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Before America had a Constitution, it had pulpits.

Pulpits that taught citizens how to think about authority, duty, and the proper limits of government. The ministers later associated with the “Black Robed Regiment” understood that biblical truth must step through the church door. They addressed public questions because they believed theology had consequences for all of life and that pastors had a responsibility not to comfort congregations but to form their biblical worldview.

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way.

For most of American history, pastors did not need permission from the state to speak about the moral and political questions confronting their people. They preached about slavery, war, temperance, elections, public officials, religious liberty, and national repentance because they understood the pulpit to be accountable first to God.

Restoring an old right

The modern expectation that pastors should carefully separate biblical teaching from anything deemed “political” would have been foreign to much of the American church that helped shape this country.

That context is important because the fight over the Johnson Amendment is often framed as though churches are seeking some new political privilege. We are not asking the government to give pastors a new right, but to stop restricting an old one.

The origins of the Johnson Amendment are revealing. In 1954, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson was facing a primary challenge from Dudley Dougherty, a wealthy young Texas politician whose fierce anti-communism appealed to supporters of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Dougherty was hardly a formidable opponent — Johnson defeated him by more than 40 points in the Democratic primary — but he had sympathizers in powerful conservative organizations, including the Committee for Constitutional Government and Facts Forum, a media operation established by Texas oil billionaire H.L. Hunt.

Johnson was particularly concerned about the Committee for Constitutional Government, which had circulated material promoting Dougherty. He asked his staff to investigate whether its activities violated election laws or threatened its federal tax exemption. The answer on the latter question was apparently no.

Johnson was undeterred. Having investigated whether existing law could be used against his political opponents, he now proposed changing the law itself. That July he introduced an amendment to the federal tax code barring tax-exempt charitable organizations from participating in political campaigns. It passed without debate. Churches, which had played no part in Johnson’s dispute, were covered by the new restriction.

Freeing the pulpit

There was no sweeping national debate about churches corrupting elections. There were no extensive hearings over whether the American pulpit had become dangerously partisan. Johnson claimed to be confronting communist nonprofit organizations, but churches had become a source of political opposition. The law was written broadly enough, encompassing churches; they were heavily affected by its enforcement and soon began receiving letters from the IRS. The restriction ultimately extended far beyond Johnson’s immediate political dispute, reaching into the pulpits of American churches for generations.

Today, the Johnson Amendment prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, including churches, from supporting or opposing candidates in political campaigns.

This restriction is at the center of the legal challenge by National Religious Broadcasters. Churches remain free to address public policy issues, including controversial ones, but pastors face restrictions when their speech crosses into supporting or opposing a political candidate. NRB seeks to protect the freedom of churches and their pastors to speak from the pulpit without jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.

The broader concern is what decades of uncertainty, legal caution, and fear of enforcement have produced inside churches themselves: a deep-seated culture of self-censorship.

‘Political’ … or biblical?

Critics often accuse pastors of turning biblical issues into political ones. In many cases, the sequence runs the other way. Politicians took questions involving abortion, marriage, sexuality, race, religious liberty, and justice and turned them into partisan battlegrounds.

These were biblical questions long before they were campaign issues.

Politics does not acquire ownership of a moral question merely because politicians begin arguing about it. Scripture had something to say about marriage, government, money, justice, and human dignity long before there were Republicans, Democrats, campaign platforms, or federal agencies. The church does not surrender those subjects when they appear on a ballot.

Perhaps pastors will stop being accused of bringing politics into the pulpit when politicians stop dragging biblical questions into politics.

That does not mean churches should become campaign headquarters. They should not. The pulpit should never become an appendage of either the Republican or Democratic parties. Biblical authority is diminished whenever Scripture is bent to serve political power.

But there is an opposite error: treating “nonpartisanship” as a reason for silence whenever Scripture touches a politically controversial subject.

A pastor should be free to preach biblical truth without compromise and apply it to the real-world questions confronting his congregation. If Scripture challenges the left on abortion, sexuality, family, or religious liberty, he should say so. If it challenges the right, he should say that too. The standard is not partisan usefulness. It is biblical fidelity.

That is why NRB entered the legal challenge to the Johnson Amendment.

The district court dismissed our case on jurisdictional grounds rather than reaching the merits of the constitutional claims. The case is now on appeal. NRB will continue fighting because the government should not stand between a pastor and his responsibility before God.

RELATED: What Fulton Sheen understood about fame that today’s Christian influencers don’t

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Courage required

But the legal fight only reaches so far.

The First Amendment can protect a pastor’s freedom. It cannot produce courage. A court can remove a restraint, but it cannot make a church recover confidence in the authority of Scripture. NRB can fight for the freedom of the pulpit. Pastors must decide whether they will use it.

That question grows more urgent because Christians are being formed every day by institutions that have no hesitation about preaching their own worldview. Social media, universities, corporations, entertainment, political movements, and influencers constantly catechize Americans about morality.

When churches avoid the same subjects because they have become politically controversial, they do not create neutrality. They simply leave the work of formation to everyone else.

America does not need a more partisan pulpit. It does need a freer and more courageous one.

We are fighting to restore an old right: that of pastors to open the Bible, preach the whole counsel of God, and speak to the life of the nation without first asking the government for permission.

​Black robed regiment, Constitution, First amendment, Hl hunt, Political campaigns, Religious liberty, Scripture, Theology, Johnson amendment, Lyndon johnson, Nrb, National religious broadcasters, Christian living, Lifestyle, Law, Faith 

They said the kids would be fine. Here’s the gay-parenting research that got buried.

A peer-reviewed study reported that children with married same-sex parents had more than four times the odds of reported emotional difficulties as kids with a married mom and dad.

There’s a lot of mischief being done very quietly in the weeds of what seems like respectable scientific studies.

