Category: blaze media

A sitting United States congressman reported an unexpected altercation during his visit to Israel last week. While supporters call for accountability, others have insisted that the altercation was nothing more than a big misunderstanding.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) made a post on Saturday detailing an alleged detention by Israeli settlers and Israel Defense Forces.

‘It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America. This is how revolutions start.’

The video and photo in Rep. Khanna’s initial post show multiple vehicles in the road with a few men standing outside one of the trucks. The vehicles appear to be blocking the road from the perspective of a camera in a vehicle facing the scene.

Two of the men are apparently holding firearms. One of them appears to be wearing full military garb.

“Israeli settlers, brandishing American made M4s, detained me & other Americans on my trip to Palestine. When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers & continued our detention,” Khanna said in the caption of the post.

“They made a huge mistake. You will be hearing more soon,” he added, linking a New York Times article at the end of the post.

RELATED: California Democrat calls for ICE to be abolished after Homan announces ‘record’ illegal alien arrests

Alex Wong/Getty Images

The initial post has since garnered 10 million views on X.

The New York Times added some context behind Khanna’s three-day trip. On Wednesday, the Democratic congressman was visiting the abandoned Palestinian Bedouin village of Khirbet Zanuta in the southern West Bank.

According to the report, “a car of men holding guns pulled up and blocked the narrow road out of the village.” The men allegedly began harassing and taunting Khanna and his team. Eventually, members of the Israeli military showed up, yet instead of dispersing the settlers, they began blocking the road as well.

While Khanna was eventually allowed to continue his journey, he reflected on the fear that this incident inspired in him: “I felt powerless in that situation, which is not an easy thing, as I have a lot of privilege in life. Imagine how people feel every day, Palestinians under the occupation, if they could make an American congressperson feel powerless for 90 minutes.”

The Israeli military confirmed that troops were sent to the scene after receiving a report of settlers blocking vehicles near the Palestinian village, according to a statement by the Israeli military to Reuters.

“Upon their arrival, the troops dispersed the Israeli civilians and allowed the vehicles to continue on their way,” the military told Reuters.

On Monday morning, the congressman reposted bodycam footage capturing what Khanna described as an “unprecedented, illegal detention of Americans by a foreign country.”

The video, posted by Nadav Wieman, executive director of Breaking the Silence, shows the point of view of a man walking up to several men in one car and speaking with them briefly before returning to a van. However, the man does not refer to Khanna by name, nor does Khanna appear at any point in the video.

Of the video, Wieman wrote: “The IDF is lying about the detention of Rep. Khanna. I was on the ground with him that day, and my body camera captured us being detained by both settlers and Israeli soldiers. The IDF did not disperse the violent settlers, as they claim. They explicitly sided with them.”

However, others, including Ambassadors Mike Huckabee and Michael Leiter, have insisted that there is “more to this story,” as Huckabee put it.

In a “Face the Nation” interview, Leiter, Israeli ambassador to the United States, explained that the congressman did not follow the proper protocol, leading to confusion: “There was not an alert. There was a question about visas, that’s all.”

“When we requested he coordinate the trip with us, he rejected that by basically staying silent. So, that’s unfortunate. This whole incident is unfortunate,” he added.

Huckabee, U.S. ambassador to Israel, has acknowledged the incident in two separate posts, though both posts merely highlighted others’ reporting on the incident, a fact which one of Huckabee’s high-profile opponents attacked.

Additionally, Huckabee’s two posts acknowledging the incident came several hours after Tucker Carlson’s attack on his response:

An Amercian [sic] member of congress is threatened by foreign terrorists carrying American rifles, backed by a foreign military paid for by American taxpayers, and the US ambassador to that country says not a word in defense of his own countryman, and instead uses his social media accounts to promote his own vapid cable news appearances, which amount to propaganda for that same foreign country. It’s too much, too insulting and humiliating to America. This is how revolutions start. For the sake our nation, Mike Huckabee should be removed from his post immediately.

Blaze News contacted the Jerusalem Embassy’s press office in an attempt to receive a comment from Huckabee but did not immediately receive a response.

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​Jerusalem embassy, Mike huckabee, New york times, Ro khanna, Tucker carlson, Politics, Israel, Idf 

California Assembly members recently peered into the garage of a suburban hobbyist and experienced a collective panic attack. Their legislative response, Assembly Bill 2047, presents itself as a targeted strike against the DIY firearm industry. This classification completely misrepresents the mechanics of the law. The actual mechanism establishes a permanent legal framework in which consumer hardware operates as an automated, inescapable agent of the state.

The statute mandates that every 3D printer sold in California must run mandatory screening software. This system intercepts every digital file, compares the geometric coordinates against a government-maintained database of banned shapes, and shuts down the machine if it detects a forbidden curve. Property law historically recognized a distinct boundary between an object and its purchaser. Under this new system, the state retains ultimate operational veto power over the physical components sitting on your workshop desk, rendering your financial investment and your purchase receipt completely meaningless.

A permanent digital warden in the consumer’s living room.

In 1872, the Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company did not include a microscopic state inspector inside the frame of every Single Action Army revolver to ensure the user aimed at a legal target. The legal system punished the homicide after the body was found. Tools were inert objects of wood and iron. If a blacksmith forged a crowbar in 1890, the state did not mandate that the anvil refuse to shape metals exceeding a certain thickness to prevent bank robberies. A.B. 2047 reverses this dynamic by installing a permanent digital warden in the consumer’s living room.

This structural pivot transforms the machine into the primary enforcer of public policy. The logic governing this bill mirrors the expansion of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. Originally designed to flag massive international drug cartel transactions, those exact same reporting mechanisms now force local credit unions to report every individual citizen who withdraws $10,000 of their own cash to buy a used truck. The surveillance footprint expands because the code is already written, and bureaucratic infrastructure loathes a vacuum.

If only outlaws have printed guns

The state’s reliance on automated geometry recognition assumes an intelligence that software does not possess. A hollow cylinder with threading on one end is the exact geometric blueprint for an automotive oil filter, a high-school physics lab weight, a specialized irrigation nozzle, or a firearm suppressor. Algorithms cannot parse human intent. The software views the universe entirely as vectors and vertex points, meaning an industrial designer prototyping a new prosthetic limb component faces an automatic shutdown because his custom structural bracket shares a three-millimeter curve tolerance with a specific rifle receiver.

The actual architects of illicit manufacturing remain entirely unaffected by these computational barriers. A criminal operating a black-market workshop possesses the basic technical literacy required to flash an open-source firmware update, bypass the factory software entirely, or source an unrestricted machine from a vendor across the Nevada border. The state creates an elaborate system of restrictions that binds only the compliant hobbyist who registers his machine, buys legitimate materials, and pays his taxes on time.

RELATED: At America 250, Democrats unveil new surveillance state blueprint

ismagilov/Getty Images

The relationship between user and object now resembles a feudal tenancy arrangement rather than true possession. You provide the electricity, you allocate the physical square footage in your home, and you purchase the plastic filament. The state determines whether the machine executes your command.

This aligns with the broader degradation of product ownership seen across the tech sector, such as the 2022 incident in which John Deere restricted farmers from repairing their own tractor transmissions without a proprietary digital key held exclusively by corporate headquarters. A $99,000,000 class-action settlement in April of this year forced the manufacturer to temporarily lease diagnostic software back to owners for a fixed 10-year window, leaving the underlying structure of corporate hardware control completely unbothered. A.B. 2047 takes this this loss of consumer control and weaponizes it into a statutory requirement.

Join and die?

Silicon Valley spent decades convincing the public that connectivity equaled liberation. A.B. 2047 codifies the reality that connectivity equals a centralized kill switch. Once the population accepts the premise that a manufacturing tool must seek state clearance before melting a line of plastic, the database of forbidden shapes will expand during every subsequent legislative session. The next amendment will target unlicensed medical devices, then copyrighted mechanical designs, and eventually any component that challenges a state-sanctioned corporate monopoly or a protected government contract.

Totalitarian control rarely arrives via a single, dramatic military coup. It embeds itself through highly rationalized, safety-oriented firmware updates pushed to your device at three in the morning while you sleep. By the time the consumer realizes the machine on his desk is no longer his property, the software has already logged the technological infraction and immediately notified the authorities.

​Tech 

President Trump said Monday he has a pick in mind to fill the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat — and it’s not a rising Republican star or a familiar name from Congress.

Trump wants South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) to appoint the late senator’s sister, Darline Graham Nordone. Graham became the legal guardian of Nordone in his early 20s after their parents died within months of each other, and the two remained close for the rest of his life.

‘This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!’

Graham died Saturday night at 71, likely of an aortic dissection, the medical examiner said, following what his office initially described as a “brief and sudden illness.” His death prompted a scramble among Republicans for the seat.

Trump posted on Truth Social, “I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina. This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!”

Under state law, McMaster has sole authority to name an interim replacement, and that appointee would likely have a leg up in the special primary on Aug. 11 to fill Graham’s spot on the November ballot, if he or she decides to run.

