Category: blaze media

The Pentagon has named two previously unidentified U.S. soldiers who were killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan late last week.

On Monday, the Department of War identified the fallen soldiers as 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, both of whom were killed during an enemy attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.

‘She gave the ultimate sacrifice for her country and will always be remembered as a hero.’

Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, who was killed in action on Friday, enlisted with the U.S. Army in 2025.

Gonzales was assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina. She served as a 14P Air and Missile Defense crew member, according to the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command Public Affairs press release.

“We are profoundly saddened by the loss of Pvt. Isabella Gonzales,” said Brig. Gen. Glenn Henke, commanding general of the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command. “She gave the ultimate sacrifice for her country and will always be remembered as a hero. Our hearts go out to her family, friends, and teammates. Our immediate priority is ensuring they have the resources and support they need to process this grief together.”

RELATED: One line from Tucker Carlson sparks political firestorm for the GOP

1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, who died on Saturday, was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

“1st Lt. Feehan’s unwavering dedication to our mission, our values, and the air defenders he led will leave an enduring legacy,” Brig. Gen. John Dawber, 32nd AAMDC commanding general, said. “We stand fully committed to supporting his family and loved ones through this incredibly difficult time, and we will never forget his ultimate sacrifice in defense of our nation.”

Feehan will receive “the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and Combat Action Badge, and be posthumously promoted to captain,” according to a U.S. Army press release.

“Godspeed, heroes. Their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, following an initial CENTCOM announcement of the casualties.

The CENTCOM post added that four American service members were medically evacuated to Jordanian hospitals and have since been discharged. Other personnel were evaluated for minor injuries and have since returned to duty.

CENTCOM also announced that “one service member is currently missing,” in the same Saturday post.

The identity of the missing service member has not yet been confirmed, though a Central Command public release announced that U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains at the location on Sunday. The remains were being examined at the time of the release.

In the same release, CENTCOM announced a separate incident in northern Iraq that left one U.S. service member dead and another wounded during a “controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.”

This brings the casualties over the weekend to at least three, with many more injuries being reported as well.

These announcements come at the end of more than a week of consecutive strikes against Iran as ceasefire negotiations continued to deteriorate. On Sunday, CENTCOM announced the conclusion of the ninth consecutive evening of strikes to “further diminish Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

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​Department of war, Fallen soldiers, Pentagon, Pete hegseth, Politics 

A potential massacre at a Christian high school in Nebraska was thwarted thanks to the swift action taken by school officials and the Nebraska State Patrol.

Columbus Catholic Schools, a unified educational system that serves over 850 students in Nebraska, received a message on June 26 threatening Scotus Central Catholic, a Christ-centered high school in Columbus.

‘The heated political rhetoric that too often leads to radicalization and violence must cool off.’

Jeff Ohnoutka, the executive director of CCS, said in a statement on Friday that after he was made aware of the “disturbing threat,” he immediately brought it to the attention of the NSP and the Columbus Police Department.

According to the NSP, the message “included a threat of violence to the school and Governor Pillen’s family.”

Republican Governor Jim Pillen and his wife, Suzanne, have four children and seven grandchildren. The family is Roman Catholic.

In a post under the name “Bobby McGee” on the Facebook page for Columbus Catholic Schools, 32-year-old homosexual Ean Halstead of Omaha allegedly wrote, “I’m going to shoot up this school and kill Jim Pillen’s children and a few nuns for (expletive) funsies,” reported WOWT-TV.

RELATED: International pro-life leader assassinated at home

Gov. Jim Pillen (R). Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

Within hours of learning of the threat, authorities identified an apartment in Omaha that was linked to the IP address associated with the social media post.

Authorities promptly made contact with Halstead outside an apartment complex on Bedford Avenue, but “the man refused commands from troopers, ran to the apartment, and barricaded himself inside,” said the NSP.

Law enforcement on the scene — reinforced by NSP SWAT — obtained a search warrant for the residence as well as an arrest warrant and were able ultimately to coax the suspect out and into handcuffs without incident.

Halstead was initially charged with obstructing a police officer and failure to obey a lawful order.

Following further investigation and an examination of electronic items seized during a search of his residence, the NSP rearrested Halstead on July 17 and charged him with terroristic threats and destruction of evidence.

Halstead is currently being held at the Douglas County Department of Corrections. The NSP told Blaze News that the investigation remains ongoing.

According to court documents reviewed by the Plains Sentinel, Halstead has a “history of violent tendencies” and was previously slapped with a protection order from an ex-boyfriend for allegedly brandishing a knife and threatening to “kill him and their dogs while they slept.”

WOWT reported that Halstead was convicted for threatening his ex-lover and setting his bedroom on fire while filming.

Gov. Pillen’s chief of staff, Dave Lopez, said in a statement, “We are extremely grateful to the dedicated investigators of the Nebraska State Patrol and allied law enforcement agencies for their quick and thorough work to track down this individual and ensure the security of the First Family.”

“We have zero tolerance for political violence here in Nebraska, including threats to carry it out,” continued Lopez. “If you threaten violence against a public official or their family in this state, you will be found and held accountable. The heated political rhetoric that too often leads to radicalization and violence must cool off.”

Ohnoutka thanked the NSP and Columbus Police Department “for their service to our state and the city of Columbus.”

“May God continue to bless Columbus Catholic Schools,” he added.

Halstead’s threat comes nearly one year after a trans-identifying man formerly known as Robert Westman shot up a Catholic church full of schoolchildren in Minneapolis, injuring 23 and killing two kids, ages 8 and 10. The shooter, who committed suicide at the scene, left behind a mountain of evidence indicating that he was motivated by hatred for the Catholic Church and President Donald Trump.

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​Nebraska, Jim pillen, Catholic church, Nebraska state patrol, Politics 

The World Series of poker is returning and bringing with it an experimental AI to allow television viewers in on the secrets of body language and facial tics. The move generally invades the once hallowed ground of the proverbial “poker face.”

Will fans embrace or reject this great disenchantment? And does it even work?

Facial recognition leading to pre-cognitive services will be big business.

First, some history. The recent heyday of the World Series of poker is now a fading memory. To reverse its decline, Omaha Productions has expanded its live production slate to re-establish lost verve and recapture audiences.

Helmed by former quarterback Peyton Manning, the odd-duck production studio “stands as a trusted expert in the dynamic world of live events,” according to its website. “Our social content creation from these events ensure they have life outside the room as well. F*%$ it, we’ll do it live!”

Or if not live, then adjusted, via the latest in AI control features designed to further leverage the distance between what viewers want and what they are willing to try to understand in the thick of their media experience.

Blowing the cover of the industry’s best poker faces seems like a last-ditch effort to spice up the activity of, yes, watching other people on a screen who are watching each other and looking at cards on a table — proof of the great interiority of human experience if there ever was one.

This is where the fetid polycule marriage of social media, Hollywood dissolution, and AI entertainment tools is heading.

So what’s in the box?

The tech is made by one Luke Geel, according to LinkedIn a graduate of Johns Hopkins who describes himself as interested in poker, chess, and … augmented reality.

Geel’s so-far nameless AI tracks facial tics, blinks, gestures, and the like and subsequently weighs these against its prior training to deduce some semblance of “read” on body language and intention. This writer couldn’t find much evidence of the AI actually working.

But Geel posted a video to his LinkedIn three months ago (it shows up again in the various Omaha announcements) that depicts the overlay of various visual graphic effects on some footage of pro poker players. It leaves a lot to the imagination and appears to be little more than a low-rent “Minority Report” simulacrum. Check it for yourself.

Already it’s become clear to many once-wide-eyed denizens of the internet that their wondrous world wide web has been reduced to something nearer to a virtual late-night TV ad carousel.

RELATED: Can this robot give you the cure for loneliness?

imaginima/Getty Images

But it’s not quite right to think of the process as one of degradation. From the internet’s origins at the Stanford Research Institute to its crescendo amid the string of high-tech company offices along North First Street in today’s San Jose, the internet (like virtually all digital technology) is derived from, and keeps advancing, advanced weapons and varieties of weaponization. Surveillance, reconnaissance, cognitive and psychological operations — the list is long.

Weapons and worship

The laundry list of devices blurs the line between the excellent and the bogus. This too is a form of weaponizing. To take one example, the polygraph, despite continuous use in the application of federal and state security clearances, has never been made admissible in courts because it’s unreliable. The “science” doesn’t work. Nonetheless, the power of the “lie detector” is in its existence, in the fact that it can be wielded here but not there, understood only by a select few. The threat of it someday crossing over into some category of unimpeachable fact wires its anti-human element deep into the human environment.

