Category: blaze media

A years-old speech from Anne Hathaway is making the rounds online again, and in hindsight, it served as a warning for the gender madness that was to come.

“With the exception of being a cisgender male, everything about how I was born has put me at the current center of a damaging and widely accepted myth,” Hathaway began in a 2018 speech for the Human Rights Campaign.

“That myth is that gayness orbits around straightness. Transgender orbits around cisgender, and that all races orbit around whiteness. And it is a myth that keeps money and power in the hands of the few instead of being invested in the lives of the free,” she continued.

“I appreciate this community so much, because it’s where I learn to reject this myth. I appreciate this community because together we are not just going to question this myth, we are going to destroy it,” she added.

“What does ‘gayness revolves around straight’ even mean?” BlazeTV host Dave Landau asks, confused.

“It means nothing,” co-host Stu Burguiere says.

“And all races revolve around white … if you’re talking about a global scale, then white is the minority,” Dave says.

“She’s just saying, ‘Listen, I have learned from all of you, who, by the way, I will not be meeting or signing autographs or shaking hands with after this, but I’ve learned from all of you that from a distance, that I am guilty about who I am, and I’m going to stand up here and do what I can to kind of alleviate that guilt,’” he continues.

“That’s all it is,” he adds.

“It’s this idea that you’re constantly victimizing people,” Stu agrees, adding, “and then they cheer for it.”

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​Stu burguiere, Dave landau, Anne hathaway, Hollywood, Whiteness, Blazetv show, Lgbt 

A prominent public intellectual is getting stomped out on social media after backing a socialist scheme before it came knocking at his door.

Scott Galloway is a professor and podcaster who agrees with many left-leaning political policies, but he changed his tune after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, allegedly doxxed his address.

‘I came out in favor of this tax. He’s taken a legitimate source of tax revenue and is turning it into a wanted poster.’

Galloway said he was supportive of the Mamdani plan to jack up taxes on pied-à-terre residences, which are luxury second homes that do not serve as primary residences.

But when Mamdani released a list of these residences that allegedly included Galloway’s residence, all of a sudden, Galloway realized that backing a socialist scheme was bad for his personal finances.

“I’ve been doxxed. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Mayor Mamdani has decided to release a list of the 950,000 residences with addresses and names that might be eligible for his pied-à-terre tax,” claimed Galloway.

“I came out in favor of this tax. He’s taken a legitimate source of tax revenue and is turning it into a wanted poster. And the question I would have is, other than trying to identify and imply these people have done something wrong, and then 18 months after a health care CEO was executed in the streets, and then published the list, what is the upside here? Why is he doing this?”

He went on to defend those seeking success in New York City.

“New York is the last place you want to demonize success! The reason people want to move to New York is they think, ‘I want to be successful on Broadway, I want to be successful in business, I want to be successful in the arts, and no one’s going to get in my f**king way if I am really talented and work hard,'” said Galloway.

“We’re going to celebrate it, we’re not going to put a big ‘R’ on your door and say you’ve done something wrong because you’re successful,” he added.

Kara Swisher, another prominent liberal, called it “creepy” and “very surveillance” on the same podcast.

Both were mocked and ridiculed by those who see Galloway as receiving a consequence of socialist karma.

“Useful idiots. NEVER help a communist,” responded Spencer Pratt.

“The Scott Galloway video is so captivating because it’s one of the rare moments we get to watch a prominent liberal realize the leaders he votes [for] view him as the problem. We’re witnessing the realization happen in real time. Scott, just wait until you understand that violence against the Target List is the whole point,” said one account on social media.

RELATED: Mamdani-endorsed candidate deleted extremist posts about seizing property and abolishing police, prisons

“I can’t believe this commie guy is doing commie stuff,” joked another detractor.

Galloway has been criticized for offering liberal solutions to young males embracing brutish and extremist outlets for feelings of alienation and loneliness.

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​Scott galloway, Zohran mamdani, Socialism, New york city, Politics 

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) condemned Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) on Sunday, characterizing him as a “danger” and calling for his resignation. Miller, who is running for re-election, has denied the allegations advanced by his ex-father-in-law and indicated that he will not scuttle his re-election campaign.

How it started

In May 2021, then-congressional candidate Miller got engaged to Emily Moreno, the daughter of then-Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. The lovers had met while working for Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s failed presidential campaign in 2015 and got married in a civil ceremony on Aug. 17, 2022.

‘I’m winning in November.’

In November 2023, the couple welcomed a daughter into the world, but by that time, their relationship was apparently already falling apart.

Miller — who years earlier was accused by ex-girlfriend and ex-White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham of physical abuse that the congressman’s lawyer said “never happened” — filed for divorce in August 2024. According to a court filing, Emily Moreno Miller had moved with their daughter into a house earlier that month that had been allegedly purchased by a company owned by Sen. Moreno.

As the divorce proceedings grew uglier, a spokeswoman for Sen. Moreno stressed that “it’s a private family matter” and the senator would not be making further comments.

The couple’s divorce was finalized last year. However, their custody battle raged on, and just recently, a leftist site dug up allegations from court filings that paint Miller in a particularly unflattering light.

RELATED: Mike Lee SOUNDS the ALARM after stunning polls from Senate race in Texas

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Mother Jones, citing a trove of court filings and police reports obtained through public records requests, last month detailed allegations of verbal abuse by Miller as well as drug use and violent behavior against multiple individuals.

The leftist site highlighted records related to an investigation by Cuyahoga County’s Division of Child and Family Services into how the couple’s daughter ended up with a broken collar bone — an injury that was not proven to have been the result of abuse. The records reportedly show that Emily Moreno told the detectives investigating the broken bone that Miller allegedly threw hot water at her in June 2024, pushed her, and put a gun to her head.

Mother Jones acknowledged that “some of the accusations contained in the records have not been conclusively proven by a court or law enforcement agency,” and noted that Emily Moreno “never filed a police report against Miller for harm she says he inflicted on her.”

How it’s going

On Sunday morning, Miller — who sued Emily Moreno earlier this year for alleged defamation and suggested in a recent interview that his ex-wife has untreated bipolar disorder and “sadly isn’t all there” — shared a nearly 20-minute video to X where he not only rejects his characterization as an abusive husband and father but confronted and denied each of the key allegations raised against him.

Miller also made clear that he wasn’t dropping out: “I’m not getting out of this race, and I’m winning in November.”

The congressman concluded his video by emphasizing that he will “hold strong” and clear his name and urging skeptics to review the packet of court documents he also released on Sunday, which the congressman evidently regards as exculpatory.

‘I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable.’

The summary accompanying the “evidence packet” claims that: “every abuse allegation that has been investigated has been resolved in Miller’s favor”; “Moreno’s own sworn and recorded statements directly contradict her abuse allegations,” including her October 2024 statement that Miller had never harmed their daughter; “no court has ever found that Miller abused anyone”; and in the “‘boiling water’ incident,” Miller had only sprayed his ex-wife with tap water from the sink sprayer.

Stefan Mychajliw, a spokesman for Emily Moreno, said in a statement, “It is shameful that Max Miller decided to go on a bizarre and lie-filled rant about his ex-wife to desperately try to save his political career. There is a documented trove of evidence that Miller has a history of violent and dangerous behavior and no amount of victim shaming will change that.”

“Miller can lie and spin on X, but he cannot do so under oath in a court of law,” added the spokesman. “We are confident that justice will prevail in court.”

Sen. Moreno, among those not buying what his former son-in-law is selling, penned a lengthy social media post on Sunday, stating, “As a father and husband, I can tell you the last two years have been pure hell for my wife Bridget, our daughter Emily, me, and our entire family in the aftermath of Emily’s divorce.”

“It has been horrific to watch this play out in full public view, all while knowing an innocent two-year-old girl is caught in the middle,” continued the senator. “Our priority has always been protecting our daughter and our granddaughter. Out of concern for the safety of my family, I hoped to keep this matter private but Max Miller’s increasingly erratic and dangerous behavior has made that impossible.”

Sen. Moreno noted further that “Max Miller needs serious psychological help. He is a danger to my daughter, and I hold my breath every minute he has custody of my granddaughter.”

According to the senator, Miller’s character is unbecoming of an elected official, and “he should not serve in the House of Representatives.”