Oh, wait. You never heard that? Yeah, I know you never heard that.

The research that produced this finding got buried in the academic literature. And today I’m going to show you how easy it was for that correction to escape public notice — and why it matters for real families like yours.

I suspect the pro-gay establishment hopes you don’t see this.

Meet Chris from Ohio

I want you to imagine somebody who really needs reliable answers.

Let’s imagine a 20-something young lady. I’ll call her Chris. Chris from Ohio.

Chris thinks of herself as bisexual or nonbinary. In her mind, she has a real choice between partnering and co-parenting with a person of the opposite sex or a person of the same sex.

Her decision-making is going to partly depend on what she thinks it would be like to be a mom with another woman versus being a mom with a man.

So let’s keep Chris in the back of our minds. And if you’re reading this because someone you love is in this situation, or because you’ve lived it yourself, I want you to know this article is for you.

The study behind the controversy

Now, back to the study. The study reporting that children with married same-sex parents had more than four times the odds of emotional difficulties compared with children of married opposite-sex parents. That doesn’t mean Chris’ own future children would be four times as likely to have problems, but it’s certainly a finding she might want to know about.

This whole research saga started with a paper published in 2016 in the peer-reviewed journal Demography that seemed to show the kids are all right with same-sex couples as parents.

Let’s call this Study No. 1.

The researchers expected the children of same-sex married couples would look pretty much the same as the children of opposite-sex married couples. And they found what they were looking for.

This study showed no statistically significant difference in emotional difficulties between kids raised by same-sex couples and kids raised by their married mom and dad. The researchers did report a disadvantage for children with married same-sex parents on a separate behavioral-problems measure, but the emotional-difficulties finding showed no significant difference.

But in 2017, one short year later, the very same researchers analyzed a corrected and expanded version of the same dataset and found the result I already mentioned: Children of same-sex married couples had more than four times the odds of emotional difficulties.

We’ll call this Study No. 3.

I’m going to show you exactly how this happened.

What the numbers actually say

Okay, so let’s look at some numbers. I’ll highlight which figures to look at and what they mean.

For Study No. 1, showing no differences, look at Table 5.

The researchers report what are called odds ratios. You use this method when you’re trying to compare how likely something is between two or more groups.

You start with a reference category, and all the other groups are compared to that reference category.

In this case, the reference category is children raised by different-sex married couples. In other words, kids raised by ordinary married moms and dads.

Now, if the odds ratio equals 1, that means the two groups have the same odds of the outcome.

In this case, the researchers wanted to say children raised by married couples are equally likely to have emotional difficulties whether their married parents happen to be the same sex or the opposite sex.

And that’s essentially what we see in the first line of Table 5. The estimated odds ratio is close to 1, with no statistically significant difference.

This is the no-differences result.

If, on the other hand, the odds ratio is greater than 1, that means the group has higher odds of emotional difficulties than the reference group.

So let’s look at the results the very same set of researchers found using the corrected and expanded data in Study No. 3. That would be Table 7.

Doing the math

Now, stay with me here, because what I’m about to show you is something I suspect the academic establishment hoped you would never notice.

Look at the column labeled emotional difficulties odds ratio. For kids raised by married same-sex couples, the odds ratio is 4.16.

That means the estimated odds of reported emotional difficulties were more than four times as high as for children of opposite-sex married couples.

Odds aren’t quite the same as probabilities, and the small sample means we should be cautious about exactly how much weight to put on that figure. But it’s a substantial change from the original no-differences result.

So now let’s remember Chris from Ohio for a moment.

She may have heard about studies like the first one, saying her potential kids would be fine whether she marries a man or a woman.

She probably didn’t hear too much about this correction. You would think she has a right to know just how fragile that no-differences result really was.

So how did the researchers get from no significant difference to more than four times the odds in under a year?

From no differences to twice the odds

Now, here’s where the Ruth Institute comes into play. We had a little role to play in the background.

If you guessed that there was a Study No. 2 between Study No. 1 and Study No. 3, you win the prize.

Study No. 3 actually came about after some back-and-forth with a critic.

This critic pointed out that the National Center for Health Statistics had issued an advisory about the dataset. Some of the data had been miscoded.

Specifically, the problem involved the recorded sex of married partners. Some opposite-sex married couples had been incorrectly classified as same-sex couples. Because genuinely same-sex married couples were such a small proportion of the population, even a relatively small number of miscoded records could seriously distort the findings.

The NCHS had advised researchers against using the affected survey years to analyze same-sex married couples. But Study No. 1 had included those years.

So the critic reclassified the data, excluding the problematic years. And his reclassification obliterated the original estimate showing no difference in emotional difficulties, although the replacement estimate remained statistically uncertain.

In fact, the children of same-sex married couples had approximately twice the estimated odds of emotional difficulties. The difference wasn’t statistically significant in that small sample, but it was a substantial change from the original estimate.

You can see the results in Table 3 of Study No. 2. The panel excluding the miscoded data shows the odds ratio for same-sex married couples is now about 2 instead of 1.

The author of Study No. 2 corrected what appears to have been an honest mistake. So fair enough.

This is how science is supposed to work: back and forth. Everybody’s work can improve from this type of give and take.

But still, let’s remember Chris from Ohio, trying to decide what to do with her life. Do you think she heard about this miscoded data?

Probably not.

The biological parenthood problem

Anyway, we still haven’t gotten to the statistics showing more than four times the odds of emotional problems.

This critic pointed out another problem in the original study, Study No. 1. The authors used biological parenthood as a control variable.

Now, wait a minute. Let’s think about this for a minute.

If the focus of the study is the difference between same-sex parents and opposite-sex parents, you really have to be careful about controlling for biological parenthood.

No child of a same-sex couple will have two biological parents in that couple.