We exist already in strange relationship with sacralized machines. If and when AI facial recognition software becomes standard, normalized like the polygraph, it will simply reify the tensions between the true, the false, and the unmentionable. Facial recognition leading to pre-cognitive actuarial services will be big business. It may even, like the proverbial broken clock, work sometimes. But it will never represent reality, because humans possess spontaneity. Absolute, human, emotional realities aren’t fixed into a grid. They simply cannot be predicted by men or their machines.

And yet we can be near-certain that efficient, accurate AI facial recognition is coming soon. In many places, whether we know it or not, it’s safe to say it’s already here.

So isn’t it just a few beats until we see the mainstream arrival of pre-cog, pre-crime, and every other possible preemptive measure of corralling the human being? Ironically, the advance of such things, and the acceptance and apathy that will doubtless often greet it, seem to suggest that their arrival won’t make much difference — because the behavioral “corrections” they are ostensibly deployed to achieve will already have been made. Why not act as if they’re already here if their arrival is inevitable?

That’s the logic, anyway. With little more than a graphic to prove it, we’re told no one can hide any longer behind his poker face. Are we willing to believe — and pay the price of that belief?

​Tech 

Democrats’ continued efforts to gaslight the nation about the integrity of American elections and the SAVE America Act proved too much on Sunday for ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, who evidently felt obligated to push back against one Democrat’s misleading claims.

President Donald Trump provided the nation on Thursday with damning insights into the apparent insecurity of American elections, past efforts by foreign powers to exploit election system vulnerabilities, and the Department of Homeland Security’s discovery of around 250,000 noncitizens on voter registration rolls in just four states.

‘That’s actually not the case.’

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) was among the many Democrats who raged over the president’s disclosures and conclusion that to shore up election security ahead of the midterms, lawmakers should pass the SAVE America Act — which would require individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote and voting in federal elections.

Warner has vowed to kill the SAVE America Act.

“The greatest danger to our elections right now is false narratives seized upon here at home as a pretext to convince Americans their elections cannot be trusted — or worse, to justify unprecedented federal intervention in elections that the Constitution entrusts to the states,” Warner said in a statement.

“Our democracy depends on confidence in elections that are administered according to law by the states, not on falsehoods invoked to justify unprecedented government intervention,” added the senator.

RELATED: Democrats go into FULL PANIC MODE after Trump exposes election interference from China and the deep state

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Warner went on-air Sunday with his concern-mongering at ABC News, a network that days earlier refused to carry live TV coverage of Trump’s speech detailing election vulnerabilities and foreign interference.

When asked about the president’s disclosures, Warner admitted that multiple foreign powers actively seek to influence American elections and expressed concern about Chinese hacking initiatives.

However, sticking to his party’s script, the Democrat claimed that Trump “is not looking for a secure election because if we have a free and fair election, he and his allies are going to get beat historically this fall.”

ABC News host Jonathan Karl raised the matter of Democrats’ unanimous opposition to the SAVE America Act, then asked Warner, “Requiring photo ID to register to vote — is this something that Democrats should get behind?”

A Pew Research Center survey of over 3,550 Americans conducted last August found that 83% of respondents favored requiring all voters to show government-issued identification to vote. A Gallup poll conducted the previous October found that 84% of Americans supported the photo ID requirement.

“You know what? In Virginia, we have voter ID and photo ID. I got to show my — ” said Warner.

Karl interrupted Warner to note, “That’s actually not the case. I mean, I’m a Virginia voter. You don’t need to show a photo ID in Virginia. There are a wide range of things you can show for ID, and if you don’t show one of those, you can sign an affidavit saying, attesting — but, so it’s not required.”

“You do have a variety of documents,” said Warner. “But we have voter ID of one form or another.”

According to the Virginia Department of Elections, “Voters may provide either an acceptable form of ID or sign an ID Confirmation Statement at the polls.” Accepted forms of ID in Warner’s Democrat-run state include student IDs containing photographs; employee ID cards containing a photograph; and utility bills, bank statements, government checks, or paychecks containing the voter’s name and address.

Those who show up to a polling location who decline to sign an ID statement affirming their identity “may vote a provisional ballot.”

When asked whether there should be a voter ID requirement nationwide, Warner suggested he might support having to show a set of IDs “as long as it comes from some official point,” but he proceeded to once again attack the SAVE America Act as a form of “voter disenfranchisement.”

Following his live fact-check by Karl on ABC News, Warner was widely ridiculed online.

The Republican Committee of Prince William County, Virginia, asked whether Warner had “lost his ‘fastball.'”

The Virginia Project, a PAC supportive of the Republican Party in the Old Dominion, piled on, writing, “Warner doesn’t even know Virginia’s voting laws.”

The X account for the Republican Study Committee noted, “80% of the country wants to secure our elections, and Senate Democrats like Mark Warner keep proving they would rather fabricate facts than support basic safeguards, even when the truth is what our republic depends on.”

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​Mark warner, Virginia, Save america act, Donald trump, Jonathan karl, Politics 

Ann Widdecombe was a British politician and devout Catholic convert whose common sense and unabashed conservatism made her a popular target for leftist abuse, including by at least one official in the current Labour government.

Widdecombe — a 78-year-old patron of Right to Life UK and Reform UK immigration spokeswoman who fought for the rights of the unborn, against euthanasia, against LGBT imperialism, against climate alarmism, and for Britain’s departure from the European Union — was assassinated in her home in Devon, England, earlier this month.

‘He had expressed his hatred of me on more than one occasion.’

Widdecombe’s suspected killer, 28-year-old Joshua Kerry, appears to be yet another bloodthirsty leftist.

Police responded to the pro-lifer’s home on July 9 after her lifeless body was discovered lying in the kitchen. As Widdecombe’s grievous injuries could not be explained by a fall, detectives promptly launched an investigation into the murder, which is believed to have occurred just after noon on July 8.

On July 10, Kerry — whom Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage claimed, on “good authority,” to be a “hard-left activist” and “intolerant individual obsessed with Soviet communism” — was arrested on suspicion of murder in what was initially figured for a burglary gone wrong.

Kerry was reportedly caught on CCTV leaving his Rotherham residence, approximately a four-hour drive away from Widdecombe’s house, early on the day of the murder. Before leaving, he also was allegedly spotted by neighbors putting “some kind of wooden pole” into his car.

RELATED: British villagers act like it’s 1776, declare independence over mass-migration plans

Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

Assistant Chief Matt Longman of Devon and Cornwall Police urged the public “not to speculate about what might have happened,” and stressed that he had “no information to believe that that is a politically motivated crime.”

However, one Reform UK source said at the time, “It is clear to everybody that we are being gaslit by the police.”

Devon and Cornwall Police cut Kerry loose the next morning, claiming he “is no longer part of the investigation,” but hours later, Kerry was rearrested at his home in Rotherham — this time by Counter Terrorism Policing North East and South Yorkshire Police — on suspicion of murder and the “commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism.”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood subsequently announced that counter-terrorism police had taken the lead in the investigation into Widdecombe’s death, and Laurence Taylor, head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, said the investigation had turned up “new information and evidence” pointing to the murder having been a “targeted attack.”

‘Why are we targeted like this? Because we say things that are unfashionable among many in Westminster.’

A source told the Sun (U.K.) that in their search of Kerry’s house, they found clippings of news articles about Reform UK, its leader Nigel Farage, and the party’s immigration policies.

“It would appear he had a profound dislike of the party, its leader, and its policies,” said the source.

Farage alleged in an article on Saturday that the suspect “attended various marches and hated anyone with an opposing view. He had expressed his hatred of me on more than one occasion.”

Courtney Foster, a woman who lives near the suspect, told the Telegraph, “He rarely comes out of the house — his dad used to do everything for him, and I don’t know what he did for a living.”

Kerry’s dad recently passed away.

“I think once his dad died, he went a bit loopy,” added Foster.

In addition to seizing Kerry’s electronic devices, police also seized a red Vauxhall Corsa believed to have belonged to the murder suspect.

Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesman, accused Labour, Liberal Democrats, and Tory politicians of setting the stage for the attack with their rhetoric.

“I can tell you about the climate in which she was killed, a relentless narrative from politicians and the media that Reform UK is a threat, a threat to be urgently stopped,” said Yusuf. “A narrative so relentless it constitutes incitement. And why are we targeted like this? Because we say things that are unfashionable among many in Westminster but are popular in the country at large.”

Farage recently celebrated his fallen friend, stating, “This was somebody who gave her life to public service, to fighting for the things that she believed in.”