RELATED: Lindsey Graham dead at 71

LOGAN CYRUS/AFP/Getty Images

However, Nordone is unlikely to seek the seat herself. So if McMaster selects her, the special primary would be locked in as the real contest for the nomination while still keeping the seat in Republican hands until the new Congress convenes Jan. 3.

McMaster’s office has not committed to a pick, saying only that its focus “at this time” is on honoring Graham’s life and service. McMaster is expected to hold a press conference at 4 p.m. ET Monday, where he may address the vacancy directly.

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​Henry mcmaster, Lindsey graham, President trump, Republicans, Politics, South carolina 

In a recent article, the New York Times set out to decode the supposed political meaning behind conservative political figures’ maternity wardrobes, but it really just exposed how desperate the media has become to smear them.

“Vanessa Friedman, the author, claims ‘these pregnancies symbolically reinforce the administration’s emphasis on the pronatalist movement, pushing family, motherhood, and higher birth rates,’” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey reads from the article on “Relatable.”

“Actually, the truth is that the Trump administration and MAGA in general is young. Like it is a younger movement. I’m not saying all of the youth is MAGA. Obviously, the youth is still predominantly Gen Z, but you got a lot of young people. I love it,” she continues.

“But we’re all kind of like the same generation, in the same stage of life, having kids. That’s cool. Not that I’m someone who needs representation,” she adds.

In the article, the author writes, “If the bare-chested, muscled, mixed martial arts fighters at the UFC match that President Trump hosted on Flag Day were the poster guys for the MAGA’s image of masculinity, then the pregnant women of Trump world are one half of their feminine counterparts.”

“They offer an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement,” she added.

The author used old photos of pregnant Jackie Kennedy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie, to illustrate her point: that women used to hide their pregnant bellies, and now they show them off, like Usha Vance.

“Now, she tries really hard to go deeply into this to say that this has to do with promoting fertility rates, which may be so, but this is also a change in style. She is trying to contrast style in the 1960s, in 2000, to today,” Stuckey explains.

“I think a lot of women have found that actually accentuating the bump or being able to show that is more flattering than wearing things, especially when you get bigger, that look like a tent,” she continues.

Usha Vance responded to the article on X, writing, “Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!”

“She’s just trying to make the point again, it’s not that deep. I bought a dress that was super affordable and that I could fit and that’s all. It’s not some marketing scheme to promote fertility,” Stuckey 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, Donald trump, Jackie kennedy, Jd vance, The new york times, Usha vance, Pregnant women, Maternity fashion, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

The Strait of Hormuz — the body of water between Iran and Oman linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman — is one of the world’s key maritime choke points through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil customarily transits. It has largely been closed since the U.S. and Israel went to war with Iran in late February.

After America’s interim peace deal and ceasefire with Tehran was blown to smithereens last week, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will “keep” the strait and formally serve as its guardian.

‘We guarded it for nothing.’

U.S. Central Command announced late on Sunday that it had executed another series of offensive strikes against Iran, striking “Iranian military air-defense systems, coastal radar sites, missile and drone capabilities, and small boats using U.S. fighter aircraft, naval vessels, one-way attack aerial drones, and one-way attack sea drones for the first time.”

CENTCOM stated that “the Strait of Hormuz is a vital maritime corridor for global trade. Iran does not control it.”

Trump referred to the latest strikes in a phone interview with “Fox & Friends” on Monday, noting, “We had a deal — it was a done deal — and then they broke it. They always break it. We’ve had 10 deals with these people.”

“So we’re just going to hit them very hard, and we’re going to keep the strait,” continued the president. “And we’ll probably run it. We’ll become the guardian of the strait. Maybe we’ll call it the guardian angel of the strait. And we should be reimbursed for that.”

In April, Trump floated the idea of the U.S. unilaterally imposing tolls on vessels attempting to pass through the strait, stating, “Why shouldn’t we? We’re the winner.”

RELATED: Trump says interim peace deal with Tehran is ‘over’ after Iranian strikes: ‘They’re scum’

Elif Acar/Anadolu/Getty Images

This suggestion ruffled some feathers at the time, especially since tolls on vessels transiting a natural strait would seem to run afoul of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — ratified by the U.S., 170 other nations, and the European Union — which guarantees vessels the “right of transit passage” through straits used for international navigation; bars states bordering straits from hampering transit passage; and states that “no charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage through the territorial sea.”

In his interview on Monday, Trump said, “When we do that, we’re going to be reimbursed, because the other nations are very wealthy, they’re on our side, and we can’t be expected to do that for nothing, unlike we had for many years.”

“We guarded the strait for 50 years — more — and we never got paid for it,” added Trump.

“We guarded it for nothing, and now we’re going to guard it and we’re going to get paid for guarding it — a lot of money.”

Trump later noted in a Truth Social post that “the U.S.A. will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”

The BBC suggested that American allies will likely “balk” at the 20% duty.

A spokesman for the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the unified command of the remaining Iranian Armed Forces, said in a statement on Monday, “We will under no circumstances allow the US to interfere in the management of the Strait of Hormuz.”

The spokesman said that Iran would respond forcefully to any attempt by the “aggressor and pirate US military” to obstruct or create insecurity for the passage of commercial ships outside the routes designated by Tehran, reported state media.

Mohammed Mokhber, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, reportedly said in a statement, “We defend it so that in the future, for the passage of our ships, we are not forced to pay tribute to the enemy!”

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​Strait of hormuz, Iran, Tehran, War, Oil, Trade, Blockade, Gulf of oman, Donald trump, Politics 

A Wisconsin female who was renting an Airbnb at a Florida resort purposely drove into and injured a resort security guard after refusing to provide ID earlier this month, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said.

The victim — who works security at the Windsor Island Resort on Aloha Boulevard in Davenport — contacted authorities around 9 p.m. July 4, the sheriff’s office said.

‘All this woman had to do was show some ID and register her car at the resort where she was staying.’

The victim told officials a female driving a gray Chrysler Pacifica was attempting to enter the property when she was told at the entry gate that she needed to be on the list of approved visitors or provide identification, the sheriff’s office said.

The driver, who had a female passenger in the car, asked, “What are you going to do if I drive through?” officials said.

The driver was told that would not be a good idea, officials said.

With that, she sped through the entry gates and proceeded to Lana Avenue, the sheriff’s office said.

RELATED: ‘Needs a reset’: San Francisco mayor’s security detail attacked just as he admits city governance is ‘broken’

Image source: Polk County (Fla.) Sheriff’s Office

Officials said the security guard got into his patrol vehicle and followed her.

He asked her again for identification and to register her car as a visitor to the property, and she replied that he was “doing too much,” officials said, adding that she also said she was renting an Airbnb there.

As the security guard stood next to his patrol car, the female then asked twice, “You wanna get hit?” and drove into him, pinning his body between the passenger side of her vehicle and the driver’s side of his patrol car, injuring him and damaging the equipment on his belt and the patrol car, officials said.

The sheriff’s office said the security guard’s injuries were not serious, but the suspect fled the scene at a high rate of speed.

Detectives responding to the scene positively identified the suspect as 32-year-old Tayquanna Butler of Green Bay, Wisconsin, officials said.

Indeed, detectives also confirmed she was listed as a resort renter through July 6, officials said.

Detectives obtained an arrest warrant charging Butler with aggravated battery and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, officials said, adding that a check of her criminal record showed she had prior arrests in Wisconsin for disorderly conduct and domestic abuse.

Detectives contacted the Orlando International Airport Police Department and confirmed that Butler was scheduled to fly back to Wisconsin on July 7, officials said.

But when Butler arrived at check-in, she was successfully detained, officials said. Polk County Jail records indicate Butler remained behind bars Monday morning; her total bond amount for both felony charges is $25,000.

“You’re not going to come into Polk County and act the way you do back home, disobeying not just the laws of decorum but the laws of our state,” Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. “All this woman had to do was show some ID and register her car at the resort where she was staying. Now she’s facing two felonies and is locked up in jail.”

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​Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, Aggravated battery, Airbnb rental, Arrest, Disorderly conduct, Domestic abuse, Florida, Id, Repeat offender, Resort, Security guard, Wisconsin, Crime 

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) died suddenly Saturday night. May he rest in peace, and prayers and condolences to his family.

His death has understandably focused attention on the mechanics of filling vacancies in the U.S. Senate. That process is governed by state law, though authorized by the federal Constitution.

The public deserves better than confident assertions resting on incomplete analysis.

South Carolina law is clear, though somewhat complicated. Republican Governor Henry McMaster appoints an interim senator to serve until the end of the current term on January 3, 2027. But because Graham had already won the Republican nomination for the general election scheduled in November, a special primary will be held on a compressed timetable to choose a new nominee.

Complicated, yes. But clear.

Kentucky is another story.

Attention has inevitably turned there because of lingering questions about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s health and his announcement that he will not seek re-election. That has prompted speculation about what would happen if his seat became vacant before his term expires.

Unfortunately, much of the commentary has confidently asserted propositions that are, at best, only partially true.

One widely repeated claim is that Kentucky’s governor would appoint a replacement, but only from a list of three names submitted by the departing senator’s political party. That was once accurate. It is no longer.

