Democrat socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Mayor Zohran Mamdani were seen laughing and smiling together at Ground Zero in New York City on Friday as 9/11 victims’ families wept nearby.

The incident occurred as family members read the names of the 2,977 Americans killed on September 11, 2001, by Islamic terrorists. Some families had asked earlier in the week that Mamdani stay away from the memorial due to his Islamist associations.

‘America deserved 9/11.’

Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani did not respond to requests for comment.

The clip circulating online juxtaposes 9/11 families visibly grieving with Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez laughing and smiling nearby.

Mamdani attended the ceremony despite a petition, which gathered over 110,00 signatures by Friday, requesting that he not intrude on the event.

“I’m proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” Mamdani told reporters Monday. “And what I want this week to be a focus on is on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11.”

RELATED: The little chapel that didn’t lose a single window on 9/11

In 2025, Mamdani appeared alongside Imam Siraj Wahhaj, identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He also appointed as chief counsel Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented Ahmed al-Darbi, a convicted al-Qaeda operative whose brother-in-law hijacked the plane that struck the Pentagon.

The first-term mayor has previously framed Muslims as the primary victims of 9/11, telling crowds in 2025 that his “aunt” was forced to stop riding the New York City subway in the aftermath of 9/11 “because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab.” It turns out, the woman was not his aunt and did not live in NYC.

Mamdani also claimed a former teacher warned him on Sept. 11 that he might face bullying because of his Muslim background. The former teacher does not recall that conversation, according to the New York Times.

Both Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez have ties to left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who in 2019 said, “America deserved 9/11.” Piker was raised in Turkey and lived there until he came to the United States for college.

Piker attacked families who signed the petition asking that Mamdani not attend the 9/11 memorial, saying they had a “demented racist viewpoint.”

AOC has appeared on Piker’s streams and hugged him at Mamdani’s victory party. Asked in August 2026 whether Piker should have a role in the progressive movement, she said Democrats “have a responsibility to build a winning coalition.”

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​Democrat, Ground zero, Socialists, World trade center, Politics, Zohran mamdani, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, New york city, 9/11