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A specter is haunting America — the specter of communism. Across the country, socialists are emerging from the political margins, convinced that their moment has arrived.

Recent victories by Zohran Mamdani and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York and Melat Kiros in Colorado have emboldened the Democratic Socialists of America. The organization is now looking beyond deep-blue strongholds toward battleground states such as Michigan and Wisconsin.

The red wave is rising. Americans must stop it before it reaches shore.

Abdul El-Sayed could very well capture the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, while Francesca Hong is mounting a serious campaign for governor of Wisconsin. Hong recently finished close behind Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez in a straw poll of Democratic state convention activists.

The movement suffered a setback in Maine, where Graham Platner ended his Senate campaign after a former girlfriend accused him of sexual assault. Platner denied the allegation. His departure, however, does not mean the socialist faction will relinquish its growing influence within the Democratic Party.

Some Democrat leaders are now trying to distance themselves from the movement. They cannot so easily escape responsibility for it.

For decades, Democrats at every level have cultivated the soil in which this radicalism has grown.

In Portland, Oregon, activists tore down statues of America’s founders while local leaders proved unwilling or unable to stop them. More recently, Mamdani used his Independence Day address to portray his opponents as believing that America is “an arena of supremacy” reserved for those with the correct race, accent, or ancestry.

The remark did not directly condemn America as such. It did, however, reflect the left’s familiar habit of interpreting the country primarily through oppression, exclusion, and domination.

Gallup’s latest polling shows how deeply that attitude has penetrated the Democrat electorate. Only 14% of Democrats say they are extremely proud to be American, compared with 70% of Republicans and 28% of independents.

RELATED: What if the commies were right after all?

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Patriots instinctively recoil from such contempt for the country. But they should also understand precisely why socialism and communism are incompatible with American principles.

The founders built the republic on natural rights. From those rights flow liberty, private property, religious freedom, free enterprise, and self-government.

Communism rejects them all.

It replaces private property with state control, religious faith with materialism, voluntary exchange with centralized planning, and political dissent with coercion.

The modern democratic socialist may avoid the language of dictatorship and revolution. The underlying tendency remains the same: Transfer more authority from citizens and local institutions to the state.

Mamdani calls for government-run grocery stores, rent controls, and sweeping redistribution. Hong favors aggressive state action to impose her economic and climate agenda. El-Sayed campaigns for Medicare for All, placing still more of the health care system under federal control.

Each proposal is presented as an isolated benefit. Together, they describe a political philosophy in which government assumes ever more responsibility for providing food, housing, medical care, employment, and personal security.

That bargain always comes with a price.

Socialists begin by promising free goods and services, financed by taking the people’s “fair share” from wealthy “parasites.” But economies do not run on resentment. When governments suppress prices, punish investment, seize property, and replace market signals with political commands, the results are familiar: shortages, corruption, censorship, and poverty.

Stalin’s Soviet Union imposed collectivization and famine on Ukraine, killing millions. Castro’s Cuba still struggles to provide reliable electricity and basic goods. Venezuela fell from one of Latin America’s wealthiest countries into hyperinflation, scarcity, and mass emigration.

These catastrophes were not unfortunate deviations from socialism. They followed from concentrating economic and political power in the same hands.

America rests on the opposite premise.

It trusts citizens more than bureaucrats to understand their own needs, pursue their own interests, and build their own lives. The Constitution divides power precisely because the founders feared a state capable of crushing liberty while claiming to act for the public good.

RELATED: Democrats can’t outrun their socialist wing

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The Democratic Party now faces a pipeline of candidates who reject that inheritance, moving from DSA chapters into Democratic primaries and, increasingly, elected office.

The stakes extend beyond New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Colorado.

America will not survive another 50 years — let alone another 250 — by embracing the ideas that impoverished, terrorized, and destroyed societies throughout the previous century.

The new socialists may have better branding, fashionable social-media accounts, and carefully softened language. Their program still demands that Americans surrender more of their property, independence, and authority to the state.

The red wave is rising. Americans must stop it before it reaches shore.

​America, Communism, Darializa avila chevalier, Democratic party, Democratic socialists of america, Graham platner, Medicare for all, Melat kiros, Natural rights, Opinion & analysis, Red wave midterms, Socialism, Zohran mamdani 

The state of Texas continues to experience a mass influx of Indian immigrants, who are now the largest Asian subgroup in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. The increase in population growth is in part due to the state’s robust H-1B program. Indian nationals consistently receive roughly 70% of all approved H-1B visas in Texas due to its booming tech, IT, and engineering sectors.

It’s no surprise, then, that the majority of the H-1B fraud cases and investigations that have been publicly reported or pursued in Texas in recent years involve Indian nationals, Indian-origin individuals, or firms primarily serving Indian workers.

BlazeTV’s Sara Gonzales has been at the forefront of these investigations — busting allegedly fraudulent Indian-run businesses claiming to sponsor H-1B visa workers. Her work was the catalyst for Governor Greg Abbott’s freeze on new H-1B hires at state agencies and universities and Attorney General Ken Paxton’s state investigations and lawsuits against dozens of suspect companies.

But Sara’s issues with Texas’ growing Indian community go beyond just fraud.

“All of these people come here illegally or legally, scam our system, drive up home prices, and then s**t on our neighborhoods — like quite literally,” she says.

She points to a story that has gone viral of an Indian man publicly defecating in a Texas neighborhood.

Sara is horrified but not necessarily shocked by the incident.

“Do you think that when they come here, they’re going to stop s**tting in the streets? No, of course not,” she says. “They don’t respect our country. They are coming here to take.”

“This is not the first time we’ve had some documentation of an Indian person or an immigrant of some sort who doesn’t respect our country, doesn’t respect our rules … caught, like, peeing right outside their restaurant that they work at,” she continues.

“You can take the Indian out of India, but can you take the India out of the Indian? Apparently not.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Sara gonzales unfiltered, Sara gonzales, H-1b fraud, India, Indian immigration 

A national five-year plan tells you what a regime believes about the unfolding of society over time: that the future is an engineering problem, history has a rhythm, and the state holds the baton. China is now in its 15th such plan. Its language has evolved over the decades. Whereas early plans stressed Soviet-assisted heavy industry, the current one elevates “AI Plus,” swarm intelligence, embodied AI, and intelligent agents. The word “rejuvenation” appears with the frequency of a liturgical response. But the plan remains a metronome for national development, as an official commentary put it in 2026.

China spent 3.93 trillion yuan on research and development in 2025, or 2.8% of GDP. The country holds 6.3 million valid invention patents and installed 295,000 industrial robots in a single year, 54% of all the industrial robots installed on Earth. Nature Index ranks the Chinese Academy of Sciences as the world’s leading research institution.

China’s supercomputers now hold the top global ranking.

For the first time, the World Intellectual Property Organization placed China in the global innovation top 10 and says the country leads the world in knowledge and technology outputs. Stanford’s AI Index reports that the performance gap between American and Chinese AI models has mostly closed. These indicators report a condition that already exists.

However, the interesting question about China’s technological future has never been whether its numbers are big, but what kind of civilization produces them and, in return, what kind of civilization they produce.

Engineering everything

Writer Dan Wang calls China an “engineering state,” which he contrasts with America’s “lawyerly society.” In a lawyerly society, problems are disputes to be adjudicated, interests to be balanced, rights to be negotiated in the shadow of precedent. In an engineering state, problems are systems to be optimized. You do not argue about the bridge; you build the bridge. You build it faster than anyone expected, and then you build the rail line to the bridge and then the city around the station, and soon the question of whether the city was a good idea becomes moot because the city is already there and full of people buying things on their phones.