Another confidently asserted claim is the opposite: that the governor has no appointment authority because the Kentucky legislature abolished it in 2024. That conclusion may ultimately prove correct as a statutory matter, but it is not nearly as obvious as many commentators suggest.

Kentucky law is murkier than the headlines acknowledge.

Until 2024, the answer was straightforward. Kentucky law expressly authorized the governor to appoint an interim U.S. senator while requiring him to choose from a list of three nominees submitted by the departing senator’s political party. That unusual compromise preserved partisan continuity while limiting gubernatorial discretion.

RELATED: Kentucky governor makes unusual request as mystery deepens over Mitch McConnell’s health

Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images

But in 2024, the Republican-majority General Assembly repealed that statute over Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto.

That much is undisputed.

From that repeal, however, many commentators have leaped to the conclusion that the governor now possesses no appointment authority at all. That does not necessarily follow.

The 2024 legislation replaced the old Senate-specific appointment statute with provisions requiring a special election to fill the vacancy. That plainly reflects the legislature’s desire that the people — not the governor — ultimately choose the senator.

But a special election does not answer a different question: Who, if anyone, occupies the office in the meantime?

Here is where the analysis becomes more complicated.

Kentucky still has a general vacancy provision stating that where “there is no other provision of law for the filling of a vacancy in any office,” the governor shall fill the vacancy by appointment.

Does a statute requiring a future special election constitute “another provision of law” for filling the vacancy? Or does it merely prescribe how the office will ultimately be filled, leaving the temporary vacancy to the general appointment statute?

Reasonable lawyers can disagree.

Those insisting that the governor has no appointment authority argue that the legislature plainly intended to eliminate interim appointments altogether. They point to the purpose of the 2024 law and contend that allowing even a temporary appointment would frustrate that objective.

That is a serious argument. But it is not the only one.

The legislature repealed the Senate-specific appointment statute. It did not repeal the general vacancy statute. Courts ordinarily avoid finding repeals by implication and instead try to harmonize statutes whenever possible.

One could therefore read the two provisions together: The general vacancy statute supplies temporary occupancy of the office, while the election statute governs the permanent replacement.

Whether Kentucky courts would accept that interpretation is another question.

Nor is the statutory question the only uncertainty. The Kentucky Constitution contains vacancy provisions that some commentators believe independently constrain the legislature’s ability to eliminate the governor’s appointment authority. No court has squarely resolved how those provisions interact with the 17th Amendment and the legislature’s 2024 revisions.

In addition, the claim that the rule changes if a vacancy occurs before Aug. 3 rather than after is incorrect. That trigger date applies only “if the unexpired term will not end at the next succeeding annual election.” If the unexpired term will end at the next succeeding annual election, as it would with McConnell’s seat, the Kentucky Constitution provides that “the office shall be filled by appointment for the remainder of the term.”

That brings us back to the deeper question: Is Kentucky’s constitutional appointment authority preempted by the 17th Amendment?

RELATED: Outrage erupts after sitting member of Congress found in dementia living care home after being missing for months

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The 17th Amendment permits state legislatures to authorize temporary gubernatorial appointments, but it does not require them to do so. It assigns that discretionary decision to the legislature.

Whether that assignment preempts a contrary state constitutional provision remains an open question.

That means Kentucky faces multiple unresolved legal issues, both statutory and constitutional.

Perhaps Kentucky courts would conclude that the 2024 legislation successfully eliminated every form of interim appointment.

Perhaps they would conclude that the general vacancy statute remains available until the special election.

Perhaps they would hold that the Kentucky Constitution independently authorizes the governor to make a temporary appointment.

Or perhaps a state or federal court would hold that the Kentucky Constitution is preempted by the 17th Amendment, which gives the legislature discretion over whether to authorize temporary gubernatorial appointments pending a special election.

The point is not that any one of those answers is certainly correct. The point is that no court has decided any of these questions.

That makes the confident pronouncements now appearing in news stories and television commentary premature.

There is an irony here. The legislators who sought to make Senate succession more democratic may instead have created uncertainty at the precise moment when certainty matters most.

If a vacancy occurred tomorrow, the first contest might not be between rival candidates at the ballot box. It might be between rival lawyers in the Kentucky Supreme Court.

The public deserves better than confident assertions resting on incomplete analysis. When the law is genuinely unsettled, intellectual honesty requires saying so.

Kentucky’s Senate vacancy law deserves that honesty. So do the citizens who may one day depend on it.

​17th amendment, Andy beshear, Constitution, Kentucky, Lindsey graham, Mitch mcconnell, Opinion & analysis, Senate, Special election, State law, Supreme court 

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) won the Republican nomination for a fifth term in the U.S. Senate, securing 56.8% of the vote in the June 9 Republican primary election. The 71-year-old lawmaker died, however, on July 11 — allegedly as the result of an aortic dissection caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Action must now be taken to ensure that Republicans have a champion to oppose Democrat Senate candidate Annie Andrews in the Nov. 3 general election.

‘There will be time to decide.’

State law holds that in the case of a vacancy in the office of a U.S. senator from death, Gov. Henry McMaster (R) — who said in a statement that Graham “is irreplaceable” — can appoint a replacement to serve until Jan. 3 following the next succeeding general election, meaning the GOP can maintain its slight voting edge in the Senate.

Since Graham was facing re-election, there will be a special primary election to replace him on the ballot.

According to state law, the one-week filing period for this special primary election opens the second Tuesday after the death — July 21 — and the special primary election must be conducted on the second Tuesday immediately following the close of the filing period, which would land on Aug. 11.

RELATED: Lindsey Graham dead at 71

Gov. Henry McMaster (R). Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

“A runoff, if necessary, must be held two weeks after the first [special] primary,” says state law. “The nomination must be certified not less than two weeks before the date of the general election. If the nomination is certified two weeks or more before the date of the general election, that office is to be filled at the general election.”

President Donald Trump told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he had somebody in mind to replace Graham but declined to volunteer the name.

“I have somebody that I think would be great, but I don’t want to say it now because it’s just, you know, it’s too soon with Lindsey,” said Trump. “I don’t want to even talk about anybody, but I do have somebody that I think is really good.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told “Meet the Press” that “there are at least one or two Congress members that I would expect Henry McMaster, our governor, to consider,” but that regardless of who is named as the temporary appointment, “an open primary process would be in the best interest of South Carolinians.”

In terms of contenders in such a race, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) has made it clear that he is not game.

Wilson noted on Sunday morning that while he had spoken to Trump about Graham, he had assured the president that his “goal is to remain in the House to keep his two-vote majority for the American people.”

Failed South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nancy Mace, on the other hand, appears open to throwing her hat in the ring, telling CNN that “there will be time to decide” whether she’ll consider running for the now-vacant seat.

A source familiar with the matter told CNN that Rep. Ralph Norman — a congressman once widely regarded as a possible challenger to Graham — is also “open to considering a run”; however, Norman has expressed uncertainty.

Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette is another name that has been floated in media reports as a contender. A source in her camp told NBC News that Evette received “dozens of phone calls and texts” encouraging her to jump into the race. Evette ran for governor but lost in the GOP primary runoff last month.

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​Annie andrews, Gop, Lindsey graham, Lt gov pamela evette, Nancy mace, Primary election, South carolina, U.s. senate, Politics 

Five police officers allegedly manifested the problem with Flock surveillance systems in Georgia and were charged and fired from their police department.

Neighborhoods across the nation have objected to local police departments signing up for Flock surveillance systems that monitor and capture vehicle license plates.

Police Chief Michael Persley argued that the system had worked properly because the police were caught allegedly abusing the system through safety checks instituted by Flock.

While law enforcement officials say the surveillance program helps them capture criminals and prevent crime, privacy advocates question whether the company is abusing constitutional rights.

Flock defenders were dealt a severe blow when officers were charged by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with abusing the data.

“The GBI has arrested and charged five former Albany Police Department officers with Misuse of License Plate Data and Violation of Oath of Office following an investigation into the misuse of their access to the Flock Safety System,” read a statement from the GBI dated July 6.

Tytianna Davis, 27, was charged with five counts of misuse of license plate data and one count of violation of oath of office.

Jade Jackson, 32, was charged with two counts of misuse of license plate data and one count of violation of oath of office.

Nicholas Richardson, 30, was charged with 11 counts of misuse of license plate data and one count of violation of oath of office.

Brittney Smith, 23, was charged with one count of misuse of license plate data and one count of violation of oath of office.

Issac Whitus, 24, was charged with two counts of misuse of license plate data and one count of violation of oath of office.

The officers have been accused of accessing the system for “non-law enforcement purposes.”

In a press release, Flock suggested that the incident affirms the efficacy of the system: “This incident is the first publicly confirmed case of Flock’s Audit Assistance feature in action and highlights the importance of how technology separates good policing from illegal misconduct.”

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

A statement from the Albany Police Department, led by Police Chief Michael Persley, said three officers were terminated because of the accusations, while the other two were terminated over separate, unrelated policy violations that were uncovered during the investigation into the alleged abuse.