So the variable for biological parenthood may be soaking up variation that is part and parcel of being a child with same-sex parents.

That’s the critic’s argument. Researchers may reasonably want to separate the effects of biological relatedness, family stability, and parental sex. But depending on the question they’re trying to answer, controlling for biological parenthood can also remove an important part of the difference they’re studying.

The author of Study No. 2 argued that the biological-parenthood variable should be removed and the analysis redone.

By taking out biological relatedness, the estimated association between living with married same-sex parents and emotional difficulties becomes a whole lot stronger than you originally would have thought.

This is exactly the sort of thing I mean when I talk about tricks with data. There’s a lot of mischief being done very quietly in the weeds of what seems like respectable scientific studies. And I suspect the academic establishment is hoping you’ll be too lazy to figure that out.

RELATED: The 3 failed promises of gay ‘marriage’

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Out of cite

Now, who was this mystery critic, you might ask? The critic whose name I haven’t yet mentioned?

The critic the authors referred to when they wrote, in their response, that they were conducting an analysis in response to commentary by Sullins?

Who is this mysterious Sullins person? It is none other than Father D. Paul Sullins, Ph.D., my colleague at the Ruth Institute.

Father Sullins has been a senior research associate with us since 2018. When he wrote this paper, he was still a sociology professor at the Catholic University of America.

But we’ll take a bit of credit, though, because we had the good sense to snag him when he retired.

Anyhow, notice something about the sentence referring to Father Sullins in the authors’ revised paper. It does not give the customary parenthetical citation with his name and the publication date of the article they’re talking about.

When I first saw this, I thought, “What?”

I scurried back to the references page looking for the full citation to a paper by Sullins. I was shocked to find that his paper, the one to which they’re responding, is not even listed in the references.

Well, that is not only bad science, that is bad manners.

How rude.

Anyway, at least Father Paul got them to redo their calculations. But if somebody wanted to put these papers side by side, the way we’ve done here, it would not be easy to do.

I’ll let you decide for yourself whether you think this is an oversight.

Unsettled science

The academic establishment is committed to the no-differences viewpoint.

You can see why I think so in that missing citation. You can see it in the fact that studies showing no differences get plenty of media airtime, while corrections and contrary findings stay quietly hidden in academic journals.

Those are facts readers deserve to know.

And that brings us back to Chris from Ohio.

Perhaps someone like Chris is reading this today. Perhaps someone reading knows somebody who learned from experience that same-sex parenting was not as easy as you had been led to believe.

I want to say to any of you in that situation: I am sorry. This should not have happened to you.

And I want you to know today that you’re probably not the only person going through this. The science about same-sex parenting is not nearly as settled as you’ve been led to believe.

Please share this article. You’ll be doing something the academic establishment too often fails to do. You’ll be giving Chris from Ohio the information she actually needs and deserves.

​Lifestyle, Gay marriage, Gay parenting, Family, Lgbt, Traditional marriage, The ruth institute, Christianity, Father paul sullins, Countering ‘pride’ 

Of the 350 million people living in America, more than 250 million use the world’s largest online marketplace. That marketplace is Amazon, and it has been keeping a file on each of them. A new report describes just how personal and damning Amazon’s dossiers can be.

The company builds highly complex customer profiles by analyzing your purchases. These profiles run the gamut, including inferences about customers’ ages, relationships, body types, clothing sizes, food preferences, and daily routines. For example, as Futurism noted, one customer who sought to identify what Amazon knew about her found that she reads Kindle books in the bathroom. Amazon was right. The question was how it knew. Another customer was described as having “no friends,” while a third, according to the Verge, found a comment suggesting her posterior was, shall we say, aesthetically unappealing.

Disclosure is the cost of doing business in 2026.

Decades ago, the average American could drive out to a general store and buy a hammer and nails. When all was said and done, all that fellow would have divulged was that he bought practical essentials with the cash he kept in his jeans. The fact that no one else knew any more about him than that was a happy byproduct of a system in which commerce and surveillance didn’t intersect the way they do now. Our grandfathers locked the door when they got home and drew the blinds. They knew that what happened in the house stayed in the house.

Those days are long gone.

When you purchase a bottle of vitamins, Amazon knows, or thinks it knows, what ails you. It sizes up your children by the books you buy them. Your Amazon account knows your shoe size. It knows what you were snacking on in the middle of the night last Tuesday, and it connects that with other purchases and extrapolates, building a picture of your life so intimate and complete that it amounts to a sort of digital twin, a simulacrum so adept at predicting your behavior that the company can nudge it in the directions of its choosing.

Some might suggest that this is nothing new. Companies have always tracked us. But what is new is how casually people agree to this arrangement. Yes, you provide Amazon with your credit or debit card number when you make a purchase. Of course. How else will you pay for that juicer you probably don’t need? Your street address, too, naturally. Someone has to plop it on your welcome mat. And that is fine; such disclosure is the cost of doing business in 2026, the price of admission to the modern marketplace. But Amazon goes much farther. Purchases of back-pain ointment can become evidence that you are slouchy, grumpy, and uncoordinated. Multiple orders of coffee beans might paint you as a lonely, possibly out-of-shape insomniac.

RELATED: Seattle votes to ban grocery ‘surveillance pricing’. Your data shouldn’t set your food bill.

Seattle votes to ban grocery ‘surveillance pricing’. Your data shouldn’t set your food bill. urbazon/Getty Images

Amazon is a monopoly, which means it wields a kind of power heretofore seen only in governments. It controls the flow of goods and services and the transmission of information. With this power comes responsibility, and by weaponizing such intimate data, Amazon can abuse it in the most irresponsible and unethical way.