By December 2024, China had 1.1 billion internet users, more than a billion online payment users, and 974 million online shoppers. Seventy percent of citizens over 60 were shopping online. Short-video platforms had become major retail channels, with 71% of viewers reporting purchases after watching. What is happening is a compression of social acts: Entertainment, advertising, recommendation, checkout, and social proof collapse into a single continuous interface. Commerce is atmosphere, the feed a way of life.

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The philosopher Yuk Hui has argued that technology is never culturally neutral, that different civilizations articulate different relationships between nature and technical practice, and that the assumption of a single universal technics, Greek in origin and Western in development, has blocked serious thought about what Chinese technology might mean on its own terms. For example, China has built a governance architecture around AI that looks little like America’s approach of permissionless innovation followed by belated regulation. China’s algorithmic recommendation rules already require platforms to promote “mainstream values” and “positive energy.” Its measures on generative AI require legal data sources, accuracy improvements, and safeguards against harmful outputs. Its 2025 labeling rules mandate disclosure of AI-generated content. China is engineering the moral atmosphere in which its AI systems operate.

A civilization at stake

The question this raises is the oldest one in the modern history of Chinese technology, first posed during the Self-Strengthening Movement of the 1860s, when Qing reformers tried to borrow Western military and industrial methods without disturbing the civilizational order that received them. The May Fourth intellectuals of 1919 radicalized the problem by turning science into a slogan for national salvation. The People’s Republic added the Soviet planning apparatus. Each generation has found a new way to ask the question: How much of modern power can be adopted technically without rewriting the civilization that adopts it?

The answer apparent in the current data is that China has become extraordinarily good at a specific kind of technological work but has not yet settled the deeper question. China leads the world in deployment, turning research into factories, interfaces, supply chains, and mass habits with a speed no other country can seem to match. Its Shenzhen industrial parks run AI models that optimize manufacturing parameters 30 times an hour. Its robot installations outnumber those of every other nation combined. Its open-weight AI models such as DeepSeek V4 have pushed cost-efficient, deployable intelligence to the center of the national ecosystem.

Our future?

The United States still produces more frontier AI models, holds higher-impact patents, and dominates AI data-center infrastructure. China’s basic-research share of R&D spending, while rising, remains low among top performers: 7.08% in 2025, up from 6% in 2019, which represents real movement as well as a persistent tilt toward application over inquiry. China’s supercomputers now hold the top global ranking, but on benchmarks more relevant to AI workloads they rank fourth, running on domestic chips not yet at the leading edge. The semiconductor constraint and export controls are real. The gap between “registered users” and “actual users” of generative AI, between 600 million and 249 million, tells its own story about the distance between infrastructure and habit.

The most plausible future is that China becomes the place where 21st-century technologies are most completely socialized — embedded into schools, factories, transport, shopping, and the daily texture of regulation and moral instruction. China will be the civilization that most thoroughly absorbs technology into ordinary life, and in so doing, reshapes what ordinary life can mean. The question is whether absorption at that scale and speed leaves room for the things that cannot be optimized. That question, too, is very old, and the five-year plan cannot answer it.

​Tech, China, Artificial intelligence 

It’s no longer a secret that most of the food Americans eat is detrimental to their health. From chemical pesticides and GMOs to artificial additives, preservatives, and dyes, much of the common foods available today are loaded with junk known to cause health issues — even serious ones, like cancer and disease.

Few, however, know that Big Food is largely owned by tobacco companies. On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey sits down with Ashley and Patrick Sullivan, the creators of the documentary “Breaking Big Food,” which pulls the curtain back on how the tobacco industry hijacked our food system and sparked a major health crisis.

“In 1985, R.J. Reynolds, the maker of Camel cigarettes, purchased Nabisco for about $5 billion. In 1988, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, purchased Kraft Foods for about $13 billion,” Patrick explains, noting that “these are just two of the examples of Big Tobacco buying up” big name food companies.

“By the 1990s, Big Tobacco actually controlled about 40% of the food supply in America,” he adds.

Ashley explains that the reason for the push to control Big Food stemmed from the government’s decades-long anti-smoking campaign that resulted in a sharp decline in U.S. adult smoking rates — and a whole lot less cigarette sales.

“[Tobacco companies] saw number one, the industry that they were in was going down in flames and maybe saw an opportunity in the food industry to go in and say, ‘We are the addiction people, let’s figure out how to apply what we know to processed foods,”’ she says.

“How did that actually affect the ingredients in the products at these companies?” Allie asks.

Patrick says it began with the most rudimentary of business questions: “How do we get our customers to buy more of our products?”

Science provided the answer.

“The tobacco scientists became food scientists, and they began studying how do we tickle the pleasure centers of the brain with potato chips and candy and sodas, and they found this sort of perfect mixture of fat, salt, and sweet that makes it so no one can eat just one,” he explains.

They also found ways to save money by using preservatives to expand the shelf life of food products and making cost-effective ingredient swaps, like “switching from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup.”

Companies used crafty marketing strategies, Ashley notes, to distract the public so it didn’t notice the significant changes that were being made to food ingredients.

“Let’s color this with red dye 40 and make it look really pretty. Let’s do these fun ads. Let’s target children, make it fun for them to want to purchase these foods,” she says.

“Let’s put a toy inside of the cereal. Let’s give a free gift with a Happy Meal,” Patrick adds.

Then the government inverted the food pyramid, recommending high portions of grain over any other food group. That wasn’t because humans thrive on a grain-rich diet but because of the “lobbying efforts on the behalf of grain producers,” Patrick notes.

To hear more of this fascinating interview about how America’s food system became poisoned, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, Maha, Big food 

The gains made in classical education in recent years are truly encouraging. Students are once again learning great names and great stories, and they are encountering primary texts that invite them to participate rather than be passive observers.

But while the classical academic program is teaching our children the names of virtues long out of fashion, we should ask whether we have created the conditions in which those virtues can truly take root and flourish.

Students need raw contact with nature so that virtue is exercised with cold hands and aching backs, not merely batted around the seminar table as an abstraction.

In the “Cyropaedia,” Xenophon’s account of Cyrus’ formation and adventures before he ascended to Persia’s throne, Xenophon describes the paideia, or the process of formation whereby young men become statesmen. Xenophon’s Cyrus grew up with rigorous discipline: combat, cold exposure, fasting, and the austere corrections of men hardened by war.

His education was a series of experiences fashioning him for military service, accustoming him to privation, and schooling him in the unapologetic art of justice.

What Xenophon sketches out, in the main, mirrors the Greek historian Herodotus’ description of the education of noble Persian youth in “The Histories.” They were sent away to spend time with military commanders on the empire’s frontiers.

Far from the corrosive luxuries and intrigues of the court, the young learned to “ride, shoot the bow, and speak the truth.” Only when sufficiently hardened were they considered fit to return to the seats of power and take their place in the political life of the empire.

Both Herodotus and Xenophon depicted an ideal education that prioritizes exposure to nature, the cultivation of martial virtue, and the use of simple, manly rhetoric consisting of straightforward, honest speech — rather than the forked-tongued parlance common in the halls of power. This, both Greeks report, is education that forms kings.

Unfortunately, this is far removed from our modern approach to education. You won’t find anything like the kind of education depicted in the “Cyropaedia” in public, private, or STEM-focused schools — or even most classical schools.

To help us take seriously what Xenophon and Herodotus say about education, especially where it is at odds with contemporary practice, we should enlist the aid of John Henry Newman, a theologian who wrote luminously about education. In a series of sermons, Newman criticized the nearly homogeneous-in-form book learning we call education today.

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In a sermon on the state of innocence before the Fall, Newman argues that our reason is just as fallen and corrupt as our passions. He asks, “What then is intellect itself, as exercised in the world, but a fruit of the fall, not found in paradise or in heaven, more than in little children, and at the utmost but tolerated in the Church?” He continues, noting that after the Fall, “passion and reason have abandoned their due place in man’s nature, which is one of subordination, and conspired together against the Divine light within him, which is his proper guide.”