“License plate reader systems are designed to support legitimate public safety operations, including identifying stolen vehicles connected to criminal investigations, revoking stolen vehicles and assisting in locating individuals during public safety incidents,” said a statement from the APD about the incident.

“Any use of this technology outside its authorized purpose is unacceptable and inconsistent with the standards of professionalism, integrity, and accountability expected of every member of the Albany Police Department.”

The GBI said the investigation is ongoing.

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​Flock surveillance systems, Law enforcement, Privacy rights, Licence plate reader, Police, Politics 

The European Union had a chance to curtail one of the most intrusive bills it has ever seen on Thursday, but citizens will have to wait even longer to find out their fate.

The potential law in question is a debate on “rules to prevent and combat child sexual abuse” in online communications. If passed, the legislation would have cascading effects on the privacy of the average citizen.

‘CHAT CONTROL IS COMING.’

Originally proposed in May 2022, the proposal has bounced around for more than four years. On Thursday, lawmakers once again voted to send the bill back to the Council of the EU, which represents the governments of the member states.

Members needed at least 361 votes to reject the bill, and even though they voted in a majority, it was not enough to kill the legislation.

“CHAT CONTROL IS COMING,” wrote Cypriot member of parliament Fidias Panayiotou.

“Even though most Members of the European Parliament have voted to REJECT Chat Control, we have not been able to reach the absolute majority that was needed (361 Members). This is a sad day for Europeans,” he added.

RELATED: Tony Robbins says his AI agent bought a robot — and asked to take it over. The internet’s not so sure.

The EU proposal is meant to disrupt and stop Child Sexual Abuse Material, referred to as CSAM, by having social media and tech companies scan messages for potentially harmful content.

In a report from November 2025, the EU revealed the types of data tech companies had collected since engaging in its voluntary detection trial. The companies reported that they had collected the following traffic data:

“a) data related to the user account (Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Yubo), e.g. user ID, username, and IP address;

b) metadata related to content (Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Yubo);

c) data related to a potential victim (Google);

d) abuse operations data (Google).”

All providers mentioned videos and images, according to the EU.

RELATED: Xbox to retreat from wokeness, fire thousands — and still might not survive

Nicolas TUCAT/AFP/Getty Images

Now at stake is whether scanning must include monitoring even end-to-end encrypted services, a scheme advanced under the moniker Chat Control 2.0.

Politico described the vote on Thursday as “chaotic,” with one MEP reportedly telling the EU parliament vice president, “We don’t know what we are voting on.”

Member countries now must either accept the changes or propose a different version, which would send the EU into conciliation procedure.

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​European union, News, Chat control, Censorship, Police state, Fidias panayiotou, Tech 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Democrats were quick to condemn an attack at a mosque as Islamophobia — but BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales notes that the attack wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“If there was one message that he wanted you to know, it is that he loves soccer … but if there’s one more thing that he always wants you to know, it’s that Muslims are always the victims. Isn’t it crazy how that turns out?” Gonzales asks, before reading Mamdani’s post about the “attack.”

“Yesterday, during Friday prayers at the Muslim Center of New York in Queens, a man reached for his pocket and congregants saw what looked like a firearm, creating a terrifying situation for Muslim New Yorkers who had gathered to worship,” Mamdani wrote in a post on X.

“I’m immensely grateful and relieved that an MTA employee, a cab driver and an NYPD officer acted quickly to help ensure no one was hurt. Every New Yorker should be able to observe their religion without fear or intimidation,” he added.

“I would guess that you wouldn’t see that same energy if it was a synagogue,” Gonzales comments.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also took the opportunity to highlight the situation, with Schumer writing on X that “Islamophobia is unacceptable and we must continue to reject hatred and bigotry in every form.”

James posted that “we must stand united against Islamophobia.”

However, they left one “major detail” out about the attacker.

“It’s just that he was a Muslim. He’s a Muslim himself. So I don’t know how you guys are going on your diatribe,” Gonzales says.

“And according to the criminal complaint, he was seen entering the mosque where he removed his baseball cap and put on a head covering and a mask. He proceeded to count his money and said, ‘If anybody touches my money, it’s going to be trouble,’” she continues.

“And then someone saw what appeared to be a gun in his waistband. They tackled him to the ground. It turns out it was a bb gun,” she adds.

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, Zohran mamdani, Letitia james, Chuck schumer, Islam, Islamophobia, The blaze, Synagogue, Mosque, Attack, Sara gonzales unfiltered 

For more than a century, mainstream historians — Christian and non-Christian alike — have largely agreed on one point: Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure.

The enduring debates concern something else entirely. Who did Jesus claim to be? What can history tell us about His life? And how should historians interpret the handful of ancient, non-Christian sources that mention Him?

That small change significantly alters the tone of the passage, allowing Josephus to report what Jesus’ followers believed without personally endorsing their claims.

One of those sources has long stood at the center of scholarly debate.

“And in this time there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man …”

Those famous words come from the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. For generations, however, many scholars have argued that portions of the passage were embellished by later Christian copyists, making it difficult to know exactly what Josephus originally wrote.

A new book argues historians have been too skeptical.

A more extraordinary Jesus?

In “Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ,” Yale-trained historian T.C. Schmidt contends that Josephus’ famous “Testimonium Flavianum” — his longer account of Jesus — is substantially more authentic than many scholars have believed. If Schmidt is correct, one of history’s most important non-Christian accounts portrays Jesus as a more extraordinary figure than the prevailing scholarly consensus has assumed.

That would not overturn the historical case for Jesus, which already rests on multiple ancient sources. Rather, it could strengthen historians’ confidence in one of antiquity’s earliest and most important independent accounts of Jesus’ life, execution, and the remarkable movement He inspired.

Among skeptics and believers alike, historians have long looked beyond Scripture when evaluating the historical Jesus.

As New Testament scholar John P. Meier has observed, “The implication is that the biblical evidence for Jesus is biased because it is encased in a theological text written by committed believers. What they really want to know is: Is there extra-biblical evidence … for Jesus’ existence?”

Mainstream historians have long answered that question in the affirmative.

Tacitus: No friend to Christianity

One important witness comes from Roman historian, senator, and ethnographer Tacitus, who flourished in the late first and early second centuries, well within living memory of the end of Jesus Christ’s earthly life.

In his “Annals of Imperial Rome,” Tacitus, who was no friend to Christianity, makes a reference to Jesus Christ that teaches the reader multiple facts about Christ from an outsider’s perspective.

The passage appears amid Tacitus’ account of the burning of Rome under Emperor Nero in 64 A.D. The full passage (in the Michael Grant translation) reads:

“But neither human resources, nor imperial munificence, nor appeasement of the gods, eliminated sinister suspicions that the fire had been instigated. To suppress the rumour, Nero fabricated scapegoats — and punished with every refinement the notoriously depraved Christians (as they were popularly called). Their originator, Christ, had been executed in Tiberius’ reign by the governor of Judea, Pontius Pilatus. But in spite of this temporary setback, the deadly superstition had broken out afresh, not only in Judea (where the mischief had started) but even in Rome. All degraded and shameful practices collect in the capital.”

(Grant notes that “this is the only mention in pagan Latin of Pontius Pilate’s action.”)

This not only confirms the spreading influence of Christianity over the region and beyond; it also places Jesus Christ in the correct time and place according to biblical sources and tradition, and crucially, it connects Him with Pontius Pilate.

Josephus: 2 accounts

Josephus provides another crucial witness.

His brief reference to “James, the brother of Jesus who was called Christ,” found in Book 20 of “Jewish Antiquities,” has long been accepted by most historians as authentic. As biblical scholar Lawrence Mykytiuk notes, the reference only serves its purpose of identifying James if Josephus expected his readers to recognize Jesus as a real historical figure.

But Josephus contains a second — and far more famous — reference to Jesus.

RELATED: The Trinity answers the Bible’s central question

DeAgostini/Getty Images

Known as the “Testimonium Flavianum,” Josephus’ longer account of Jesus has occupied scholars for generations because portions of the text appear unusually favorable toward Christianity.

Traditionally, scholars have proposed three possibilities.

The first is that the entire passage is a later Christian forgery.

The second is that Josephus wrote it substantially as we have it today.

The third — and for many years the dominant scholarly position — is that Josephus wrote a genuine core that was later embellished by Christian scribes.

Schmidt argues that historians have underestimated Josephus.

‘He was thought to be the Christ’

Drawing on Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Armenian textual traditions, he contends that the “Testimonium” has survived with remarkably little alteration. According to Schmidt, the text has lost only “two or three words,” while the overwhelming majority of the passage is authentically Josephus.

He also argues that early Greek-speaking Christians themselves often treated the passage not as a confession of Christian faith but as a neutral — or even mildly skeptical — description of Jesus, making extensive Christian editing less likely than many scholars have assumed.

One of Schmidt’s most important arguments concerns a famous line traditionally translated, “He was the Christ.”

According to Schmidt, the earliest textual evidence points instead toward a more cautious reading:

“He was thought to be the Christ.”

That small change significantly alters the tone of the passage, allowing Josephus to report what Jesus’ followers believed without personally endorsing their claims.