Miller said in response to Sen. Moreno’s post, “If my daughter said the same thing to me, I personally wouldn’t wait two years before holding him accountable. You know this isn’t true and the only reason you are speaking out now is to hide from your own media circus. This is all political.”

When asked over the weekend whether Miller should resign, President Donald Trump — who previously endorsed him — said, “Well, I’m going to look at it. I mean so far it’s accusations.”

A poll conducted in late June had Miller leading Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter by only one percentage point.

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​Max miller, Bernie moreno, Ohio, Republican, Politics 

Nearly half of American adults say health care is difficult to afford, and about one-third have skipped or postponed care because of the cost, according to KFF polling. Even insured Americans are feeling the strain: The average monthly price of health insurance rose nearly 26% in a single year, the Urban Institute recently found.

Many forces drive those costs. One has operated largely outside public view: private equity.

Private equity-owned hospitals charged more, spent no less on patient care, and kept the difference.

Last month, my organization, Campaign for Accountability, released “Overbilled and Overtreated,” a report combining hospital financial data from the National Academy for State Health Policy with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project’s ownership tracker. We compared 71 hospitals acquired by private equity firms with 71 closely matched peers.

After acquisition, private equity-owned hospitals collected $669 more in operating profit per patient. Their operating margins were 6.5 percentage points higher — roughly a 31% increase. Among privately insured and self-insured patients, where hospitals have more freedom to set prices, the gap widened to 10.4 percentage points.

Those profits did not appear to come from running hospitals more efficiently. Private equity ownership produced no statistically significant reduction in operating costs per patient. Costs did not fall. Charges rose.

Court records show what pressure for higher revenue can look like inside medical facilities.

At Steward Health, created after Cerberus Capital Management converted a nonprofit hospital chain into a for-profit company, a former nurse billing auditor alleged that a Massachusetts team systematically reclassified patient charts into more expensive billing categories. A moderate emergency room visit could be elevated to the most severe level; the team, he said, could “only upcharge.”

Three Steward physicians filed a separate lawsuit alleging that hospital staff recorded patients’ blood pressure readings as normal to avoid diagnoses that would require costly treatment.

At Select Rehabilitation, then capitalized by Caltius Capital Management, a whistleblower alleged that therapists were pushed to inflate billable minutes to meet quotas. In one example, the company allegedly billed for 50 minutes of therapy after providing five. The whistleblower also claimed that severely ill patients underwent needless therapy and that discharges were delayed to maximize revenue.

RELATED: Hospital consolidations and ‘nonprofit’ tax breaks are driving up medical costs

Onuma Inthapong/Getty Images

At Surgery Partners, owned by H.I.G. Capital Group, a physician alleged that patients were required to undergo unnecessary urine drug tests at a company-owned laboratory. The tests were billed at $3,200 to $4,600, while physicians were barred from using a $20 alternative. The company later agreed to a $41 million settlement with the Justice Department and received a $45 million federal pandemic bailout days later.

The most disturbing example involved children. USA Today reported that dentists at North American Dental Group, a private equity-backed chain, drilled healthy teeth under pressure to generate revenue. One 3-year-old received seven root canals without first receiving an X-ray. He later required surgery to repair the damage. A reviewing dentist called the treatment a form of child abuse.

Private equity firms are not shy about the strategy. Ardent Health, owned by Equity Group Investments, told investors in 2025 that roughly half its revenue growth would come from higher rates rather than greater patient volume. Surgery Partners boasted of rising “revenue per case.”

Translated from investor language, the promise is simple: Charge more for each patient and call the difference growth.

Private equity is not solely responsible for America’s health care crisis. Hospitals, insurers, drug companies, government payment systems, and professional cartels all contribute to high prices and limited competition. But private equity adds a distinctive pressure: Investors expect rapid returns, while the patients absorbing the costs often cannot shop around, delay treatment, or meaningfully challenge a bill.

RELATED: Caregivers should not have to lie to prove compassion

Benjavisa/Getty Images

Policymakers should account for that pressure. Proposals include barring private equity-owned hospitals and skilled nursing facilities from participating in Medicare and requiring providers to disclose mergers, acquisitions, and changes in ownership or control. At minimum, patients and regulators should know who owns the facility sending the bill.

Stronger disclosure alone will not solve the problem. Regulators and prosecutors must also scrutinize upcoding, unnecessary treatment, discharge delays, and other practices that turn patients into revenue targets.

The evidence in our report is difficult to dismiss: Private equity-owned hospitals charged more, spent no less on patient care, and kept the difference.

That may be an attractive growth strategy for investors. For patients already postponing care because they cannot afford it, it is another bill they should never have had to pay.

​Health care affordability, Hospital profits, Private equity impact, Rising insurance prices, Patient care costs, Private equity, Hospital bills, Surgery, Medical bills, Opinion & analysis 

Remember the radio? Of course you do. It’s not hard to remember. It’s still around. You can buy a little one on Amazon and tune into AM or FM. Cars still have them, for now. You can enjoy classical music on public radio, political commentary on talk radio, the game on a Friday night, or whatever else there is floating around on the airwaves at any given moment on any given day.

Before TikTok there was Facebook, and before Facebook there was MySpace, and before MySpace there was television, and before television there was radio, and before radio there was silence.

‘Who else is listening to this right now?’ That’s what I wonder a little when I’m driving and scanning the radio. There’s no way for me to know.

Imagine what that transition was like — from silence to radio.

Big world

I’ve been reading “Hello, Everybody! The Dawn of American Radio” by Anthony J. Rudel recently, and in it, Rudel writes at length about that time and transition from silence to radio sound.

The world was so big in those days. Rhode Island was so far from Spain, and Ohio was so far from Rhode Island. In that big world of people without Social Security numbers or anything like our panopticon of 2026, there were millions and millions of little worlds. Towns, blocks, clans, families, and people all in their own little worlds, living and breathing in silence.

Radio was, in some way, a beginning of the modern world as we know it. Of course, there have been many symbols of many beginnings in different and disparate domains, and radio was one of them. The ability to transmit a message across the land to anyone else who might want to listen was the beginning of mass communication and mass modern society. In hindsight, it was the first step in a long march toward Instagram, Facebook, and X.

When media was social

But radio was nothing like today’s social media. The people who listened to it still lived primarily in embodied communities — families, churches, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Radio expanded that world; it did not replace it.

Social media has done the opposite. Millions of us now inhabit synthetic networks populated by algorithms, bots, AI-generated content, and strangers selected by recommendation engines rather than real proximity. We are connected to more people than ever while becoming increasingly detached from the human beings physically around us.

Radio felt like a kind of modern magic. Voices traveled across the plains, through the night, and into your living room, making a vast country seem smaller. Yet those voices still pointed back toward a shared human world, answering one of humanity’s oldest questions: Is anybody out there?

Beautiful uncertainty

There’s something beautiful about how terrestrial radio isn’t completely predictable or reliable. Fishing, not knowing what you might catch when throwing your line in the water is like that. Driving and just letting the road go is like that. Tuning into the radio, passing over static as you turn the dial right, hearing faint music or voices covered by the gray sound, and landing on a station you haven’t heard before is like that.

Driving late at night with one hand on the wheel and the other on the dial, scanning from station to station, seeing if there is anything worth listening to is different from looking through Spotify playlists or flipping through CDs like we once did 20 years ago. Spotify playlists somehow feel like shopping at the store, and CDs felt like something private, while radio stations feel like something almost — almost! — communal.

“Who else is listening to this right now?” That’s what I wonder a little when I’m driving and scanning the radio. There’s no way for me to know. There’s no way for the radio station to know. There’s no way for anyone to know who’s listening in their car or in their bedroom or in their kitchen.

The sound is sent out into the world on a certain frequency, and those who are tuned in hear. There is no history of it marked, there is no documentation logged, there is no surveillance state knowing you listened that night. Ah, the sound of freedom.

RELATED: Goodbye, car radio? Big Tech’s plans to control what you listen to behind the wheel.