Newman acknowledges reason as a gift from God for which we should be grateful. But this hardly contradicts his call for us to refrain from idolizing it, whether at the expense of the passions or not.

In another sermon, Newman exhorts, “Now the danger of an elegant and polite education is, that it separates feeling and acting; it teaches us to think, speak, and be affected aright, without forcing us to practise what is right.” He continues: “The refinement which literature gives, is that of thinking, feeling, knowing and speaking, right, not of acting right; and thus, while it makes the manners amiable, and the conversation decorous and agreeable, it has no tendency to make the conduct, the practice of the man virtuous.”

This sounds like bad news for a culture whose educational practice consists almost entirely of sitting, reading, and thinking.

But we might object that reading about heroic characters can inspire us to emulate their virtues. So too can vicious characters warn us off their path and help us to see patterns of evil as they develop. Without rejecting literature-based education entirely, Newman plays out a likely scenario involving the breakdown of character when it has been reared on affect rather than its rougher cousin, reality:

For instance, we will say we have read again and again, of the heroism of facing danger, and we have glowed with the thought of its nobleness. We have felt how great it is to bear pain, and submit to indignities, rather than wound our conscience; and all this, again and again, when we had no opportunity of carrying our good feelings into practice. Now, suppose at length we actually come into trial, and let us say, our feelings become roused, as often before, at the thought of boldly resisting temptations to cowardice, shall we therefore do our duty, quitting ourselves like men? Rather, we are likely to talk loudly, and then run from the danger. Why? — rather, let us ask, why not? What is to keep us from yielding? Because we feel aright? Nay, we have again and again felt aright and thought aright, without accustoming ourselves to act aright; and though there was an original connexion in our minds between feeling and acting, there is none now; the wires within us, as they may be called, are loosened and powerless.

“Loosened and powerless” is a sad substitute for what Newman suggests we ought to demonstrate instead: “hardy, rough-handed obedience.”

We now find ourselves back with Cyrus on the frontier, where reality itself is the teacher and the lesson is not optional. Even students in the best classical schools today spend too much time in purely intellectual arenas, where they can separate feeling from action, sentiment from reality — arenas where talk is as cheap as it is plentiful.

Fortunately, there is a corrective. But be warned: It is as rugged and as demanding of adults as of the young. It will require many in education who are accustomed to the relative comfort of lecture halls and seminar tables to relearn the feel of callouses and the inevitable alternation between sweating and shivering that the unmediated life provokes.

The corrective, simply put, is robust physical training in fitness, athletics, or the school of the outdoors — camping, climbing, and diving. Students need raw contact with nature so that virtue is exercised with cold hands and aching backs, not merely batted around the seminar table as an abstraction.

They need hard, physical work — tilling the soil or caring for animals — that teaches patience and responsibility and impresses upon them the limits of human will. They need to willingly forgo modern comforts that obscure the lessons contained in God’s book of nature.

Hard labor and self-mastery learned through challenge can no longer serve as mere supplements to education. As long as we treat them as such, we should not expect our children to demonstrate the “hardy, rough-handed obedience” that Newman argued is the hallmark of citizens of great nations.

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

​Public schools, Private schools, Classical education, Physical education, Xenephon, Herodotus, John henry newman, Physical labor, Cyrus the great, Opinion & analysis 

Oklahoma City Police this week released video recorded around 8 a.m. July 2 showing a suspect throwing a Molotov cocktail at a victim in a wheelchair — and authorities said the “terrifying incident unfolded right across the street” from police headquarters.

“What happened next showed the absolute best of our community and our first responders,” police said.

‘These are people, these are our neighbors, these are our fellow Oklahomans. These are people with hopes and dreams, just like any of us.’

Police department detectives and a “quick-thinking bystander immediately rushed into danger to help the victim and take the suspect into custody on the spot,” police said, adding that the city’s fire department “was also quick to the scene to provide crucial medical aid.”

Police said, “Thanks to this rapid, heroic response, the victim is expected to recover, and the suspect is behind bars.”

The Oklahoman reported that a city police officer wrote in a court affidavit that the perpetrator was walking westbound on Main Street when he saw the victim — who was in a wheelchair — crossing the street. The perpetrator turned around and approached the victim, then ignited a Molotov cocktail and threw it directly at the victim, which set him on fire, the paper noted.

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The Oklahoman said the video shows the victim wheeling himself out of the fire — but the suspect who threw the Molotov cocktail then appears to try to push the victim back into the flames.

Two Oklahoma City police detectives exited a vehicle at the intersection and took a 38-year-old suspect into custody, the paper said.

The victim was treated for minor injuries, including burns on the back of his neck and arms, the Oklahoman said, citing court documents.

More from the paper:

According to the court affidavit, the suspect told investigators he was “looking for marks” and intended to kill the victim because he thought he saw a “mark” and believed the victim was a child molester. He also told investigators he made two Molotov cocktails but was only able to use one before detectives stopped him.

After the attack, the suspect was booked into the Oklahoma County jail on complaints of first-degree arson, assault and battery with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to kill and two counts of possessing, using, manufacturing or threatening to use an incendiary device or explosives.

KOCO-TV identified the suspect as Alexander Emery, adding that authorities said Emery has a lengthy criminal history, including charges of trespassing, burglary, drug offenses, breaking and entering, and assault and battery — with cases dating back about a decade.

Jail records indicate Emery’s bond amount is $200,000.

RELATED: Democrats wanted a makeover. They got Marxism and Molotov cocktails.

Alexander Emery. Image source: Oklahoma County Jail

KOCO said a news crew from the station found the Molotov cocktail attack victim, who is homeless, in his wheelchair near the scene of the attack. The station said he declined to go on camera but told the news crew he’s OK, feels grateful, and believes God was with him during the harrowing incident.

The victim also told KOCO he was treated at the scene but declined to go to the hospital. He also told the station he doesn’t know the attacker or the reason behind the assault.

Meghan Mueller, president and CEO of the Homeless Alliance, told KOCO the video of the attack is “absolutely horrific.”

“The fact that this happened is something that should shock the community,” Mueller added to the station. “These are people, these are our neighbors, these are our fellow Oklahomans. These are people with hopes and dreams, just like any of us.”

Mueller also told KOCO that “the really important thing to remember is that we all need to take better care of each other.”

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​Oklahoma city, Molotov cocktail attack, Wheelchair, Arrest, Police headquarters, Police, Crime 

The Social Security trust fund is projected to run out of money by 2032. Without legislative reforms, retirement benefits for tens of millions of Americans could face significant cuts.

As lawmakers debate how to preserve the program, most proposals focus on raising payroll tax revenue or making other budgetary adjustments. But these discussions miss a larger point: The program itself is increasingly ill-suited for younger generations.

Americans who are decades away from retirement should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and pursue retirement planning through private alternatives.

Rather than forcing Americans into a system that may not deliver on its promises, policymakers should allow young workers to opt out and prepare for retirement in their own way.

America’s younger generations are coming of age amid an affordability crisis. Housing costs, groceries, health insurance, transportation, and higher education consume a growing share of household budgets. In such an environment, financial flexibility matters more than ever.

Yet every paycheck is hit by a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax, withheld with the promise that workers will receive benefits decades later when they reach retirement age. For many Millennials and members of Generation Z, that promise appears increasingly uncertain.

The idea that workers simply “pay in” and later receive back what they contributed has long been misleading. Today’s payroll taxes largely fund benefits for today’s retirees. As demographic pressures strain the system, younger Americans face the prospect of paying into Social Security for decades while receiving far less in benefits than previous generations.

In turn, few Gen Zers count on Social Security to support them in retirement someday. More than half expect to rely on personal retirement accounts as their primary source of income in retirement. Only 35% expect the program to still be around when they retire.