Schmidt also argues that Josephus’ distinctive writing style appears consistently throughout the passage and that Josephus was uniquely positioned to know reliable information about Jesus, given his family connections and familiarity with Jerusalem’s political and priestly elite.

An invitation

Schmidt ultimately invites readers to reconsider the “Testimonium Flavianum” in light of this evidence.

His reconstructed text reads:

“And in this time there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds. … He was thought to be the Christ … on the third day it seemed to them that he was alive again …”

If Schmidt is correct, the significance extends beyond textual criticism.

Rather than simply reinforcing the already broad scholarly consensus that Jesus existed, Schmidt argues that one of history’s most important non-Christian historians may have offered a richer — and more authentic — portrait of Jesus than generations of scholars have assumed.

Instead of merely mentioning Jesus in passing, Josephus describes Him as a wise teacher, a worker of remarkable deeds, a man who drew large crowds, whose execution under Pontius Pilate failed to extinguish His movement, and whose followers remained convinced that He had risen from the dead.

Whether Schmidt ultimately persuades the scholarly community remains to be seen. His work does not seek to settle the historical Jesus debate so much as reopen one of its most important textual questions.

It is, instead, an invitation — for believers and nonbelievers alike — to reconsider whether historians have underestimated the authenticity and significance of antiquity’s most important non-Christian account of Jesus Christ.

A free online version of “Josephus and Jesus: New Evidence for the One Called Christ” is available here.

​Christianity, Historical evidence, Imperial rome, Jesus christ, Judea, Pontius pilate, Scholars, Faith 

Democrats’ growing radicalism presents a danger to the country. Their shrinking ability to conceal it presents a danger to the party.

As democratic socialists and other far-left candidates win Democratic primaries, the mask of moderation is slipping. The establishment media can downplay radical policies when they belong to activists, backbenchers, or losing candidates. It becomes much harder when those candidates begin winning elections.

The Democratic Party’s greatest political danger is not that the party features a rapidly growing number of radicals. It’s that ordinary Americans are finally getting a clear look at them.

The Graham Platner debacle in Maine shows both how much extremism Democrats will tolerate and how long the media will help them avoid confronting it.

Platner was sold as an acceptable working-class populist. His carefully cultivated image as an oyster farmer obscured his privileged background and family support. He disparaged fellow veterans, blamed military service for a history of incendiary online statements, and sent explicit messages to women while married. His policy positions occupied the party’s farthest-left edge. Then came the Nazi tattoo and a series of preposterous explanations.

Democrats, their leaders, and sympathetic media outlets stood by him through it all.

Only after a woman publicly accused Platner of sexual assault did his campaign finally collapse. Platner denied the allegation, but leading supporters withdrew their endorsements, and he announced plans to leave the race.

The episode illustrates two problems: Democrats’ willingness to embrace radicalism in nearly any form and the establishment media’s willingness to disguise that radicalism.

The second may ultimately prove more damaging to the party.

How can appearance be more dangerous than reality? Because the Democratic Party has been moving left for years while much of the press assured Americans that it remained broadly moderate.

Bernie Sanders nearly defeated Hillary Clinton for the 2016 presidential nomination. Two members of the Democratic Socialists of America entered Congress with “the Squad” in 2018. Under the figurehead leadership of Joe Biden, the administration pursued diversity mandates, radical climate policies, uncontrolled spending, and an open southern border.

RELATED: This is not the ‘red wave’ America needs

Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

The establishment media minimized those policies, just as it concealed Biden’s cognitive decline until his political usefulness expired. Once Biden became obviously unelectable, Democrat leaders and their media allies turned on him.

The same thing happened to Platner. The party tolerated everything until his liabilities threatened its electoral prospects.

In both cases, the candidate was expendable. The ideology remained.

Democratic radicalism is becoming more visible because the party and its media allies can no longer hide it. As more moderate Democrats lose primaries, the press must cover the candidates replacing them.

American political journalism has always preferred the horse race to the substance: polls, debates, endorsements, fundraising, and election-night results. Those subjects are more exciting — and less revealing — than sustained scrutiny of what candidates intend to do in office.

But the horse race becomes a problem when the socialists are winning it.

In 2025, self-described socialists Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson won the mayoralties of New York City and Seattle.

More recently, Mamdani-backed candidates swept prominent New York congressional primaries. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman, while other left-wing candidates unseated Democrat establishment figures.

In Texas, far-left state Rep. James Talarico won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed has emerged as a leading contender in the Democratic Senate primary.

More victories may follow as the primary season continues.

Each one forces the media to cover candidates it would previously have dismissed as activists on the party’s fringe. As establishment Democrats disappear from ballots, journalists have fewer supposedly moderate alternatives to place in the foreground.

RELATED: Democratic Socialists of America will seek to RADICALLY upend the federal government in reported platform update

Adam Gray/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The problem becomes even more severe in heavily Democratic districts, where winning the primary is effectively equivalent to winning the general election.

Those nominees are highly likely to enter Congress, join Sanders and “the Squad,” and pull congressional Democrats farther left. Their anti-Trump agenda will give them a national platform over the next two years, making their positions increasingly difficult to ignore.

The establishment media can soften the language. It can call socialism “progressivism,” describe government control as “investment,” and portray ideological victories as demands for affordability or generational change.

It cannot indefinitely hide what elected officials say and do.

That is the Democratic Party’s greatest political danger. It’s not merely that the party features a rapidly growing number of radicals. It’s that ordinary Americans are finally getting a clear look at them.

For years, the establishment media helped Democrats preserve the appearance of moderation while the party moved steadily left. Socialist victories are making that deception impossible.

​Bernie sanders, Democratic socialists, Democrats, Graham platner, Media, Moderation, Primaries, Hillary clinton, The squad, Congress, Opinion & analysis, Leftism, Anti-american 

What is real?

I know that sounds like I’m trying to “blow your mind, man.” But I don’t mean it in some kind of hippy-dippy, dorm-room philosophizing kind of way.

They want a place where they know they’ll be seeing the world as it is, where they can drop their defenses against being fooled.

In 2026, “What is real?” is a very pressing question.

Won’t get fooled again

If you’ve spent any time on X, Instagram, or Facebook, you’ve probably gotten used to thinking about reality. Namely when coming across the countless AI-generated photos and videos flooding your timeline.

Some, of course, are obviously fake. A penguin shaking hands with a polar bear on a dock while a moose looks on from a sailboat? Most likely AI. But with others it’s not so easy.

Take that photo of the beautiful sunrise over those shining snow-covered mountains. Looks real … but it isn’t. Neither is that perfectly convincing woman talking about the scheduling app that helped her organize her life.

Unless you are exceedingly discerning, you’ve probably been fooled by AI, even if just for a few seconds. You shouldn’t feel bad, and you shouldn’t feel like a dupe, even though you probably do. We weren’t made for this world of images that look 99.99999% real but are 0% so. What in our past would have ever prepared us for this world? Seeing is believing? That may have been true once upon a time, but no more.

Shutter island

There are a lot of implications here for society. How do we live in a half reality, half anti-reality world? How do we organize a society around truth when the truth is constantly muddied by false images and videos? How do we even talk to each other if we can’t reach a consensus on what’s in front of us? These are big questions without clear answers.

But on a smaller, more granular, human level, I think something interesting is happening: People find themselves aching for more truth, more reality. Not everyone, of course. Some are going full steam into the Kafkaesque world of reality-nihilism. But others see the trap, the chaos, and the shallow ugliness of anti-reality.

Earlier this year, I started a project by the name of Film 20. Essentially, it’s a place of pure reality in the form of film photography. It’s an archive of photos from real people and real places all around the world. No iPhone photos are allowed, no digital photos from DSLRs either. Only film; only reality.

RELATED: The Kids Are Outside

O.W. Root

Reality hunger

At first, our followers were mostly film photographers and film aficionados. But an interesting thing happened in the past few months. The account blew up in a substantial way. There are now nearly 29,000 people following Film 20, an account dedicated to documenting reality through the eyes of film photographers.

Those 29,000 people aren’t all photographers, though some are — our DMs are flooded with submissions from wonderful photographers from all over. They aren’t just following for the nice photos either. I know because the primary sources of growth have been derived from posts underscoring the purpose of Film 20.

“Never AI. Always reality. Only film.”

People — 29,000 people — want a feed of reality and only reality. They want a place where they know they’ll be seeing the world as it is, where they can drop their defenses against being fooled.

Cultivating authenticity

I know that everyone doesn’t have this same kind of yearning for reality. I understand that these 29,000 are not representative of the general population in 2026. But I don’t think this desire is going away, and I don’t think the awareness of the shallow falseness of digital AI imagery is a short-term blip. The further we move into the AI world, the stronger this yearning for reality will be.

The bleed of fake video and imagery into every corner of our digital world will continue for the foreseeable future. It will be annoying. Next year you will only see more fake videos than the last.

So whether it is film photography, live music, local food, or real people with real emotions, the future of reality is one that will need to be cultivated and earnestly sought out. Just like we try to eat healthy and read good books, we will need to consciously make the choices that lead us toward reality in every way we can.

