Category: blaze media

An estimated 31 million people living in the U.S. are bitten by ticks annually, but this year, the number may hit a record. If a pair of radical professors had their way, then the surging bites would go unchecked, leaving multitudes of Americans sick — and unable to eat meat.

Citing its Tick Bite Tracker dashboard, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced late last month that visits to emergency rooms for tick bites were higher than normal in many parts of the country and that in all but the South Central U.S., “weekly rates of ER visits for tick bites are the highest for this time of year since 2017.” The Midwest is the most affected region.

This is especially concerning because tick bites can lead to various serious and potentially debilitating diseases including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and every carnivore’s nightmare: alpha-gal syndrome.

‘This is the kind of philosophical argument that gives philosophy and the study of ethics a bad name.’

Amid this surge in tick bites and hospitalizations, a July 2025 academic paper defending the intentional spread of AGS via genetically modified ticks is once again in the spotlight.

AGS is a serious, potentially deadly allergy to alpha-gal, a molecule found in most mammals including cows and pigs. According to the CDC, the body of an afflicted individual registers alpha-gal in red meat and other mammal products as a threat and triggers an allergic reaction. This allergy can develop after a bite from a tick, most commonly the lone star tick.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are believed to presently be affected by AGS.

A pair of professors at Western Michigan University School of Medicine said in an article titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published in the journal Bioethics, that tick-borne AGS should be regarded as a “moral bioenhancer if and when it motivates people to stop eating meat.”

RELATED: The FDA seems to care more about celebrities than sick Americans

Ben McCanna/Portland Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

Eating meat, as humans have done for millions of years, is — according to Professors Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth — supposedly bad for the world because it contributes to “climate change” and harms animals.

“AGS promotes in the people who have it a resistance to eating mammalian meat,” wrote the professors. “Thus, they eat less mammalian meat, which is an improvement in their capacity for moral behavior.”

Crutchfield and Hereth not only argued that efforts to prevent the spread of tick-borne AGS are impermissible but that “promoting tickborne AGS is strongly pro tanto obligatory” and that promoting the proliferation of tick-borne AGS by genetically optimizing the disease-carrying capacity and adaptability of ticks is “morally obligatory.”

“Today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tickborne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation,” added the radicals.

The professors claimed — in the paper that Crutchfield subsequently said was a hypothetical ethical framework for discussion — that intentionally infecting people with a syndrome that prevents them from eating meat does not violate their rights but is rather analogous to mass “vaccinations.”

Crutchfield argued in a 2019 paper that such “moral bioenhancement” interventions in pursuit of imagined moral improvements, not health gains, ought to be not only compulsory but covert.

“This is to say that it is morally preferable for compulsory moral bioenhancement to be administered without the recipients knowing that they are receiving the enhancement,” he noted in the abstract for the 2019 paper.

Crutchfield and Hereth are hardly the first on the scene to discuss possibly using bioengineering to render the population incapable of eating meat.

For instance, Taiwanese-American “bioethicist” S. Matthew Liao discussed over a decade ago not only reducing humans’ average height to reduce their “footprint” but artificially inducing “intolerance to red meat by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins” by way of a medical device resembling a nicotine patch or other means.

H. Sterling Burnett, director of the Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, told the College Fix in response to the 2025 paper, “It is never morally right to promote a disease which harms people, robs them of choice, literally makes them sick, and, in extreme instances, kills them.”

“Whether to fight climate change or promote animal welfare, preventing the eradication of a disease that causes human harm — indeed, promoting increased infection — is morally abhorrent,” continued Burnett. “This is the kind of philosophical argument that gives philosophy and the study of ethics a bad name.”

Bioethics published a critical response in March to Crutchfield and Hereth’s paper that challenged the professors’ assumptions that introducing AGS would reduce overall animal suffering, that intentionally infecting humans would not violate fundamental moral rights, and that intentionally infecting people with AGS is comparable to vaccination.

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

​Allergens, Allergy, Animal welfare, Bioengineering, Biological warfare, Carnivore, Climate change, Lyme disease, Meat, Science, Tick bite, Tick bites, Ticks, United states, Western michigan university, Politics 

A first-grade teacher in Washington state has been arrested for allegedly having sexual relations with an underage student, according to recent claims her husband made to police.

The Whitman County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that 25-year-old Mackenzie Naught was arrested May 10.

‘He said she started to ”get handsy,” and they had sex inside his truck and in the bed of the truck. He then dropped her off at about 4 a.m. near her house.’

Naught was charged with first-degree sexual misconduct with a minor.

Naught had been an employee of the St. John School District.

Police said they “received information about an alleged inappropriate relationship between a student and the employee.”

“Following an initial investigation, deputies developed probable cause supporting the allegations,” the statement read.

Police said the investigation is ongoing and that “all parties involved are cooperating with the investigation.”

The Spokesman-Review obtained court records saying Naught’s husband informed police on May 9 that his wife of four years had confessed to him that she had sex with a teen on one occasion.

The husband had screenshots to prove his wife had been sexually active with the teenager, court documents also said.

According to the husband, the teen admitted to the illicit encounter in a voice call and through Snapchat messages, court docs said.

The husband told police he had known the teen for years and was friends with the boy’s family. The Spokesman-Review reported that Naught initially told deputies she never had sex with the teen.

According to court records, the alleged victim informed police that Naught was “being flirty” and that she attempted to persuade him to meet her. The teen initially felt weird about meeting Naught but eventually decided to see the teacher.

The Spokesman-Review reported, “He picked her up at about 2:15 a.m. in his truck down the street from her house. She asked him where the ‘little spot’ was they could go, he told deputies.”

The news outlet added that “she suddenly kissed him. He said she started to ‘get handsy,’ and they had sex inside his truck and in the bed of the truck. He then dropped her off at about 4 a.m. near her house.”

The Spokesman-Review, citing court documents, added that Naught said she knew the boy was 16, but that he is “like one of their friends.”

RELATED: Special-ed teacher accused of sexually assaulting students in her home, giving them alcohol; 1 victim said he ‘felt trapped’

According to court documents, Naught apologized and said she knew the situation was wrong and instructed the teen not to tell anyone.

Naught had been a teacher at St. John Elementary since September; the teenager is a junior at St. John-Endicott High School, according to court docs.

Superintendent Tina Strong said in a statement, “At this time, St. John School District is aware of allegations involving a district employee that are currently being reviewed by law enforcement.”

“The employee has been placed on leave and will not be on campus during this process,” Strong wrote. “The district is cooperating fully with the appropriate authorities and will also be conducting its own investigation into the allegations.”

Strong continued, “Our priority continues to be the safety, well-being, and support of our students and school community.”

“We understand situations like this can create concern, questions, and emotions throughout a small community, and we ask that everyone approach this matter with care and respect while the appropriate process unfolds,” Strong continued. “We also expect staff to continue maintaining the highest level of professionalism during this time.”

Naught appeared in Whitman County Superior Court.

Neither the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office nor the St. John School District immediately responded to Blaze News‘ requests for comment.

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

​Teacher arrested, Bad teacher, Teacher sex scandal, Teacher student sex scandal, Child sex crimes, Crime, Washington state 

The pro-life movement has seen a number of significant victories under President Donald Trump.

In less than six years, Trump has stopped U.S. tax dollars from funding groups that perform or promote abortions overseas, appointed three Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminated some federal funding to Planned Parenthood through Title X rule changes, protected doctors and nurses who didn’t want to participate in abortions, ended most government use of aborted fetal tissue for research, and pardoned several pro-life activists who had been arrested for protesting.

Despite these wins, many pro-lifers are frustrated with President Trump’s public stance on abortion. They criticize his treatment of the issue as a state concern instead of pushing for a strong national ban or more federal limits. They also feel he hasn’t done enough to stop widespread mail-order abortion pills and condemn his calls for “flexibility” on related policies.

While BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre is fully on board with the pro-life movement, believing abortion is “the murder of a child in no certain terms” and “one of the most horrific things about our society,” he argues that many activists fail to see the reality of what the movement is up against.

On this episode of “The Auron MacIntyre Show,” the host argues that no amount of laws or Trump bans can fix the problem because the entire American system — its economy, workforce, and culture — is built on easy access to abortion.

While Auron sympathizes with the many pro-lifers who were dissatisfied with President Trump during his 2024 campaign for refusing to make big promises about abortion bans, he argues that Trump was wise to take a nuanced approach to such a deeply polarizing issue.

“Donald Trump knew that this was going to be very unpopular, and he just refused to run on it in the election. … That makes political sense,” he admits.

Now that Trump is president, he continues to treat the issue of abortion exactly as he promised to treat it during his campaign, but many pro-lifers are nonetheless incensed.

As midterms draw nearer, pro-lifers are working to ban the abortion pill, but Auron says the timing of this initiative is unwise.

“Trump’s got enough problems with other optical issues going on — Iran, deportations, Epstein files, all that stuff. He doesn’t need another unpopular thing on his plate,” he argues, reiterating that he fully supports the pro-life movements’ initiatives in principle.

But practically, these initiatives aren’t working.

“The core issue is the state referendums. If the pro-life movement was winning at the state level after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, it wouldn’t need Trump to go out and do any of these things,” Auron explains.

“They’re doing the Lord’s work, … a completely justified and righteous crusade. But you need to understand that if you’re losing consistently on the state level, something has happened,” he continues.

What has happened, he explains, is that abortion has become foundational in America since Roe v. Wade. What that landmark case did was “[create] an incentive structure that put abortion at the center of many of our economic and cultural systems and understandings.”

“We have made literal child sacrifice the center of our civilization,” he says bluntly.

It fueled the 1960s sexual revolution, which coincided with the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion, and turned sex from a risky behavior into a virtually consequence-free one, changing relationship dynamics between men and women, de-incentivizing marriage and family, and teeing women up to enter the workforce en masse.

“[Women in the workforce] has all kinds of huge benefits for employers. Corporations love working women. … It basically doubles the labor pool,” Auron says.