Rather than dragging younger workers through years of uncertain taxation, policymakers should give them a choice. Americans who are decades away from retirement should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and pursue retirement planning through private alternatives.

The freedom to decide how to spend and save one’s income is deeply ingrained in American culture. Some people rent apartments, rely on public transportation, and prioritize international travel. Others buy homes, raise families, and invest heavily in property or small businesses. The diversity of lifestyles that defines the United States is made possible by economic liberty.

Social Security’s mandatory payroll tax limits that liberty, particularly for younger generations who are unlikely to receive the same value from the program as their parents and grandparents. Every dollar directed to Social Security is a dollar that cannot be used to pay down debt, purchase a home, invest in education, build a business, or save independently for retirement.

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Private retirement accounts also offer greater opportunities for long-term growth. Historically, diversified investments held through 401(k)s, IRAs, and other retirement vehicles have generated substantially higher returns than the growth reflected in Social Security benefits. Depending on their investments, 401(k) plans may return 5% to 8% annually, while some Roth IRA portfolios may return 7% to 10%.

In contrast, Social Security payments reflect 1% to 3% annual growth, matching cost-of-living adjustment inflation rates.

Younger workers with decades of investing ahead of them are uniquely positioned to benefit from compound growth. But the ineffective Social Security system holds them back from the thousands to millions in returns available by private-sector investment vehicles.

In an era of accessible investing platforms and unprecedented financial tools, a one-size-fits-all government retirement system makes less sense than ever. Americans are capable of making different choices about their financial futures. They should have the freedom to decide whether Social Security is one of them.

As lawmakers confront Social Security’s looming insolvency, they should look beyond tax increases and accounting fixes. The debate should include a more fundamental question: Why should younger Americans be required to participate in a system they increasingly doubt will deliver on its promises?

Social Security was created for a different era, when workers had fewer options, people did not live as long, and America’s population was booming. Those conditions no longer exist, and it leaves the system unable to afford its original obligations.

If Social Security cannot provide future generations with the same security it once promised, then those generations should be free to pursue their own path. Young Americans deserve the freedom to build their own financial future.

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

​Social security, Gen z, Opinion & analysis 

A 17-year-old boy is on trial for allegedly shooting to death an elderly couple that had hired him to do odd jobs around their home in Mississippi.

Cordarius Hobbs was arrested by Simpson County Sheriff’s deputies after an hours-long standoff on June 3 when they were called to the residence near Mendenhall.

Less than a week after Hobbs was taken into custody to face charges for double murder, his two brothers were involved in a massive manhunt.

The incident unfolded after three contractors went to the home of 75-year-old Bill Blair and his 71-year-old wife, Carol Blair, to install a generator at about 10 a.m.

They said they noticed that the door to the wife’s car was left open and there were multiple guns on the seats, according to a Mississippi Bureau of Investigation investigator.

An hour and a half later, they called the Simpson County Sheriff’s Department for a welfare check on the Blairs.

A half hour later, at noon, deputies arrived and tried to push through a screen door to find gunshots being fired at them. That began a standoff between police and the alleged shooter, which lasted for about two hours.

Hobbs tried to flee from the home on foot, but police were able to capture him. They said he was wearing all black and holding a bag but did not have a weapon when captured. He was also shot during the incident, but his injuries were not life-threatening.

According to investigators, 280 bullet casings were found inside the home, as well as three guns, which all belonged to Bill Blair.

Inside the home they found Carol Blair in a fetal position in a bedroom with three gunshots to the back of her head. Bill Blair was found lying on his back in the kitchen with three gunshots to his face.

Hobbs was charged with two counts of capital murder along with a burglary count, four counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, and two counts of aggravated assault on individuals 65 or older.

The family of the victims said they had hired Hobbs to clean up around the home.

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The Blairs’ pastor told KPTV-TV they were the “sweetest couple” and one was rarely seen without the other nearby.

“They loved the Lord, and it was evident in their life. … You knew that they were just good people that would help anyone,” Pastor Andy Fullington said.

Less than a week after Hobbs was taken into custody to face charges for double murder, his two brothers were involved in a massive manhunt after an officer was shot during a traffic stop.

Cortavious Lawayne Hobbs, 18, and Cortavion Dewayne Hobbs, 19, got into a shoot-out with police and were later found hiding underneath a house, prosecutors said.

Covington County Deputy Yates Rodney, who was critically wounded, is still undergoing treatment for his injuries.

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​Double murder, Standoff, Massive manhunt, Brutal murder, Elderly couple, Crime 

Most of us like to think we would be willing to die for a great cause, granted the courage. A harder question is whether we would be willing to spend 20 years losing for one.

More than two centuries ago, a young British politician named William Wilberforce confronted exactly that question. His answer changed the moral character of an empire.

‘You have the far greater honour of being a Representative for the Lord, in a place where many know him not.’

Young, wealthy, and well connected, Wilberforce entered Parliament at just 21 years of age, quickly earning a reputation as one of the finest orators in Britain. Charming, witty, and socially connected, he was hardly known for disciplined seriousness. The writer and socialite Madame de Staël called him “the wittiest man in England.”

Everything changed after a profound Christian conversion in 1785.

Amazing grace

Politics suddenly seemed worldly, perhaps even incompatible with genuine discipleship. Wilberforce reluctantly considered resigning his seat in Parliament and entering the ministry. Had he done so, history might remember him — if at all — as an obscure Anglican clergyman.

Before making his decision, however, he visited St. Mary Woolnoth, a modest parish church in the City of London, to seek the advice of its rector, the Rev. John Newton.

Newton urged him to stay. Parliament, he insisted, was not an obstacle to Wilberforce’s calling. It was his calling.

That counsel carried unusual weight. Newton, known mainly today as the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” had once captained slave ships himself, enriching himself along with his country. His repentance forced him to confront an evil that Britain had conveniently learned to ignore.

It would become the defining cause of Wilberforce’s life.

Accidental abolitionist

Wilberforce did not set out to become the face of the abolition movement. After his conversion, he found himself drawn into a growing circle of evangelical reformers increasingly alarmed by the slave trade.

At Barham Court in Teston, the Kent home of Sir Charles and Lady Middleton, he listened to James Ramsay, a former naval surgeon who described the horrors he had witnessed in the Caribbean. Around the same time, Thomas Clarkson and the Quaker abolitionists were traveling the country interviewing sailors, surgeons, and former slaves, collecting physical evidence from slave ships, and assembling what would eventually amount to some 900 pages of testimony.

They had built an overwhelming case but lacked one crucial thing: a champion inside Parliament.

Encouraged by his friend William Pitt, now prime minister, Wilberforce accepted that role. Clarkson would gather the evidence. Wilberforce would lay it before the nation.

‘We can no longer plead ignorance’

In 1789, standing not far from where visitors stand today outside the Palace of Westminster, Wilberforce rose in the House of Commons to deliver what would become one of the most famous speeches in British parliamentary history.

“The nature and all the circumstances of this trade are now laid open to us,” he declared. “We can no longer plead ignorance.”

The slave trade was, in his words, “so enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable” that he had determined he would “never rest” until it was abolished.

The three-hour speech was a triumph. Newspapers praised its eloquence. Many believed abolition was now inevitable.

Instead, opponents shifted the battle from the moral arena to the procedural one.

The powerful West India lobby argued that the evidence was incomplete and demanded further hearings. Parliament agreed. More witnesses were summoned. More testimony was taken. Months slipped away. When time ran out, the debate was adjourned until the following session.

The next year the matter disappeared into a select committee. Then a general election dissolved Parliament, forcing much of the process to begin again.

By the time the House finally voted in 1791, nearly two years had passed since Wilberforce’s celebrated speech.

The result was crushing. His first abolition bill was defeated by 163 votes to 88.