Ron Schwerin/Getty Images

Batter up

Maybe it’s nostalgia, or maybe it’s aesthetics, but whatever it is, there is something so damn American about listening to a baseball game on the radio. The game sounds better over a little tinny speaker with crackle and static than it looks on a 96-inch flatscreen. The way the announcers sound, the way they describe every detail, the distant cry of the crowd in the background. You imagine sight in your mind behind your eyes as you play out what they tell you.

Maybe the beauty of radio is the fact that we don’t have control once we finally land on a station that’s clear. Someone else chooses the music to play or the words to say, and it’s there in the background, and everyone out there who’s listening listens. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad, maybe it’s all right, but it’s just what there is, and it’s fine. I think we might get sick of making so many choices these days. There’s too many choices. Going on a ride with someone else is nicer than driving ourselves.

If all this is just nostalgia, then it’s a nostalgia for a world that hadn’t quite yet evolved, or rather devolved, into the global cyber panopticon we have today. It was a world teetering on the edge of technological modernity; one still with the magic of the old little worlds; one that was peering over the fence toward the future and everyone else far away. It was a big world out there, and we could only hear just a little of it.

It was tinny, scratchy, and it was magical.

​Community, Culture, Lifestyle, Radio, Social media, The root of the matter, Baseball 

The left suddenly fears that artificial intelligence will replace American workers. It showed far less concern when illegal immigration undercut wages and jobs.

The double standard reveals a larger economic vision: protection for the credentialed class, cheap labor at the bottom, and little concern for the working Americans caught between them.

The left has built a bifurcated economy because it has bifurcated loyalties. Neither side of that arrangement puts America’s working class first.

Progressive warnings about AI often begin with the claim that employers will use new technology to replace costly labor or avoid training new employees. One progressive platform warns that AI could cause massive labor-market disruption. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposes taxing AI so that its gains do not flow only to the wealthy.

The concern isn’t inherently foolish. New technology can displace workers, at least temporarily, and policymakers should consider how people adapt. But the left’s labor solidarity becomes strangely selective when the competing worker entered the country illegally.

The Migration Policy Institute recently estimated that the illegal immigrant population may have reached 15.8 million. The Biden years also produced more than 10 million border encounters, although that figure includes repeat attempts and excludes people who evaded detection.

Meanwhile, the July Bureau of Labor Statistics report counted 7.1 million unemployed Americans. Those numbers do not prove that every illegal worker displaced a citizen. They do make it absurd to pretend that millions of additional workers have no effect on wages, bargaining power, or employment.

The standard answer is that illegal immigrants perform jobs Americans refuse to do. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) put the argument plainly: In a capitalist economy, someone will always do the work others do not want.

But jobs are not fixed objects with permanently assigned wages. When employers cannot attract workers, they must raise pay, improve conditions, invest in equipment, or change the way the work is performed. Labor scarcity gives workers leverage.

Progressives claim to understand that principle when they campaign for higher legal wage floors. The five states with the highest minimum wages are deep blue. Democratic lawmakers routinely demand “living wages” and stronger benefits.

RELATED: The bipartisan farm bill that also grows amnesty

Wenmei Zhou/iStock/Getty Images

Yet the same politicians short-circuit the market mechanism that might raise wages naturally. They permit a large supply of unauthorized labor, including an estimated 8.5 million people working off the books, to fill jobs at wages and under conditions many would never accept.

That arrangement is not compassionate to workers. It allows employers to avoid the higher pay, benefits, and taxes that legal labor would require. It also leaves illegal immigrants vulnerable to exploitation because their status limits their ability to challenge abuse.

The result is a two-tiered labor market.

At the top sit credentialed professionals whose jobs may be threatened by AI. Their anxieties receive white papers, Senate hearings, tax proposals, and sympathetic coverage. At the bottom sit unauthorized workers whom progressive politicians describe as indispensable because they perform society’s least desirable tasks.

Crockett’s own words and similar comments from other Democrats expose the hierarchy. The jobs at the top must be protected from technological competition. The jobs at the bottom must remain cheap enough that Americans supposedly will not take them.

The people excluded from both priorities are working-class citizens.

They are told that automation may eliminate their better-paying opportunities but that low-wage jobs cannot pay more because imported labor must fill them. They face high legal wage mandates and benefit requirements on one side, then competition from off-the-books labor on the other.

Government benefits without strong work requirements can compound the problem by creating a steep penalty for returning to employment. Sanctuary policies then protect the unauthorized labor supply that keeps wages down.

RELATED: Unaffordable housing is still ruining the party

Cemile Bingol/iStock/Getty Images

This is not a coherent defense of workers. It is a coalition strategy.

The modern left protects the professional class that staffs its institutions and the immigrant constituencies it hopes to mobilize. The blue-collar Americans who once formed the Democratic base receive speeches about dignity while policy steadily erodes their bargaining power.

Long gone are the days when the left at least pretended to organize politics around the American worker.

AI may indeed disrupt employment. Illegal immigration can also depress wages and displace workers. A party genuinely committed to labor would confront both pressures honestly instead of treating one as a crisis and the other as a moral obligation.

The left has built a bifurcated economy because it has bifurcated loyalties. Neither side of that arrangement puts America’s working class first.

​Artificial intelligence, Illegal immigration, Labor, Wages, Unemployment, Elizabeth warren, Jasmine crockett, Big tech, White collar, Working class, Living wage, Opinion & analysis 

Nick Shirley — the 24-year-old investigative journalist who exposed the shocking depths of alleged day care and social services fraud in Minnesota’s Somali community — has now turned his gaze to another growing issue in America: the rise of communism.

While there are people of all ages and backgrounds who embrace communism, the system that seeks to erase freedom and equalize misery is especially popular among Gen Z.

On this episode of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered,” Sara plays a viral clip from Shirley capturing a young woman arguing in favor of abolishing prisons — even if that means her rapist is allowed to freely roam the streets.

In the video, the woman admits that she is “pro-communism,” including “getting rid of prisons.”

When Shirley pressed her on why she feels prisons need to be abolished, she argued they are not beneficial for society.

“The system of criminality is a very strange way to interact with, like, I guess, humanity in general, and like things that as a species we’re not interested in, like, perpetuating. I think it’s kind of backwards, and so I’m not certain what prisons are actually doing for our society,” she said.

When Shirley asked her if she’d prefer “to have criminals out in the open,” her answer was a shocking yes.

“Sure, I’m fine with that because the idea of a ‘criminal’ is, like, a little bit funny to me,” she said.

“Let’s just say somebody who has raped a woman — would you like them to be out in the street?” Shirley asked.

“I think my answer is yes, even though that’s a challenging answer to say,” she replied.

Shirley then asked if she felt the same way if she were the woman who had been raped.

“I have been raped, and they are out in the street, and I’m not sure, like, them going to jail is a solution to, like, whatever is going on inside their heart or even my own heart that, like, contributed to that experience that I’m having,” she said. “And I don’t want more people to get raped, but I don’t know for certain that going into a jail in the United States is going to shift anything inside of their, like, operating system so that they’ll make a different choice again.”

Sara is baffled by Shirley’s exchange with the young communism supporter and fears a future where people with these destructive worldviews begin taking positions of power in society.

“These people are going to be CEOs, I guess, someday,” she says.

To see the viral footage, plus another shocking clip where a young man admits on camera he has a job but fraudulently collects food stamps and other benefits, watch the video above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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

​Sara gonzales, Nick shirley, Communism, Gen z, Blazetv show 

Fox News political analyst Guy Benson is receiving congratulations from across conservative media after announcing the birth of his daughter, Madison Halsey.

“She’s here, and she’s perfect,” Benson wrote in a post that quickly racked up more than 10,000 likes.

“We are blessed and overjoyed to welcome Madison Halsey into the world and into our family. Our hearts are filled to the brim. A baby girl. We are just so thankful.”

However, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t share his excitement.

“You’ve heard my spiel on surrogacy a lot, but when we create these children, especially in this situation where you are buying the eggs from one woman, you are renting the womb from another woman,” she says.

“So you’re taking a child away from their biological mother, you are placing them in an unrelated woman whose smell and touch and heartbeat and body they get to know, they call home for nine months,” she continues.

“And then you immediately take that child after birth away from the only home, the only smell, the only regulator, the only woman they have ever known and away from the biological mom with whom they share half of their DNA. We are treating that child worse than we treat kittens and puppies,” she adds.