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​Ann widdecombe, Assassination, Pro-life, Conservative, United kingdom, Politics, Crime 

Colorado’s race for governor has taken an unexpected turn. Republican nominee Victor Marx, a ministry leader, is one of the most unconventional candidates America has ever seen.

BlazeTV host Pat Gray is shocked by his background — which involves claims of murder and exorcism — calling it “some weird stuff.”

“This Republican running for governor in Colorado, he’s a ministry leader. His name is Victor Marx. He won the Republican primary for governor. And there’s now going to be the general election matchup in November with Phil Weiser, who’s the Democrat nominee,” Gray explains.

“This guy’s an interesting cat. Right now, he performs exorcisms that bring in about $7 million a year. And he does these exorcisms over the phone,” he says.

“I didn’t realize there was that kind of cash in exorcisms,” he continues, adding, “This is going to make this industry explode.”

Marx also claims that when he was just 7 years old, his stepfather forced him to kill someone.

“He claims his stepdad put a gun in his hand in some rural area and then placed his hand over Victor’s hand and pulled the trigger, killing an unarmed man out in the wilderness somewhere. Then, he took that man back to his house, and he buried him underneath the house,” Gray explains.

“And there’s never been any evidence of that,” he says. “But I don’t know why you would make up a story like that. You just think it’s cool? You think it’s mysterious?”

“I’m not really sure what’s going on with the guy, but that’s bizarre. And he was asked if he’s the only person he’s ever killed. And he said, ‘As a child, yes, without question,’” Gray says.

Want more from Pat Gray?

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

​Colorado, Exorcism, Pat gray, Victor marx, Pat gray unleashed 

Massachusetts police say they are investigating the discovery of a dead man’s remains at a Mattapan home owned by the husband of a Democratic congresswoman.

The property is a multi-family rental building that is owned by Conan Harris, husband of Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

‘My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one today in Mattapan.’

Police said they went to the property on Saturday at about 1:52 p.m. and found a man who appeared to be dead from a single gunshot wound.

The homicide unit is investigating the incident.

“We got home, and there were police coming down the street; they blocked it off with crime tape over there, and neighbors were gathered around,” said Ari, a woman who lives on the same street as the location of the incident.

“The Congresswoman extends her deepest condolences to the impacted family,” read a statement from a Pressley spokesperson.

Harris posted a message on Facebook about the incident.

“Thank you everyone for the care and concern, our family is safe,” the statement read. “My heart goes out to the family that lost a loved one today in Mattapan.”

Boston Democratic Mayor Michelle Wu also released a statement.

“I know the situation is still under investigation, and Boston police are diligently trying to pursue the information they can get,” she said at an event Sunday in Roxbury,

RELATED: Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib claim gun shop’s billboard is ‘inciting violence’ against them

Pressley, a member of the far-left radical Democratic group known as the “Squad,” was first elected to Congress in 2018. She has repeatedly excoriated the criminal justice system as racist.

“Our families and communities continue to be plagued and destabilized by the overlapping crises of mass incarceration, police brutality, and over-criminalization,” she said in May 2025, adding that “black and brown communities” continue to endure “an unprecedented assault” from the second Trump administration.

In June 2020, she also boldly declared, “Yes, I support the defund movement,” and called for “restorative justice practices.”

“Why are we deploying the police when there’s an individual battling mental illness?”

Online records indicate the property was last sold in 2021 for $340,000 in 2021. It was listed for sale at the price of $1.15 million, but the listing was removed on Saturday.

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​Ayanna pressley, Boston, Murder, Politics 

As a physical therapist, I have seen the same problem countless times. A patient makes steady progress for months, then suddenly plateaus. The exercises have not changed. The injury has not worsened. The patient is doing everything right, yet lingering pain or weakness will not budge.

After some investigation, we often find the cause: a medication problem. A prescription changed. A refill was delayed. A side effect went unrecognized. The patient’s body began responding differently, and the rehabilitation plan stalled.

Protecting pharmacy access is not a favor to one industry. It is part of protecting the patient’s path back to health.

Physical therapy, prescribing, and pharmacy cannot operate as separate worlds. Most patients who enter my clinic have at least one chronic condition, one prescription, or both. Medication can affect pain, balance, fatigue, inflammation, and healing. The pharmacist who understands a patient’s history and drug regimen belongs on the care team, not outside it.

Physical therapy can often reduce pain and restore movement without long-term reliance on medication. But after surgery or during a complicated recovery, pharmaceutical support may play an essential role. Patients do best when movement, hands-on care, and medication work together deliberately rather than through guesswork.

Recovery already asks a great deal of patients. A death in the family, an unexpected bill, or a difficult work schedule can disrupt appointments and home exercise. Those obstacles are hard, but patients can usually manage them with planning and support.

A collapsing pharmacy network is different. Patients cannot will a closed counter back into service, reach an unavailable pharmacist, or fill a prescription that remains trapped in a broken system.

Look at San Francisco, which now faces a “pharmacy crisis.” National chains have closed locations, while independent pharmacies struggle to survive. In Missouri, state officials are suing CVS and other pharmacy benefit managers over insulin pricing. Lawmakers may intend to lower costs, but poorly designed interventions can destabilize the same pharmacy networks patients depend on.

The ownership model is secondary. A national chain and a neighborhood independent may operate differently, but either can provide essential access. When either disappears, patients lose timely refills, answers about side effects, and help resolving dosing questions. In physical therapy, that can mean slower progress, cautious loading, missed sessions, and avoidable setbacks.

A short-staffed pharmacy creates similar problems. Patients struggle to reach prescribers and may wait days for guidance. Pharmacists often serve as the most accessible medication experts in the health care system, but accessibility requires someone behind the counter with enough time to listen.

When those questions go unanswered, therapists are left working around uncertainty. We may not know whether dizziness comes from the exercise program, the underlying condition, or a new medication. We may have to delay progress because safe rehabilitation does not permit guessing.

RELATED: Joy Behar’s TrumpRx rant shows how elites think

Gary Gershoff/Getty Images

I see the opposite when pharmacy access works. Sometimes a pharmacist’s clarification or a small medication adjustment helps a patient move past the last trace of a limp. Sometimes it allows a musician to use his fingers comfortably again. When the pharmacy side of the plan aligns with physical therapy, patients can recover faster without adding unnecessary costs or complications.

The care I provide is important, but recovery succeeds through cooperation. Physical therapists restore movement. Prescribers diagnose and choose treatments. Pharmacists catch interactions, explain side effects, and help patients use medications safely. Large chains and local independents both employ professionals who perform that work every day.

Pharmacists have become “integral to chronic disease management.” Policymakers should treat them that way. Any reform aimed at drug prices, corporate practices, or pharmacy benefit managers should begin with a basic test: Will patients retain reliable access to a pharmacist?

When the answer is no, the consequences reach far beyond the pharmacy counter. They appear in rehabilitation clinics, physician offices, emergency rooms, and patients’ homes.

Good rehabilitation depends on movement expertise and medication expertise working together. Protecting pharmacy access is not a favor to one industry. It is part of protecting the patient’s path back to health.

​Opinion & analysis, Pharmacy benefit managers, Drug prices, Prescription drugs, Physical therapy, Caregiving, Insulin, Lawsuits, San francisco, Missouri, Rehabilitation 

Imagine driving a manufacturer-provided press vehicle for a road test and suddenly finding yourself surrounded by police because a license-plate reader misidentified your temporary tag.

That’s exactly what happened recently to an automotive journalist Joel Feder, who says officers tracked the vehicle for days before stopping him in a parking lot over a plate-reading error.

Some license-plate readers have also been installed near businesses that sell firearms, creating records of vehicles visiting those locations.

It isn’t an isolated case.

Armed and dangerous

We’ve covered Flock cameras before. They were sold as precision crime-fighting tools that could quickly locate stolen vehicles and help police solve serious crimes. But mistakes continue to happen. Similar errors have led to innocent families, used-car buyers, and other drivers being subjected to high-risk traffic stops. In some cases, officers have even drawn their weapons.

At the same time, residents are pushing back.

Dozens of cities and towns have allowed Flock contracts to expire or removed cameras altogether after residents questioned the systems’ accuracy, privacy implications, and data-retention policies. Public pressure is making a difference.

Before anyone declares victory, however, there’s another side to the story.

The surveillance network itself isn’t disappearing. In many communities, Flock is simply being replaced by another vendor.