Women also became huge money-savers for businesses because employers could not only pay women less than men to do the same job, but they could also pay men lower wages because the pressure to pay salaries that could provide for whole families suddenly vanished.

“Instead of getting one man doing the job that raised a family, you got a man and his wife both working for the same amount that just the man used to work for,” Auron says.

This shift also culminated in the need for more government. Before women entered the workforce, “Americans didn’t need a big government because women were at home, and they were building these associations, these connections, this social credit,” Auron says, “and so you didn’t have to have people step in and do all the things that women were doing.”

It also upped the nation’s GDP because all the work women were doing at home suddenly “[had] to get reterritorialized into the market.”

“When you move all of the female jobs, all of the female roles, all of the social capital that females were creating out of the economic zone and you move it into the economic zone, of course GDP goes up, line goes up, economic activity goes up because now there’s all these surrogates who have to do what women did when they were mothers,” Auron explains.

Abortion thus became a guarantee that the benefits of working women were locked in for corporations.

But the depth to which modern society is built upon the altar of abortion runs far deeper than that.

To hear Auron’s full breakdown, watch the episode above.

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

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

​Abortion, Abortion bans, Abortion pill, Abortion pills, Auron macintyre, Birth control, Blaze media, Blazetv, Child sacrifice, Donald trump, Donald trump abortion, Midterms, Planned parenthood, Pro-life movement, Pro-lifers, Roe v wade, Sexual revolution, Supreme court, The auron macintyre show 

Hollywood director Brett Ratner was aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, making the trip to China on the Trump administration’s dime.

Ratner, who helmed and produced recent first lady biopic “Melania,” was spotted on the overseas flight by a member of the traveling press pool.

‘Brett Ratner is traveling on Air Force One. Just spoke to him.’

According to New York Post reporter Emily Goodin, Ratner made the trip as part of a delegation including Elon Musk and outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook. In addition to his diplomatic duties, he also intended to scout locations for “Rush Hour 4,” a sequel the president himself has taken pains to encourage.

RELATED: Sara Gonzales EXPOSES Chinese-linked day care allegedly selling H-1B visas — and Texas AG responds with lawsuit

– YouTube

Power ‘Hour’

According to Ratner’s spokesperson, this will be the first time the director has filmed in China, and “Rush Hour 4” will start shooting in 2027.

Blaze News reported in November that President Trump had been urging Paramount founder David Ellison to bring back “raucous comedies” and classic action-style movies.

While Trump enthused over the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s 1988 “Bloodsport,” he also clamored for a fourth installment of the Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker “Rush Hour” franchise. “Rush Hour 3” was released in 2007.

RELATED: California mayor abruptly RESIGNS — after admitting to spying for China

China whirl

Although Ratner had previously shopped around a new “Rush Hour” pic, his #MeToo era cancellation — after six women accused him of sexual misconduct in 2017 — allegedly made Paramount leery of working with him.

Once an A-list action director, Ratner’s career has since cooled. “Melania” is his first film since producing true-crime thriller “Georgetown” in 2019.

The White House did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment regarding Ratner accompanying the delegation.

Other executives who made the trip reportedly included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, General Electric CEO Larry Culp, and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon.

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

​Align, Brett ratner, China, Hollywood, Me too, Melania, Ratner, Rush hour, Trump, Entertainment 

I got off the plane in Grand Rapids, Michigan, took my bag from the carousel, exited the terminal through the sliding doors, and headed past the shuttle stop toward the parking garage. So far everything had gone as smoothly as modern air travel can.

Then I got to the Enterprise car rental desk.

If you can’t rely on a confirmed reservation for a car, what are we even doing here?

The young man at the desk was friendly, although he offered some surprising news concerning the transportation I’d reserved just the night before.

“We don’t have a car for you.”

Futile Enterprise

I asked him why, exactly, mentioning the confirmation email I had on my phone. He told me that they simply didn’t have any more cars and that the system was messed up and that he was sorry for the inconvenience and that the soonest I might — key word being might — be able to get one would be 10 p.m. the following evening.

Not great.

I left, pulled up Google on my phone, and found another Enterprise location in another part of the city. I made a reservation for a few hours later and received another confirmation email. Just to be thorough, I then called up the branch to make sure they did indeed have a car for me.

They didn’t.

It was the same conversation as before, but this time the worker told me they wouldn’t have a car for two days. He apologized for the inconvenience, a word I have to admit I peevishly found inadequate for my current dilemma. But then, I had just flown from Milan to Chicago and Chicago to Grand Rapids — after 23 hours without sleep — and so was uncommonly eager to get to my final destination. Which, even should I procure a car, would entail a good four hour’s drive.

What’s the deal?

There is a “Seinfeld” bit about this. What’s the point of the reservation if you can’t fulfill the reservation?

Seinfeld, of course, does the bit very funny. But it’s not really so funny, or at least it’s not so funny when you are the one in the midst of trying to claim a car reservation that apparently can’t be filled. Renting a car to get to the airport hadn’t been a problem; why was it impossible now that I wanted to go home?

I sat there wondering what I should do.

I thought, do I stay the night in a hotel in the hope of getting my hands on a car the next day? No, I don’t want to waste the money. Do I call my wife and ask her to pile all three kids in the car, drive four hours down to pick me up, and then drive four hours back home again? Absolutely not. That would be hell for her, and she does more than enough.

I sat there rather irritated at the situation I found myself in. I have had my fair share of detours when on the road, sure. Sometimes travel plans change and you have to adapt. But if you can’t rely on a confirmed reservation for a car, what are we even doing here?

RELATED: I want to like our Kindle, but I’m hopelessly addicted to real books

Jim Heimann Collection/Getty Images

Let it ride

So I thought and thought, and I remembered that buses exist.

I hadn’t taken one in years, but it turned out they hadn’t gone the way of free checked bags and wearing actual pants on flights. Sure, it’s worse than a rental car, but it might get the job done. So I checked the schedule, found my route, and bought a non-refundable ticket for $54.

The bus to St. Ignace wasn’t terribly full Tuesday afternoon. There were only a few of us riding the great steel chariot north. Some old people, a couple of guys in worn jeans and construction boots, and a young guy — a college student — heading back to school at Michigan Tech in Houghton.

He brought a heavy backpack, a suitcase, and a set of golf clubs. He told me that after getting to St. Ignace, he would transfer to another bus that would take him west across the Upper Peninsula and up into the Keweenaw toward Houghton. He said the bus would arrive in Houghton at 6:30 a.m., making his trip north more than 16 hours long.

While detailing his epic journey, he said, “It’s OK, it builds character.”

I said, “Yes, it does.”

He said, “Plus, I don’t have any money.”

I said, “Neither did I,” remembering the days I used to ride the bus.

Just the ticket

Sitting there on that stiff and uncomfortable seat I recalled those many trips. Coming back from college and going back again. Taking the Megabus when I had no money in my 20s. They always advertised it as having fares as low as $1. For some reason, I never found those tickets.

I thought of riding the bus to Granada in Spain with my wife. We brought egg salad sandwiches wrapped in tin foil. I remembered taking an overnight bus from Eilat to Haifa in Israel. It was so long, but it was so cheap, and I was too.

Our bus finally pulled into the Walmart parking lot — the makeshift bus stop in our little town — at 8:41 p.m. Tuesday night. My wife and kids were there waiting for me in our gray Honda. The kids were wearing their pajamas and all ready for bed. The failure of the rental car companies to do their job was annoying. The bus ride wasn’t terribly comfortable. The final leg of my trip home took longer than I had anticipated. But I didn’t really care once I stepped off the bus and into the Walmart parking lot.

I made it home, and it’s a funny little story (maybe “Seinfeld” had the right idea), and what’s life without those?

​Lifestyle, Travel, Men’s style, Family, Rental cars, Buses, Michigan, The root of the matter 

With current events stirring up global energy prices, corn ethanol is once again being dressed up as if it is a domestic energy source and agent of energy security.

The truth is that it takes more fossil fuel energy to make a gallon of corn ethanol than a gallon of gasoline. It is time to face this unpleasant truth and the other perverse outcomes achieved by 20 years of misguided policy.

Biofuels in general are just a way to put a green fig leaf on petroleum by rerouting it through a farm field.

In 2005 and 2007, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Energy Independence and Security Acts that together created the Renewable Fuel Standard program. RFS had three stated objectives: to improve U.S. energy security, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and to support rural economies and agricultural development.

Instead, RFS has increased motor fuel prices, increased food prices, put millions of carbon-sequestering acres of land into intensive cultivation, increased greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, and increased water consumption and pollution.

The gallons of U.S. gasoline displaced by federal ethanol blending mandates are being exported to Mexico and other nations. The great success of RFS has been the hand of the government transferring wealth from motorists to big agriculture corporations.

The government wanted biofuels bad, and it got them bad. Under Corn Belt lobbying pressure, Congress waived the need for RFS to achieve actual greenhouse gas reductions for all existing corn ethanol biorefineries, plus all that could be built by the end of 2010.

The bulk of the corn ethanol produced over the past 20 years and today comes from these waivered plants. The EPA’s specious 2010 prediction that corn ethanol would achieve a 21% greenhouse gas reduction by 2022 was immediately challenged by the National Research Council for not properly counting land-use change and not realistically treating food competition and water use.

This panel of experts from the National Academy of Sciences even questioned the viability of the entire concept of reducing greenhouse gas with biofuels. The most rigorous and honest estimate by a third party in testimony before Congress used the EPA’s own methodology to show that adding corn ethanol to gasoline has increased greenhouse emissions by 28% over the pure gasoline baseline, with no trajectory to ever recover.

As for energy security, the goal was noble, but the method was irrational. Corn ethanol is critically dependent upon fossil fuels at every stage of production — tractor and truck fuel, fertilizer and pesticides, biorefinery energy and chemicals. Biofuels in general are just a way to put a green fig leaf on petroleum by rerouting it through a farm field.