For kittens and puppies, the natural bond between a mother and her litter is respected.

“But for some reason, when it comes to human babies who are much more fragile, who are much less resilient, and of course as Christians, we believe are made in God’s image and so matter infinitely more than a cat or a dog, we say, ‘Eh, it’s probably fine,’” Stuckey says.

“It is the prioritization of adult wants over children’s needs,” she adds.

But it’s not just purposely taking children away from their biological mother that bothers Stuckey, noting that the entire process has “physical consequences for the child.”

“It’s much more risky for the embryo. It’s much more risky, or riskier, for the baby as well during conception, during transfer and implantation, during gestation,” she explains.

“But then of course, you’re creating this emotional and psychological, physiological risk too,” she continues, before playing a TikTok video of a man in a homosexual relationship claiming his son cries for his “mommy” despite never knowing his mother.

“This is very common. This is natural. This is instinctive. Somewhere deep inside, we want to know where we came from. We want our mom. That does not mean that two men who are raising a child don’t love their child,” she says.

“It means that they’re not a mom. You can be a really good dad, but you will never be a mom,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Allie beth stuckey, Christians, Fox news, Guy benson, Surrogacy, Blazetv show, Lgbt 

Jimmy Carter did more damage to American foreign policy in one weekend than most diplomats manage in a career.

In June 1994, President Bill Clinton sent Carter (no relation) to Pyongyang as a private citizen, with no authority to negotiate or speak for the U.S. government. Two days later, Carter cut a deal anyway. Then he called CNN before he called the White House. Clinton learned that his own North Korea policy had changed by watching television.

Fleitz has written the best kind of policy book: one grounded in the record, animated by firsthand knowledge, and confident enough to let readers reach the obvious conclusion.

That episode, recounted on page 34 of Frederick H. Fleitz’s new book, “North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office,” makes up the best two pages in the book. It also contains the clearest explanation of why the book deserves attention.

Fleitz spent more than two decades inside the machinery of American national security policy — at the CIA, State Department, House Intelligence Committee, and National Security Council. He was in the room, or close enough to it, for much of what he describes. This is not a book assembled from newspaper clippings. Fleitz names names, places officials on opposing sides of consequential fights, and lets the record judge them.

The Carter episode establishes the pattern Fleitz traces across three decades. North Korea manufactures a crisis. Washington sends someone to talk. Pyongyang extracts a concession. The concession is celebrated as a “breakthrough.” North Korea breaks the agreement once the cameras leave. Then the cycle begins again.

Why did it continue under presidents of both parties? Because it worked.

Fleitz does not spare the Clinton administration. He describes the 1994 Agreed Framework — the deal Carter set in motion — as a bad bargain from the start. The administration called it a “framework” rather than an “agreement,” he argues, to avoid the Senate ratification a treaty would have required. Pyongyang received two light-water reactors and years of fuel oil. Washington received a promise to surrender spent fuel rods that never arrived.

The Bush years receive the same treatment. Fleitz recounts envoy Chris Hill dismissing intelligence about North Korea’s secret uranium-enrichment program. Dick Cheney later told journalist James Rosen that Hill was “deceitful, perfectly prepared to lie to the president.” Hill’s reply — “I’m not Richard Nixon” — is the kind of detail that makes an insider’s account worth reading.

RELATED: Nukes by the numbers: A problem we can’t wish away

Kim Jae-Hwan/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Fleitz is writing about policy, but he understands that policy is made by people with ambitions, loyalties, grudges, and blind spots. His book is not a dry institutional history. It is a fight among real officials over real consequences.

The 2007 destruction of Syria’s North Korean-built reactor at al-Kibar receives similarly careful treatment. Fleitz reports that the Bush administration tried to keep Israel’s strike hidden from Congress — a detail that reveals as much about Washington’s instinct for secrecy as it does about North Korea’s proliferation network.

The Trump chapters give the book its greatest energy because Fleitz supports his case with numbers rather than adjectives. North Korea tested no missiles in 2018, only a handful of short-range missiles in 2019, and no intercontinental ballistic missiles until 2022. That year, under President Joe Biden, North Korea set a single-year record of roughly 165 missile launches.

Fleitz also details the February 2018 sanctions package, the toughest imposed on Pyongyang to that point, and Trump’s warning that “phase two” could become “very, very rough” if sanctions failed. Whatever one thinks of the rhetoric, it reads as the voice of a president wielding leverage rather than asking politely for cooperation.

Fleitz states his central conclusion plainly: North Korea respects strength and exploits weakness.

In his telling, every bad deal in the book was struck when an American president negotiated from a position of distraction, exhaustion, or political vulnerability: the 1994 Agreed Framework under Clinton, the near-deal at the end of George W. Bush’s second term, the Iran nuclear agreement under Barack Obama, and a reported secret arrangement with Iran under Biden.

The one moment Pyongyang backed off and came to the table, Fleitz argues, came in 2018, when the regime confronted a president threatening its destruction rather than pleading for another agreement.

RELATED: The future of warfare is not what you think

STR/KCNA/KNS/AFP/Getty Images

That thesis will invite argument, as it should. Trump did not eliminate North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, and the regime remains dangerous. But Fleitz makes a persuasive case that pressure created negotiating space while accommodation repeatedly rewarded bad behavior.

The lesson extends beyond North Korea. China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran are drawing closer. Washington still faces the temptation to mistake talks for progress, signatures for compliance, and diplomatic activity for strategic success.

For that reason, “North Korea, Nuclear Brinkmanship, and the Oval Office” is not merely a history of failed negotiations. It is a warning about a pattern that American policymakers keep repeating.

Fleitz has written the best kind of policy book: one grounded in the record, animated by firsthand knowledge, and confident enough to let readers examine the evidence and reach the obvious conclusion. Weakness does not moderate regimes such as North Korea. It teaches them what they can take next.

​Bill clinton, Dick cheney, Jimmy carter, Opinion & analysis, State department, Joe biden, Donald trump, George w. bush, North korea, Nuclear weapons, Diplomacy, Kim jong un, Frederick fleitz, America first, Foreign policy 

Generative AI has gained all kinds of new skills over the years, one of which is permanence, or the ability to remember details from past conversations. These days, your favorite AI platform may know a lot about you, such as your occupation, hobbies, and likes/dislikes. But what would happen if your AI chatbot had its memory hijacked to steal your data? That’s exactly what can happen with this latest fatal flaw that was discovered in some AI platforms.

This concerning trick was first uncovered by a research team at New Mexico State University. Dubbed GhostWriter, it has the ability to use hidden prompts to carry out tasks without the user’s knowledge. These can be innocuous, like capturing information currently saved in the clipboard on your device, or they can be malicious, like logging into your bank account and routing funds to an external bank, as well as stealing files, passwords, and other personal information.

It lies dormant for weeks, months, or even years.

According to the researchers, GhostWriter works in two stages:

First, it requires a prompt injection, where the attacker leaves a command for the AI to carry out a specific task when the user writes an unrelated prompt. In this case, the attacker could tell the AI to look for its user to type a certain keyword or phrase to trigger the hidden command. The second stage is activation. In this phase, the user unknowingly initiates the GhostWriter command, prompting the AI agent to carry out the intentional task the user requested, as well as the hidden task the attacker requested. At this point, the AI completes both tasks as instructed.

From the AI agent’s point of view, the tasks were both valid commands, and it will complete them to the best of its ability. From the user’s point of view, he often won’t know that a secondary task was carried out on his device, leaving him unaware of any malicious activity connected to his account. And for the attacker, he receives the stolen data with little fanfare.

RELATED: Protect yourself now from Apple’s latest privacy fail

itsarasak thithuekthak/Getty Images

What makes GhostWriter especially dangerous is that it’s not a virus or a hack in itself. It’s simply a tweak to the AI’s memory — a simple hidden command to do something its original user didn’t intend for it to do, nor could the user know to issue his own command to stop the act.

GhostWriter is also persistent, meaning that it can’t be overridden or erased as long as the potential victim is unaware it exists. Instead, it lies dormant for weeks, months, or even years until the right user prompt triggers the command that causes the malicious activity to be carried out.