Different vendor, same spying

Companies such as Axon, Motorola Solutions through Vigilant Solutions, Rekor Systems, Genetec AutoVu, and ELSAG — now part of Leonardo — are stepping in to compete for the same contracts. They may promise stronger privacy controls or improved technology, but the basic model remains the same: photograph passing vehicles, record where they were seen, and store that information in searchable databases.

The debate is no longer whether these systems should exist. It’s who gets to operate them.

Privacy advocates argue that building long-term databases showing where people travel raises serious Fourth Amendment questions, particularly as courts have become increasingly skeptical of warrantless collection of detailed location information.

The concerns extend beyond highways and intersections. Some license-plate readers have also been installed near businesses that sell firearms, creating records of vehicles visiting those locations. Critics argue that this raises additional questions about lawful activities protected by the Second Amendment.

RELATED: Flock Safety CEO: It’s ‘terroristic’ to want to know where we put our spy cameras

Timothy Fadek/Boston Globe/Getty Images

DeFlock delivers

One of the most effective responses has come from ordinary citizens.

An independent project called DeFlock.org maps known automated license-plate reader locations across the country, allowing residents to see where cameras have been installed. Armed with that information, people have attended city council meetings, questioned local officials, and in some cases convinced communities to remove cameras or reject new contracts.

Technology companies will continue improving these systems because there’s money to be made, and police departments will continue looking for tools they believe help fight crime.

The real question is where communities decide to draw the line.

Every time you leave your driveway, these systems collect another data point about your movements. If everything works perfectly, most drivers never notice. When something goes wrong, however, innocent people can find themselves explaining a database error to police officers on the side of the road.

Changing vendors doesn’t necessarily change that reality. It simply changes whose logo is on the camera.

​Fourth amendment, License plate reader, Second amendment, Flock cameras, Deflock, Privacy, Surveillance, Big tech, Automotive 

Former President Joe Biden is preparing to tell Americans all about his presidency in a new memoir set for release this fall. But BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales isn’t buying the idea that Biden could write a book at all.

“Autopens are getting so advanced that these days they can write an entire book from cover to cover because Joe Biden has a book that is releasing in November,” Gonzales says.

“Oh man, I can’t wait to not read that,” she adds.

And a promotional video of Biden only adds more weight to her belief.

“Since I left the presidency, I’ve had a lot of people ask me, ‘Joe, what have you been doing?’” the former president began in the video.

“Nobody asked you that. … My question is, don’t you have cancer? How is that going? Isn’t it strange?” Gonzales says, before playing another clip of Biden stumbling through the promo.

“It’s about the challenges we faced as a nation and about the decisions I made and why I made them,” Biden said.

Gonzales points out that the video only gets worse, just like his presidency.

“It’s about why I chose to run for re-election and why I chose to step aside,” Biden said.

“He chose to step aside, ladies and gentlemen. He chose it. That definitely was his decision. It wasn’t something that anyone forced on him,” Gonzales comments, wondering why the former president is choosing to release this book now.

“You’ve got to wonder, maybe the plan is to try to scrape together cash because didn’t Jill just write … a book, and nobody bought it, and nobody read it? Why do you guys keep writing books?” she asks.

“Maybe there’s a larger plan here,” she adds, pointing out that he could be “trying to get some cash flow coming in because nobody will pay for his presidential library.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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​Sara gonzales, Joe biden, Jill biden, Autopen, Sara gonzales unfiltered 

Canada’s failed policies are doing more than fouling American air. Summer across the Midwest and East Coast has again brought unhealthy and hazardous air-quality warnings from Canadian wildfires. Poor forest management threatens public health and daily life. Canada’s immigration policies pose a deeper and more lasting danger.

Most Americans still regard Canada as a polite northern extension of the United States: familiar, friendly, and strategically harmless. That view belongs to another era. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that “nostalgia is not a strategy.” Neither is complacency.

America once regarded the northern border as its safest frontier. That assumption is precisely what now makes it dangerous. Nobody thought to watch it.

Canada is becoming one of America’s most underestimated national security vulnerabilities: a permissive northern platform through which mass migration, organized crime, and hostile foreign influence can reach the United States.

The first problem is demographic. In 1961, 96.8% of Canadians reported European origins, primarily British or French. By 2021, that figure had fallen to 52.5%, a decline of 44.3 percentage points in 60 years, even allowing for changes in census methodology. Canada has undergone one of the most dramatic demographic transformations in the Western world. A mass-migration regime has shifted the primary source of new Canadians from Europe to Asia, with Asian populations now making up roughly one-fifth of the country.

That change would carry fewer risks in a confident, assimilationist nation. Canada has chosen the opposite course. The United States has historically shown an extraordinary ability to turn foreigners into Americans. Canada instead embraced state-sponsored multiculturalism. Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even described the country as the world’s first “postnational state,” with “no core identity” and “no mainstream.” Canada has combined mass immigration with an increasingly vague idea of national belonging.

Immigration without assimilation has accelerated the country’s Balkanization. New arrivals often settle in established immigrant communities, producing ethnic enclaves first at the neighborhood level and, increasingly, across entire cities.

In Brampton, Ontario, Canada’s ninth-largest city, more than 52% of residents are South Asian. In Richmond, British Columbia, more than half the population is Chinese. Markham, Surrey, Burnaby, Mississauga, and Richmond Hill reflect the same pattern: not merely high immigration, but concentrated communal geography.

Lebanon offers an extreme warning of where such politics can lead. Once politics stops revolving around competing ideas and becomes a census of rival communities, foreign governments learn to exploit those divisions.

RELATED: Can political dissent be classified as harassment? One Canadian city says yes.

DON MACKINNON/AFP/Getty Images

That prospect should concern Washington. Canada has already become a major arena for foreign interference. Its own public inquiry has examined the activities of China, Russia, India, and other governments. Diaspora communities can become targets and instruments of intimidation, surveillance, political coercion, and imported ethnic conflict. The 2023 killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar illustrated the danger. Canadian officials alleged that agents of the Indian government were involved in his assassination on Canadian soil.

China presents the gravest strategic threat. Beijing does not need to turn Canada into an outright enemy of the United States. It needs only to use Canada as a gateway into the North American system. During the 2025 campaign, Carney identified China as a major geopolitical threat and source of foreign interference. His government has since adopted a more accommodating posture, even avoiding a direct answer when asked whether he still regarded Beijing as a threat.

Canada’s decision to allow Chinese electric vehicles into the country at reduced tariff rates shows the risk. Modern electric vehicles are not simply cars. Their cameras, microphones, sensors, software, and remote-update capabilities can collect enormous quantities of data. Washington may restrict Chinese connected vehicles in the United States, but those safeguards weaken if Canada allows large numbers of them into the shared North American market.

That policy could put tens of thousands of Chinese surveillance platforms on American roads, gathering information near military bases, power plants, communications infrastructure, and other sensitive sites.

The physical border creates another vulnerability. The northern frontier no longer deserves its old reputation as strategically irrelevant. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions rose sharply from fiscal year 2022 through fiscal year 2024, although they have since declined under the Trump administration.

The increase showed how easily weak Canadian migration policy can undermine American border enforcement. When the United States tightens its southern border while Canada maintains looser entry policies, the northern frontier becomes an escape valve for foreign nationals seeking unlawful entry.

RELATED: Canadian female, 33, accused of slapping teen girl wearing pro-Trump clothing on NJ boardwalk. Now suspect is in ICE custody.

mirsad sarajlic/iStock/Getty Images

The danger extends beyond illegal immigration. Criminal organizations, foreign agents, and potentially terrorist-linked individuals can exploit a border designed around an older assumption of trust. Fentanyl compounds the threat. Authorities have intercepted Chinese precursor chemicals in Canada and uncovered sophisticated drug “superlabs” north of the border.

The conclusion should be unavoidable: The Canada of the American imagination no longer exists. The old Canada rarely sent toxic smoke across the border. It served as a loyal northern shield — a NATO ally, a NORAD partner, and a dependable member of the Western alliance.

The new Canada is more ambiguous and more dangerous. It remains formally allied and culturally familiar, but it is also increasingly fragmented, increasingly open to commercial ties with American adversaries, and increasingly exposed to hostile foreign influence.

The United States need not treat Canada as an enemy. But we can no longer assume Canada will remain a fully reliable security partner. America once regarded the northern border as its safest frontier. That assumption is precisely what now makes it dangerous. Nobody thought to watch it.

​Illegal immigration, Opinion & analysis, Canada, China, National security, Nato, Border patrol, Fentanyl 

Zohran Mamdani ran a brilliant campaign last year by promising to make New York City affordable through democratic socialism.

Now the bill is arriving.