Freedom used to mean having the power to act for yourself. Today, it must also mean being free from others’ judgments about you. We all have a basic, if implicit, right to control how much personal information others collect and how they use it. But to exercise that right, you must first know what they know about you. That means greater transparency, a fairer balance of information between companies and their customers, and a way to challenge institutions when they get things wrong. A woman purchasing coffee beans may not be an insomniac but instead live in a home with multiple people who drink multiple cups of coffee a day.

But Amazon, with its current harvesting and inference system, doesn’t care about nuance. A man purchasing “Mein Kampf” simply because he is interested in the evolution of one of the most evil historical figures ever to walk the face of the earth might find himself recast as a white supremacist with a penchant for goose-stepping. In the not-too-distant future, browsing alone could trigger pre-crime algorithms.

Thankfully, all is not lost. As Futurism reports, Amazon lets users review some of its guesses and questionable assumptions about them. To do so via desktop:

Go to Account & Lists, then Account. Scroll down and select the option to “manage your information,” then either the profile option or the personalization option. In the Amazon app, you can find this feature by following this particular route: Profile icon > Account > Shopping preferences > About you.Check the other options in that section too, in particular around privacy settings and advertising preferences, to make sure Amazon isn’t collecting and using information you don’t want it to use.

This won’t stop all personal information collection, and it may not delete all such data, but it can limit the extent of that process.

Ultimately, each individual must decide how much info he is comfortable sharing with Amazon and whether the benefits justify the trade-off. In other words, is free two-day shipping really worth sacrificing your privacy and basic dignity?

​Amazon, Tech 

Kighley Medrano was born and raised in the Mormon church but became an evangelical Christian after she married her husband. Today, she uses her platform to share her testimony of leaving the LDS church and to expose problems with Mormon theology by contrasting it with the biblical gospel.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Kighley told Allie Beth Stuckey that the religion of Mormonism has “satanic underpinnings” and that the angel Moroni — who, according to LSD faith, directed Joseph Smith to the golden plates — is a demon.

“In the Mormon temple … to receive your endowments, there is a video that everyone has to watch,” Kighley says, explaining that the video is about the fall of Adam and Eve.

At one point in the video, she says, Satan breaks the fourth wall and tells the audience to put on their “aprons,” which have “fig leaves” on them. Not only are Mormons “buried in their fig-leaf aprons,” which Kighley says is “undoing … the work of Christ,” but “the only time that you’re told to do anything in the temple is from Satan.”

On top of that, Mormonism has “re-erected the temple,” she says.

“There is a veil that is put back up, and there is a holy of holies. It’s called the celestial room, and that is where God’s spirit dwells,” Kighley tells Allie. “So, they’ve undone the work of Christ even in that.”

“Even though, yes, the word ‘Jesus’ is in the name, the undoing of the work of Christ is so evident throughout the Mormon religion and teachings,” she adds, calling it “satanic.”

The revelation that caused “an immediate paradigm shift” for Kighley, however, was when she was taught how the Bible describes Satan.

While she was still part of the Mormon faith, Kighley’s daughter befriended another girl, whose mother had left the LDS church for Christianity. One day while their daughters played, they had a deep discussion over their differing faiths.

“I said, ‘OK, so then what about, “By your fruits you will know them”? Generally, the Mormon church produces good, moral families; good, moral children. What about that? What about the fruits?’” Kighley recounts.

“And she said, ‘I agree that generally the Mormon church produces good, moral families and children, and it looks really good on the outside, but Satan comes dressed as an angel of light.’”

Kighley says that at the time of this conversation, she was unaware that this was verbatim from Scripture.

“When she said that, immediately the angel Moroni popped into my brain, and it was like just the lights flipped on, scales fell from my eyes, and an immediate paradigm shift happened,” she says. “And I knew that the angel Moroni was a demon.”

To hear more of Allie and Kighley’s conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Allie beth stuckey, Latter day saints, Christianity, Blazetv show 

Driven primarily by Halloween, October is the peak month for horror movie viewership. BlazeTV hosts Stu Burguiere and Dave Landau both enjoy a good spooky flick, especially during pumpkin season.

On this episode of “Stu and Dave Do America,” the duo along with special guest and horror movie expert Angela Boggs rank their top five horror movies in descending order.

Dave’s list:

Dave, who briefly studied film in college, says the following are his favorite horror movies based on what he personally enjoys watching.

5. John Carpenter’s 1982 classic “The Thing,” starring Kurt Russell. The film follows a group of researchers at an isolated Antarctic station who encounter a shape-shifting alien that perfectly imitates living organisms, forcing them into paranoia as they try to discern who is still human.

4. “The Cabin in the Woods” (2011), directed by Drew Goddard, starring Chris Hemsworth. The plot revolves around five college friends who spend a weekend at a remote cabin, only to discover that they’re being manipulated as part of a much larger, ritualistic horror scenario.

3. “Evil Dead II” — the second film in the franchise — directed by Sam Raimi in 1987, starring Bruce Campbell as Ash Williams. Williams, the central character throughout the original trilogy, returns in this film to face even more extreme Deadite horrors, including a possession of his own hand.

2. “American Psycho” (2000), directed by Mary Harron, starring Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, and Reese Witherspoon. The plot centers on a wealthy, status-obsessed Wall Street banker who secretly leads a double life as a serial killer, committing increasingly violent murders while maintaining a perfect outward image.

1. “The Shining” (1980), directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. This iconic horror film follows the Torrance family as they spend the winter as caretakers of an isolated hotel. The father slowly descends into madness under the influence of the hotel’s dark supernatural forces.

Stu’s list:

While Stu isn’t a horror movie megafan like Dave and Angela, he enjoys the occasional scary film, including:

5. The original 1996 “Scream” movie directed by Wes Craven. The film, which kicked off a long-running franchise, follows a masked killer as he terrorizes the teenagers of a small town by phoning them with horror-movie trivia questions before attacking.