Reality is good for the body, mind, and soul.

​Ai, Community, Film, Reality, Iphone, Photography, Cameras, Film photography, Fake, Culture, Art, The root of the matter 

The left is in hysterics after the Texas State Board of Education approved new K-12 language arts curriculum standards for the 2030-2031 school year that include specific Bible stories and verses as required reading. Even though the board justified it as essential literary and cultural education rather than religious instruction, cries of “religious favoritism” and “separation of church and state” are dominating left-wing media.

“If you turn on CNN or the BBC or the Guardian or PBS, NBC, any of them, honestly, you’d think Texas had just crowned Jesus king of Texas and ordered every public school child to genuflect before a Bible on their teacher’s desk,” scoffs Glenn Beck.

The truth, however, is that these standards do not in any way breach the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. They simply re-tether America — and the broader West — to her founding principles.

“There is no mandate to put a physical Bible in every classroom. There’s no statewide requirement for devotional prayer or forced religious exercises. … It’s literacy and historic study,” Glenn explains.

He points to the 1963 Supreme Court case Abington School District v. Schempp, in which the court ruled 8-1 that mandatory devotional Bible reading and prayer as opening religious exercises in public schools violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, while explicitly noting that objective, academic study of the Bible (for its literary and historic qualities) as part of a secular education program is permissible.

“Texas is not becoming a theocracy,” says Glenn. “They are walking through a door the Supreme Court left wide open and that our founders walked through with conviction.”

In 1782, Congress even officially endorsed the Aitken Bible (the first complete English-language Bible printed in the United States) for both religious study and literacy advancement in schools.

“One of the very first things that our representatives did … was to put the Bible in the hands of American families and schools,” says Glenn. “That’s not Christian nationalism. That’s the actual founding character of our republic.”

For most of American history, he explains, the Bible was not only “not controversial in schools” but actually seen as “central” to public education.

The McGuffey Readers, first published in the 1830s by educator William Holmes McGuffey, were hugely popular 19th-century American schoolbooks that taught reading, morality, and character through stories, poems, and excerpts that heavily featured the Bible alongside classic literature.

“Children learned to read from the Bible. They learned character from the Bible. That was normal,” says Glenn. “What happened in the 1960s — that was the radical break, not Texas 2026.”

Texas, he argues, is “right” to require Bible readings because students “cannot understand Western civilization,” including its most cherished literature, without it.

“Remove the Bible and half of Shakespeare goes dark. Try reading Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ … Try to understand Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy.’ … You cannot understand ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ ‘Moby Dick,’ ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ Dostoevsky’s novels of sin and redemption — any of this,” Glenn exclaims.

Other forms of art crucial to the West become inaccessible too.

From Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” and da Vinci’s “Last Supper” to European cathedrals and the great concertos, sonatas, and symphonies of Bach and Beethoven, the Bible is preeminent to the West’s greatest artistic achievements.

“The Ten Commandments are woven into the Western legal codes. … You don’t understand the Declaration of Independence if you don’t understand the Bible. You don’t understand the abolition movement in Britain and America … Lincoln, the second inaugural address — what is that other than just one giant biblical meditation on sin and judgment and mercy?” Glenn adds, emphasizing Scripture’s foundational role in Western history.

“Trying to understand Western civilization — the art, the literature, the music, its laws, its ethics, the very language — without the Bible is trying to understand the Middle East without the Quran. It is the foundational text; remove it, and the culture becomes incoherent,” he declares.

He warns that when a civilization becomes untethered to its foundation, everything begins to unravel.

“The morals drift; the art loses meaning; the law loses anchor; and most importantly — and don’t the progressives know it — the people lose their story,” he laments. “That’s what’s been happening for 60 years in American education.”

Glenn praises Texas for bringing Scripture back into academics where it rightfully belongs. “They are doing what they must do: simply refusing to continue the lie that the Bible is irrelevant to who we are.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Texas, Bible, Education 

They can give you a gun and a badge. They cannot give you good judgment.

The Fort Worth Police Department gave Sarah Stogner both a gun and a badge. What it apparently failed to determine was whether she possessed the judgment — or the constitutional literacy — required to exercise the state’s coercive power over free citizens.

Sarah Stogner did not shoot anybody, thank God. But that’s an extraordinarily low bar for fitness to exercise state power.

The controversy arose during Fort Worth’s Trinity Pride celebration on June 27, where Christian street preachers were evangelizing outside the event.

Video shows Stogner telling one preacher he could be cited if he said something “offensive.” City officials later emphasized that the citation itself was based on a noise ordinance governing amplified sound, not the content of the preacher’s message.

Sure.

The department then ordered First Amendment retraining after the encounter went viral.

Those facts may determine the outcome in court. They do not change what thousands of people on social media saw with their own eyes: a police officer confidently asserting authority the Constitution does not give her.

The retraining is welcome, I suppose. It also adds insult to injury.

What are they teaching at the police academy these days? This was not some obscure Fourth Amendment exception or a tangled question of qualified immunity.

This was constitutional law 101.

Americans do not lose their right to speak because somebody — a cop especially — dislikes what they have to say. Giving offense is not a crime. Hurt feelings do not create probable cause. The First Amendment does not contain a Pride festival exception. Yet.

What struck me most, however, was not Stogner’s ignorance. It was her arrogance.

She never appeared uncertain. She never asked a supervisor for guidance. She never paused to consider whether she was inventing a speech code on the spot.

RELATED: Blue cities reject law, reject order — and reject America

KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images

She spoke as if the badge settled the question.

That’s worse than stupidity.

A stupid officer can be corrected. An arrogant officer believes correction is for everybody else.

A badge is not a moral credential. It is a legal office.

It does not make its bearer wiser, more virtuous, or more trustworthy. It confers authority — massive authority — within limits established by law.

For years, conservatives have rightly defended law enforcement against the left’s poisonous campaign to “defund the police.” They have recognized the indispensable role police play in maintaining civil order, protecting innocent people, and arresting violent criminals.

They have also rightly rejected the left’s habit of judging an entire profession by its worst actors.

But somewhere along the way, respect curdled into deference.

“Back the blue” became less a defense of lawful policing than a demand for unquestioning loyalty to anyone wearing a badge. Conservatives who instinctively distrust IRS agents, public health officials, and federal regulators somehow came to regard local police as natural allies in the defense of liberty.

That is a dangerous mistake.

Police officers are not the conservative movement in blue uniforms. They are not constitutional scholars with Glocks. They are government employees exercising delegated power.

“Protect and serve” is a worthy ideal. It’s also good marketing.

Every bureaucracy develops its own interests, habits, and institutional mythology. Every bureaucracy eventually divides the world into “us” and “them.”

Police departments are no exception.

Officers spend their days giving commands, issuing citations, conducting searches, making arrests, and using force when necessary. They are trained to establish control and treat uncertainty as a potential threat.

Much of that is unavoidable. Police work is dangerous. Hesitation can get an officer killed.

But the habits required for survival can become habits of mind.

The citizen becomes the subject. Disagreement becomes defiance. Questions become challenges to authority. The officer acts; the public is acted upon.

A Bible, a flag, or a thin blue line decal will not save you when an officer decides you are the problem. Neither will your voting record. The state does not ask whether you backed the blue before it puts you in handcuffs.

Do not misunderstand me. This is not an argument against police. It is an argument against political idolatry.

Conservatives understand, at least in theory, that government power must be constrained because human beings are fallible, self-interested, and prone to abuse authority.

We remember that principle when discussing the FBI, the IRS, or unelected regulators. We remember it when federal agents raid somebody’s home or some public health official invents a mandate.

Then a local officer puts on body armor, and suddenly half the right forgets everything it claims to believe about the state.

The uniform changes. The principle doesn’t.

Police exercise executive power. They carry the state’s monopoly on lawful violence on their hips.

That is precisely why they deserve more scrutiny, not less.

RELATED: Democratic Senate candidate can’t hide from ‘defund the police’ comments, no matter how hard he tries

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

A DMV clerk can ruin your afternoon. A police officer can ruin your life.

That power requires more than tactical training, physical courage, or marksmanship. It requires judgment. More than anything, it requires humility.

An officer must never forget that the badge does not create rights. It imposes limits.

The Constitution does not exist to make police work easier. It exists in part to prevent government officials from doing whatever seems easiest in the moment.

A citizen saying something offensive may cause some heartburn. A loud preacher may irritate festival-goers, businesses, officers, and city officials. None of that gives police authority to suppress protected speech.

Enforce the noise ordinance if the facts support it. But do not allow the police to invent an offended listener’s veto.

Good officers understand the distinction. Good departments reinforce it. Good conservatives should insist upon it.

The answer is not hostility toward law enforcement. The left has already demonstrated the stupidity and destructiveness of treating every cop as an occupying soldier.

The answer is constitutional realism.

Support police when they uphold the law. Defend them when they are unfairly maligned. Hold them accountable when they exceed their authority.

But stop pretending they belong to us.

They are not supposed to serve conservatives, progressives, Pride organizers, or street preachers.

They are supposed to serve the law.

When they forget that, another training seminar may satisfy the public relations department. It does not answer the more serious question.