Firefighters are good. Firefighters are socialism. Therefore, socialism is good. That is the intellectual caliber of the movement now ascending in American politics.

New York’s new pied-à-terre tax took effect this month. Almost immediately, the luxury real estate market tanked. Wealthy buyers, it turns out, are not livestock. They can delay purchases, move money, change residency, or simply decline to participate in Mamdani’s experiment.

This elementary fact appears to have surprised the people running America’s largest city.

That’s the trouble with democratic socialists. They are forever astonished when human beings refuse to behave like figures in a budget projection.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has a solution: Make the argument so stupid that nobody can discuss socialism seriously at all.

Appearing recently on “The Dean Obeidallah Show,” Ellison announced that police departments are socialist because taxpayers fund them.

“You call the cops; guess who pays them. Your tax dollars,” Ellison said. “Guess what that is. That’s socialism, pal!”

He threw in fire departments, water inspectors, and public works for good measure.

No, pal. That isn’t socialism. That’s just government.

Ellison wasn’t offering a forensic definition, of course. He was performing a cheap semantic trick for people he assumed would nod and applaud before thinking.

Police are socialism. Firefighters are socialism. Roads are socialism. Public schools are socialism. (Well, yes, kind of.) Once every government function becomes socialist, socialism no longer requires a defense. You already support it. You have no choice. Unless you plan to extinguish your own house fire, arrest your own burglar, and pave the road yourself, welcome to the revolution.

Joe Rogan has been repeating the same dumb line for years, I’m sorry to say. Last year, he again called the fire department socialist because everybody pays for it and everybody receives protection.

I like Rogan. He isn’t a malefactor like Ellison. He simply does not know what he is talking about. That is less wicked, but it is increasingly difficult to excuse in a man who has spent thousands of hours interviewing people who actually know things.

Millions hear Rogan and think: Well, gosh, that makes sense.

No, it doesn’t. It’s flat wrong.

Worse, Ellison and Rogan smuggle in the same fraudulent choice: socialism or chaos.

Either government employs police officers and firefighters, builds roads, and inspects drinking water, or every citizen must hire his own private constable, buy his own fire engine, and fill the pothole at the end of the driveway.

That is not the choice.

RELATED: The media’s Democratic cover-up is collapsing

Chuwy/Getty Images

Socialism concerns ownership and control of productive property. Government collects taxes, enforces laws, maintains courts, fields armies, and provides services. Governments did all of those things long before socialism acquired a name.

By the Ellison-Rogan standard, if we can call it that, every king who collected taxes was a socialist. Ancient Rome was socialist because it built aqueducts. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were socialists because the national government employed customs agents. Louis XIV was apparently waiting for the workers to seize Versailles.

The alternative to socialism is not anarchy. It is limited government.

Conservatives sometimes make the mistake of talking as though government itself were the enemy. It isn’t. Not necessarily. Bad government is the enemy. Unlimited government is the enemy. Government that exceeds its legitimate purposes, devours private institutions, and treats citizens as dependents is the enemy.

But we need government.

We need cops and firefighters. We need courts, armies, roads, and public works — the odd toll road notwithstanding. Somebody must enforce contracts, punish violence, defend the country, and preserve public order.

Ordered liberty requires order.

The American political tradition does not reject government. It recognizes that government is necessary and dangerous and therefore must be limited by law. That is a much older and more serious idea than the facile view that every tax-funded service is socialism and every objection to socialism is an argument for anarchy.

Ellison knows better. That’s what makes him a bad guy. He understands perfectly well that a police department is not socialism. He chooses to speak as though he does not because the confusion serves him.

If cops and firefighters are socialism, then socialism is already as American as apple pie. No need to defend rent controls, wealth taxes, government grocery stores, confiscatory tax schemes, or the steady expansion of public power on their merits. Just offer the child’s syllogism: Firefighters are good. Firefighters are socialism. Therefore, socialism is good.

That is the intellectual caliber of the movement now ascending in American cities.

RELATED: ‘Back the blue’ cannot mean blind obedience

Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Ellison is dishonest about words because dishonesty serves his politics. Rogan is careless with ideas because being laughably wrong has never reduced his audience. Mamdani is careless with markets because he imagines moral righteousness repeals the law of supply and demand.

These are not serious people. But they are seriously dangerous.

They hold offices, microphones, audiences, and influence wildly disproportionate to their judgment. They confuse applause with vindication and slogans with thought. They speak with total confidence because none of them expects to pay for being wrong.

The people who do pay are homeowners, renters, workers, employers, customers, and taxpayers who cannot laugh, wave, and leave the consequences to somebody else.

Democratic socialism’s new champions are not merely wrong about economics. They are frivolous about power. They offer socialism or chaos because admitting the existence of limited government would ruin the con.

They are playing with cities and states they are not wise or disciplined enough to govern. Shine, perishing republic!

​Democratic socialism, Keith ellison, New york city, Police departments, Socialism, Zohran mamdani, Taxpayers, Joe rogan, American politics, Fire departments, Opinion & analysis 

When he’s not filming “Unashamed” podcasts, duck hunting, or hanging out with his family, Jase Robertson can usually be found combing the land with his metal detector. His interest in treasure hunting sparked several years ago when a family friend battling cancer introduced him to the hobby. His enthusiasm for metal detecting grew over time and eventually culminated in the Fox Nation series “Duck Family Treasure.”

This deep fondness for unearthing lost treasure recently drew Jase to a story about a lost biblical treasure that many have forgotten or perhaps never heard of. On a recent episode of “Unashamed,” Jase shared the fascinating and mysterious tale of Oded Golan and the James Ossuary.

Golan is a Tel Aviv-based Israeli antiquities collector. According to his testimony, he purchased a bone box in the mid-1970s from a Jerusalem antiquities dealer, paying only a modest sum. The box bore an Aramaic inscription that read: “James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.”

The implications of such a discovery, Jase explains, were enormous because if proved legitimate, it would “give proof to the Bible itself.”

But for decades, Golan didn’t think much of the box or its inscription. As a secular Jew, he didn’t connect it to the biblical James. Around 2001, however, he happened to show the box to a visiting French epigrapher André Lemaire, who instantly recognized the potential significance.

Lemaire published his analysis of Golan’s bone box in “Biblical Archaeology Review.” The ossuary was then briefly exhibited at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, causing worldwide sensation as possible first archaeological evidence linked to Jesus.

“This turned into an eight-year trial,” Jase exclaims.

The public attention attracted the Israel Antiquities Authority, which then convened experts to analyze the box’s inscription. They ultimately declared the “brother of Jesus” part was a modern forgery, citing patina analysis, style differences, and other evidence.

“I’m a treasure hunter so I was familiar with [patina],” says Jase. “The patina all seemed legit except on the part where it said ‘brother of Jesus.’”

But this accusation makes him a bit skeptical. “[The box] had a lot of patina on it, which you can’t fake patina. … Any treasure hunter knows that,” he says.

The experts’ conclusion that the “brother of Jesus” inscription was forged ignited a massive international scandal, complete with police raids on Golan’s home, dramatic claims of a sophisticated forgery ring, and headlines labeling it the “forgery trial of the century.”

The ensuing years-long legal saga became a grueling courtroom battle of rival experts, ending in Golan’s 2012 acquittal on forgery charges (though he was convicted on a minor trading offense). The judge, however, noted the verdict did not prove the inscription authentic.

“They just really couldn’t prove that it wasn’t authentic,” says Jase.

The ossuary was eventually returned to Golan. It remains one of the most controversial artifacts in biblical archaeology, with scholars still divided on its authenticity.

Jase wonders if the authorities’ seeming frenzy to disprove the inscription stemmed from Judaism’s rejection of Jesus as deity.

“In their mind, they’re like, ‘Well, Jesus is not the son of God. This guy’s got some proof,’” he remarks.

Ultimately, whether the box contained the actual bones of Jesus Christ’s brother James is not a matter of great importance, Jase argues.

While he believes there’s “pretty strong evidence” the bone box could be legitimate, trying to prove its authenticity is “the wrong search,” he says.

“I really feel like in my heart that we serve God in faith. If you’re trying to look to prove there’s a God, I just don’t think that’s the way God designed it.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Unashamed with the robertsons, Christianity, Jase robertson, Biblical archaeology 

The three companies that make most of the world’s memory — Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix — are saying their entire output is spoken for.

Micron has completed pricing agreements for its full 2026 supply of high-bandwidth memory and says tightness will persist beyond 2027. SK Hynix says customer demand has already claimed all of its DRAM and NAND production for the coming year. Samsung expects its high-bandwidth memory sales to more than triple.