The cause had not been defeated by a single great rebuttal; it had been slowly drained of momentum through delay.

‘Scandal from the Christian name’

Wilberforce could have accepted the verdict as proof that the country simply was not ready. Instead, he rose and made a promise that would define the rest of his public life.

Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic.

Notice what troubled him most.

Slavery was not merely an economic mistake or a political embarrassment.

It was “a scandal” upon “the Christian name.” Britain claimed to be a Christian nation while enriching itself through the buying and selling of human beings. That contradiction could not simply be managed. It had to be removed.

And so Wilberforce returned, again and again. He introduced new motions, reopened old debates, and refused to let the issue disappear beneath the next political crisis.

Meanwhile, the defeat of 1791 energized the public. Hundreds of thousands of Britons signed petitions demanding abolition. An estimated 400,000 people — many of them women directing household purchases — joined a nationwide boycott of West Indian sugar produced by enslaved labor.

The pressure worked, and when Wilberforce returned to Parliament in 1792, immediate abolition suddenly appeared possible.

Wicked compromise

Then Henry Dundas proposed what sounded like a reasonable compromise. The trade, he agreed, was unjust. It should therefore be abolished — gradually.

With the insertion of a single word, Parliament transformed an urgent moral demand into an indefinite political process. On paper, Parliament had voted to abolish the slave trade. In practice, nothing changed.

The cause weakened further when Britain entered into war with Revolutionary France. Opponents of abolition portrayed reformers as dangerous radicals infected by French ideas. Government attention shifted toward financing the war and preserving stability at home.

Wilberforce’s motion in 1793 failed by just eight votes. Public enthusiasm faded. Thomas Clarkson collapsed from exhaustion and withdrew from active campaigning. Wilberforce increasingly found himself carrying the cause almost alone inside Parliament.

‘Permanently hurt’

Then came perhaps the cruelest setback of all. In 1796, after years of promises that the trade would be “gradually” abolished, Wilberforce made another determined push for immediate action.

The measure failed by four votes.

Afterward he learned that several reliable supporters had missed the vote because they had gone to a fashionable new Italian opera. His diary captured the heartbreak in a single sentence: “Enough at the Opera to have carried it. I am permanently hurt about the Slave Trade.”

Seven years after taking up the cause, Wilberforce appeared scarcely closer to success than when he had begun. The defeat left him physically exhausted and emotionally broken.

Stand firm

Once again, he turned to John Newton. More than a decade earlier, Newton had persuaded the newly converted Wilberforce not to leave Parliament. Now he offered a different kind of counsel.

He did not suggest success was just around the corner; instead, he challenged Wilberforce’s definition of success itself.

“You are not only a Representative for Yorkshire,” Newton wrote. “You have the far greater honour of being a Representative for the Lord, in a place where many know him not.”

It was a radically different way of measuring a political life.

Newton then pointed Wilberforce to one of Scripture’s great public servants.

“Daniel likewise was a public man,” he wrote, “and in critical circumstances. But he trusted in the Lord … and therefore though he had enemies, they could not prevail against him.”

Newton acknowledged that Wilberforce might never accomplish all the good he hoped for, but refused to judge the value of his work by legislative victories alone.

“Though you cannot do all the good you wish for,” Newton wrote, “some good is done, and some evil is probably prevented.”

RELATED: CS Lewis: Angry atheist surprised by God

John Chillingworth/Getty Images

Year after year

Wilberforce stayed. Over the next 11 years, one apparent breakthrough after another dissolved into disappointment. Some years Parliament rejected abolition outright. Other years it settled for minor reforms that regulated the trade rather than ending it. Constitutional crises, changes of government, renewed war with France, and shifting political alliances repeatedly pushed abolition to the margins.

In 1804, after fifteen years of labor, Wilberforce finally succeeded in carrying an abolition bill through the House of Commons. The House of Lords quietly buried it. Claiming they needed more time to examine the evidence, they postponed consideration until the parliamentary session expired.

It was, in essence, the same procedural tactic that had greeted his first great speech 15 years earlier. Yet Wilberforce again refused to conclude that delay meant defeat. Year after year he returned to the same chamber, made the same arguments, presented the same evidence, and asked the same question of his country.

Remaining at his post

Then, in 1806, everything changed. William Pitt was dead. A new government under Lord Grenville and Charles James Fox made abolition a priority rather than a private sympathy.

On February 23, 1807, after nearly 20 years of defeats, delays, compromises, and disappointments, the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to abolish the British slave trade.

As members rose to cheer, Wilberforce remained seated with bowed head and tears streaming.

The applause was not for a brilliant speech delivered that evening. It was for two decades of quiet perseverance.

The victory belonged to many people: Thomas Clarkson, who gathered the evidence; John Newton, whose counsel twice kept Wilberforce at his post; the Quakers who organized, petitioned, and sacrificed despite having no seats in Parliament; and the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Britons who signed petitions and quietly changed their buying habits.

But none of them would have witnessed that day had Wilberforce concluded, somewhere along the way, that 20 years of apparent failure was enough.

Christians today still debate the best strategy for engaging an increasingly hostile culture. Some emphasize building institutions. Others speak of retreat. Those are important questions.

But Wilberforce reminds us of something more fundamental.

He never discovered the perfect political strategy. He never enjoyed ideal political conditions. He spent most of his public life with little prospect of victory. Yet he refused to postpone obedience until circumstances became favorable. He simply remained at the post God had given him.

Most of us imagine faithfulness as a single dramatic stand. Wilberforce reminds us that it often looks much quieter. Doing the same work, year after year, long after applause has faded, allies have drifted away, and success seems impossible.

That is how, by God’s grace, the moral character of an empire was changed.

​Converts, William wilberforce, Britain, Abolition, Slavery, Uk, John newton, Christianity, Parliament, Lifestyle, Faith 

“Citizen Vigilante,” a 2026 action thriller starring Armie Hammer, has sparked such intense controversy, Germany outright banned it.

The film centers on a vigilante who rebels against the government to target violent criminals and rapists (often portrayed as Muslim migrants) along with the corrupt officials enabling them. Maintaining his anonymity, he builds a massively popular social media presence, rallying the public against the reigning authorities.

“[‘Citizen Vigilante’] is being viewed with satisfaction in some communities,” Glenn Beck says, calling it “extraordinarily dangerous.”

Unlike other iconic anti-hero characters in films like “The Equalizer,” “Death Wish,” and “Pale Rider” who reluctantly step in to quell evil, Hammer’s character, Glenn says, not only “wants to” be a punisher of evil, but he compels others to join him in that endeavor.

Calling this film indicative of “an enormous moral shift,” Glenn warns that “the gunfighter that stays becomes the tyrant.”

Instead of washing the blood from his hands and “[riding] away in the sunset” after his mission is accomplished, Hammer’s character revels in his notoriety as a social media star and vows to continue his vigilantism until citizens learn to take justice into their own hands.

“This is a dangerous movie,” Glenn says.

“I think the whole point was to … point out actual things that are happening … like in the U.K. There are some very bad things that are happening because of mass illegal immigration. The governments are failing. They’re turning a blind eye to it,” adds Jason Buttrill, Glenn’s head researcher and writer.

He doesn’t believe, however, that Hammer’s vigilante character is presented as the solution to disorder and corruption.

“They showed that this is not a good guy. He’s a very bad guy. He’s an evil guy. If government fails to protect their people, if they allow these things to happen, there will be a Bubba effect, and you will not like the devil that shows up afterwards,” he explains.

Glenn agrees but fears that most spectators will miss this and interpret Hammer’s character as the answer to society’s ills.

“If you’re over in England or you’re in Germany, that stuff is happening,” he says, referring to how some governments are willfully enabling a breakdown of law and order by protecting and covering for violent criminals (especially migrants), while ordinary citizens suffer unchecked crime, two-tier policing, and suppressed criticism of mass immigration.