RELATED: How the Union Pacific merger could revitalize America’s rail industry

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

While corn ethanol production has plateaued at 15-16 billion gallons for the past 10 years — not coincidentally matching the federal subsidy limit — domestic crude oil production has skyrocketed due to technological innovations.

The U.S. is once again energy self-sufficient and the world’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas. In 2024, the U.S. exported 100 billion gallons of refined petroleum. Other countries are burning U.S. gasoline in their cars and producing the same CO2 emissions as Americans would be if they were allowed to use it.

One of the great ironies is that RFS was authorized under the Clean Air Act. The EPA’s own 2010 regulatory impact analysis showed it would increase net air pollution and cause up to 245 more U.S. deaths per year. The EPA also granted corn ethanol a perpetual vapor pressure waiver for smog-causing emissions that it has denied to petroleum.

Perhaps worse, ethanol in gasoline enables the hydrocarbons to mix with water and thereby increase ground water and surface water contamination from fuel leaks to a far greater degree than the demonized MTBE it replaced.

A government program that has strayed so far from its objectives should be terminated. The federal agency in charge of protecting the nation’s environment should not be allowed to administer a program that increases air pollution and stresses on water, land, and climate. Fuel should be fuel and food should be food.

Surely Congress can find a better way to promote U.S. energy security and boost rural economies without imposing the highly regressive tax of increased fuel prices, inflicting such harm to the nation’s air and water resources, and promoting global food insecurity.

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

​Co2 emissions, Energy policy, Ethanol, Fossil fuel energy, Fuel prices, Gasoline, Motor fuel, Natural gas, Petroleum, Crude oil, Gas prices, Opinion & analysis 

It is rare that mayoral campaigns receive national attention, but Spencer Pratt’s bid for mayor of Los Angeles is an exception.

Since his initial campaign announcement in January, Pratt has been gaining momentum and is now polling in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (D). His campaign has primarily focused on restoring the city to its former glory, particularly in the wake of the damage from the horrific Palisades fires of 2025.

If politicians want to connect with voters, especially the next generation of voters, they will have to become good communicators online.

Two weeks ago, he uploaded his now-viral campaign ad featuring the hit song “Not Like Us,” showing the untouched properties of Mayor Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. The video then showcases the charred ruins where Pratt’s home previously stood, along with the trailer he now resides in.

Whatever the fate of Pratt’s campaign, he has hit on a messaging strategy that right-wing candidates would do well to emulate going forward if they want to be successful in the digital age.

Conservatives have had trouble breaking out of their image as out-of-touch intellectuals. Pratt’s message has more emotional impact. And his language is assertive. In the past, Republican leaders like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and Mike Pence had a cultural reputation for being passive. Pratt’s ad makes him look like something out of the “John Wick” action series.

In the late 2000s, Pratt rose to fame on the reality television series “The Hills.” At the time, he was known as something of an antagonist, not unlike Trump when the latter appeared on his own television series, “The Apprentice.”

Pratt is using the skills he developed in Hollywood to focus on the problems regular Angelenos suffer under liberal leadership — ballooning homeless encampments, family-destroying traffic in lethal drugs, and mismanaged animal shelters. Each of his main issues is effectively communicated in an emotionally compelling way.

Pratt’s campaign is the kind that could emerge only in the post-Trump era. In each of President Trump’s campaigns, he used his skills as an entertainer to communicate his agenda. “Make America Great Again” became a resonating success because it quickly and clearly explained his ideology.

Photos of Trump driving a garbage truck and working at a McDonald’s were used to convey his affection for hard work. And just as Pratt used the high-energy song “Not Like Us,” Trump commandeered the anthem “YMCA,” turning it into a MAGA staple.

RELATED: Master of the medium: The key to Trump’s success

Mandel NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Traditional communications methods like yard signs and mailers are still important in politics, but there is a growing requirement for candidates to have a strong social media presence. About 51% of Gen Z teenagers get their news primarily from social media, and the consumption rates of adults who get their news from social media platforms are consistently growing.

If politicians want to connect with voters, especially the next generation of voters, they will have to become good communicators online.

If conservatives don’t internalize this message, liberals certainly will. Many already have. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a radical socialist, won a resounding victory thanks in part to his social media skills.

He did a good job talking to residents, explaining perceived problems, and appearing to be a good-natured provider. He leaned into showing emotion, such as when he tearfully told the story of his aunt who couldn’t ride the subway after 9/11 — even though he didn’t actually have an aunt living in New York in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

He has tried to appear friendly, singing songs and dancing for preschoolers alongside former President Obama. He has even managed to tell a few jokes, such as when he appeared on “The Tonight Show.”

Mamdani’s charm won him the election in New York, and Pratt’s charm could do the same in Los Angeles. Conservatives shouldn’t mimic Mamdani’s dishonesty, but they need to be prepared to lean into their own distinctive charisma. Regardless of the outcome in his election, Pratt can help show the way. Conservatives who want to keep winning in the next few years need to pay attention.

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

​Spencer pratt, Los angeles, La mayor race, Karen bass, Conservatives, Social media campaign, Zohran mamdani, Palisade fires, Democrats, Opinion & analysis 

On May 12, Pope Leo XIV awarded Iran’s ambassador to the Holy See, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari, the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX — one of the Vatican’s highest diplomatic honors.

The move sparked significant backlash and outrage, especially on social media and among Iranian exiles, conservatives, and critics of Iran’s regime, with widespread claims that the Vatican was legitimizing a repressive government.

BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler, who describes herself as a devout Catholic, had a similar reaction.

“This is the Iranian regime — a fanatical, Islamist, theocratic regime,” she says. “Why on earth would the leader of the universal Christian church be awarding any kind of diplomatic honor to these killers, these anti-Christian killers?”

But some research revealed the answer, leading Liz to argue that Pope Leo isn’t the villain he’s being made out to be.

“This award is not something that is handed out based on individual merit. It is a recognition that is essentially standard practice for ambassadors who have been in residence at the Vatican for two years or more to receive this award,” she explains, noting that several other qualifying individuals also received the award at the same time as Mokhtari.

Liz equates the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX to a “participation trophy.”

“The only qualification for this participation trophy trophy is, oh, you’ve been here as an envoy to the Vatican for two years, therefore you get this ribbon, you get this trophy,” she says, concluding that the incident “is not as bad as it originally sounded.”

Liz acknowledges, however, that “perception on the outside matters” and that the optics of this situation are less than ideal.

“To many people, perception is reality, and … it looks like Pope Leo just gave the ambassador from the fanatical, Islamist, theocratic regime in Iran an approving pat on the back,” she says, highlighting Iran’s slaughtering of thousands of its own protesters and brutal persecution of Christians.

To hear more of Liz’s analysis and commentary, watch the video above.

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Blaze media, Blazetv, Iranian regime, Irans ambassador, Liz wheeler, Mohammad hossein mokhtari, Pope leo xiv, The grand cross of the order of pius ix, Vatican, The liz wheeler show 

Since first garnering national attention with his 2011 biography “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy,” author, radio host, and cultural commentator Eric Metaxas has become one of the most prominent Christian public intellectuals in American conservative life. A best-selling author whose books include “Martin Luther,” “If You Can Keep It,” and “Letter to the American Church,” Metaxas is now about to release “Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World.” Weeks ahead of publication, he sat down with John Zmirak to discuss the American founding, the spiritual roots of the Revolution, and the modern crisis of civic memory.

John Zmirak: For the past 10 years or so, you and I have had a tradition: You write a deeply serious book on a very important topic, and I ask you impertinent, frivolous questions about it, which you answer with exasperated reluctance. Since “Revolution” is the biggest book you’ve published in some years, I thought we should do the same thing, but perhaps at greater length, if only to test the reader’s patience. Are you agreeable?

‘Perhaps the central idea is that apart from Christian faith, there would never have come into existence the nation called the United States of America.’

Eric Metaxas: More than agreeable! Fire away, sir!

John Zmirak: As you were writing the book, you were worried about the length. You forced yourself to leave out some offbeat, outrageous incidents and spurn some avenues of inquiry. First, can you tell us what you wish you had had room to cover? Second, did you consider other means of shortening the book — for instance, by leaving out all the verbs? I find that in most books, they just clutter things up. In many academic books published recently, authors largely eschew them, albeit to the detriment of readability …

Eric Metaxas: Yes, I wanted this to be a definite and comprehensive telling of the epic tale of America’s birth 250 years ago. So there’s a lot in it! Every famous story and every amazing hero and a few despicable villains. But for the record, I did not leave out any of the offbeat and outrageous incidents, simply because I couldn’t help myself and because they’re so wildly entertaining. For example, I had to include the scene at the Hellfire Club in which the maniacal, cross-eyed John Wilkes contrives to have a garishly costumed baboon leap onto the back of his archnemesis John Montague, the earl of Sandwich. Such scenes seem to me central to the wider story, somehow, because they give it the color we need to understand the period.

I hope people enjoy my chapter on the “Mischianza” celebration in Philadelphia, for example. Nor could I refrain from mentioning the “gastric lusts” of the stout and haughty imbecile that was General James Grant. And of course on the first page of the first chapter, I mention Sir Thomas Crapper in a footnote. I really do think including some of the stranger and more interesting details makes the book more fun to read, generally. That’s the hope!

But I genuinely wish I could have gone on for another 200 pages. Perhaps in a second edition I will do that. Depending on how the current edition is received, of course. But there really are so many stories I wanted to include but simply didn’t have room for. I was dying to include the story of the burning of my hometown, Danbury, Connecticut, by the monstrous British General Tryon, in which Benedict Arnold figures prominently, several years before his name literally became synonymous with traitor. Perhaps in the second edition, as I say.

’50-year drift’

John Zmirak: You’re publishing this book to mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, which pedants refer to as the “Septuagesima” or something. But you prevailed upon President Trump to start calling it by your own pet name, the “Supercentennial,” which is at once both less confusing and sillier. My first question: Given your close access to President Trump, do you think you could start feeding him my policy ideas? For instance, I want him to start a RICO investigation of the U.S. Catholic bishops for smuggling immigrants into the country and getting $5 billion in federal contracts over 15 years as their reward. Could you make that happen?