These conditions reflect a structural reallocation, and the structure in question is the global AI data center.

Powerful buyers secure in advance what smaller buyers receive on less favorable terms.

Most people do not think about DRAM or NAND flash. These crucial components of computing are usually invisible, until they are not. Robert Dennard invented the one-transistor DRAM cell in 1966. NAND flash emerged in 1987. Both became so pervasive and reliably cheap that they disappeared into the background hum of modern life, noticed only during the periodic price spikes that briefly made technology reporters use the word “shortage” before everyone forgot again.

That era of comfortable ignorance is now over for a single reason: artificial intelligence.

Memory’s dark secrets

HBM is a kind of DRAM. What makes HBM distinct is its architecture. Individual DRAM dies are thinned to less than the width of a sheet of paper, punctured with thousands of microscopic holes called through-silicon vias, stacked eight or twelve layers high, and then integrated onto an interposer alongside a processor. The result is memory that can deliver more than a terabyte per second of bandwidth to a single chip. The latest Samsung HBM4 reaches 3.3 terabytes per second through a 2,048-pin interface. Nvidia’s DGX B200 system aggregates eight GPUs for a combined 64 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth.

Every wafer of silicon devoted to HBM is a wafer not devoted to the DDR4 that goes into a student’s laptop, or the LPDDR4 in a budget smartphone, or the conventional DRAM in an automotive controller. Micron says HBM carries a three-to-one trade ratio against DDR5 in that producing one unit of HBM consumes the wafer area that could have produced three units of ordinary memory.

The advanced packaging lines needed for HBM are themselves scarce. The clean-room space is limited, and new fabs take years to build. Micron’s next Idaho facility will produce its first wafers in mid-2027. Another Idaho fab follows in late 2028. A New York fab arrives sometime after 2030.

A great increase in supply is not imminent.

RELATED: China’s new AI master plan is a glimpse at total technological control

bernie_photo/Getty Images

What makes AI so hungry for memory is the nature of inference. When a large language model generates a response, it maintains something called a KV cache, a running record of the conversation’s context that must remain in fast GPU memory for the duration of the interaction. The cache grows with prompt length and must be held open for every concurrent user.

Researchers have demonstrated two- to fourfold throughput improvements simply by managing this memory more efficiently, which gives some indication of how much capacity is currently being consumed by the brute fact of keeping a conversation alive. Contemporary AI is a persistent system that continuously occupies memory.

A new currency of capital

The old memory market was cyclical and anonymous. Spot prices rose and fell. Inventory accumulated and cleared. No one signed multiyear contracts for commodity DRAM. That market is gone.

Micron now holds 16 strategic customer agreements with pricing floors, cash deposits, and remaining performance obligations totaling $100 billion.Tencent has signed a three- to five-year DRAM deal with China’s CXMT worth nearly $3 billion to guarantee supply for its AI and cloud operations. Customers are seeking contracts of up to three years even for legacy products like DDR4 and LPDDR4 because they cannot be sure of getting them otherwise.

Memory has begun to behave less like a commodity and more like a strategic reserve, allocated by contract and commitment rather than by price discovery on the open market. It has become another resource, like liquefied natural gas or cloud computing capacity, that powerful buyers secure in advance and smaller buyers receive on less favorable terms.

The geopolitics follow predictably. South Korea is treating the memory boom as a national industrial project, with SK Hynix planning investments of 100 trillion won. Japan is pushing next-generation NAND manufacturing. The United States is trying to reshore leading-edge DRAM through Micron’s Idaho and New York expansions, backed by federal incentives. Memory fabs are instruments of national positioning within the AI supply chain.

The cost of recollection

The British retailer Currys has warned that memory shortages driven by AI data centers will raise prices for smartphones, laptops, and consumer electronics. The fact that a chatbot prompt issued in a data center in Virginia can affect the price of a replacement phone purchased by a student in Texas is the peculiar indignity of the present arrangement. The same wafer starts, packaging lines, and engineering hours can serve DDR5, HBM4, enterprise SSDs, or automotive memory, but not all at once.

AI reorganizes scarcity and makes visible the hidden architecture on which digital life has always depended.

We are accustomed to thinking of memory as something personal, something human. The word itself carries that connotation. But in the semiconductor industry, memory has become a capacity metric, a throughput variable, a strategic asset to be reserved and allocated in the service of optimized computation. With the structural shortage of memory, one meaning of the word yields to another.

​Tech 

The place between wakefulness and sleep is a strange limbo where a number of odd things can happen. Some people experience an overwhelming sense of dread, terrifying visions of shadowy figures or intruders in the room, a crushing pressure on their chest, and the complete inability to speak or move anything except their eyes.

This phenomenon is called sleep paralysis.

According to the modern medical explanation, sleep paralysis is a temporary brain glitch that occurs during the sleep-wake transition, where the brain awakens while the body’s natural REM atonia (muscle paralysis that prevents acting out dreams) lingers.

But there’s a growing belief that sleep paralysis isn’t just some freaky biological occurrence but rather a spine-chilling spiritual attack.

On a recent episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess dove into the ancient history of what modern science dubs a “harmless” sleep condition.

While Rick says that what science calls sleep paralysis “hallucinations” may be just that — the “brain playing tricks” — the dread, chest pressure, and shadowy figures sound suspiciously similar to stories of demonic attacks.

And in fact, in other countries all over the world, sleep paralysis is indeed believed to be the work of demons.

Citing Vicki Joy Anderson’s sleep paralysis book “They Only Come Out at Night,” Rick notes that horrifying tales of night monsters who sit on a sleeper’s chest date back to ancient times. This night hag takes different names depending on the country, but the core phenomenon — chest-crushing paralysis and malevolent presence — is remarkably universal.

“All these cultures with all their different names, they describe something demonic, and every single name seems to describe an experience where the demon is strongly pressing down on them and they cannot move — every single one of them,” he says.

Based on the anecdotes in Anderson’s book, Christians who experienced sleep paralysis and called on the name of Jesus experienced “instant relief.”

In addition to calling on the name of the “Lord Jesus” specifically, Rick advises Christians experiencing sleep paralysis to find a “prayer partner” who will commit to praying daily for relief, to confess sin and repent, to refrain from doing things or consuming content that could open demonic doors, and to recite Psalm 91 as a prayer each night before bed.

He then addresses those who are not Christians and thus cannot access the supreme power of Jesus.

“If you’re not redeemed, then that’s the first thing you got to do. You need to be under the authority of Jesus Christ. You need to be abiding in Him. You need to place your faith in him, not in rituals, not anything like that, but in Him — then access the power that He has.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Strange encounters, Rick burgess, Spiritual warfare, Christianity, Demonic attack 

Americans are breathing a sigh of relief at the apparent end of woke lectures masquerading as movies. The last few that slipped through have been sent to the box office graveyard.

But another problem remains.

What gives a human life ultimate meaning? That is a question woke ideology cannot answer. It is also the question every civilization, and every soul, must face.

As John Wick taught us, bad choices lead to consequences. And after 15-plus years of woke education and pop culture, one consequence may be that American audiences can no longer handle a movie that wrestles seriously with the deepest questions of human life.

Permit me to explain why this trouble looms on the horizon like Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”

The woke agenda, with its oppression-studies degrees and DEI catechisms, has trained generations of students and audiences to think superficially. They are told suffering comes from “whiteness” and “heteronormativity,” and that if they elect enough democratic socialists, these problems will vanish and free stuff will rain down from heaven.

Spend enough time on a modern university campus, and you will see how often life’s deepest questions are flattened into identity categories.

Why do people suffer? Systems of oppression.

Why does life feel empty? Unjust structures prevent economic flourishing.

The standard DEI professor solves the problems of evil and meaning by reassuring one group of students that their hardships are caused by another group of students, and that each group can be identified by skin color and sexual preference.

The solution is always the same: Become an activist. Advocate for the marginalized. Restructure society. Stop whiteness.

Think of the Ralph Wiggum meme: “I’m helping.”

Movie after movie has thrown these inane answers at American audiences. Marvel has done more than most. It had a chance to get serious when Ultron sought a solution to the problem of evil. Instead, it simply got violent.

What was the franchise’s answer to evil? Some saccharine claim about the innate goodness of human beings when they are “free” under a nanny state of superheroes.

But those supposedly good humans are the same people who committed all the evil Ultron saw when he studied world history.

The Avengers are an existential nightmare, making one wonder whether each member of the team was meant to be a hero of the absurd after all.