Now, the good news

If there’s any silver lining, it’s the fact that GhostWriter largely affects agentic AI, or agents. Most AI platforms on the market today — including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok — are all simple chatbots that require human input to carry out tasks. That means for most casual users, GhostWriter shouldn’t pose a threat to their personal information.

That said, while AI agents are still quite rare, many of the top AI companies in the world are scrambling to build functional versions to carry out work projects, complete personal tasks, and more. NVIDIA, a hardware leader in the space, wishes to outfit companies with enterprise AI that can work alongside (and even replace) human employees. Then there’s Google, which wants to load an agentic version of Gemini into Android devices called Gemini Intelligence. Although agents are scarce today, all the major AI platforms are working hard to make agents ubiquitous in the next five years or less.

As for those who do rely on agentic AI today, the New Mexico State University researchers believe that Agentic Memory Sentry, a defense system that uses refined memory saving and retrieval mechanisms to lower the likelihood of a successful GhostWriter attack, is the best way to thwart potential attacks, though even this method isn’t perfect yet. Ultimately, users will either have to trust agentic AI with these built-in risks, or avoid it altogether. I know which option I’ll pick.

​Tech, Security, Ai, Data, Privacy 

As anti-Jewish rhetoric gains traction in some corners of the political right, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says the church can no longer afford to stay silent about what she calls “Israel derangement syndrome.”

“The Israel derangement syndrome, the Jewish derangement syndrome that has infected the minds of so many people, that they see Jewish people behind every closed door, that they’re behind every conspiracy, that they’re pulling the strings of power in every single direction, and that everything, somehow every tragedy, every injustice comes back to Israel, that is just beyond the pale,” Stuckey says.

“That is beyond logic. That is beyond reason. I think that there is something spiritual there because we see that same pattern over and over again in so many cultures throughout history and that is anti-Christian,” she continues.

This “Jewish derangement syndrome,” Stuckey says, has “blinded them to reality.”

“Scripture gives us no reason whatsoever to sever Christianity from its Jewish roots. Jesus came as Israel’s Messiah, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. And the gospel came, according to Romans 1:16, to the Jew first and also to the Greek,” she explains.

“Christianity, it is absolutely true and inarguable, is rooted in God’s covenant with Israel, which Christ fulfilled,” she continues.

“Jesus was born under the Jewish law given to Moses in the Old Testament and came to those who were under the law, to Jews. That was His primary mission field. That’s what He reiterated over and over again,” she adds.

What those with “Israel derangement syndrome” are attempting to do is separate Christianity from Judaism when the Bible makes clear that it’s impossible.

“You cannot when you serve a Jewish savior and a God who does not go back on His promises,” Stuckey says.

“One plan of salvation through Jesus Christ for Jews and Gentiles and every single person. That does not negate the very real Jewish context, Jewish history, Jewish principles that are shared because of the biblical canon, because of the history of who God actually is,” she explains.

Stuckey also points out that many detractors claim that we don’t have Judeo-Christian roots because our founding fathers were not Jewish.

“A lot of the people I see saying that are what you call ‘trad Cath.’ A lot of the people I see pushing back against this Judeo-Christian terminology moniker are Catholic themselves. So if we are going to say we can’t call it Judeo-Christian because the founders weren’t Jewish … we’re also not going to call it Catholic Christian because the founders weren’t Catholic,” she says.

“When people are saying Judeo-Christian, they’re not saying that some of the founders were Jewish. They were saying, ‘We have these shared principles of people being made by a God whose power and knowledge transcends ours,’” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Allie beth stuckey, Founding fathers, Israel, Jesus, Christianity, Judeo-christian, Blazetv show 

“Two Americas” may be the most exhausted phrase in American political discourse. We have had two Americas divided by race, class, geography, religion, education, television network, and presidential preference.

Now we have two Americas divided by Anthony Fauci.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require.

In one, Fauci is a criminal who helped finance dangerous research, concealed what he knew about the origins of COVID-19, misled Congress, and used the authority of science to protect himself and the institutions he led from public scrutiny. That’s my America. I suspect it’s yours, too.

In the other, Fauci is a secular saint: a brave physician who guided the nation through catastrophe while enduring abuse from Donald Trump, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), vaccine skeptics, and assorted right-wing maniacs like us.

Fauci’s appearance before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday did nothing to bridge the divide. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times rather than answer questions about the pandemic and its origins. Paul responded by announcing plans to seek a contempt resolution.

One America heard a confession. The other witnessed a show trial.

Nobody changed his mind. I doubt anyone could.

Six years after the pandemic began, America still cannot agree on what happened, who failed, or what accountability would require. Some people would rather forget about the whole thing and move on. A proper reckoning would demand some agreement about which questions may be asked, what evidence would count, and what findings might alter anyone’s judgment.

We don’t even have that much.

Was the pandemic a natural disaster, a laboratory accident, a bioweapon test, or the product of scientific ambition compounded by bureaucratic negligence and ineptitude? Were school closures ever justified? How much did masks help? Which restrictions saved lives? Which merely demonstrated official power? When did caution become coercion? When did uncertainty become dogma?

RELATED: Saint Anthony Fauci’s index of forbidden questions

Nyia Sissac/Washington Post/Getty Images

Even asking some of those questions still sounds incriminating to one America and deranged to the other.

I know something about the private cost of that division.

An old friend from college — my first real editor, in fact — essentially ended our friendship during the first year of the pandemic. The dispute was not over anything I had written. It was over work I had published at another publication.

One of our senior contributors was among the first writers I knew to challenge the official COVID narrative in a smart, sustained way. She questioned social distancing, masking, and the categorical dismissal of treatments such as ivermectin. My friend believed I was terribly irresponsible for continuing to publish her.

I have no regrets about doing so.

Publishing an argument is not the same as certifying every claim in it, much less demanding that readers accept it. Editors are supposed to permit serious challenges to official consensus, especially during an emergency when government claims carry extraordinary consequences.

I have spent most of my adult life in the commentary business. I make an argument. The reader judges it. If it persuades, fine. If it doesn’t, so it goes. I do not lose sleep because somebody disagrees with me. A great many people do.

That arrangement collapsed during COVID. Disagreement became evidence of moral defect. Publishing skepticism was treated not as an editorial judgment but as complicity in harm.

My friend also insisted that Trump was “100% responsible” for the disease spreading to the United States because he had failed to quarantine airline passengers arriving from China in early 2020.

His certainty struck me more than the accusation itself. One hundred percent left no room for the Chinese government, international travel, public health agencies, state officials, ordinary human behavior, or plain bad luck, let alone malice aforethought.

I tried to extend an olive branch. I suggested that we discuss it over a meal, as we had talked politics, books, ideas, and life many times during a friendship spanning more than 30 years.

He said that wouldn’t be possible because of the prevailing restrictions on social gatherings.

The policy dispute had cracked the friendship. The rule supplied the reason we could not repair the rift.

Several months later, I wrote in an email:

I have been thinking a lot about the stressors of this year and of the past few years and of the past several months especially. What I wanted to tell you is how much I value our friendship of more than 30 years. My hope is that when everything settles down, whenever that may be, you and I can sit down and have a proper conversation. I hope that history matters and I hope that goodwill prevails. And I hope you know how grateful I am to you.

He never replied.

We’ve exchanged perfunctory birthday wishes since then. That’s about all. I don’t dwell on it. But I thought of him this week now that Fauci is once again a hot topic.

I miss my friend as I miss my father, who died in 2017.

The losses are not identical, obviously. Dad can’t return. My friend could. But both men belonged to the architecture of my life. My friend knew earlier versions of me that few living people remember. He helped form the writer and editor I became.

RELATED: Reactions pour in after Fauci pleads the 5th over 100 times

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

COVID reportedly killed more than a million Americans (though I’m well aware that number is disputed). It also damaged and destroyed things nobody considered at the time: friendships, marriages, churches, businesses, childhoods, trust in physicians, trust in institutions, and what was left of the habit of regarding political opponents as fellow citizens capable of error rather than enemies guilty of unspeakable crimes.

No Senate committee could possibly tally those losses.

A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner with a prominent historian at the University of California. I lamented how difficult it will be for anyone to write a proper history of COVID.

“We won’t write it,” he told me. “Our kids will.”