Glenn is deeply concerned that citizens suffering under this kind of soft totalitarianism will watch this movie and say, “Damn right — that’s exactly what should happen.”

But “you’re not gonna like the guy who shows up,” he warns.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Citizen vigilante 

The owner of a Texas bakery said it was staying open for the Fourth of July out of fear and anger over the policies of the Trump administration, and many responded by calling for a boycott of the bakery.

Haley Popp used the Facebook account for the Hive Bakery in Flower Mound to issue a scathing attack on supporters of President Donald Trump after initially saying she didn’t feel like celebrating the holiday.

This is hardly the first time Popp has used her politics to rile up Republicans and get free marketing for her business.

“We expressed not wanting to celebrate the 4th this year, as we’re embarrassed, afraid, and disappointed in what this country has become,” reads the post on the bakery shop account.

“MAGA is adversarial. It’s a cult of unintelligent, rabid, immoral sycophants. Those conservatives who still have rational thought have left the MAGA movement. Those who remain and continue to support the most corrupt administration in our nations history, are here, wishing for our bakery to burn to the ground,” she added.

“Enjoy a little taste of this Americana,” she concluded. “We are open tomorrow from 10-6 as we refuse to observe this holiday. F**k this fascist regime and every single person perpetuating the downfall of our country. Still holding out hope for an AOC revolution.”

That post went viral after the popular Libs of TikTok account posted it on social media.

She has since claimed that the anger and hatred led to a response from liberals, who bought her T-shirts and ordered woke baked goods to show their support for her and their opposition to Trump.

But this is hardly the first time Popp has used her politics to rile up Republicans and get free marketing for her business.

In 2022, Popp posted pro-abortion messages from the bakery’s account and later posted screenshots of the angry responses she got. She said she had a line out the door and sold out of many items when liberals came out to support the bakery.

RELATED: Jimmy Kimmel’s sister-in-law slammed with backlash for reportedly bullying local business — over Spencer Pratt cookies

She told the Dallas Eater at the time that she had been very open about her support for “LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter, and women’s rights” since opening the bakery.

Then in 2025, she made the news again for the same thing. A WFAA-TV report said she profited greatly from the reaction of Trump supporters.

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​Fourth of july, Libs of tiktok, Texas, Boycott, Maga, Fascist, Facebook post, Politics 

A viral interaction between Fort Worth police and a Christian street preacher has caught the attention of the civil rights division of the U.S. Attorney’s office.

David Grisham and another member of his evangelical preaching team were confronted by a female police officer for their outreach to participants of a Pride event in Texas.

‘The Fort Worth Police Department responded, not by protecting his constitutional rights, but by threatening him with arrest and ultimately issuing a citation.’

Many objected to the officer’s actions on the basis that she appeared to be infringing on the evangelists’ free speech rights and right to religious expression. Video of the interaction was posted by the popular Libs of TikTok account.

“If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem,” the unidentified officer said.

“If they are offended by your speech … I will write you a ticket, and we’ll go from there,” she continued.

A second video shows other officers confronting Grisham.

Grisham was ultimately given a citation for “unreasonable noise,” which is intended to apply to noise from construction or animals, but is not limited to those sources.

Attorney C.J. Grisham, who has no known familial relation to the plaintiff, told the Christian Post that the officer failed to follow the ordinance.

“This ordinance was not followed because no officer performed a decibel check,” he said.

He also argued that the city’s decibel limit was unlawfully set beneath that set by Texas.

“Mr. Grisham was exercising his right to express his views on matters of significant public concern,” the attorney said. “The Fort Worth Police Department responded, not by protecting his constitutional rights, but by threatening him with arrest and ultimately issuing a citation.”

On Wednesday, Fort Worth Police spokesman Officer Buddy Calzada released a statement saying the issue began when the group “was using a bullhorn to amplify their voice.”

Calzada claimed police received complaints from business owners, told the group to stop using the bullhorn, and said the group refused to stop. He said the bullhorn was seized as evidence after the citation was issued.

“At no time did officers prevent any individuals from expressing their views,” Calzada added in a statement to the Christian Post. “Officers told the individuals they could continue exercising their rights without using an amplification device. However, the individuals willingly ceased protesting after the bullhorn was seized as part of the enforcement action.”

He went on to say the viral video did not accurately represent the entire interaction but also admitted the police officer made statements that “were not accurate.”

RELATED: Court victory for Christian mom banned from adopting foster children over religious beliefs on LGBTQ agenda

On Friday, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon responded on social media that the Justice Department would look into the incident.

“Troubling,” she wrote. “Our [civil rights] team is on it.”

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​Christian street preacher, Free speech rights, Libs of tiktok, Pride event, Fort worth police, Religious freedom, Politics 

Graham Platner officially filed to leave the race for one of Maine’s seats in the U.S. Senate on Friday after facing intense criticism for numerous scandals.

Democrats now have only 17 days under Maine law to find his replacement and take on the campaign to replace incumbent Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

‘My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine.’

On Wednesday, Platner had posted a video excoriating the leaders of his own party and accusing them of betraying him in order to derail his far-left political agenda.

He continued that message in the statement he issued Friday.

“I write to formally withdraw my candidacy for United States Senate,” Platner wrote.

“People are desperate for change. For this broken system to be righted. For the American experiment to be furthered. Over the past eleven months, thousands and thousands of Mainers poured their hearts, time, and talent into a movement to deliver that vision. I will be forever grateful to them,” he added.

“And in submitting this letter today, I seek to further the movement we have built together and the future we believe in,” he said. “My name may have been on the ballot, but that ballot line belongs to the people of Maine.”

Platner had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman he dated about five years ago, which appeared to be the final straw for many Democrats who pulled their endorsements. He has vehemently denied the allegations.

RELATED: Donna Brazile gets CRUSHED online over bizarre reply to allegations against Graham Platner

Half a dozen Democrats have already announced their willingness to replace Platner as the Democratic nominee for an election that could decide the partisan control of the Senate after the midterm elections.

“F**k ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts,” Platner concluded.

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​Democrats, Graham platner, Midterm elections, Sexual assault, Susan collins, Us senate, Politics 

Socialism is no longer knocking at the door of American politics — it’s winning elections.

And New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is leading the charge.

“We raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers instead of taking more from those with the least. Throughout this process, I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘If socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists,’” he said in a recent speech.

“If these past months have shown us anything, it is that socialists not only understand economics just as well as the capitalists who came before, but that we can solve their years of mismanagement through an embrace of our principles,” he added.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck can’t believe how far their movement has come, pointing out that while “every single socialist experiment fails,” democratic socialists like Melat Kiros — who just won the primary in Colorado — continue to gain ground.

“She says, ‘We’re taking our system back, and we’re taking our country back,’” he says. “What do you mean you’re taking your country back?”

“When you’re talking about getting rid of capitalism, you’re not taking it back,” he continues. “So, the question is, is this just the edges of the party, or … is this a death knell for the next election?”

And while those who want to shrink the government’s power over American citizens are the ones being called extremists, democratic socialists want to expand it.

“And here’s something else that nobody seems to notice,” Glenn says. “Every successful socialist movement in history claimed to represent the workers. … Where are the workers today? Where are they?”

“Today’s movement represents the graduates. Look where all the energy comes from. The elite universities, the prestigious media, the nonprofits, the government bureaucracy, the professional advocates, the activists, the commanding height of culture,” he continues.

“Karl Marx predicted the revolution would come from the factory floor. Instead, it seems to be coming from the faculty lounge,” he adds.