4. “Signs” (2002), written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. It centers on a former priest and his family living on a rural farm who discover that the mysterious crop circles in their cornfield are actually signs of an extraterrestrial invasion.

3. “Misery” (1990), directed by Rob Reiner, starring James Caan and Kathy Bates. Based on the Stephen King novel, the film is about a famous novelist who is rescued from a car crash by his number-one fan; she then holds him captive in her remote home and forces him to rewrite his latest book to her satisfaction.

2. The original 1978 “Halloween” film, directed by John Carpenter and starring Jamie Lee Curtis. The movie, which launched a major long-running franchise, introduces escaped mental patient Michael Meyers, who returns to his hometown on Halloween night and begins stalking and killing babysitters, while his psychiatrist races to stop him.

1. “Halloween 3: Season of the Witch” (1982) — the third installment in the series — directed by Tommy Lee Wallace, starring Tom Atkins. Famous for being the outlier in the series, this film does not include the iconic Meyers and instead follows a doctor as he investigates a series of murders linked to a toy company that plans to kill children across America using cursed Halloween masks triggered by a TV commercial.

Angela’s list:

Angela, host of “Angela Does Horror,” where she posts horror reviews, watch-alongs, recommendations, and discussions, is a horror film superfan. Her top five list, she says, is intentionally “quirky and different” but still gets her “in the Halloween spirit every year.”

5. “1408” (2007) directed by Mikael Håfström, starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson. The film follows a skeptical author who debunks haunted hotels; he checks into the infamous room 1408 at a New York hotel and is forced to confront genuine supernatural terror.

4. Indie horror film “Starry Eyes” (2014), which had a limited U.S. theatrical release. The plot revolves around an aspiring actress in Los Angeles who makes a dark deal with a sinister film production company in exchange for the fame she’s desperate to achieve.

3. “Unfriended: Dark Web” (2018), written and directed by Stephen Susco. The low-budget studio horror, which got a theatrical release, follows a group of friends on a video chat as they discover that one of them has stolen a laptop connected to the dark web. The original owners begin systematically targeting and killing them while they watch helplessly.

2. “Late Night with the Devil” (2023), directed by Colin Cairnes and Cameron Cairnes. This independent film that was also theatrically released is a found-footage-style film revolving around a struggling late-night talk show host in 1977, who tries to boost his ratings with a live Halloween special featuring a possessed girl, only for the broadcast to unleash real demonic forces on air.

1. “As Above, So Below” (2014), directed by John Erick Dowdle. Presented in found-footage style, the film takes place in the catacombs of Paris, as a team of explorers searching for the philosopher’s stone becomes trapped in a nightmarish labyrinth where their personal sins and fears are turned against them.

To hear the panel go into depth about their top horror picks, check out the episode above.

Want more from Stu and Dave?

To enjoy more of Stu and Dave’s lethal blend of wit, humor, and insightful commentary subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Dave landau, Halloween, Horror, Stu burguiere, Blazetv show 

My younger brother, Hamraz, was arrested in Iran at 16. Two years later, the Islamic regime executed him. His death filled me with anger and a desire for revenge. But as I studied the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenged me to love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me.

God transformed my hatred into love. Rather than seek revenge against Muslims, I devoted my life to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with them.

Love your Muslim neighbors. Befriend them, serve them, pray for them, and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ.

I love Muslims. And I love America. That is precisely why I am sounding the alarm.

I came to this country from Iran and discovered freedoms that religious tyranny denies. I know what it means to lose those freedoms. Americans who have never lived under such a regime should not assume their liberties will always be secure.

My purpose is to warn, not to stir hatred or violence. I want Americans to recognize the danger of political movements that seek to replace constitutional government with religious rule — and to confront that danger with truth, courage, and love.

Many Americans think of Islam exclusively as a religion. Historically, it has also supplied models for political authority and law. Muhammad was a religious prophet, a political leader, and a military commander. His followers in Mecca initially had little political power. In Medina, beginning in the 7th century, he governed a community and led military campaigns. His successors extended Islamic rule across vast territories.

For 1,400 years, movements seeking Islamic government have drawn upon that history: organize believers, build influence, gain power, and govern according to their interpretation of Islamic law.

Not all Muslims take the Quran’s commands and Muhammad’s example equally seriously. Many nominal Muslims love freedom and reject extremism. But I believe those who follow those teachings most closely see the extension of Islamic political rule as a religious duty. That is the ambition I mean when I warn of world domination.

The danger is not confined to terrorism. A movement can pursue religious authoritarianism through political institutions as well as violence. Its leaders may use freedoms of speech, worship, and political participation while seeking power to deny those freedoms to others.

RELATED: Marco Rubio’s spicy Greece speech left out the most crucial ingredient

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

I watched a version of that tragedy unfold in Iran. Before the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promised liberty and justice. Many Iranians believed him. After the revolution, his regime imposed religious law, crushed dissent, persecuted minorities, and executed political opponents. My brother was among the dead.

Judge a political movement by more than its promises before it gains power. Examine its history, its stated aims, and what it intends to do after winning.

Europe offers warnings of its own. Across Europe, Islamist movements have sought greater political and cultural influence. In some communities, disputes over religious arbitration, women’s rights, freedom of expression, and the application of Islamic law have raised serious concerns.

America must learn from these experiences.

Political influence is not always pursued through violence. It can also develop gradually through organized, long-term efforts to influence schools, local governments, public institutions, and, ultimately, national policy.

Some Islamist movements seek to use the freedoms of democracy — free speech, religious liberty, and political participation — to gain influence while advocating systems that would deny those same freedoms to others.

Participating in civic life is every American’s constitutional right, including the right of Muslim Americans. But when any movement seeks political power for the purpose of imposing religious law on others, Americans must recognize the threat.

We must never confuse religious freedom with permission to undermine the freedoms of others.