Thirty years from now, the central figures won’t be around to defend themselves, polish their reputations, withhold documents, or dominate television. The pandemic may finally cease to function as a referendum on Trump, Biden, Fauci, vaccines, masks, and the moral worth of one’s neighbors.

The historians of 2056 may possess evidence we do not have and distance we cannot manufacture. They may uncover crimes. They may vindicate some officials now despised and condemn others now celebrated.

More likely, I suspect, they will describe institutions operating under fear and uncertainty, staffed by fallible people who confused authority with knowledge, consensus with truth, and self-protection with the public good.

A proper history will resist the comforting simplicity of saints and criminals. It will distinguish honest mistakes from deception, emergency measures from deliberate bureaucratic overreach, useful medicine from extravagant promises, and legitimate skepticism from opportunistic horse hockey.

It will also have to account for us.

Why did so many Americans become so certain? Why did we turn temporary policies into permanent judgments of character? Why did we allow disagreements over a virus to decide whom we would trust, whom we would shun, and which friendships we were willing to sacrifice?

Our children may answer those questions better than we can.

By then, maybe the two Americas will have become one country again — or at least two Americas capable of sitting down together for a meal. I’m not optimistic, but I’m hopeful.

​Anthony fauci, Congressional testimony, Two americas, Official covid narrative, Covid, Trump, Vaccines, Pandemic, Wuhan lab, Opinion & analysis 

I enjoy ironing. Before you summon men in white coats carrying large butterfly nets, let me explain.

My mother taught all of us to iron. My father was a military man who expected his children never to leave the house wrinkled or rumpled. He certainly never did.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing allows me to direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach.

For years, ironing was simply practical. Dry-cleaning bills add up, and we now live more than 50 miles from the nearest cleaner.

Over time, however, the chore became something more.

For four decades, I have watched my wife endure extreme chronic pain, scores of operations, and more months in hospital rooms than I care to count. During those stays, I noticed something small but measurable: Gracie rested better when the bed had fresh linens.

Clean, tightly drawn sheets and a fresh pillowcase did not relieve her pain or repair her body. They settled her. They softened the edges of a brutal experience.

Hospitals necessarily focus on medications, procedures, vital signs, and lab results. Fresh linens can slide down the list.

After hospital stays dating to the Reagan administration, I learned where the clean linens were kept and helped myself. If a sheet touched the floor or a pillowcase looked tired, I replaced it and dropped the used linens into the nylon laundry bag found in every room.

The improvement was never dramatic. Fresh sheets did not erase Gracie’s pain. But her body relaxed, and her breathing settled.

In a room governed by suffering, even modest comfort deserved attention.

One day at home, I saw the sheets in a basket beside the ironing board and thought, “Why not?”

By the way, caregiving involves a great deal of laundry. Just saying.

I began ironing Gracie’s pillowcases and praying over them. Then I tackled the sheets, including the fitted ones, which should qualify as an advanced degree. I pressed her nightgowns and hung them where she could reach them from her wheelchair. I ironed her blouses so they would be smooth and ready to wear.

With a Bluetooth earpiece, I return listeners’ calls, conduct media interviews, take audio courses, and talk theology with pastors who tutor me — all while ironing.

Laundry does not steal time from my work. It helps me focus.

RELATED: The new kid in the waiting room

Tuned_In/Getty Images

None of this solves the larger problem. I cannot take away Gracie’s pain, reverse the damage to her body, or make her legs grow back.

But I can make the bed.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing allows me to direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach.

When I cannot bring order to the crisis, I can bring order to the linen closet.

A pressed pillowcase will not cure chronic pain, but it may help someone rest while enduring it.

Scripture presses the matter further.

At the Transfiguration, Christ’s clothes became “shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:3). Paul writes that Christ will present the church to Himself as “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27).

Evidently, God likes clean laundry.

But the spotless bride will not stand before Christ because she finally scrubbed away every stain and pressed out every wrinkle herself. She will stand there because Christ loved her and gave Himself for her.

He does what no launderer on earth can do. He cleanses His people and clothes them in a righteousness they did not produce.

For those of us facing stains we cannot remove and damage we cannot undo, that is no small promise.

Every piece of laundry I press reminds me of that greater work.

Heat and pressure smooth the fabric beneath my hands. Yet even the crispest sheet will wrinkle again. The pillowcase will be soiled. The hamper will fill. By next week, I will repeat the work.

Christ’s cleansing does not fail. His atoning work does not need repeating.

RELATED: How a psychic, New Age hippie led me to Catholicism

Roger Hutchings/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis/Getty Images

One day, there will be no nylon bags filled with dirty hospital linens carrying the evidence of another person’s suffering.

There will be no hospitals.

The redeemed will stand clothed in white, in the brilliant righteousness of Christ. Nothing will stain it. Nothing will wrinkle it.

Until then, suffering remains, and so does laundry.

Each time I unfold the ironing board, I am reminded that the small relief I can offer points beyond itself to the complete redemption Christ has promised.

One day, the ironing board will be put away forever.

Until then, with a nod to the apostle Paul, I press on.

And before you ask, I iron only for Gracie.

​Chronic pain, Clean laundry, Hospital stays, Ironing, Caregiving, Caregivers, Christ, Opinion & analysis 

Florida deputies had their hands full after getting a call about a suspicious person in a grocery store parking lot Tuesday evening.

The Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded after 6:30 p.m. to a Publix in Lutz after receiving reports about a male looking into vehicles throughout the parking lot.

‘I mean, who doesn’t keep a crowbar in their buttocks?’

When deputies attempted to investigate, 22-year-old Gonzalo Cabrera refused to identify himself, resisted deputies’ attempts to detain him, and struck a deputy while attempting to flee, officials said.

The sheriff’s office said the suspect was found armed with suspected burglary tools.

Even after being taken to the ground — and while in handcuffs — officials said Cabrera continued resisting and even reached for a crowbar concealed in his waistband.

Bodycam video shows deputies grabbing the crowbar, pulling it away from the suspect’s hands, and throwing it to the parking lot surface.

Cabrera was arrested and faces multiple charges, including battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting officer with violence, loitering or prowling, possession of burglary tools, trespass on property other than structure or conveyance, and disorderly conduct, officials said.

RELATED: Video: Crooks plow car through jewelry store entrance in broad daylight smash-and-grab. But the suspects got sloppy.

More than 500 comments have hit the sheriff’s office Facebook post about the incident; the following are a few gems:

“I mean, who doesn’t keep a crowbar in their buttocks?” one commenter quipped.”Guy had tools, looking into cars? Maybe he’s a mechanic??!!” another user offered.”I was at the Publix when he was walking around,” another commenter said. “It was very odd. He was walking in between cars, looking around, very sketchy. I have no clue how long he was there — but 2 employees were watching him. One of the employees walked me to my car — the guy was right by it until we walked over …””Dems will set up a GoFundMe for his release. LOL,” another user predicted.”Just another loser lowlife drain on society,” another commenter noted.

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​Crowbar, Florida, Shopping center, Parking lot, Arrest, Bodycam video, Crime 

The idea that Donald Trump is the Antichrist warned about in the Bible continues to circulate in some fringe Christian circles. Last month, William Upham — a former Marine and Florida Republican write-in congressional candidate — was arrested and charged for threatening the president after he posted videos calling Trump the Antichrist and saying he “must be killed.”

While Upham is the only one to take his Antichrist claim to criminal levels, he’s certainly not the only professing Christian to accuse Trump of being the Antichrist.

On a recent episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess tested this theory by holding it up to Scripture.

“Let me go ahead and just tell you right now: Donald Trump does not meet the criteria, OK?” Rick says bluntly.

The first indicator that Trump doesn’t match the description of Revelation’s beast, he says, is that his communication skills do not hold up to the Antichrist standard.

“I don’t think [Trump] is all that great a communicator, and Antichrist will be the most polished politician the world has ever seen. He will be an incredible orator. You will be drawn to the way he speaks, the way he looks. … That right there, it’s already over,” says Rick.

But the list of reasons goes far deeper than just rhetorical gifts.

Rick explains that there are three primary theories for the Antichrist’s origin: Gentile/European from a revived Roman Empire, Jewish, or Middle Eastern.