Second question: How would you compare the state of the country with its condition during the Bicentennial, which, given our ages, each of us remembers as a time of widespread patriotism, economic crisis, and acne? Are American elites promoting national pride, gratitude, and civic literacy the way they once did through the “Bicentennial Minutes” that used to show between episodes of “Felix the Cat” and “Huckleberry Hound”? Or are our elites doing something else entirely? And if so, why?

Eric Metaxas: I hesitate to point out that these are not really questions per se, but will overlook that detail and try to “answer” them. I also hesitate to point out that your numerals are a Potemkin village, only there to hide the fact that a host of actual questions lurk behind the papier-mâché numbers. But I will try to answer at least some of your many wonderful questions!

Yes, of course, I certainly can importune the president with any policy proposals you want to get in front of him, especially the brilliant one about the Catholic bishops! Consider it done. Or maybe I can just give you Susie Wiles’ private email address and you can pitch her on these ideas yourself. I’ll do that privately, of course, since Susie has asked me never to give out her personal email to people of your particular “ilk,” and when she said that, she mentioned you specifically and made a ghastly face.

Regarding the differences between the Bicentennial — which we both remember — and the Supercentennial we are currently experiencing, I think that yes, more Americans knew more about American history in 1976 than today, but I also think that the 50-year drift away from teaching American history and the subsequent drift away from our founding ideals has caused more Americans to wake up and become more patriotic than ever. The madness of what we’ve been through as a nation has caused many to realize we desperately need to know our history, which is precisely why I wrote the book. Let’s just say Ken Burns’ PBS homage to the Native Americans disguised as a series on the American Revolution doesn’t exactly help things, and I thought someone should step up.

‘A grand pair of tusks’

John Zmirak: As I mentioned when we talked about “Revolution” on your radio show, this is the first book that convinced me that the patriots were right, that the British abuses of colonists’ rights met the exacting criteria for just war, and that the American founders were actually the conservatives resisting a new ideology imposed by godless, arrogant elites. In that sense, the Boston Tea Party was a forerunner of the election integrity protests on January 6, 2021. Were there issues on which your research for this book made you change your mind? What did you learn that most surprised you?

Eric Metaxas: The most surprising thing I learned was that George Washington made many of his own dentures and at one point — on a lathe operated with a foot pedal in the basement at Mount Vernon — he fashioned for himself a grand pair of tusks that he thought “properly fitting to the august office of the nation’s chief executive,” which were of such size as “inspired the deepest reverence” in those in his company and which he more than once used to intimidate Jefferson and Hamilton into silence. Most biographies leave such tidbits out of the story, but I simply refuse to!

Unfortunately, the Smithsonian has the tusks hidden away in storage in an annex in Maryland. It is my belief that their absence from the actual exhibit in the museum on our national mall marks a monumental ellipsis in the great story of Washington’s presidency. Of course I might be making this up, but who will ever know? You’ll just have to read the book, I suppose.

‘Decadence of British elites’

John Zmirak: How aggressively secular had British elites become by 1763, when the conflict with the colonies began? How fervently Christian had Americans become in the meantime, under the influence of Second Great Awakening preachers such as George Whitefield? Would you compare the growing schism between the two groups to the divide in America today between post-Christian elites and institutions and the scrappy, Bible-reading subculture of serious believers? Was there a real threat, as many colonists saw, of the British authorities interfering with religious freedom in America — as we’ve just learned the Biden administration was doing, thanks to the Trump administration’s report on anti-Christian bias?

Eric Metaxas: Can we be serious for a moment? Honestly, I had zero idea of any of this when I began my research, but this contrast became very clear almost immediately. It really is shocking that this is not more widely known, and I sincerely hope my book will help people see that this yawning cultural divide was at the heart of the matter. The British elites were as mocking of the simple evangelical culture of the colonies — especially in Massachusetts — as the secular elites are today. I simply had never known this. And yes, the threat the colonists saw was very real. Just as it was under the Biden administration.

John Zmirak: While we might find founders such as John Adams or Samuel Adams more admirable — more suitable candidates for roles such as “civic leader” or “son-in-law” — on the British side, we encounter Falstaffian wonders such as Lord Charles Townshend, aka “Champagne Charley,” who arguably did more to alienate the colonies than any other single man. Can you please tell us about “Champagne Charley” and his infamous speech in Parliament? Candidly, tell us with whom you’d rather have dinner: Sam Adams or “Champagne Charley”?

Eric Metaxas: This is a monstrously unfair question! There is simply no way to choose! It’s more cruel than the choice Meryl Streep had to make in “Sophie’s Choice”! Ich kann nicht wählen! It’s like asking whether I’d prefer to have dinner with St. Paul or Paul Lynde! Or Charlemagne or Charles Nelson Reilly! It’s simply not right to put me on the spot in this way, and I demand that you edit this question out before this is published. When people read about “Champagne Charley” in my book, they will of course know that not to wish to dine with him under any circumstances would be a kind of willful madness.

But I really do think that by painting the pictures of these characters, we get a better idea of the era and of what the Americans were dealing with. The decadence of the British elites is hard to exaggerate, and it ends up being central to the larger story. Of course I’m being deadly serious about that. The contrast between the British elites and the leaders on the American side could not be starker and says everything about what the conflict was really about. Most on our side really believed in such things as character and virtue and “honoring God” in how we fought. But the British openly mocked such ideas, as I have mentioned. I was amazed to discover this over and over in my research.

RELATED: Does ‘Bonhoeffer’ promote Christian nationalism? The truth behind the controversy

Image source: Angel Studios

‘Curdled into malice’

John Zmirak: Another change of mind you’ve provoked in me with this book is to drain away the sympathy I once had for Benedict Arnold, whom many historians have portrayed as the victim of an ungrateful Continental Congress, backstabbing colleagues such as Horatio Gates, and the quasi-Jacobin leaders of the Pennsylvania legislature. Instead, you portray him as a peevish Achilles skulking in his tent, being moved by spite and later greed to commit the ultimate betrayal — trying to surrender not just West Point to the British, but consigning the men under his command to miserable incarceration in the Brits’ deadly prison ships and even trying to arrange for his friend George Washington to be captured and likely hanged. Now, were you telling the story straight, or was this all just an allegory for Tucker Carlson turning on President Trump?

Eric Metaxas: I’m afraid the parallels to Tucker are all too apt. Yikes. But it’s horrifying to see how someone could do what Benedict Arnold did. That’s why I tell so much of his story, because it’s almost unimaginable until you hear all the details. And honestly, it’s kind of a cautionary tale for all of us. He was the bravest and most consequential figure in the whole war until Saratoga, and he was treated horribly. But then he let his gargantuan sense of self-regard lead him into something like a demonic and self-righteous bitterness that some historian said eventually “curdled into malice.” It’s awful. Hideous even. And yet we can’t look away.

John Zmirak: Who was the most admirable historical figure about whom you learned while writing this book? What misconceptions did the writing process banish from your thinking? What’s the most important lesson you hope young readers take away from “Revolution”?

Eric Metaxas: Er, that was three questions. Did you think you could so easily bamboozle me? And yet I shall endeavor to answer them, of course. The answer to the first question is John Adams. He should be a hundred times more famous than Thomas Jefferson. In a way the whole book ends up being his story somehow, although that was not my intention. But he is so compelling and so funny and acerbic and yet a man of the deepest integrity and Christian faith. I was amazed by him and by how central he was to bringing this nation into being, compared to what I had known.

One of the main misconceptions writing this book banished from my thinking was the idea that Adams was somehow peripheral, when he is infinitely more central to the story than Jefferson, as I mentioned, who really had almost no role in the Revolution itself and is mostly famous based on writing a single sentence — which was not his original idea, of course, and which was actually edited by Ben Franklin. Most of what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration had already been established over and over in the previous decade and had been said and written many times by many others. But when we declared independence, we needed someone to put it all down in a single document, and so Adams picked Jefferson to write the first draft. But we should not pretend that Jefferson was the author of the Declaration in the standard sense of the word “author,” as so many erroneously say. He brilliantly took these pre-established ideas and wove them into some beautiful sentences. But it’s not as if he came up with them. That would be like saying that Jerome wrote the Bible. Or like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote the parables of Jesus and the Lord’s Prayer. History needs at least to be honest.

As for the most important idea I think young people should take away, that’s impossible to say. There are many. But perhaps the central idea is that apart from Christian faith, there would never have come into existence the nation called the United States of America. That’s simply not debatable, but it’s very, very important, and very few people know it or want to know it. But we must know it, not just because it’s true, but because we cannot remain a free people without understanding where our freedom comes from.

‘Our glorious story’

John Zmirak: In your previous book on the founding, “If You Can Keep It,” you show how the American experiment of ordered liberty could only succeed — as all our founders agreed — if the population displayed the virtues that emerge from a lively Christian faith. You just mentioned that. Do you honestly think a sufficient percentage of Americans today have either such virtues or the faith that sustains them? If not, and in the absence of another Great Awakening, what non-democratic system of government would you recommend we adopt? Given your Greek/German heritage, perhaps you have a Byzantine or Hohenzollern alternative you could offer? Or is there some other option that occurs to you?

Eric Metaxas: Yes, if all else fails, I think a Hohenzollern-style monarchy is the way to go. But before that happens, I would earnestly advocate for us as Americans to reacquaint ourselves with our glorious story — which is precisely why I wrote this book — and try to do some justice to the great men who risked everything in living out that story. We absolutely and unequivocally owe them that, as I say in the epilogue. And I do hope that in reading my book, people will come away genuinely inspired. I think it’s almost inevitable in a way. When you see who these men were and what they did, you want to be a part of it yourself, and that’s precisely the idea. We are to continue the Revolution, as I say. That’s our job, and we must do it.

So I do believe there are enough Americans willing to do that, and it is my hope that those that aren’t yet willing will become more willing when they read the book and see what a great story they have the opportunity to become a part of.