Should someone who must be retrained on the basic meaning of the First Amendment continue to carry a gun, a badge, and the public’s trust?

Sarah Stogner did not shoot anybody, thank God. But that’s an extraordinarily low bar for fitness to exercise state power.

They can give you a gun and a badge. They cannot give you judgment.

And when an officer displays arrogance instead, conservatives should not avert their eyes simply because the uniform is blue.

​Constitution, First amendment, Fourth amendment, Police officer, Violent criminals, Fort worth, Sarah stogner, Pride celebration, Texas, Opinion & analysis 

The strongest publicly downloadable large language models are, by the composite measure of Artificial Analysis’ Intelligence Index, GLM-5.2, MiniMax-M3, DeepSeek V4 Pro, and Kimi K2.6. They are all Chinese. They are all products of heavily capitalized laboratories. They are all released under permissive licenses and commonly described as open. They are open in the sense that you can download the weights, run them on your own machines, fine-tune them, build products on top of them. They are not open in the sense that you can see how they were made. The training data and code, the recipes that would allow you to reproduce or audit the process remain, for the most part, undisclosed. The door is ajar. The room behind it is dark.

The Open Source Initiative draws a hard line on the terminology. An open-source AI system, by the OSI’s definition, must provide data information, code, and parameters sufficient to use, study, modify, and share the system. Open weights, by contrast, expose only the final product of training: the numerical parameters of a finished network. This situation is the difference between publishing a cookbook and selling a frozen dinner with the ingredient list printed on the box. Both let you eat. Only one lets you cook.

A mechanism for ecosystem capture, price disruption, and geopolitical positioning.

If you are deploying a model for enterprise search or code generation, you may want the frozen dinner: functional, affordable, and available without a subscription to someone else’s kitchen. DeepSeek V4 Pro, at four cents per task on certain benchmarks, is more than 20 times cheaper than GPT 5.5 and more than 40 times cheaper than Claude Opus 4.8. At those prices, the question of whether you can inspect the training data seems academic.

The models themselves are marvels of a particular kind of engineering. GLM-5.2 runs 744 billion total parameters with 40 billion active per token, using a design known as mixture-of-experts that allows a model to be enormous in capacity but economical in use, like a city that keeps most of its lights off at any given moment. DeepSeek V4 Pro pushes to 1.6 trillion total parameters. They process a million tokens of context, which means they can hold an entire codebase or a small library’s worth of documents in working memory. They reason in configurable modes: think a little, think a lot, or do not think at all.

The user chooses; the machine adjusts. In 2024, a chat interface invited you to ask a question. In 2026, it asks a subtler one: How much cognition should the system spend here?

When free isn’t

There is a historical analogy for open models: free software. Eric Raymond wrote about cathedrals and bazaars. Yochai Benkler wrote about commons-based peer production. Christopher Kelty described free software communities as recursive publics, groups organized around the capacity to build and maintain the very infrastructure that makes the group possible. These frameworks still illuminate something about the open-model ecosystem, where quantization hobbyists, inference-engine maintainers, and downstream fine-tuners extend the value of released weights in public, for reputation and for the pleasure of the work itself.

RELATED: Google got conformist. Now we’ll pay the price.

sesame/Getty Images

But the analogy fractures at the point that matters most. The volunteers in the original bazaar outperformed the cathedrals. The 2026 open-model ecosystem is about cathedrals distributing their products through the bazaar. DeepSeek reportedly closed a funding round exceeding $7 billion. Moonshot AI raised about $2 billion. Alibaba continues to invest in its Qwen line while weaving those models into commerce and robotics. These are not volunteer collectives. They are industrial actors pursuing what might be called strategic openness: releasing weights as a mechanism for ecosystem capture, price disruption, and geopolitical positioning. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission has argued that China has effectively gone all in on an open-model strategy, using open publication and aggressive pricing to accelerate adoption and further iteration. The plan is working.

The central paradox of this domain is that openness can simultaneously broaden participation at the edges and concentrate power at the center. Aaron Shaw and Benjamin Mako Hill observed this pattern in peer production years ago: As collaborative systems scale, they tend toward oligarchy. Open models exhibit the same dynamic at the level of an industry. Anyone can download the weights; almost no one can produce them. The foundry becomes more rarefied even as the open web grows more participatory, and the gap between using a model and understanding it widens.

The cookbook stays secret

Meanwhile, the projects that are open in the older, stricter sense continue their work at a lower altitude. Ai2’s OLMo program publishes training data, training code, intermediate checkpoints, and reproducible recipes. OLMo sits at the top of every openness index and near the bottom of every capability leaderboard. This performance is not a coincidence. Full transparency is expensive in ways that go beyond compute, requiring a willingness to be audited, to be reproduced, to be shown wrong. The labs chasing benchmark supremacy have not shown much appetite for that form of exposure.

Thus the word “open” now describes two diverging projects. One is about capability access: the right to run a powerful model without paying rent to a proprietary API. The other is about knowledge access: the right to know where a model came from, what it was trained on, and why it behaves the way it does. These two meanings coexisted comfortably when the best open models were also the most transparent ones. They no longer do. The frozen dinner is excellent. The cookbook is secret.

The coming years may belong to open weights as infrastructure, especially in coding, agentic work, and enterprise use. The deeper contest, the one that will determine what “open” means, is only beginning.

​Tech 

The power of positive thinking has taken an occult turn. After his UFC victory at the White House last month, Sean O’Malley told Joe Rogan that he had seen the outcome beforehand and manifested it into reality.

Whether he meant those words casually or literally, they reflect an increasingly common belief among athletes, entrepreneurs, influencers, and podcasters. Success is no longer merely achieved through discipline and hard work. It is manifested — even conjured. Consciousness itself creates the future.

Our thoughts influence our actions, but they do not govern reality. We make plans, set goals, exercise prudence, and work diligently. The outcome ultimately belongs to God.

At first glance, this language may sound harmless. Athletes have long used visualization techniques. Coaches encourage competitors to imagine success before a game. Olympic athletes mentally rehearse routines. Quarterbacks visualize throws. Fighters picture victories.

But modern manifesting goes far beyond sports psychology.

Traditional visualization is straightforward. Imagining success can improve focus, reduce anxiety, build confidence, and prepare the body for performance. The athlete does not create reality through thought. He prepares himself to perform when reality arrives.

Manifesting makes a different claim.

It holds that consciousness participates in creating reality. The fighter does not merely prepare for victory; he helps bring it into existence. The entrepreneur does not merely work toward success; he attracts it. The individual does not merely respond to the world; he creates his own reality.

This way of thinking has become so common that many people no longer recognize how strange it is. Yet it represents a significant religious shift in modern American culture.

Ironically, little about it is new.

The roots of today’s manifestation movement extend into 19th-century American religious history and, before that, into occult and hermetic traditions.

One important source was Christian Science, founded by Mary Baker Eddy. Christian Science taught that matter is subordinate to mind and that many human problems result from false thinking rather than objective conditions.

Christian Science differs from today’s manifestation culture in important ways, but both assign consciousness a far more fundamental role than traditional Christianity permits.

Closely related was the New Thought movement. Its writers and lecturers taught that positive thinking could produce health, prosperity, and success. The message was simple: Change your thoughts, and you can change your reality.

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Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images

Many modern manifestation teachers merely repackage New Thought for the social media age.

The vocabulary has changed, but the assumptions remain strikingly similar.

Instead of speaking about positive thinking — the scientific language of that era — people now invoke frequencies, vibrations, energy, alignment, and quantum possibilities — the scientific language of ours. Instead of spiritual laws, they speak of neuroscience and mindset.

The central claim remains unchanged: Your thoughts possess creative power.

The fundamental reality, they teach, is consciousness. The awakened self is divine.

This worldview also resembles older occult, esoteric, and theosophical traditions.

Historically, occult systems taught that hidden knowledge gave initiates access to powers unavailable to ordinary people. Reality operates according to secret principles that could be learned and harnessed. The enlightened individual gained mastery by acquiring that knowledge.

It is the promise of the serpent in the garden: You will know as God knows.

Human beings know by discovering what is real. God knows as the creator who determines what is real.

Modern manifestation culture often follows the same pattern. Its teachers claim that reality contains countless possible futures and that consciousness selects among them. Individuals are urged to discover hidden truths about their power, unlock limiting beliefs, raise their vibrations, and learn the principles by which the universe operates.

The pattern appears throughout many nonbiblical religions: You are a higher consciousness trapped in a body and must discover the secret that will restore you to divinity.

The problem is not sin but rather ignorance of your own godhood.

You do not need redemption through Christ to restore communion with God. You need enlightenment to remember that you are God.

That is why modern manifestation can accurately be described as a form of neo-gnosticism.

Ancient gnosticism taught that human beings contained a hidden divine element. The fundamental human problem was ignorance of this truth. Salvation came through secret knowledge that awakened people to their true nature.

Modern manifestation often follows the same structure:

You possess hidden creative powers.

You do not understand your true potential.

Limiting beliefs keep you trapped.

Special knowledge sets you free.