America’s openness, tolerance, and goodwill are tremendous strengths. But without knowledge and vigilance, these virtues can be exploited by movements that do not share our commitment to liberty.

RELATED: Read dangerously — but please, just read

Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu/Getty Images

I often say that I worry more about America’s future than Iran’s. Millions of Iranians know firsthand what religious authoritarianism can do. Too many Americans know it only as a distant subject in a history book.

That concern led me and other Iranian-Americans to produce “The Great American Conflict,” a documentary examining political Islam and what its ambitions could mean for this country.

My appeal is simple: Wake up. Study the history. Look closely at organizations seeking power in your community. Attend meetings, participate in elections, serve on school boards and city councils, and hold elected officials to the Constitution. Defend religious liberty, free speech, and equal rights for everyone.

Above all, act from conviction and love, never hatred or fear.

Love your Muslim neighbors. Befriend them, serve them, pray for them, and share with them the good news of Jesus Christ. I sometimes call myself Islamophilic rather than Islamophobic. I do not embrace Islamic teachings. I love Muslim people.

My brother’s execution taught me the terrible cost of religious tyranny. Jesus taught me that hatred cannot answer hatred. We can love Muslims wholeheartedly and defend America’s constitutional freedoms courageously.

The time to do both is now, while we still have the freedom to do so.

​Opinion & analysis, Iran, Islam, Islamophobia, Christianity, Ayatollah, Love, Muslims, Europe, America, Warning 

Hours before trial was set to begin last month, the Federal Trade Commission and five state attorneys general settled their antitrust case against Zillow and Redfin. While this was a major success, and the FTC should be proud, there is still more to be done.

More than 30% of American households rent. For most of them, the search begins and often ends inside one company’s ecosystem, which is a major violation of antitrust principles and laws.

The solution does not actually touch the cost of rent for average people.

To be clear, the government was able to achieve much. In a $100 million deal, Zillow had paid Redfin to shut down its multifamily rental-advertising business, transfer its customers and salesforce, and stay out of the market for as long as nine years. That deal is now dead. Instead, Redfin will have to restart its former business within six months and display Zillow’s listings under a partnership that will continue through at least 2030.

This remedy is superior to potential alternatives, such as a fine, which often does not actually solve the problem. Gigantic monopolies can usually absorb these fines and continue to violate antitrust law. Requiring actual change goes a long way toward solving the problem.

This was, to be clear, a rather easy antitrust case. The Zillow-Redfin deal was a blatant violation of the core principles of antitrust. The companies literally signed an agreement not to compete, with a nine-figure bribe thrown in.

The FTC was also not alone in its demands against Zillow and Redfin. Virginia, Connecticut, New York, Washington, and Arizona all joined in. After securing the required changes, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson hailed the result as a critical part of the Trump administration’s housing agenda.

This last framing, however, is a problematic framing for supporters of antitrust. The issue only dealt with property managers as it concerned postings for renting. The solution does not actually touch the cost of rent for average people. Essentially, a housing-advertising case is being sold as a housing-affordability case.

Consider what the settlement leaves standing.

Zillow still operates Zillow Rentals, Trulia, and HotPads. Restoring Redfin is a major success, but eliminating the deal does not solve the issue because there is so much more to do.

Even worse, Zillow’s dominance extends beyond rental listings into the homebuying transaction itself through alleged “tying” tactics. In ongoing class action antitrust litigation against Zillow, plaintiffs allege that Zillow leverages its monopoly over buyer leads to force real estate agents into steering clients toward Zillow Home Loans. By tying access to critical consumer leads to whether an agent pressures clients to use Zillow’s lending arm, the platform squeezes independent lenders out of the market and deprives buyers of competitive mortgage rates.

RELATED: The GOP can’t blame Biden forever for pain at the pump

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Then there is Redfin itself, which is owned by Rocket Companies. Rocket Companies also owns Mr. Cooper, one of the country’s largest mortgage servicers, another potential antitrust violation. This sketchy alliance has already raised the ire of some in Congress.

This is not to say that the FTC was wrong to make this settlement. It’s only to say that the job is not yet finished.

Because yes, renters may eventually pay a little less than they do now, as the trickle-down effect occurs. But that would take a long time and is the most indirect way possible to lower rent or limit increases.

There are three ways the federal government can build on its success.

First, use its 6(b) (of the FTC Act) authority to study the rental listing market as a whole: the pricing, exclusivity arrangements, syndication terms, and leverage, including illegal tying mechanisms between lead generation and home financing.

Second, the agency should make clear that trading preferential access for exclusivity should not be automatically safe simply because no money changed hands. What Zillow and Redfin did would have been illegal even if Zillow had not bribed Redfin.

Finally, Congress and state regulators should pay attention to what unfolds, particularly as 2030 gets closer. Zillow and Redfin are going to use the next four years to figure out how they can legally reconstruct their partnership; it is up to elected officials and regulators to keep them from being successful.

The FTC started off strong, but still has a long way to go. Over the next few years, it is critical that the agency turn its sights toward anti-competitive tying and finish the fight for housing affordability.

​Class action, Federal government, Housing affordability, Ftc, Zillow, Redfin, Renting, Housing market, Virginia, New york, Trulia, Hotpads, Monopoly, Mr cooper, Rocket companies, Congress, 2030, Opinion & analysis 

Florida police investigating a mass shooting threat online determined that a teenage girl had tried to frame her ex-boyfriend to get him in trouble.

Officials at Riverview High School were alerted to the mass shooting threat via an email on Wednesday that included a screenshot of an Instagram post, according to police.

‘It doesn’t matter if it’s a joke, it doesn’t matter if it’s from AI, it doesn’t matter if you’re mad, and it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to pin it on someone else. You’re going to face the consequences.’

Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies responded and found that the post appeared to come from a male student who attended the school.