“Revolution” will be available for purchase on June 2.

​American founding, American history, American revolution, Books, Christian faith, Civic memory, Culture, Eric metaxas, George washington, Interview, Lifestyle, Revolution: the birth of the greatest nation in the history of the world’, Faith 

A Republican U.S. senator who made an enemy of President Donald Trump has just been put out to political pasture.

Saturday was Primary Election Day in Louisiana, and Republicans in Louisiana have spoken: They do not want Sen. Bill Cassidy to serve a third term.

‘It’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!’

With 99% of the vote tallied, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), endorsed by Trump, led with 44.8% of the vote, followed by Treasurer John Fleming with 28.3% of the vote. Letlow and Fleming will face off in a runoff on June 27.

“THANK YOU, LOUISIANA! Louisiana made it clear tonight: we are ready for strong conservative leadership that will stand with President Trump and never waver,” Letlow posted to X on Saturday night.

“WE WILL WIN THIS ELECTION FOR THE PEOPLE OF LOUISIANA,” Fleming pledged early Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, Cassidy came in a distant third at just 24.8%.

“When you participate in democracy, sometimes it doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. But you don’t pout, you don’t whine, you don’t claim the election was stolen, you don’t find a reason, you don’t manufacture some excuse,” Cassidy said after the race was called.

“You thank the voters for the privilege of representing the state or the country for as long as you’ve had that privilege, and that’s what I’m doing right now.”

RELATED: Trump-backed Republican launches bid to challenge GOP Senate incumbent

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Cassidy likely saw his defeat coming. Since at least February, polls from Quantas Insights, Emerson College, and American Pulse have had Cassidy trailing both Letlow and Fleming by several points.

Cassidy’s fractured relationship with Trump likely played a key role.

In November 2020, Cassidy coasted to re-election, partially on a “Complete and Total Endorsement” from Trump. However, just three months later, in February 2021, Cassidy was one of seven Republican senators to convict Trump on articles of impeachment related to January 6.

Much has changed in the state and the country since that pivotal vote five years ago — and not in Cassidy’s favor.

For one thing, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a strong ally of President Trump, was elected in November 2023 and signed a law to implement closed primary elections in Louisiana, beginning in 2026. Previously, Cassidy, who supported Michael Dukakis in 1988 and who once donated to Democrats like former Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.) and former Gov. Kathleen Blanco, could rely on Democrat voters to help him in the Republican primary.

RELATED: Trump’s MAHA pick for surgeon general has Big Pharma-backed lawmakers shook

JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Then in November 2024, Trump was elected to a second term as president, collecting all eight of Louisiana’s electoral votes after carrying 60% of the vote there.

And like the elephant on the Republican Party logo, Trump never forgets.

As far back as October 2023 and all the way up until Primary Election Day, Trump has been railing against Cassidy on social media, calling him “wacky,” “incompetent,” “A TOTAL FLAKE,” and “a very disloyal person.”

Late Saturday night, Trump reveled in Cassidy’s ouster: “Bill Cassidy, after falsely using his ‘relationship’ with me during his political career, and winning Elections because of it, voted to impeach me on preposterous charges that were fake then, and now, are criminally insane! His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!”

Since Trump’s return to the Oval Office, Cassidy has made at least one significant overture to Trump, casting the deciding vote in favor of Robert F. Kennedy as health and human services secretary. The senator took heat for that vote, especially considering his background as a physician and his long-standing support of vaccines in general.

That vote was apparently not enough.

Now, the winner of the runoff between Letlow and Fleming will face the winner of the Democrat runoff between Jamie Davis and Gary Crockett in November.

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

​Bill cassidy, Republican party, Impeachment, Trump, Julia letlow, Jeff landry, Louisiana, Politics 

As the release of the UFO files to the public has finally begun, Pentagon UAP investigator Luis Elizondo recalls his own experiences with recovered materials, secret Pentagon operations, and the terrifying connection between UAP sightings and America’s nuclear technology.

“I actually gave a briefing to a senior member of the Department of Defense in 2017, several briefings, about the material that I’ve personally held in my hand,” Elizondo says, noting that the material found at the time “did not exist” with humans.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is shocked, pointing out that there’s a theme with the sightings.

“Nuclear test sites or nuclear sites, and water, why?” Glenn asks Elizondo.

“It’s not just nuclear weapons. It’s nuclear propulsion, nuclear technology. We’ve seen them over our national laboratory, Savannah River facility. There’s some reports that came out,” Elizondo says, explaining that there seems to be a correlation between UAPs, water, and nuclear technology.

“That’s why my colleagues and I had put forth a plan called Interloper to try to get one of these things,” he says.

The idea behind Interloper, Elizondo explains, was to create a “honey trap” that would be an “irresistible target.”

“We would put this nuclear carrier strike group in a certain area, and then as a UAP showed up, we turned on the lights. We turned on all our sensor data to start collecting information, telemetry and other stuff on these signatures, on these UAP,” he tells Glenn.

However, it was “killed by somebody at a very senior level.”

“There’s some speculation why that occurred. A lot of folks believe it’s because we were getting too close to another UAP effort, long-running UAP effort that the U.S. government had going on, and it was put on ice for a little while and they were getting concerned that maybe our group was getting too close to their group,” he explains.

There’s also a group Elizondo calls “Collins Elite,” who are “more radical religious individuals in the government.”

“They had a moral issue with us pursuing this topic. They believe that it contradicted their theological belief system, that these UAP were in fact demons,” Elizondo explains.

“If you studied UAP, then you were going against the word of God,” he adds.

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.

​Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Glenn beck, Investigator, Nuclear sites, Pentagon, The blaze, Uap, Ufo, Demons, The glenn beck program, Elizondo, Luis elizondo, Ufo files, President trump, Trump administration, Uap sightings, Ufo sightings, Demon sightings 

Sweden’s Ministry of Social Affairs said last week that a select segment of its youth could be “drawn into crime” and is making bold suggestions to avoid that possibility.

Describing its methods as one of the best tools at its disposal, the proposal would have shocking applications and a wide age range.

‘Electronic surveillance may, in serious cases, be a necessary support.’

The Swedish government pleaded for child safety by way of electronic monitoring during a recent press conference and noted that certain children already flagged by their social services should be required to be at home within certain hours.

Strangely, the age group ranges from 13 to 20 years old.

The subjects would be monitored for a maximum of three months at a time, the Swedish government said, while Euronews reported that smart watches or bracelets with GPS monitoring would be the proffered device.

The bracelets would look “like a watch or bracelet, so it wouldn’t be as obvious or stigmatizing” as an ankle bracelet, according to Social Services Minister Camilla Waltersson Gronvall.

While the government estimated that only 50 to 100 youths would be monitored, the social services minister cited that “173 children under the age of 15 [are] suspected of being involved in murders or murder plots.”

RELATED: Commencement speaker praises AI and globalism — graduates crush her with boos

Swedish royal family. Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Image

“The government proposes that electronic monitoring should be able to be used in situations when children’s safety needs to be ensured,” the federal website stated. It added that the watchful eye of the government would be used to “ensure that the child or young person is at home at the times decided by the social services.”

Sweden insisted that the devices would be as minimally intrusive as possible but are necessary as an “early intervention” apparatus that, in the end, will “protect” those being monitored.

“Electronic surveillance should only be used when necessary, with strict rules … the measure is needed to … prevent the child or young person from engaging in criminal activity,” the government added.

RELATED: Ode to a 1984 Buick Skylark — and to all the other cars of my life

Parliament Palace, Stockholm, Sweden. Photo by: Giovanni Mereghetti/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Using similar logic, Swedish police have had the legal authority to monitor the electronic communications of children under 15 since October 2025.

“Preventive coercive measures may be used against children under the age of 15 to … prevent and detect certain particularly serious crime,” the government said.

The government also increased the time for which “children may be detained” while expanding the reasons for doing so.

Most of the commentary from government officials, like Social Affairs Minister Jakob Forssmed, justified the monitoring system as a way to give “more tools” to the government to prevent gang recruitment and serious crimes.

“Electronic surveillance may, in serious cases, be a necessary support to ensure that children and young people do not stay in inappropriate places at inappropriate times,” said Jessica Stegrud, social policy spokesperson for the Sweden Democrats.

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

​Ankle bracelet, Child monitoring, Child safety, Electronic surveillance, Government surveillance, Gps monitoring, Monitoring, Youth crime, Tech 

The “no-contact” trend has exploded in recent years. Popularized primarily on social media, it refers to adult children deliberately cutting off all communication with their parents or family members (often at the instruction of a therapist), typically to protect their mental health from perceived toxicity or because of ideological differences.

This isn’t some fleeting fad either. According to a New York Post survey, 38% of Americans have gone no contact with a friend or family member; Reddit’s “EstrangedAdultChild” community has skyrocketed in membership in recent years; and TikTok has roughly half a million posts (with well over a billion total views) featuring #nocontact.

Severing ties with one’s family has become an epidemic.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey addressed this movement through a biblical lens.

Allie argues that the no-contact trend is a branch of “therapy culture,” which tends to elevate the self above all else.

“[No contact] is one particular manifestation of what I call the cult of self-affirmation, which tells you if you learn to find fulfillment and love and satisfaction within yourself, if you go on this road of self-discovery, you will go so deeply inside yourself that you will unlock the manifestation of all of your dreams,” she says, noting that this mindset and practice have ties to the New Age as well.

But Jesus, Allie says, clearly instructs us to take the focus off of ourselves.

“Remember Jesus’ words: If you want to find yourself, you lose yourself. If you want to live, you must die. If you want to gain what I offer you, you must lose all of these things,” she says.

But the mindset behind the no-contact movement is the antithesis of Christ’s instruction.

“It’s not that you have to deny yourself; it’s that you have to deny others. If you want to gain, it’s not that you have to lose yourself in what you have. You have to lose others,” says Allie, calling it “the worshiping of the god of self.”