The language differs, but the story remains familiar. And its attraction is obvious.

Manifestation promises control in an uncertain world. It offers success without dependence, power without submission, and meaning without repentance. It assures individuals that they are not subject to forces beyond themselves but possess the power to shape their destinies.

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Apic/Getty Images

Yet the system contains a serious flaw: It is self-validating.

When someone succeeds, the success proves manifestation works. When someone fails, the failure is blamed on faulty manifestation. Success confirms the theory. Failure confirms it too.

It resembles the gambler who remembers the one time double zero hit twice in a row and forgets every losing bet.

A theory that can absorb every possible result explains nothing. It merely improvises a new explanation after the fact.

Christianity begins somewhere else entirely.

Scripture teaches that human beings are not creators but creatures. God alone exists from eternity. He created human souls and a material world, and he called that world very good.

Our thoughts influence our actions, but they do not govern reality. We make plans, set goals, exercise prudence, and work diligently. The outcome ultimately belongs to God.

The biblical question is not, “What reality can I create?” It is, “What has God ordained, and how should I respond faithfully?”

That distinction may sound subtle, but it marks two radically different visions of the world.

One places creative sovereignty in human consciousness.

The other places it in God.

So when O’Malley says he manifested his victory, he may mean only that he visualized success and prepared himself mentally. If so, there is little controversy.

But if he means that consciousness itself helped create the result, then he is participating in a much larger religious movement — one stretching from 19th-century metaphysical spirituality through New Thought and occultism into today’s podcast culture.

The language is modern. The temptation is ancient.

​Joe rogan, Manifesting, Opinion & analysis, Positive thinking, Sean o’malley, God, Divinity, Creation, Occult 

For years, we’ve been force-fed the same sickening story. Young Americans aren’t getting married because they simply can’t afford to. The economy is disastrous, wages are too low, and housing costs require selling a kidney.

If we could just inject another thirty grand into everyone’s bank accounts, young lovers would magically sprint down the aisle. It’s a beautiful, thoroughly victim-centric fairy tale that makes everyone nod along. It’s also absolute nonsense.

Government handouts and cultural decay have combined to tell men that effort is for suckers.

A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies dismantles the narrative. The data reveals that the slow-motion suicide of American marriage has less to do with stagnant pay and much more to do with a mind virus that has convinced an entire generation they are too poor to love.

We love blaming the system because it absolves us of our crippling neuroses. But the numbers don’t lie, even if our Instagram feeds do.

Money changes everything?

Inflation-adjusted median earnings for young men recently hit a near 50-year high. Meanwhile, marriage rates continued their downward spiral. If money were the magic libido potion that many claim it is, these trends should move together. Instead, they look like two bitter, screaming divorcees tearing away from a shattered home in opposite directions.

Young men today generally out-earn the idealized pipe-smoking fathers of the 1960s and ’70s. Those mid-century men somehow managed to marry and breed without first acquiring quartz countertops, stainless-steel appliances, or a diversified stock portfolio. They didn’t postpone children until they could afford a five-star Disney excursion. Instead, they embraced the brutal reality of starting with absolutely nothing, expecting to build a life with someone they could love and trust.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, today’s married 30-year-olds own homes at roughly the same rate as their counterparts in 1970. And those homes are massive, bloated monuments to excess, full of technology that would have looked like witchcraft a few decades ago. Somehow, grandparents survived the unbearable trauma of raising kids without an automated espresso maker, a smart home cinema system, or three streaming subscriptions to numb the existential dread.

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L-R: Jason Mendez/Getty Images; Michael Nagle/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Mergers and acquisitions

Somewhere along the line, the classic vow “for richer or for poorer” was replaced with “call me when your credit score hits 800.” Marriage is no longer the launchpad for adulthood, but the prize handed out at the end of an exhausting corporate obstacle course. You don’t get married to build a life any more; instead, you do it to signal to your peers that you have successfully conquered capitalism. What was once the beginning of a life is now a form of social proof.

We can thank Hollywood and Silicon Valley for this psychological castration. For decades, pop culture has glorified permanent adolescence and consequences-free swiping. Algorithms have transformed regular, middle-class existence into an agonizing, daily comparison against 20-year-old crypto-millionaires who rent private jets for 10 minutes to take a selfie. When every engagement announcement looks like a royal wedding funded by an oil cartel, an ordinary life feels like an insult.

The sickness runs deeper than mere vanity, though. We are also witnessing a strange strike among prime-age men who have voluntarily withdrawn from the workforce to master video games in permanently darkened rooms. Government handouts and cultural decay have combined to tell men that effort is for suckers. Why bother putting on a pair of pants and clocking in when you can just opt out entirely and vape in peace?

‘Know your worth’

Meanwhile, modern relationship advice reads like a venture capital prospectus. Young women are bombarded with articles treating courtship like a hostile corporate takeover. “Know your worth,” the influencers scream. “Never settle. Demand a partner who matches your tax bracket.” And if you find him, make sure he can cook, make you laugh, and respond to texts immediately.

It sounds empowering, but it’s actually a recipe for dying alone with 12 cats. A dependable plumber making a healthy living is discarded because he doesn’t match the lifestyle of a fake TikTok entrepreneur posing next to a Lamborghini he almost certainly doesn’t own. Reality cannot compete with a manufactured version of it.

The ultimate irony is thick enough to choke on. The richest, safest, most pampered generation in human history genuinely believes it is too destitute to commit to another human being. We’ve systematically dismantled every single rung of the societal ladder and are now standing around scratching our heads, wondering why the birth rate resembles a flatline on a hospital monitor.

Until young Americans recognize that a good marriage is built on character rather than curated luxury, churches will remain empty, dating apps will remain an endless purgatory, and cats will eventually inherit more apartments than children.

​Birth rate decline, Cultural decay, Dating apps, Institute for family studies, Marriage crisis, Marriage rates, Culture, Men and women, Wealth, Marriage story 

Steve Hemphill is the former CEO of a seven-figure tech company, lifelong cessationist, and now one of the most unusual ministers in America.

Hemphill tells BlazeTV host Steve Deace that his life changed after his father suddenly passed away of a heart attack, leaving behind an “ancient safe.” What he found was a sealed envelope addressed to him and his brother.

“It said, ‘If you boys find this envelope after I’m dead, do not open it. It is not important. Destroy this envelope without opening it, Dad.’ And it was dated about five months before he died very suddenly and unexpectedly,” he explains.

“So, we burned it without reading it. And I think about it every day.”

“I became very curious about heaven because of the envelope from Dad. It made me curious about what was in the envelope. But that also led to a curiosity about what’s eternity really like,” he explains.

As Hemphill began looking deeper into the Bible, he began to realize that spiritual warfare is real.

“If you don’t have the Holy Spirit, you got a demon spirit instead. In other words, only people with the Holy Spirit can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’” he says, recalling a run-in he had with a retired professor from Stanford.

The professor walked into a Burger King, saw Hemphill there reading the Bible in a booth, and began to say “some very strange things about the Bible.”

“So, I gently interrupted this guy and said, ‘Dr. Smith, let me ask you a question. Is Jesus Lord?’ This guy got so angry at that simple three-word question that he jumps up out of the booth and starts running circles around the Burger King dining room there, screaming at me at the top of is lungs, ‘No, who is Jesus? I don’t know who Jesus is. I’m wasting my time talking to you,’” he recalls.

“I looked up at him and said, ‘Sir, I’m going to pray for you that someday you can know Jesus as Lord.’ And that made him even angrier. He leaned into me, and he’s spitting through gritted teeth, and he shakes his finger right in my face,” he continues.

“He says, ‘Don’t you dare pray for me.’ And I don’t know why I did this because I’ve never done it before or since. I smiled and said, ‘I can pray for you right now. You can’t stop me.’ And he screamed and ran out of Burger King and slammed the door,” he adds.

“So, that was the story that turned the tide for me and began to open my eyes that there’s modern-day situations where demonic activity is still happening,”

This recognition of spiritual warfare eventually led to Hemphill using “stakes,” which refers to putting the word of God on evil land.

“My buddy was a Christian, and this guy he was friends with was not a Christian. And so, when I met the guy, I said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s your spiritual warfare problem?’ And he said, ‘I have demons on my property, and I’m getting ready to commit suicide,’” Hemphill tells Deace.

“I said, ‘Let’s take some tent stakes and write Bible verses on them and hammer them all the way in the ground on the four corners of your land where this is happening. Let’s read the verses out loud to honor God and pray and ask him to make all these bad things stop in your life and see what he does,’” he explains.

“The next week he became a Christian and wanted to be baptized. And that was just bizarre to me. It was hard for me to swallow,” he adds.

But when another woman came to him for help after having terrifying demonic dreams every night at 3 a.m., he tried the same thing. Her nightmares stopped.

“Next thing you know, they’re asking me to stake out this public school. And we did that, and all the problems went away there. The guy causing them died of a heart attack immediately, 30-year-old guy,” he explains. “I can’t make this stuff up.”

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​Baptism, Steve deace, Steve deace show, Steve hemphill, Demonic activity, The bible, Christianity, Spiritual warfare