“I don’t think that our friend and President Donald Trump is going to meet that very well,” he says.

Further, according 2 Thessalonians 2:4, the Antichrist “will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

In 1 John 2:22, an antichrist is anyone who “denies the Father and the Son.”

“I’m not the judge of Donald Trump, and under no circumstance am I given authority by God to judge anyone’s eternity, OK?” Rick caveats. “However … the way that I’ve seen Trump approach his faith … I don’t believe he is of the church, but I have seen that he’s proven he’s not an enemy of the church. Antichrist would be an enemy of the church.”

“Antichrist would be someone who tries to get in theology. See, Trump just doesn’t know good theology. He isn’t trying to change anyone’s mind on what Jesus claimed. He’s just not doing what Antichrist would be doing,” he adds.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

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​Rick burgess, Donald trump, Antichrist, Christianity, Spiritual warfare, Blazetv show 

Birthdays should mark milestones, offer hope for another year, and remind us to cherish the people we love.

But on the first anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to restrict access to Elevidys, a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, there will be no cake or candles in our home.

The only birthdays Duchenne families want to celebrate are the ones our children are still here to have. The FDA should help us light those candles.

My 14-year-old son, Ryu, is still fighting to reach another birthday.

A year ago, I was exploring Elevidys as a treatment that might help him live a longer, fuller life. Then, almost overnight, that hope disappeared. The FDA first halted use of the therapy entirely before restoring access only for boys who could still walk. Ryu, who already uses a wheelchair, was left behind.

By age 14, more than 82% of Duchenne patients use a wheelchair. After age 15, the share exceeds 90%.

I have spent my life living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare, progressive genetic disease that causes muscles to waste away and almost always leads to premature death. It has shaped every chapter of my family’s story. I watched my brothers, Angelo and Antonio, die from Duchenne in their early 20s.

I began considering Elevidys because I trusted the science and the physician who brought it to my attention. I believed my son deserved the same opportunity other eligible patients were receiving.

Instead, the past year has been heartbreaking.

Ryu’s disease has progressed. His breathing is weaker, and he relies on his BiPAP machine more than he did a year ago. Duchenne families measure time differently. Every lost ability is marked by a clock that never turns back.

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

MarioGuti/iStock/Getty Images

The FDA said it restricted Elevidys after reports of three patient deaths. Those boys died from liver complications, not complications caused by wheelchair use. Families like mine struggle to understand why patients with advanced disease lost access to a treatment because of risks that were not unique to them.

Safety must remain paramount. We are not asking regulators to approve every experimental therapy or ignore serious adverse events. Elevidys had already passed through years of research and clinical trials and had been administered to Duchenne patients before access was narrowed.

We are asking for something more modest and more humane: When a disease is progressive and fatal, families should be allowed to work with their doctors to decide whether the potential benefit justifies the risk for their own children.

The anniversary of the Elevidys restriction also marks the moment I turned 40 years of helplessness into action. I learned what an op-ed was and wrote my first one. I entered the intimidating world of social media.

On my first trip to Washington, D.C., I learned how to call an Uber and met with senators, staff members, other rare-disease mothers, and patients. I did not go because I wanted to become an activist. I went because I am a mother. I had to speak for my son and honor the memory of my brothers, who never lived to see the possibilities available to patients today.

My brother Angelo volunteered for experimental research in the 1990s, when almost no treatment options existed. He wanted future children with Duchenne to benefit from his courage. Years later, one of those children would be his nephew — my son.

RELATED: Medicare red tape turned insurers into villains

stevegraham/iStock/Getty Images

The FDA is entering a period of new leadership. The next commissioner should put patients first, recognize that rare diseases demand urgency, and trust families and physicians to make informed decisions together. Returning to the old approach would cost families the one thing no regulator can restore: time.

Hope has a birthday too. We celebrate it whenever a scientist makes a breakthrough, a doctor refuses to give up, a parent fights for one more chance, or the FDA chooses urgency over bureaucracy.

I pray this dark anniversary is the last time FDA policy leaves Duchenne families behind — and the beginning of a new era in which boys like Ryu have the chance to live as fully and as long as possible.

The only birthdays Duchenne families want to celebrate are the ones our children are still here to have. The FDA should help us light those candles.

​Bureaucracy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Fda, Opinion & analysis, Red tape, Science, Therapy, Regulation, Treatment, Children, Healthcare 

Hollywood’s budget addiction is catching up with even its biggest franchises.

Two major projects have hit financial speed bumps, proving that even recognizable brands aren’t automatic green lights anymore.

‘This is the match that we needed to, quite frankly, burn it all down and finally build a country for mothers.’

First, there’s the last “Fast & Furious” film. The previous installment earned a tepid $146 million stateside in 2023, but more than $500 million from international sales. The film’s massive budget still made getting into the black a chore.

Now, the studio is dragging its feet on the last “Fast” feature, hoping to somehow whittle down the big bucks needed to make it happen. Let’s hope the studio doesn’t send our heroes into space again.

Meanwhile, after a lot of jawboning, “Heat 2” appears ready to go before the cameras. Director Michael Mann wanted a massive shooting budget for his sequel to the beloved 1995 crime caper, and multiple studios flirted with the film but ultimately said no.

Now, the deep pockets at Amazon will help make this movie happen, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role originally performed by Val Kilmer and Christian Bale standing in for Al Pacino.

Pass the hat, folks. If you want to see these bloated IP extensions, someone’s got to pick up the tab.

‘Man’-handled

It’s a wonder it lasted this long.

Disney+’s “Wonder Man” series, based on the obscure MCU character of the same name, supposedly earned a second-season renewal earlier this year. Not so fast. The Mouse House just slammed the door shut on new episodes.

The series race-swapped the main character, played on screen by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, but the show didn’t build on that sweet, sweet MCU synergy.

The character could reportedly pop up in future Marvel films, proof that Disney still believes more superheroes — not fewer — are the answer to audience fatigue.

RELATED: SUPER FLOP: Sneering ‘Supergirl’ flees multiplex for home streaming

David Jon/Getty Images

Harvey’s ‘heartbreak’

Gossip monger Harvey Levin built a career asking uncomfortable questions. Apparently, Anthony Fauci is the exception.

The TMZ boss called it “one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen in government” after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before a Senate committee investigating the government’s COVID response.

Levin acknowledged he has “problems with the way CDC handled COVID,” saying the agency “did damage to children and adults.” Even so, he insisted Fauci had been “an amazing public servant” and dismissed the hearing as a Republican “witch hunt.”

That’s an odd conclusion. If the CDC’s pandemic response caused real harm — as Levin now concedes — why shouldn’t one of its most influential public faces be asked tough questions under oath?

Mother of all leftists

Is Reshma Saujani a filmmaker or arsonist?

Saujani, an executive producer of the new documentary “No Country for Mothers,” used a PBS interview to promote more than just the film.

The documentary explores the challenges facing modern motherhood, offering familiar progressive prescriptions — more government intervention, expanded social programs, and a renewed push for the Equal Rights Amendment.

But Saujani saved her most provocative remarks for the end, describing the film as the spark for something far bigger than policy reform.

And they are staying until midnight, talking, crying, holding each other, hugging each other, talking about the laws are going to change, the policies are going to pass, the neighbor that they’re going to help. Like, this is the — this is the match that we needed to, quite frankly, burn it all down and finally build a country for mothers.

She also claimed, without offering a lick of evidence, that unseen forces are “suppressing women’s content.” One suspects those mysterious gatekeepers have an orange complexion.

More telling, though, is the revolutionary flourish. A documentary about helping mothers somehow ends with a call to “burn it all down.” That’s an odd way to pitch a movement built on caring for families.

Sleazy does it

Your newest OnlyFans creator got her start when Jimmy Carter was president.

Donna Mills, 85, is embracing the most 2026 career pivot imaginable. The “Knots Landing” star announced she’ll be joining the adult-centered platform, saying it “offers the opportunity for a more personal and direct connection.”

Good luck with that. A sizable share of the actress’ longtime audience may need a grandchild just to download the app.

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What began as two teenage girls holding a sign at a WNBA game has exploded into a much larger controversy over Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and the future of the league itself.

After Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted and berated the young fans for thanking Cunningham “for speaking up for girls,” the incident quickly became a national story. But BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock argues the real target isn’t the teenagers — and it isn’t even Cunningham, who has spoken up against allowing men in women’s sports.

“Two teenage girls sit courtside holding a sign at the Fever-Storm game. ‘Thank you, Sophie, for speaking up for the girls.’ That’s the provocation. That’s the whole crime. And Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton walks up to those children and unloads,” Whitlock explains.

“‘I hope Jesus can forgive you for what sin you’ve done. God can save you,’” he mimics. “Points at her own head. Calls them ‘effing insane,’” he says.

Whitlock is disturbed, pointing out that “a grown millionaire owner used the name of Jesus as a weapon against those two girls.”

And Cunningham spoke out again following the incident, writing in a post on X: “I truly believe there is a safe space and love for EVERYBODY. Biological girls, biological boys, trans women, and trans men. Everyone is welcome at my table! You can disagree and still be kind. Bravo to those girls for standing up for what they believe. You’ll be hearing from me soon. Yay for gifts.”

“Truly embarrassing of the co-owner. Unfortunately shows the type of leader she is,” she added.

And while Cunningham is taking heat for not denouncing the young girls and their beliefs, so is Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark.

“This was never about a sign. It’s about who that sign represents. Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and the millions of normal, heterosexual sports fans they dragged into these arenas. This league resents the audience that legitimized it,” Whitlock explains, before playing a clip of Elle Duncan of Netflix demanding Clark denounce her fans.

Duncan called on Clark to say, “Stop that s**t. I don’t want it. I’m tired of it.”

“She’s demanding that Caitlin Clark denounce her fans for what other adults did,” Whitlock says.

“She’s an idiot,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Swipe right for eternal love, or swipe left to ensure your primary relationship in old age is with a potted plant. Many choose right, but very few find someone to build a life with.

Silicon Valley pitched the online romantic bazaar as the ultimate solution to human isolation. Instead, it engineered a high-tech hellscape that leaves millions broken, bitter, and eating alone over the kitchen sink at two in the morning.

The year 2012 marked the release of Tinder, a dating app that effectively converted human pair-bonding into a high-speed slot machine. Instead of buying a drink for someone at a dimly lit tavern, adults began flicking their thumbs across screens, evaluating potential mothers and fathers of their future children with the exact same depth of consideration given to choosing a cheap lunch order. Ten seconds. Three photos. A witty line stolen from an old internet forum. Next.

The photogenic narcissist with a rented Lamborghini gets 80 matches before lunch.

The financial reality of these companies makes permanent romance a direct threat to corporate profits. A customer who meets a compatible partner, deletes the app, and goes on to celebrate a golden wedding anniversary represents lost revenue. The ideal subscriber isn’t a happily married suburbanite with three kids. Rather, it’s a chronically anxious 30-something who gets dumped every four months, panics, buys a premium tier to see who liked them, and spirals into a weekend of intense self-doubt. The product was never commitment, but continuous, profitable frustration.

Researchers at the Institute for Family Studies recently examined male and female users from Keeper, a service built specifically for individuals seeking long-term commitment and children. The findings exposed a hilarious truth about the entire industry: Men and women actually want the exact same things. When you remove the gamified tricks, both sexes rank shared values, clear communication, humor, intelligence, and physical health at the top of their partner wish lists. Men show a slightly higher preference for youth and appearance; women lean harder into ambition and status. These differences are rounding errors, minor details compared with the larger human desire for a trusted co-pilot on life’s unpredictable journey.

Swiped away

Humans spent centuries relying on tight-knit networks to filter out total weirdos and freeloaders. In 1950, your grandmother met your grandfather because he lived three blocks over, they went to the same neighborhood gathering, and her brother knew he wasn’t a complete lunatic. Reputation acted as a natural safety net against terrible partners.

Swiping erased that protective social structure, dumping millions of unvetted strangers into a giant digital meat market. Devoid of meaningful context, users naturally optimize for short-term visual signals. The guy with a solid work ethic, no criminal record, and a modest savings account gets buried under an avalanche of algorithmic garbage. The photogenic narcissist posing with a rented Lamborghini secures 80 matches before lunch.

RELATED: Can this super-humanoid robot ‘solve’ loneliness?

imaginima/Getty Images

This environment turns dating into an absurd exercise in artificial scarcity and total overload. A tiny percentage of hyper-exaggerated profiles swallow the vast majority of human attention, generating an unmanageable barrage of lazy messages for a small minority of users. Meanwhile, the average guy spends his evenings shouting into a vast, empty canyon, receiving zero matches over weeks of desperate effort. One group gets drowned in a sea of shallow options; the other starves in a desert of complete invisibility.

The options we need

The tragic comedy of the whole arrangement lies in our collective willingness to blame our physical flaws instead of correcting our mental ones. Single people embrace profile coaches, professional photoshoots, and premium upgrades, convinced that a slightly improved posture in a photo will finally break the spell. They treat a rigged carnival game like a personal failure of character.

Imagine applying this logic to any other crucial human need. Picture an app that promises to help you buy a home, but instead of showing you mortgages or inspection reports, it forces you to look at picture frames for three seconds and charges you five dollars a minute to talk to a real estate agent who has no intention of ever handing over the keys. You would call it a scam. In romance, we call it “having options.”

Fixing family formation requires abandoning the destructive delusion that these platforms are helping us settle down. A system actually tuned toward marriage would hide photos behind deep character metrics. It would charge users based on long-term relationship outcomes and aggressively ban anyone looking for a quick distraction on a Friday night. Until the market finds a way to profit off 50-year anniversaries, single adults will remain trapped inside an infinite first-date loop, paying inordinate sums for the privilege of staying entirely alone.

​Tech, Dating world 

If COVID-19 nearly broke civilization with a 1% fatality rate, can you imagine the pandemonium a more lethal pathogen would cause? According to national security journalist Annie Jacobsen — author of “Biological War: A Scenario” — society should be reckoning with that very question because genetically modified pathogens with a 100% kill rate are sitting in laboratories right now.

In an interview with Glenn Beck, Jacobsen explained that these pathogens aren’t theoretical — and that a real-world release would move far faster and more destructively than most people grasp.

The prospect of a pandemic that makes COVID-19 look like child’s play terrifies Glenn — not just because of the lethal implications of such an event but also because society has never been so skeptical of the government and institutionalized science.

If something truly deadly escaped, how many would even believe it?

“The trust is gone. It’s just gone,” Glenn says. “If an outbreak happened today, half of the country would not believe Donald Trump. If it was … Kamala Harris, half of the country would not believe her.”

And then there’s the people who are so jaded, it doesn’t matter who’s in office — “they don’t trust the science,” Glenn says, because COVID-19 mistakes still have never been owned by the scientific authorities.

These skeptics, justified as their mistrust may be, would be in peril, however, if an invariably fatal pathogen were to escape.

“There are genetically modified pathogens out there that have a 100% case fatality rate. Everybody dies. And [in the book] I show readers what the government has planned for that kind of event,” Jacobsen says.

“I take the readers from outbreak to anarchy in six days … and then you learn what happens after anarchy,” she adds.

“How convinced are you that we are near … an accident in one of these labs?” Glenn asks.

“[Biological] accidents are listed in Defense Department nomenclature as having the same plan go into effect as an attack. … So, a lab leak 100% is as deadly as an attack because the pathogen, if it’s airborne, the weapon system is the human lung set,” Jacobsen explains.

Glenn then pivots to gain-of-function research.

“I understand if we’re looking for, you know, cures for these weapons, but I just don’t know — it feels as though we have crossed a point to where we’re almost insane and will appear to be suicidal at some point down the road,” he says.

“You can’t use any of these biological weapons. It’s all against the law since Nixon, but how many countries are still doing this stuff?” he asks.

To understand just how prevalent gain-of-function research is, all you have to do, Jacobsen says, is “look at the labs.”

“There are 110 BSL-4 labs around the world. That’s the maximum containment lab. And BSL-3, by the way, is just right below that. You can work with plague, hantavirus, anthrax, rabies in a BSL-3 lab, and there are 3,500 of those labs around the world,” she explains.

“And so, the idea of an accident is, you know, we’re just right at that precipice.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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