Allie acknowledges, however, that boundaries are sometimes necessary in a parent-adult child relationship.

“If you’re talking about actual harmful, hateful actions and words, OK, like that’s one conversation to have,” she says. “The problem with this is that this category of justification for going no contact is so large, and it encompasses everything from petty offense to political disagreements to not liking your parents’ tone to your parents in your mind just being too judgmental.”

“There are so many reasons that are covered under this that I think are awful reasons to cut off your parents,” she adds bluntly.

So what’s the Christian response to the no-contact movement?

To answer this question, Allie begins by playing an old clip of Charlie Kirk addressing the issue of having difficult parents.

“Even if your parents share values and views and a worldview that you do not have, you are biblically obligated to honor them, which means to spend time with them and to love on them and to go visit them. … If you are incapable in this case of honoring your earthly father, you will never honor your heavenly Father,” he declared.

Scripture corroborates this repeatedly. Allie displays several verses that explicitly instruct children to honor their parents.

There are no caveats to this either.

“There’s nothing there that says [honor your mother and father] as long as they’re still nice to you, as long as they agree with you, as long as they’re not emotionally immature, as long as they don’t do anything to you that makes you angry … as long as you can’t think back in your life to any time that they didn’t treat you fairly,” says Allie.

But she acknowledges that this is no easy journey — especially for those whose parents were genuinely abusive or neglectful.

“It takes a lot of the power of God to say, ‘Even if you didn’t treat me well, I am going to treat you well,”’ says Allie. “That’s what Christians are called to. That is the radical kind of love that the world who says they know what love is does not understand.”

We are called to this sacrificial, unconditional love, she says, because that’s the kind of love Christ extends to us.

“Even when we were spitting on Him and mocking Jesus, even when our sin placed Him on the cross, He said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,”’ says Allie. “That’s the craziness that Jesus brought forth.”

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.

​Allie beth stuckey, Allie stuckey, Blaze media, Blazetv, Christianity, Estrangedadultchild, Mental health, New age, New york post, No contact, No contact trend, Relatable, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Selfaffirmation, Social media, Therapy culture, Tiktok 

Monoculture is a concept describing a society in which everyone — or at least a large plurality — shares common interests. America once had one in spades. People stopped on the street to watch the “Seinfeld” finale being broadcast in Times Square. Over half of the entire country watched the final episode of “M.A.S.H.”

And, of course, there were sports. America’s two most popular sporting leagues, Major League Baseball and the National Football League, once dominated their respective halves of the year. At one time, almost 60% of American households watched World Series games.

But now that’s changing. And while determinists may argue that it was an inevitability that some sports may wax or wane in popularity, they did not have to. They are being killed.

It is difficult — even borderline impossible — to watch some teams’ games.

In the late 1950s, football teams had a problem. The NFL instituted a blackout policy, banning games from being broadcast if they did not sell enough stadium tickets ahead of time. This was done to aid teams from smaller cities, which depended upon revenue from ticket sales and could have potentially failed without that income.

But the Supreme Court ruled that the NFL — in determining which teams’ games could be broadcast — was running afoul of the law. So the league turned to Congress and President John F. Kennedy, who in 1961 passed and signed the Sports Broadcasting Act.

The SBA gave antitrust exemptions to the four major American sporting leagues — the NFL, MLB, the National Hockey League, and the National Basketball Association — when it came to the pooling of telecasting rights of their games

With their exemptions secured, the leagues proceeded to enforce strict exclusivity policies, giving the rights to the games to certain stations in certain circumstances. This system worked for a while, but it began to break down in the age of cable television, when certain games were essentially placed behind paywalls, a practice that has intensified in the streaming era.

This development has been a boon to the major leagues, which have made billions in sales of exclusive games. Amazon paid about $1 billion per year for “Thursday Night Football,” and MLB makes at least $800 million from its exclusives.

For the fans, however, it has been a disaster.

RELATED: Trump’s antitrust policy is working for everyday Americans

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Now, “Thursday Night Football” belongs to Amazon Prime when outside a local region. The same situation occurs with key Christmas Day games, which can be found on Netflix. ESPN likewise has exclusive rights, some of which are broadcast on YouTube and others on Netflix. Certain nationally broadcast games are not available on local TV.

MLB’s blackout policies have produced even more confusion for viewers. It is difficult — even borderline impossible — to watch some teams’ games. Atlanta Braves fans, for example, were in recent years instructed on how to watch their team’s games on Gray-owned broadcast stations, but Gray only hosted 15 games out of MLB’s 162-game season. Watching all 162 could cost hundreds of dollars.

Some MLB fans are even worse off. The state of Iowa, for example, is “blacked out” from viewership of six different nearby teams, leaving fans unable to watch a given game unless they have access to a specific package.

Obviously, viewers hate this. Polling has found that over 70% of sports fans want games to be broadcast for free locally, and the National Association of Broadcasters has called for Congress to consider changing the Sports Broadcasting Act.

While changes to the Kennedy-era law are overdue, there is reason to believe that the law as written does not allow the leagues to act as they have. The text of the law covers professional sporting leagues that engage in “sponsored telecasting of the games.” Telecasting is a specific form of transmission and arguably does not include broadcasts over the internet.

Some may point out that laws written in an older time can apply to newer technologies, but that’s not at issue here. The First Amendment, for example, covers speech said over television or the phone — but that is because it is still speech. If the SBA had covered only broadcasting, the leagues would potentially have an out. But it doesn’t.

The Trump administration is already taking action on this front. The Federal Communications Commission asked for comments on the state of sports broadcasting earlier this year, and the Department of Justice has opened an antitrust probe into both the NFL and MLB.

These investigations could end up being long-running and likely will require both Congress and the courts to act. Americans should urge all three branches of government to take action and cut through the broadcasting web to save the last element of America’s monoculture.

​Mlb, Nfl, Nba, Supreme court, Sports broadcasting act, Trump adminstration, Blackouts, Sports blackouts, Local tv markets, Opinion & analysis 

A recent viral essay from the New Yorker details the virtual market lock Google and other AI companies have quietly, some might say underhandedly, gained on the coveted and highly vulnerable K-8 public school population.

While we’re watching oil prices, the border invasion, and trying to feed our families, Big Tech is already fully insinuated into the school system — via long-standing, highly corrupt but technically legal arrangements between corporate-industrial capital and the U.S. Department of Education.

John Taylor Gatto, the legendary New York schoolteacher, best-selling author, and titan in the struggle for human dignity, once warned, “Schools were designed … to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.”

Lifelong customers are tough to create, unless you indoctrinate them.

He was correct, of course. And so the penetration of AI and Big Tech into public schools shouldn’t be a surprise. Rather, it is inevitable — as AI and Big Tech share many of these original ideas related to the management of human beings via cybernetics and technocracy. It’s almost as if the captive audience of young children was put into place to wait for the final insinuation of ultimate control through dumbing-down technology.

Consider the experience recounted in the New Yorker by writer Jessica Winter, a mother herself: “Students at my eleven-year-old daughter’s public middle school began receiving new Google Chromebooks, and that is when I heard the tap-tap of the cloven hooves approaching our doorstep. The Chromebooks, which the students use in every class and for homework, came pre-installed with an all-ages version of Gemini, a suite of A.I. tools. When my daughter, who is in sixth grade, begins writing an essay, she gets a prompt: ‘Help me write.’ If she is starting work on a slide-show presentation, the prompt is ‘Help me visualize.’”

Lifelong customers are tough to create, unless you indoctrinate them at the most vulnerable and malleable stages of their lives. As our expectations have fallen concerning our social arrangements, companies like Google or Anthropic, in partnership with, say, Microsoft, are building a long play. They’re capturing the brand allegiance, building familiarity, and establishing “relationships” early — investments that will extend throughout life.

“No single company has a monopoly on A.I. in K-8 education,” Winter observes. But Google, thanks to its Chromebook, is well on the way.

“A report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group noted that, by the last quarter of 2020, year-on-year sales of the device were up by 287%,” reports Winter. “In a national survey conducted by the Times last November, about 80% of K-12 teachers said that their districts use Chromebooks, which has created a vast captive market for Gemini and helped make A.I. in schools a near-universal prospect.”

RELATED: Commencement speaker praises AI and globalism — graduates crush her with boos

Phelan M. Ebenhack/Getty Images

One senses a strange respect for the business acumen of these market virtuosos. After all, it wasn’t long ago that their “progressive” bona fides and “good person” ethos were fully accredited by the country’s all-too-well-established elite institutions. Those old habits and expectations die hard. But today the emerging picture concerning AI-forward Big Tech and our children’s minds, to say nothing of our own dwindling capacities, still remains too “conspiratorial” for most of the mass media apparatus.

However gingerly, Winter tiptoes toward the truth. She flags a new MIT study that concludes “the integration of LLMs into learning environments may inadvertently contribute to cognitive atrophy.” But again: Winter notes the study’s timid authors “appended an FAQ to the paper with instructions on how to discuss its findings,” begging readers not to use “the words like ‘stupid,’ ‘dumb,’ ‘brain rot,’ ‘harm,’ ‘damage,’ ‘brain damage,’ ‘passivity,’ ‘trimming,’ and so on.”

Even if we didn’t have countless studies decrying the potential and proven deleterious effects of AI — on adults! — we should, and could if we wanted, simply sit back and apply Gatto’s observations and warnings to the manner in which tax schemes and kickbacks have deluged the classroom with digital technology that seems built more to impair than inspire.

It isn’t at all up for debate as to whether the U.S. education system was purposely built to serve the needs of industrial capital for docile and compliant workers. We could, I suppose, debate the ethics of that government-corporate merger. But it has long been in effect.

What may still be debatable is whether we, as a people — we American are still a coherent people, right? — wish to radically amplify the depth and scope of that docility. The perverse logic at work in the unified sectors of American education, finance, technology, and government is geared for deeply anti-human outcomes. And those fed into the gears at a young enough age will never know any better.