RELATED: Give He-Man credit for mocking the unmockable

Screen Archives/Getty Images

These reflections made me wonder whether today’s audiences, ruined by DEI, could watch a movie like “Cool Hand Luke.”

The film would almost certainly never be made today. But even if it were, would anyone make it to the end? Better yet, would anyone understand what the movie asks us to confront?

Luke, played by Paul Newman, returns home from World War II to a life with no obvious purpose. In a drunken act of vandalism, he cuts the heads off parking meters and is sentenced to a southern prison camp.

The crime is almost beside the point. The movie is not really about criminal justice. It is asking an older question: What does a man do when he cannot find meaning?

Luke’s struggle is existential. He first fights the toughest prisoner, and his refusal to stay down becomes a declaration that he will not surrender his humanity. Later, when Luke wins at poker, the men call him “Cool Hand Luke.”

His coolness is defiance against a universe that appears silent. If nothing matters, why get upset?

The prison itself becomes a metaphor for human existence. The laws appear arbitrary. Luke tells another prisoner, “All I see is a lot of guys laying down a lot of rules and regulations.”

Then, Luke’s mother visits one last time as she is dying.

Their final conversation is painfully cold. He calls her “Arletta” rather than “Mother.” Neither expresses love. As she leaves, he simply says, “So long, Arletta. Take care.”

Harry Dean Stanton sings “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” as Luke walks back into the prison. The inability of sentimentalized religion to give Luke meaning becomes the movie’s second theme, after the helplessness of law.

Soon afterward, Luke receives word of his mother’s death. He sings a mocking song about the empty superstition of popular religion:

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones, sitting on
A pedestal of abalone shell.
Going 90, it ain’t scary,
’Cause I got the Virgin Mary
Assurin’ me that I won’t go to hell.

Popular religion pours opium over the suffering of this life with empty sentimentality and promises of a better afterlife.

Neither law nor sentimental religion can quiet Luke’s soul. So he runs.

Captured once, he hears the famous line from the captain: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

After another escape attempt, the guards force him into a grotesque cycle of digging and filling the same hole.

“Luke, what’s your dirt doing in the boss’ hole?”

After Luke digs a grave-sized hole, another boss asks, “Luke, what’s your dirt doing on my yard? Put it back in that hole.”

This continues until his spirit finally breaks. He begs them to stop. He promises never to escape or back-sass again.

Yet he escapes once more.

RELATED: The left’s icons keep face-planting in public

Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

His final refuge is an empty church. There, Luke finally speaks honestly. He addresses God simply as, “Hey, Old Man.” He admits that he began strong but has grown tired. He wants answers. He wants someone to respond.

Silence.

“I guess you’re a pretty hard case too,” Luke concludes.

A fellow prisoner is sent in to persuade him to come out peacefully. Luke yells out the window, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” but he is shot and killed before he can finish.

The movie refuses every easy answer. The audience is meant to leave and wrestle with the problem of meaning.

Luke cannot be right about final emptiness. But where can we find meaning if neither law nor superficial popular religion can provide it?

That is precisely the sort of question our culture increasingly avoids.

The last 15 years have been a parade of DEI sermons and ideological mush. The worry is that Americans raised in this, educated in woke K-12 schools, and graduated into oppression-studies assumptions would not know how to contemplate existential meaning in a movie like “Cool Hand Luke.”

They would reduce the story to demographic categories. White prisoner. White guards. Southern prison. Oppression explained. Luke deserves what he got.

As a philosophy professor, I hope Americans have not lost the ability to appreciate stories that force us to confront the deepest questions. I hope they are not merely rejecting the stupidity of DEI but also rejecting superficial answers and longing for something deeper.

What gives a human life ultimate meaning? That is a question woke ideology cannot answer.

It is also the question every civilization, and every soul, must face.

​Cool hand luke, Evil, Movies, Woke hollywood, God, Opinion & analysis 

A huge brawl at an Arizona In-N-Out Burger was caught on video early last week, and customers are seen running for cover in the clip.

Tempe police told KSAZ-TV they were called to the fast-food restaurant near Rural Road and Playa del Norte Drive just after 7 p.m. Monday.

‘Bunch of future doctors and lawyers.’

The station said people were seen screaming and running for the door as the melee commenced.

In the clip, numerous individuals are seen trading punches, wrestling, and tackling each other all over the restaurant, KSAZ said.

A person who uploaded video of the fight told the station customers were “camping out” inside the restaurant during an active monsoon storm.

But by the time police arrived at the scene, all those involved in the brawl had already taken off, KSAZ said, adding that some fled on foot while others departed in cars.

The station said what sparked the fight is unknown, and no names have been released in connection with the case.

Police did tell KSAZ that officers were able to speak with witnesses and restaurant staff, and a follow-up investigation is under way.

RELATED: Male, 55, accused of grabbing 15-year-old by neck, throwing him to floor of In-and-Out Burger — and it’s all caught on video

Commenters who posted reactions under the KSAZ video report showing the brawl were disgusted by it:

“Bunch of future doctors and lawyers,” one commenter wrote.”Did they order it animal style?” another commenter quipped, referencing an In-N-Out Burger serving option.”Stay in school, kids,” another commenter suggested. “This is what happens when you drop out and become a loser. Becoming violent and then running away speaks volumes about your level of education.””In my day we took it outside,” another commenter recalled. “Not in front of women and children.”

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​Arizona, In-n-out burger, Brawl, Police, Crime 

McAllister, Montana, does not take long to drive through. We have a post office, a cabinet shop, and an empty lot where the old bar and restaurant once stood.

Yet there it was. The American flag hung at half-staff.

Somewhere between the Carolina foothills and a tiny town in southwest Montana, I was reminded that no matter how far life carries us, the places that formed us never quite let us go.

It was not for someone from Montana. It was for a boy from upstate South Carolina.

Standing in the parking lot of that tiny post office, I found myself thinking that southwest Montana might as well be another country from the red clay, pines, and dogwoods of northwest South Carolina.

Yet one lowered flag carried me back more than 2,000 miles, leaving me with an unexpected ache for both places.

Lindsey Graham’s passing felt different. There had been no long illness, no farewell tour, no gradual retreat from public life. He worked until the end. One day, he was in the middle of the nation’s business. The next, the flag in our little Montana town flew at half-staff for a man whose life began just a few miles from mine.

Washington knew him as a senator. The world knew him as a fixture on Sunday morning news programs, in committee hearings, and on diplomatic missions halfway around the globe.

Upstate South Carolina knew him simply as Lindsey.

Our paths crossed long before I could have imagined standing beside a lowered flag in a small Montana town thinking about him.

He grew up in Central. I grew up in nearby Anderson. We may even have been born in the same hospital.

When Lindsey first ran for Congress, my sister worked on his campaign. His district included my parents’ home. For a time, his sister lived only a few doors from them. Years later, one of my four brothers worked closely with him through the State Department on matters involving Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.

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The first time I met Lindsey personally was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where my wife, Gracie, had been invited to sing for wounded warriors. We shared dinner that evening with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and his wife, along with Montana’s Conrad Burns.

At one point, Lindsey laughed and said he and I could carry on a conversation without anybody needing subtitles.

After meeting several members of my family over the years, he ran into my parents somewhere back home, shook his head with that familiar grin, and asked, “How many of y’all are there?”

That was Lindsey. For all the demands placed on him, he remembered people.

We disagreed on more than a few things over the years. Some of those disagreements mattered. But disagreement is not the same thing as dismissal.

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that.

In an era when too many public careers seem measured by growing fortunes and lucrative opportunities after leaving office, Lindsey’s modest estate told a different story. Whatever history ultimately concludes about every vote he cast or every position he took, it is difficult to argue that he entered public life to enrich himself.

He seemed to take the title literally.

It was public service in the truest sense of the phrase.

Whether one agreed with him or not, Lindsey’s work ethic was undeniable. He left behind a reputation far larger than his estate.

Lindsey Graham died with his boots on.

Only hours earlier, he was still in motion — meeting with allies, working with foreign leaders, talking with colleagues, and carrying the responsibilities that had defined most of his adult life.

Then, almost in an instant, the meetings ended, the phones stopped ringing, and the man who had spent a lifetime helping shape history took his place within it.

Flags across America have been lowered. Soon, they will be raised again. The mail will be sorted. Ranchers will stop by the post office. Life will continue, as it always does.

But standing there in the parking lot of our little post office, I closed my eyes and sighed.

I was not thinking about Washington or the halls of power. I was thinking about upstate South Carolina.