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​Capitalism, Communism, Democratic socialists, Friedrich hayek, Glenn beck, Karl marx, Melat kiros, New york city, Revolution, Socialism, Zohran mamdani, The glenn beck program 

The socialist movement that is making inroads into the Democratic Party will reportedly release far-left extremist goals that would completely remake the federal government.

The Democratic Socialists of America has been behind the success of extremists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), other members of “the Squad” in Congress, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).

The once-fringe group has gained prominence in recent weeks after several DSA-endorsed candidates defeated centrist establishment Democrats.

The DSA is working on updating its platform to reportedly include the elimination of the U.S. Senate as well as the Department of Defense, according to a Fox News report.

Even further, the new platform would advocate for Congress to choose a new executive branch and judiciary that would be subordinate to Congress.

The new platform would also call for full amnesty for all illegal aliens in the U.S. The current DSA platform calls for all deportations to end, for zero restrictions on travel between countries, and full voting rights for noncitizens.

The once-fringe group has gained prominence in recent weeks after several DSA-endorsed candidates defeated establishment Democrats in elections in New York City and other locations.

Darializa Avila Chevalier is running for New York’s 13th Congressional District after advocating for the abolition of borders, police, and prisons. She also posted, “F**k Kamala Harris” and expressed her deep disdain for the Democratic Party leadership. Chevalier has since said she has “grown considerably” since those posts on social media.

Claire Valdez won the primary for New York’s 7th Congressional District and ran on demilitarizing the border, amnesty for illegal aliens, and ramping up the “Green New Deal” of global warming regulations.

Melat Kiros is running for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District and has said she wants to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and also expressed anti-Israel sentiments.

RELATED: ‘They’re animals’: Trump UNLOADS on ‘godless Communists’ taking over the Democratic Party

Despite recent victories by the DSA, some centrist Democrats have formed an alliance to push back and empower the faction of the party that is not socialist and defends the free market.

The DSA has since revoked its endorsement for Ocasio-Cortez because she has not been virulently anti-Israel enough for its tastes.

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​Democratic party, Democratic socialists of america, Department of defense, Federal government, Politics 

LifeWise Academy is a nonprofit Christian organization founded in 2018 that provides off-site, Bible-based religious instruction to public school students during the regular school day. The program is fully compliant with the three criteria of released time laws (affirmed by the 1952 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Zorach v. Clauson): classes are held off school property, it’s privately funded, and participation is voluntary with parental consent.

But LifeWise is nonetheless being attacked at some schools — often by those who welcome progressive initiatives, like Pride Month, in the classroom.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey sat down with LifeWise Academy founder and CEO Joel Penton to discuss the program and its ongoing battles with progressive schools.

Serving tens of thousands of students across hundreds of schools in over 30 states, LifeWise Academy Bible lessons are designed to take students through the entire Bible in just five years.

“So a child will start Genesis 1 in first grade, and by the time they finish elementary school and fifth grade, they’ve been through the entire Bible,” says Penton, noting that lessons have a three-part focus: head (knowing the Scripture), heart (gospel connection), and hands (living it out).

The result is not only that kids from Christian homes become more educated on Scripture, but children who do not come from Christian homes hear and accept the gospel.

Penton tells a sweet story of a young girl who joined LifeWise Academy and brought the gospel home to her entire family.

“[She] came home, and she said, ‘Why aren’t we talking about God here?’ And so they started going to church, and by the end of the story, there’s a family of nine that have all been baptized, and they’re members of the church,” he says.

The heartwarming stories of how LifeWise classes impact children and their families roll in every single day, Penton tells Allie.

And yet some schools are resistant to allowing LifeWise to impact their school community.

While 90% of schools say yes to LifeWise programs, there is “a very vocal minority,” says Penton, that go to great lengths to prevent campus startups.

These people “do not like the Bible; they see it as regressive … and they don’t want anybody to have access,” he explains, “and even though it’s optional, and they don’t have to sign their own child up, they don’t like that anyone can sign their child up.”

These community members protest LifeWise programs at school board meetings and engage in hashtag activism, but most of the time, Penton says, they end up unintentionally helping the cause.

He gives the example of a school district in Ohio ending its LifeWise program after two years, which sparked such intense backlash, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) signed House Bill 8, requiring all public school districts to adopt a religious released-time policy. This led to roughly 80 additional school districts starting LifeWise programs.

But in deep-blue places like the state of Washington, the resistance is intense.

Allie plays a clip of Charles Adkins, a member of the Everett Public Schools Board of Directors in Washington state. At a board meeting, he said, “I want to make it very, extremely, abundantly clear that yes, I do in fact hold animus towards LifeWise Academy.”

Everett Public Schools, says Penton, have policies that are “transparently discriminatory and aimed at LifeWise Academy.” Compared to other secular programs, which require a one-time parent permission slip, parents of students in LifeWise Academy must “walk in a permission slip each and every week.”

“They’re just trying to create more obstacles to make it more difficult,” says Allie.

But weekly permission slips aren’t the only barriers facing LifeWise students.

“If we give a child a worksheet, maybe they colored a picture of Moses or something … when they go back to school, it has to be in a sealed envelope,” says Penton, noting that other programs do not have this requirement.

When LifeWise attempted to resolve the district’s policies internally with the school board, they reportedly received no response. First Liberty Institute then filed a federal lawsuit against Everett Public Schools on behalf of LifeWise Academy and families, alleging unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and hostile treatment of the religious released-time program.

“What’s wild is that the letter we sent said, ‘We believe you hold animus,’ which, you know, they’re supposed to say, ‘No, we don’t.’ And then [Adkins] said at a school board meeting into a microphone that he does hold animus,” says Penton, joking that First Liberty “really appreciated” his convenient candor.

While the lawsuit is still ongoing, Penton notes all he wants is for “policies to go back to normal” and for LifeWise Academy “to be treated as anybody else would.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the full episode above.

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​Allie beth stuckey, First liberty institute, Relatable, Lifewise academy 

State Sec. Marco Rubio said that the horrific pedophile pardoned by Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will no longer threaten U.S. citizens after he took action.

Tou Lue Vang of Laos admitted to committing horrible and disgusting sexual abuse of a 10-year-old in 2005 and accepted a sentence of 30 years probation to avoid prison time, as previously reported by Blaze News.

‘Americans must never be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals who have no right to begin with to reside in our country.’

Vang was allowed to finish probation early, and then a commission that included Walz voted to pardon him in June. That would have possibly allowed Vang to stay in the country, until Rubio stepped in.

“Just days before this foreign sex offender was scheduled to be deported, Tim Walz the governor issued him a pardon, setting him free to once again endanger the children of America,” said Rubio in a video on social media.

He then said he revoked Vang’s legal status.

“As a result, federal agents took him into custody, and as of today, he has been removed from the United States,” Rubio added. “Because of our actions, this foreign criminal will never pose a threat to any American ever again.”

Far-left Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who is also on the board of pardons, attempted to justify the pedophile pardon in a statement to KSTP-TV.

“The Minnesota Board of Pardons made a unanimous decision to grant Tou Vang this pardon after an exhaustive process, which included a statement of support for the pardon from the victim, a recommendation to grant the pardon from the Clemency Review Commission, and a large number of community support letters,” he wrote.

He went on to accuse the Department of Homeland Security of “lying through their teeth” about the pardon shielding Vang from deportation.

The victim in the case did release a statement supporting the pardon.

“What happened to me was wrong, but I have had many years to think about this. I have made my peace with it. I forgive him,” she wrote. “I want his family to stay together here. His children need their father. He and his wife have built a life. I believe that he has learned and grown since the abuse and that the family has suffered enough.”

RELATED: Illegal alien coach who murdered boy committed sex crimes against 2 underage boys: Cops

A New York Times report said that the plea deal was offered because the victim had been pressured against testifying by her family members, according to the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

“Americans must never be forced by their elected leaders to live alongside foreign sex criminals who have no right to begin with to reside in our country,” Rubio concluded. “This administration will always stand with the American people and defend them from violent criminals.”