​Google, Classroom, Ai, Tech 

Recently, I wrote about my cancer diagnosis. In the aftermath of that ordeal, I finally scheduled something I had put off too long: a colonoscopy. It had been 11 years since my last one.

Part of that gap was due to neglect, I suppose. But much of it came from the reality of caregiving. Over the last six years alone, my wife and I have spent nearly 12 months in hospitals. The stretches at home often felt like military logistics.

And since we live about 60 miles from the nearest facility performing colonoscopies, scheduling one is not exactly like stopping by the barbershop.

Truthfully, I was nervous. Not panicked, but uneasy enough to want reassurance that this was one area of my body not planning an uprising. Once you hear the word “cancer,” your imagination suddenly takes on a full-time job.

When we learn to steward our bodies and hearts well, it often spills into our finances, our work, our relationships, and the way we carry responsibility itself.

So there I sat in the curtained pre-op area waiting for the doctor.

As I watched, the curtain beside me kept shifting while he searched for the opening. A hand appeared, disappeared, then the curtain moved again.

After decades of hospitals and surgeries with my wife, I’ve learned something important: If you lose your sense of humor in these places, the fluorescent lighting wins.

So when the doctor finally stepped through the curtain, I said to him in my best Roy D. Mercer impression:

“Look a here … if you’re havin’ a hard time finding the hole in the curtain, I’m a little concerned about you rootin’ around where you’re about to go.”

He burst out laughing and sheepishly assured me he knew exactly what he was doing. A few minutes later, they wheeled me toward the procedure room.

As we rolled through the doors, I gave the Mercer impression another go:

“Ahhright then … y’all gonna get to the bottom of this now. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.”

Then, just before they put me under, the doctor answered in his best Larry the Cable Guy voice:

“Let’s get ’er done!”

My last thought before going to sleep was: “How reassuring.”

Thankfully, the procedure went well. I’m good for several more years. I’ve seen moments like that one in hospital rooms, waiting areas, funeral homes, and around kitchen tables where exhausted families carried burdens they never imagined carrying.

Two weeks before the colonoscopy, I was playing the piano for the funeral of a beloved pastor here in Montana. The sanctuary was heavy with grief. Then, while adjusting my music, my sleeve caught the piano lid.

Apparently, the thing had been engineered by the same people who design bear traps. The lid slammed shut with a crack loud enough to wake the dead, which, considering the setting, felt especially unfortunate. The whole congregation jumped. Then, they laughed while I turned the color of a stop sign. And for just a few seconds, in the middle of grief, people breathed again. Not because suffering is funny, but because despair is heavy, and laughter gives weary people enough strength to pick the load back up.

RELATED: Life can be hard, but don’t forget to laugh

Anton Zacon/Getty Images

Somewhere along the way, we started confusing seriousness with rigidity. We became suspicious of humor in hard moments, as if laughter dishonors grief.

I don’t believe that. The older I get, the more I believe humor can be an act of stewardship rather than denial.

It’s not pretending things don’t hurt or making light of tragedy. Just refusing to surrender every corner of the heart to darkness.

Hospitals have a way of distilling what matters. Sitting in waiting rooms, hearing monitors beep through the night, or listening to the wheels of a gurney rattle down a hallway strips away much of the endless noise masquerading as importance in our culture.

You start remembering what matters.

A friend recently asked how I’m approaching decisions about my cancer treatment. My answer was simple: Stewardship will drive this decision. Thankfully, we caught my cancer early enough that I have options. That didn’t happen through panic. It happened through paying attention.

Caregivers are notorious for postponing their own health while tending to everyone else. I’ve certainly done my share of that over the years. But healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Screenings matter, rest is important, and laughter is essential from time to time.

Stewardship rarely stays confined to one corner of life. When we learn to steward our bodies and hearts well, it often spills into our finances, our work, our relationships, and the way we carry responsibility itself.

In a culture consumed with debt, rancor, fraud, and endless outrage, the problems can feel too large and tangled to fix.

But perhaps stewardship still begins the same way it always has: with individuals willing to accept responsibility for what’s right in front of them.

This include our health, families, work, and our other obligations.

Healthy cultures are built the same way healthy lives are: one act of stewardship at a time.

​Cancer, Cancer diagnosis, Cancer treatment, Caregiving, Stewardship, Individual responsibility, Humor, Opinion & analysis 

In her latest H-1B investigation, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales confronted the owner of Great America Technologies in Frisco/Plano, Texas, over suspected fraud. After trying for months to visit the business’ registered address, only to find an empty office suite where multiple H-1B employees are supposedly working, as well as a defunct phone number and website, Sara finally tracked down Nagarjuna Reddy Sakam at his personal residence.

She pressed him on the company’s multiple H-1B sponsorships according to USCIS data, the lack of visible evidence of business operations, and whether or not Nagarjuna was illegally running the business, which originally was registered under his wife’s name, before he obtained his green card.

When Sara demanded that he present her with the company’s public access files — a legal requirement for any American business sponsoring H-1B employees — Nagarjuna reacted defensively. The confrontation led to a heated back-and-forth that culminated in Nagarjuna threatening Sara with a lawsuit and Sara vowing to report his business to the authorities.

On this episode of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” Sara drops the latest bombshell on her investigations into Nagarjuna’s Great America Technologies, Inc.

She warns: “I hope that you’ve taken your blood pressure medication before watching this. If you haven’t, you can hit pause and go make sure that you do that, because this is really going to piss you off.”

– YouTube

Shortly after their confrontation, Sara discovered that 20 minutes after she left Nagarjuna’s residence at his request, he allegedly called 911 and tried to “file a complaint” on her forf questioning the legality of his business operations. The call resulted in “no legal action against [her].”

He then allegedly sent her a poorly worded “ChatGPT cease-and-desist letter,” accusing her of trespassing, invasive questioning, unlawfully recording him, and harassment and intimidation.

But that’s just the beginning of what Sara discovered.

During their viral confrontation, Nagarjuna repeatedly insisted that he was “paying taxes to the government.”

Sara found out, however, that Great America Technologies Inc. had taken out a significant PPP loan.

“[Nagarjuna] actually took an insane amount of money as a PPP loan handout that was forgiven,” she says, citing ProPublica data.

“[It] is a total, my friends, of $266,542 taken from us,” she adds.

Sara believes the numbers are suspicious.

“I’m just wondering why on earth a software consulting company with only remote workers and no one working in office would need to take out PPP loans for payroll,” she says skeptically. “Make that make sense, because this was a time when literally every technology company in the world was thriving and making more profits than they ever had because they were already set up to work remote.”

“Over $260,000 of our taxpayer money that I’m legally paying that you just had — poof — just forgiven. I’m wondering what was that money actually spent on,” Sara wonders.

“You want to file a lawsuit? Go ahead,” she challenges. “I would love the opportunity for discovery.”

Sara believes justice is coming for Nagarjuna.

“Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, who has been on this very issue, liked the video enough to repost it,” says Sara. “So you may get very familiar with her and her attorneys very soon.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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.

​Blazetv sara gonzales, Bombshell investigation, Great american technologies, Green card, H-1b fraud, H-1b visas, H1b investigation, Inc, Nagarjuna reddy sakam, Public access files, Sara gonzales, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sponsorships 

Winn the barber ran a tidy, one-chair shop in an office park off Route 222. That meant a wait — especially since my mother usually brought my two younger brothers as well — but I didn’t mind.

Like Winn, who always wore a starched white coat and slicked his hair back with Brylcreem, I was a creature of habit, and I had a ritual for these bimonthly visits. I’d plop down into one of the vinyl-covered seats and catch up on the adventures of Archie Andrews and the rest of the Riverdale High gang.

In the 1970s, evangelical Christianity may not have been culturally dominant, but it was culturally permissible.

Normally, I stuck to more serious fare — “Batman,” “Daredevil,” maybe the odd “Sgt. Rock” if the spinner rack was looking particularly picked over. But Winn exclusively stocked his waiting room with Archie Comics.

Revival in Riverdale

Sophisticated cineastes will cry at “The Notebook” if they watch it on an airplane — something about the altitude. And something about Winn’s place — the fake wood paneling on the walls, the smell of Barbicide mingling with the eerie “easy listening” music wafting from a hidden speaker somewhere — lowered my critical defenses. I couldn’t get enough of these soothingly repetitive teenage misadventures.

Then, one afternoon I picked up an issue that seemed off. Entitled “Archie’s One Way,” the cover featured Archie and friends in his “jalopy” — comically overheating and leaking fluid everywhere — getting yelled at by a cop for ignoring the obvious street sign. “Do you know this is ONE WAY?”

So far, so good. Typical Archie setup. But instead of a wisecrack from Reggie or Jughead, we get Betty piping up from the back seat, arms raised in joyful celebration: “This is cool! The officer is WITNESSING to Archie!”

Huh.

A new creation

I opened the cover and read with a kind of dawning horror, like the lone survivor in a body snatchers movie. The art, the lettering, the bright colors were exactly the same, but somehow, when I wasn’t looking, the wholesome yet wholly secular teens I’d come to know and love had been swapped with evangelical Christian duplicates.

I had encountered one of the licensed line of Archie issues put out by Spire Christian Comics from 1973 to 1982.

The idea came from longtime Archie artist Al Hartley, who’d had a born-again experience in 1967 and thought Archie would make a great way to spread the gospel. Although he was Jewish, John Goldwater — who had created Archie along with partner Louis Silberkleit some 30 years earlier — agreed.

The regular Archie books continued unchanged. These proselytizing stories lived in their own lane, distributed through Christian bookstores and churches — although often making it out into the wider world, as I and other unsuspecting readers can confirm.

RELATED: The night of the gun was never-ending — until the day I surrendered to Christ

Old Man in Prayer by Workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn, circa 1629. Barney Burstein/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images

‘Divorce Any Style’

The message wasn’t subtle: In that same issue, the gang ends up in what appears to be Riverdale’s never-before-seen version of Times Square, recoiling at marquees advertising movies like “Divorce Any Style” (rated X), “Crime Pays,” and “Sex Sex.”