After police interviewed the male student, they determined the post did not come from him but was actually created by his ex-girlfriend.

The 15-year-old was a former student at the high school and had made the hoax image with the use of artificial intelligence, according to police.

When they interviewed her, she admitted to sending the false screenshot to the school administrators.

The girl was charged with written or electronic threat to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism and two other charges related to the threat.

RELATED: Family says Alabama woman was kidnapped after being ‘lured’ by toddler on side of a highway, but skeptics are crying hoax

“Threatening a school is a felony in Hillsborough County. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a joke, it doesn’t matter if it’s from AI, it doesn’t matter if you’re mad, and it doesn’t matter if you’re trying to pin it on someone else. You’re going to face the consequences,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office chief communications officer Amanda Granit.

Retired Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Rich Kolko said people falsely believe they won’t get prosecuted for online behavior.

“People sit at home, they’re sitting at their desk, and they feel they have this keyboard anonymity,” Kolko said to WFLA-TV.

“They think nobody can find them or nobody’s going to bother them. They’re just playing on their computer; it’s no big deal. Well, as this young lady learned and as too many other people have learned, it is a big deal,” he added.

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​Artificial intelligence, Federal bureau of investigation, Mass shooting, Crime 

If you drive at night, you know the problem. An SUV approaches from the opposite direction, and suddenly its headlights hit you like a spotlight. You squint, look toward the edge of the road, and hope you can still see your lane. If a lifted pickup is riding behind you, your mirrors can become another source of blinding glare.

When you cannot see clearly behind the wheel, that is more than an annoyance. It is a safety concern.

Are American drivers benefiting from available lighting technology, or are regulatory differences making it harder and more expensive to bring that technology to market?

Now the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is preparing to modernize federal vehicle lighting standards after years of complaints about headlight glare. Announced October 6, the rulemaking effort will examine LED lighting, automatic high beams, headlamp height and aim, and other visibility issues affecting drivers.

If headlight technology has advanced so dramatically, why are the rules governing it still struggling to keep up?

Glaring problem

America’s minimum and maximum headlight brightness standards have not changed since 1997. Since then, vehicles have gained advanced safety systems, cameras, and increasingly sophisticated lighting technology. Yet the federal rules governing headlights have struggled to keep pace.

Not every LED headlight is dangerous, and not every complaint proves a vehicle violates federal standards. But headlight design, vehicle height, and improper aim can affect how much light reaches another driver’s eyes. The growing popularity of taller trucks and SUVs makes the problem especially noticeable to people driving lower vehicles.

Drivers should not have to choose between seeing the road and being able to look at it without being blinded. Automakers have spent years promoting smarter vehicle technology. It is reasonable to ask why headlights cannot do a better job of illuminating the road without compromising visibility for everyone else.

Blind spot

In 2022, the NHTSA authorized adaptive driving beam headlights, technology designed to adjust portions of the high-beam pattern to reduce glare for other drivers while maintaining illumination elsewhere on the road.

The concept is straightforward. Instead of simply switching between high and low beams, the system can modify where the light shines around other vehicles. That can help drivers see more of the road without directing the full beam into someone else’s eyes.

But authorization did not lead to widespread adoption. U.S. requirements differed from those used in other markets, and systems available overseas did not automatically qualify for American roads. Those differences have slowed the introduction of adaptive headlights, which have been common in Europe for more than a decade.

Are American drivers benefiting from available lighting technology, or are regulatory differences making it harder and more expensive to bring that technology to market?

Safety standards matter, but regulations should solve problems, not create unnecessary obstacles to practical solutions. NHTSA needs to explain what it learned from the 2022 decision and how its new rules will avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Safety first

Blindingly bright headlights are certainly annoying, but are they dangerous?

A 2025 study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety suggests that the danger may be overstated. Examining crash reports from 11 states between 2015 and 2023, researchers found that glare was cited as a contributing factor in just one or two out of every 1,000 nighttime crashes. That rate remained essentially unchanged over the nine-year period.

In fact, headlights have become considerably safer by several measures. In 2016, just one of more than 80 headlight systems tested by IIHS earned a good rating. By 2025, roughly half did. And the share producing excessive glare fell from 21% in 2017 to just 3% in 2025.

Better illumination has also been associated with fewer crashes. An earlier IIHS study found that vehicles with good-rated headlights had 19% fewer nighttime single-vehicle crashes and 23% fewer nighttime pedestrian crashes than vehicles with poorly rated headlights.

But IIHS acknowledges that crash reports cannot capture every instance of dangerous glare. The vehicles producing it often aren’t involved in the resulting accidents, making it difficult to determine exactly what caused the problem.

Whatever the crash statistics show, drivers clearly aren’t happy. A 2026 AAA survey of 1,092 American adults found that 60% considered headlight glare a problem, while 73% of those affected believed it had gotten worse over the previous decade.

Those responses are not proof that glare is causing more crashes, but they demonstrate that the concern is widespread.

Both sets of findings belong in the discussion. Regulators should measure real-world safety outcomes while investigating why so many drivers report the same problem. Dismissing those complaints is no more responsible than claiming every bright headlight is unsafe.

RELATED: Volkswagen bet big on EVs. Now it’s making room for gas-powered SUVs.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Bright future?

NHTSA’s review should focus on measurable results. Can headlights illuminate the road effectively without creating excessive glare? Are lamps properly aimed? Do vehicle height and lighting design create predictable problems for other drivers? Can adaptive systems be tested consistently and approved without unnecessary barriers?

Automakers, safety researchers, lighting experts, and drivers should have a voice in developing standards that manufacturers can meet and regulators can enforce.

Drivers can help, too. Dirty windshields, damaged lamps, improper headlight aim, and unsuitable aftermarket lighting can make visibility worse. But consumers cannot fix outdated federal standards on their own.