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​Keith ellison, Tim walz, Deportation, Illegal alien crime, Pedophile, Marco rubio, Politics 

The preliminary hearing regarding whether to try Tyler Robinson for his alleged assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk drew to close on Friday with state District Judge Tony Graf now in the possession of a wealth of damning evidence.

Over the course of the five-day hearing, the court heard or saw:

surveillance camera footage showing the suspected assassin skulking around campus on the day of the shooting, developing a stiff leg after an apparent costume change, climbing onto a rooftop, running to a “sniper pad” on the rooftop overlooking the site where Kirk was shot, and dropping down from the roof immediately after the shooting, then fleeing the scene with “some kind of object” in his hand;that Robinson ate a Chick-fil-A on campus, where he was not a student, and allegedly interacted with TPUSA staff at the scene;a video of Robinson’s homosexual lover Lance Twiggs’ deposition, where he claimed that the individual seen in the surveillance footage “definitely” looked like Robinson;Twiggs’ testimony that Robinson left their shared apartment unusually early on the day of the shooting, had “started crying a bit” when he came back the morning after, and had told Twiggs “he wishes he hadn’t done it”;Twiggs’ testimony that he lent Robinson a tool to engrave some ammunition, especially relevant because the suspected murder weapon contained ammunition with engravings that included “Hey fascist! Catch” and “If you read this, you are gay, LMAO”;text messages between the gay lovers in which Robinson allegedly referred to one of the engravings on the ammunition, allegedly writing, “If I see ‘uwu notices bulge’ on fox new [sic] I might have a stroke”;text messages between Robinson and Twiggs in which the suspected killer allegedly admitted to killing Kirk, told his boyfriend that he “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred,” and discussed retrieving his rifle from a “drop point” and leaving behind “no evidence”;testimony from Utah Department of Public Safety Sgt. Jennifer Faumuina indicating that the two sets of male DNA discovered on the towel wrapped around the suspected murder weapon were a match to Twiggs and very likely to Robinson; testimony from David Hull, a former Utah State Bureau of Investigation special agent who led the probe in the assassination, that a male was spotted by a Spanish Forks police officer in a car registered to Robinson near Campus Drive early on Sept. 11, the day after the assassination; andtestimony on Friday from Caitlin Oliver, a forensic biologist at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, that testing on swabs taken from several parts of the suspected murder weapon and the ammunition supports the conclusion that the DNA found was primarily contributed by Robinson.

On Friday, a zoomed-in version of the footage allegedly showing Robinson crawling out to a “sniper’s perch” was also shown in the courtroom.

The footage was not, however, broadcast for public consumption in part because a media cameraman had violated a court order on Thursday, accidentally showing an exhibit that was not allowed to be published — a handwritten note allegedly from Robinson to Twiggs in which the author wrote,

If you are reading this per my text, then I am so sorry. I left the house this morning on a mission, and set an auto text. I am likely dead, or facing a lengthy prison sentence. I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it. I don’t know if I will/have succeeded, but I had hoped to make it home to you.

While the evidence was already public, having previously appeared in the search warrant released in March, the defense made a fuss such that the violation dominated the discussion for the early portion of Friday’s hearing.

Robinson chose not to testify during the pretrial hearing and has not entered a plea.

RELATED: Hearing bombshell as gay lover ties Tyler Robinson to damning evidence in Kirk assassination

L-R: Trent Nelson/Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images; Bethany Baker-Pool/Getty Images

Robinson faces charges of aggravated murder, a capital first-degree felony; felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury; committing a violent offense in the presence of a child; two counts of obstruction of justice — a second-degree felony; and two counts of witness tampering for allegedly telling his boyfriend to delete his text messages and to stay quiet if questioned by police.

The hearing will resume on Sept. 1, when both the prosecution and the defense will be afforded one last opportunity to make their final arguments to Graf about whether Robinson should stand trial.

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​Tyler robinson, Charlie kirk, Assassination, Murder, Utah, Tony graf, Trans, Gay, Turning point usa, Politics 

Yet another violent attack in the U.K. involving a migrant suspect has occurred, this time leaving an American woman dead.

Irish police and emergency services responded on Tuesday to a rented home in the southwestern town of Killarney, where the bloody body of 43-year-old New York native Jamey Carney had been discovered by her 13-year-old daughter.

‘Do not use this to become bigoted or racist or prejudiced in any way.’

Following a postmortem examination by state pathologist Linda Mulligan, police launched a murder investigation into Carney’s death — an investigation aided by the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

While Carney suffered a brutal assault and significant head injuries, Mulligan concluded that suffocation was the ultimate cause of death, reported the Irish Times. Carney had moved to Ireland with her daughter in 2021.

Early in their investigation, authorities determined that “a person of interest” had “left the jurisdiction in the early hours of Tuesday 7th July prior to the body of the deceased female being discovered.”

The suspect, who has been identified as 28-year-old Ahmad Al-Saqar, is believed to have successfully boarded a flight at Dublin Airport bound for Istanbul, Turkey, just prior to the discovery of the body.

Irish police are reportedly working with Europol and Interpol in hopes of establishing whether Al-Saqar is still in Turkey or has traveled to another Middle Eastern location.

RELATED: Not again: British cops arrest another white victim of violence rather than minority assailant suspects

Pro-Palestinian protesters march in the streets of Ireland in 2024. Huzeyfe Tastan/Anadolu/Getty Images

Al-Saqar, who features in Carney’s profile picture on Facebook, is originally from Jordan and apparently has contacts in Syria and Turkey. He reportedly launched an asylum bid in Ireland after arriving there in 2024.

According to Extra.ie, while asylum-seekers must surrender their passports to the International Protection Office at the time of making their applications, Irish authorities gave Al-Saqar his passport back because he had been granted subsidiary protection — status given to someone who doesn’t qualify as a refugee but would supposedly face “serious” harm if sent back to his home country.

A police source told the Irish Times that the suspect was not only known to Carney but regularly stayed at her home. Their apparent 18-month romantic relationship complicates the investigation because if ultimately questioned, he could explain away his DNA on the premises.

According to the Irish Sun, Carney and Al-Saqar are believed to have met at an anti-war protest. Carney had “Free Palestine” and “Fk Ice” in her Facebook bio.

In a recent social media post, Al-Saqar reportedly referred to the American mother as “my bride and my princess.”

Al-Saqar was seen with Carney on Sunday and Monday, reported the Irish Independent.

The U.S. State Department told Newsweek that the agency has provided consular assistance to Carney’s family.

“The Trump administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans,” said a State Department spokesperson. “We offer our sincerest condolences to the family and loved ones on their loss.”

A big concern for the Irish police is presently the possibility of American political figures on the right “stirring tensions in the Republic,” reported the Times.

This concern was echoed by Ryan Fox, a cousin of Carney, who told Irish state media that he didn’t want her death to become “some kind of martyrdom or some kind of political cause.”

“Do not use this to become bigoted or racist or prejudiced in any way. Bad people are in every group, and it is not the people who look like them who deserve to be blamed,” said Fox.

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​Murder, Ireland, Muslim, Asylum seeker, Europe, Palestine, Politics 

Friday is the final day of the preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough probable cause to bind Tyler Robinson over for trial in the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Thursday, day four, was an absolute bombshell for the prosecution, as Lance Twiggs, Robinson’s trans-identifying gay lover, admitted that the individual seen on surveillance footage did “look like Tyler Robinson.”

Twiggs also told the court that the day after Kirk’s murder, Robinson returned to their apartment, cried, “and said he wishes he hadn’t done it.”

Tune in for Day 5 below:

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​Charlie kirk assassination, Lance twiggs, Murder, Tyler robinson, Politics