RELATED: Consider the lilies — and one old Montana fir

Photo courtesy of Peter Rosenberger

I was thinking about the red clay my mother could never keep her five sons from tracking into the house. Boiled peanuts from a roadside stand. A sticky, hot Carolina afternoon with pine trees swaying just enough to remind you there was a breeze after all.

I was thinking about familiar voices, familiar roads, and a local boy from Central who somehow found himself helping shape the course of a nation without ever quite losing the cadence of home.

The United States lost a man who served first in uniform, then in the House of Representatives, and finally in the Senate.

South Carolina lost a son.

And somewhere between the Carolina foothills and a tiny town in southwest Montana, I was reminded that no matter how far life carries us, the places that formed us never quite let us go.

I suspect Lindsey Graham never heard of McAllister, Montana.

But that flag outside a tiny post office quietly testified that McAllister, along with countless other towns across America, paused to honor him.

​Lindsey graham, Opinion & analysis, Montana, South carolina, American flags, Caregiving, Senate, Republicans 

In 2019, Mercy Culture Church — a charismatic, conservative Christian church — was founded in Fort Worth, Texas. In the seven years since, it has planted numerous churches in Texas and elsewhere, the most recent satellite campus being in Washington, D.C.

Mercy Culture’s D.C. plant is pastored by none other than BlazeTV contributor Jaco Booyens and his wife, Philipa.

Sadly, getting Mercy Culture D.C. up and running has been something of a nightmare. On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Booyens pulled the curtain back on D.C.’s deeply entrenched spiritual battle, where historic churches allegedly function as gatekeepers against conservative biblical teaching.

Booyens explains that due to the Biden administration encouraging churches to sell their properties to developers, it’s been difficult to find a physical location for Mercy Culture D.C.

After much searching, they finally picked a building, but the nightmare was just beginning.

“We start getting complaints from the building. They’re saying … ’You’re very political … you’re saying you’re anti-abortion; you’re saying that there’s two genders; you’re saying that kids should not be trans-ified,”’ Booyens recounts, noting that he countered these complaints by arguing that these issues are “not political” but deeply “spiritual.”

Disturbed by the pushback, he started “digging” into D.C.’s long church history, and what he found was this: “There are demonic strongholds in [D.C.] that have been given right of passage, dominion — a home inside the church.”

He found the proof hiding in D.C.’s oldest churches.

“There are 13 churches in this city that are 200+ years old that run on the principle that they are — and they said it out loud to us in person — that they are the collective mind of the Holy Spirit, which is blasphemy,” he tells Glenn.

When he was touring the oldest of the churches (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, founded in the 1700s), the man conducting the tour bragged that the church of Mariann Edgar Budde — the female bishop who gained national attention for her progressive sermon at the Washington National Cathedral during Trump’s 2025 inauguration prayer service — was “one of the 13.”

He told Booyens, “We all approved that speech because that’s how correction gets made in this city; that’s how things pass through to Congress. [It] comes through this collective mind of the Holy Spirit.”

Immediately, Booyens could see the demonic “strongholds” controlling the city’s church ecosystem, ensuring the true gospel cannot spread.

This nefarious 13, he tells Glenn, is why Mercy Culture D.C. is having such a difficult time finding a permanent building. To them, Booyens is a “radical” who must be stopped.

“We are at our fourth location now,” he says, noting how evictions keep rolling in because his church is consistently labeled “too political” for standing against abortion and gender-transitioning procedures for children.

“[D.C.] is different than other cities. In this city, that which is evil often is led by the church.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Washington dc, Christianity, Church 

Jennifer Welch recently unleashed a tirade against Christian homeschooling families, calling homeschooling “trickle-down stupidity” and a “fundamental crazy Christian problem” and calling parents with traditional values “the worst, worst, worst.” She even dismissed the decision to homeschool as selfish.

Welch isn’t an education researcher or a homeschooling expert. She’s a progressive podcaster whose “I’ve Had It” podcast has built a large audience by channeling liberal anger at conservatives into viral commentary. Her latest target just happened to be Christian homeschool families. But her latest broadside is still worth answering, if only to correct the caricature she presented of millions of families who have chosen a different path.

Welch’s comments reveal a deeper, increasingly common assumption: the belief that educational institutions are better equipped than parents to shape children.

As a serious Christian who was homeschooled from kindergarten through 12th grade and intends to homeschool my own two children, I couldn’t disagree more. In fact, Welch’s contempt for families like mine is a reminder of exactly why I will never hand my children over to what have become taxpayer-funded ideological institutions.

The irony is hard to miss. At a time of collapsing birth rates, declining academic achievement, and a culture struggling to pass on its moral inheritance, America needs more strong families willing to invest their time, resources, and lives in raising the next generation.

Yet instead of encouraging those families, Welch chooses to mock them.

Here are three reasons Welch couldn’t be more wrong about families like mine.

1. Homeschoolers outperform their peers in nearly every measure

Study after study has found that homeschoolers outperform their peers across a wide range of academic measures. The facts simply don’t support Welch’s dismissive caricature of homeschooling or her claim that it produces “trickle-down stupidity.” Homeschooled students consistently perform well in standardized testing, reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies. Research has also found that homeschooled adults tend to be highly engaged in their communities and successful in higher education and professional life.

Interestingly enough, there were at least 16 U.S. presidents who received part or all of their education at home through their parents or tutors, which was a more common practice in early America.

Public schooling, by comparison, is a relatively recent invention — and one that is increasingly failing America’s students. If we’re going to question an educational model, perhaps we should begin with the one producing declining test scores and growing dissatisfaction.

If Welch believes homeschooling produces “trickle-down stupidity,” she’s overlooking a remarkable list of accomplished homeschool graduates. In addition to presidents, homeschooling has helped produce notable entrepreneurs, athletes, military leaders, and scholars for generations. More recently, figures such as Tim Tebow, Charlie Kirk, Serena Williams, Simone Biles, and Bethany Hamilton demonstrate that an education at home is hardly a barrier to excellence.

RELATED: Education without ‘schooling’: Why a godly home is the best place for children to learn and thrive

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2. Homeschooling puts our children’s needs before our own

Welch calls homeschooling “child abuse” and “selfish,” then goes on to admit she cannot imagine spending that much time with her own children: “For me personally, it was that I would have gotten up on my hands and knees and strapped them to my back and crawled to get them to school every day just to get them where I wasn’t.”

It’s difficult to square those remarks with the claim that homeschooling parents are the selfish ones.

Parents who educate their children at home invest thousands of dollars in curriculum, books, and educational resources while often sacrificing an entire income so one parent can teach full-time. They willingly make those financial and personal sacrifices because they believe giving their children a strong education, solid character, and a biblical worldview is worth far more than the cost.

This is exactly why, long before we ever started dating, my husband and I had each independently decided that homeschooling would be non-negotiable for our future family. If we couldn’t agree on homeschooling or Christian school for our children, it would have been a deal-breaker. That’s how deeply we care about raising children who love God, love their country, think critically, and become exceptionally well educated.

That isn’t selfish. It’s putting our children’s needs ahead of our own.

3. Parents — not the government — should raise children

Welch’s comments reveal a deeper, increasingly common assumption: the belief that educational institutions are better equipped than parents to shape children. But our children don’t belong to the state, to cultural elites, or to government institutions. Parents bear the primary responsibility for raising them. That isn’t simply a Christian conviction; it’s one of the foundations of a free society.

The Bible commands parents to teach their children diligently, pass on the faith, and train them in wisdom and truth, especially in a culture that has lost its bearings. Homeschooling is one way families can faithfully live out those convictions. As the late preacher Voddie Baucham famously warned, “If we continue to send our children to Caesar for their education, we need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans.”

Whenever people ask why my husband and I plan to homeschool our children, the conversation almost inevitably ends with the same question: “How will they socialize?” — as though homeschoolers spend their childhood hidden away from society.

My own experience was exactly the opposite. I interacted with people of all ages and walks of life through church, sports, music lessons, homeschool co-ops, volunteer opportunities, and countless experiences outside the walls of a traditional classroom.

I still remember living and working in Washington, D.C., and watching people’s jaws drop when I told them I had been homeschooled.

“But you’re so normal?”

Exactly.

Homeschooling isn’t about hiding children from the world. It’s about preparing them to enter it with strong convictions, intellectual curiosity, and a sense of purpose.

Jennifer Welch is free to mock families like mine. We’ll keep raising our children according to our convictions — and we’ll let the results speak for themselves.

​Biblical worldview, Charlie kirk, Christian school, Serena williams, Simone biles, Tim tebow, Traditional values, Homeschooling, Education, Christian living, Indoctrination, Faith