In another, Betty helps an injured hippie classmate (a great kid, notes Archie, before she “got into the drug scene”) accept Christ into her heart after a bad car accident.

The idea of Archie Comics as Jack Chick tract seems strange now. But is it any stranger than the recent TV series “Riverdale,” the requisite “bold” and “subversive” take that turned its Anytown, U.S.A., into a hotbed of conspiracies, crime, and gothic melodrama?

What’s really strange to contemplate from today’s vantage point is that Archie’s conversion didn’t inspire any kind of national uproar. Granted, before the internet, it was much harder for outrage to spread; most people not in Spire’s audience probably didn’t know these comics existed.

But I think it was also something else.

Negative world

Writer Aaron Renn has described American culture as moving from a “Positive World,” in which Christianity carried social legitimacy, to a “Neutral World,” and now to a “Negative World,” where public Christian identity can carry reputational cost. However one draws the lines, the Archie–Spire experiment clearly belongs to an earlier era.

In the 1970s, evangelical Christianity may not have been culturally dominant, but it was culturally permissible. Just as even liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter could speak of committing adultery “in his heart” (in Playboy magazine, of all places) and still get elected, a mainstream publisher could allow its most recognizable teenager to kneel in prayer and trust that the sky would not fall.

The moment was not confined to Riverdale — or Protestantism. In the ’80s, Marvel produced comic book biographies of Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa.

As late as the early ’90s, Marvel launched a joint venture with Christian publisher Thomas Nelson to publish the adventures of the Illuminator — a superhero with explicitly God-given powers — as well as adaptations of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and C.S. Lewis’ classic “The Screwtape Letters.” The imprint was shut down after only two years.

‘Nuff said?

In 2000, Marvel founder Stan Lee approached Episcopal priest Peter Wallace about creating comics based on a “biblical worldview” for his new online venture Stan Lee Media. In a 2023 article, Wallace recalled his pitch:

This approach would promote belief in God, the example of Christ’s life, the reality of supernatural conflict, strong moral values, and an altruistic lifestyle. Our stories would be fully compatible with the Bible and religious tradition, but without painting ourselves into a corner theologically. The goal of this approach — a goal that’s urgently needed today — is to open young minds to the reality of God, to build a strong case for faith and morality by example, without being preachy or dogmatic. It can help launch youth of all ages on a quest for truth and a personal relationship with God.

When SLM went bust along with many other first-wave internet start-ups, the idea was forgotten.

Also in 2023, Archie Comics introduced its first transgender character, more than a decade after Riverdale’s first gay student made the scene. The “queering” of Archie was probably inevitable; comic books, like movies and TV, have embraced 21st-century America’s religious zeal for “LGBTQ representation,” among other modish concerns loosely falling under the category “woke.”

But in his 85-year history, Archie Andrews has seen a lot of trends come and go — from the jitterbug and acid rock, to MTV and even crypto. As the “peak woke” of the Trump/Biden/Trump era recedes, we’re apparently seeing a bit of a religious revival among the young. Who’s to say our favorite red-headed, perpetual 16-year-old won’t get caught up in the spirit too?

​American culture, Archie comics, Christianity, Culture, Evangelicals, Lgbtq representation, Lifestyle, Marvel comics, Religious revival, Riverdale tv series, Spire christian comics, Transgender character, Woke, Faith 

I’m looking at new apartments this week here in Portland, Oregon. It’s time for an upgrade.

This has triggered a debate I often have with myself: If I’m going to move, why not leave dysfunctional, far-left Portland altogether?

Had I become so comfortable with the bad vibes of Portland that I would stay here indefinitely, out of inertia or laziness or not wanting to start over?

This is my chance to move to a different city. Or another state. Somewhere with fewer drug addicts and criminals roaming the streets and fewer democratic socialists roaming city hall.

I grew up in Portland. I have lived here off and on throughout my life. During my most productive years as a writer, I lived in bigger, more media-oriented cities, mainly New York and Los Angeles.

But I’ve always loved coming back to Oregon and assumed I would settle here when I retire. Portland always felt like my place. I love the tall trees, the gentle rain, the misty Oregon coast.

Free radicals

Unfortunately, over the last 15 years, Portland has become a hotbed of radicalism and political intolerance. So much so that it has affected my daily life.

I’ve always socialized with creative types. But in Portland, the artistic community is often more hysterical than the violent protesters in the street.

Once it became known I was conservative, I lost about 80% of my writer friends. And maybe half of my other friends. This social exclusion was especially bad during the years around #MeToo, and then COVID, and of course the constant presence of Trump derangement syndrome.

Un-friendzoned

The result is that living here has been like living on a desert island. I feel unwelcome at art events. I avoid literary parties and gallery openings.

One egregious example: I didn’t attend the celebration of life for one of my most important literary mentors, a beloved Portland poet who encouraged me as a young writer and helped advance my career.

I owed so much to this man, and I couldn’t go to his funeral!

RELATED: WACK JOB: My adventures in the mental health industrial complex

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Tiny bubbles

Recently, I saw a TikTok video by a woman whose family had moved from Seattle to Wyoming.

Her message was simple: “No matter how much you think you are aware of the bubble you live in, when you get out of these far-left cities, a whole new world opens up to you.”

This hit me hard. Had I become so comfortable with the bad vibes of Portland that I would stay here indefinitely, out of inertia or laziness or not wanting to start over?

My own private Idaho

One reason I’m reluctant to move to a red state is I’m not sure I would fit in.

Take for example, Boise, Idaho, the closest red city to Portland. I’ve visited there many times. It’s clean. There are no homeless. The people are super nice. It’s very “churchy” and family-oriented. There’s a large Mormon population.

But could I adapt to such a place? I’ve lived in liberal cities MY ENTIRE LIFE. I have never lived in a place like Boise. Would I find people who understand my sense of humor? People who like the obscure music I listen to? Or read the books I read?

Yes, the people of Boise would share my core values. But would they share my urban tastes?

Go east, young man

I had a Republican friend here in Portland who moved to Florida during Trump’s first term. At the time, that seemed like a drastic change.

For a couple of years, I emailed him every few months to ask how he was doing. He had settled right in. Florida was great. He loved it there.

As he grew more comfortable in Florida, I grew less comfortable in Portland. Now, in 2026, moving to Florida 10 years ago seems like a genius move. I am humbled by his foresight.

The great escape?

So what should I do? Be the latecomer, arriving in Tampa or Austin or Nashville a decade after all the smart people already moved there?

I guess it’s never too late. I could still escape.

But what about the tall trees, the gentle rain, and the misty coastline I love so much? What about my roots in the place where I grew up?

Robert E. Lee didn’t abandon his home state of Virginia in the face of a civil war. But Virginia was famous for its proud history and strong cultural heritage.

I’m from Portland, famous for people with orange hair who don’t know what gender they are.

Fall into the gap

I’ve always assumed Portland’s current political extremism would fade over time. Sooner or later, people would calm down and return to some form of normalcy.

But whenever I try to connect with my former liberal friends, I quickly learn that the derangement is stronger than ever.

So, should I stay or should I go?

These are the decisions we have to make during these difficult times — as we struggle to maintain our sense of ourselves and of where we came from.

​Blue states, Boise, Culture, Drug addicts, Lifestyle, Miami, Oregon, Political intolerance, Portland, Red states, Trump derangement syndrome, Wokeness, Blake’s progress 

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is back again with yet another video report on alleged H-1B fraud in her home state of Texas.

After multiple attempts to visit the listed address for Great America Technologies — a registered business in Plano, Texas, that sponsors multiple H-1B workers but has no signs of activity as well as a defunct phone number and website — Sara finally located the owner.

The confrontation led to fiery exchange.

– YouTube

“Let me give you the details on this company,” says Sara.

“In 2017 they formed this company with officers from Andhra Pradesh, India. They moved to Razor Boulevard allegedly in 2019, and in 2024, the previous owners, Laxmi Boggula and another gentleman, removed themselves as the directors and listed Nagarjuna Reddy Sakam as shareholder and director,” she explains.

“Now what we presume after doing some digging is that this new director, Nagarjuna … is actually the old director Laxmi’s husband. So it seems like we may be stumbling upon an H-1B/H-4 dependent situation where the woman opens the business and the H-1B visa worker actually runs it,” she continues.

In the next part of the video, Sara paid a visit to Nagarjuna’s personal residence.

After questioning him about the empty office and defunct phone number and website, Sara asked Nagarjuna to show her the business’ public access files and pressed him about the multiple H-1B employees he sponsors according to USCIS data.

This led to a heated back-and-forth exchange, in which Nagarjuna repeatedly denied that he employed as many H-1B workers as the USCIS database currently lists and claimed that the public access files were at a new business location in Frisco, Texas.

When Sara vowed to visit the site to obtain the files, Nagarjuna accused her of “creating nonsense.”

“Who the f**k are you come ask all these things?” he lashed out.

“Who the f**k are you to complain that I’m rooting out scam and fraud?” Sara fired back.

“Now I’m suspicious, because … if you’re doing something the right way, why would you care that I’m rooting out fraud?” she asked.

Sara then inquired about who was running the company before Nagarjuna received his green card and transferred the business to his name.

“Who was running the business at that time?” she asked.

“Me,” he said.

He then backtracked, “We [he and his wife] both are running [the business].”

“Well, you’re not allowed to do that. … How are you supposed to run that business and have a job that you’re actually being sponsored for on an H-1B?” Sara asked.

“You’re admitting that you were running a company that’s generating income. That’s against the H-1B rules,” she continued.

The contentious exchange ended with Nagarjuna threatening to file a lawsuit for being recorded without his permission and Sara vowing to report his business.

To see the footage, watch the video above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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.

​Blaze media, Blazetv, Great america technologies, Green card, H-1b fraud, H-1b visas, Nagarjuna reddy sakam, Sara gonzales, Sara gonzales unfiltered, Texas, Unauthorized business activity, Uscis data