The goal should not be to make headlights weaker. It should be to make them smarter, more effective, and less likely to blind other road users.

Washington now has another opportunity to modernize rules that have fallen behind automotive technology. The question is whether regulators will deliver sensible standards that improve visibility or create another complicated process that leaves drivers facing the same problem.

What do you think? Are today’s headlights dangerously bright, or is the problem being overstated? And should automakers be required to adopt smarter lighting technology when it can reduce glare without sacrificing visibility?

​Adaptive headlights, Headlight glare, Led technology, Safety systems, Smart lighting technology, High beams, Driving, Auto industry, Highway safety, Lifestyle, Automotive 

On October 10 at Share the Arrows — Allie Beth Stuckey’s annual Christian women’s conference — the BlazeTV host and soon-to-be mother of four announced a project she and her husband have been working on since early last year: Ana Kate, a pro-life cycle, pregnancy, and postpartum tracking app.

But this project isn’t just about creating a conservative Christian alternative to the plethora of cycle and pregnancy tracking apps out there. It’s also about countering the evil perpetuated by those secular apps.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie shared the why behind Ana Kate by exposing how most popular cycle and pregnancy tracking apps boldly support abortion.

Allie begins by sharing a story from one of her friends who used the cycle tracking app called Natural Cycles. When she noted in the app that her last pregnancy was “unexpected,” she was suddenly inundated with “ads for abortion centers on Snapchat.”

“I do not know if Natural Cycles is selling that kind of data to those entities that are then selling that data to places like Planned Parenthood and abortion clinics to send you advertisements. … I do know, based on what Natural Cycles does say on their app, that they are pro-abortion,” says Allie.

“They have articles promoting abortion, directing its users to Planned Parenthood for abortions, and linking directly to their site.”

Another popular cycle and pregnancy tracking app is Flo. Allie notes that according to the app site, “being able to access a safe abortion is a crucial part of health care.”

“Abortion is not health care because it is killing the life of a child,” she says.

Ovia is another cycle/pregnancy tracker used by millions of women.

“Ovia has an entire abortion section in its reproductive health library. Current articles include ‘What is a medical abortion and how to access one’ and ‘Preparing for pregnancy in states with abortion bans and restrictions,’” says Allie.

“Its post-abortion guide tells readers what emotions to expect after an abortion. It can also include, they say, immense relief,” she adds.

While the Euki cycle tracking app does include a pregnancy tracker, it nonetheless has information about abortion.

“They have a built-in abortion provider search,” says Allie, comparing the app to Ana Kate, which has “a pro-life practitioner directory search.”

Clue is yet another cycle tracking app that supports abortion.

“Clue was very against the overturning of Roe v. Wade. They said, ‘At Clue, we strongly believe that the very personal decision to end a pregnancy should be made in the context of legal, regulated healthcare, with shame or fear of prosecution,”’ says Allie.

She explains that Flo also responded to the Dobbs decision by “launching an Anonymous Mode,” allowing users to use the app without linking their names, emails, IP addresses, or other identifiers to their health data.

“So they’re trying to protect you from the big bad government, who wants to protect these babies inside the womb,” Allie says.

“Now, this is all opposed to Ana Kate,” she explains.

“Our tagline is ‘For women. For life.’ … We are for women in that we are for women. We exist for women. And we are for life. We are for the life of a woman, but we are also advocates for [life],” Allie shares.

“We believe that all babies, no matter the circumstances surrounding their conception, no matter their age, no matter their size, are fully made in God’s image and should be protected fully … and we are not ashamed of that.”

To hear more about Ana Kate, check out the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Allie beth stuckey, Planned parenthood, Abortion, Blazetv show 

Numerous politicians reported receiving letters with a suspicious substance on Friday, including Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service are investigating numerous letters that were sent to state election officials and congressional offices, according to a spokesperson for the USPIS.

‘Political violence has no place in our democracy, and we hope those who perpetrated this crime are brought to justice.’

“Like has happened across the country, my Minnesota office was sent a letter containing a suspicious substance, and we were promptly notified by the Capitol Police and postal inspectors,” Klobuchar wrote in a statement on social media. “Thanks to the postal workers and investigators who identified and intercepted it, no one in our office was in immediate danger.”

A similar letter was sent to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer but was intercepted by law enforcement officials.

Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota said his Sioux Falls office also received the suspicious letter.

“Our Sioux Falls office will be closed for the remainder of the day as SFPD continues to investigate and will reopen for normal hours on Monday morning,” he wrote. “This situation is deeply concerning and follows a trend of intimidating tactics that impact our team members. This has no place in our nation. America is better than this.”

He posted an image showing that the return address read “DSA,” which could stand for the Democratic Socialists of America.

Democratic Rep. Hillary Scholten of Michigan said her letter also read “DSA” and contained an “unidentified white power.”

“Today I learned that my office was the intended recipient of a suspicious letter containing an unidentified substance in what appears to be a deliberate attempt to cause harm to me and my staff,” wrote Rep. Analilia Mejia, a Democrat from New Jersey.

Others who reported receiving the threatening letters include Democratic Rep. Sarah Elfreth of Maryland, Democratic Rep. Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York, and Florida Democratic Reps. Maxwell Frost and Darren Soto.

“Political violence has no place in our democracy, and we hope those who perpetrated this crime are brought to justice,” Soto said on social media.

RELATED: Hundreds of threatening letters containing white powder sent to GOP lawmakers in states that passed laws unfavorable to LGBT activists

“We are committed to protecting our nation’s election officials from threatening and dangerous mail. Any threat or attack on an election official is unacceptable,” said USPIS deputy chief inspector Brendan Donahue.

“Our partners, including the FBI and we at the Postal Inspection Service, will bring all of our resources to bear on these investigations,” he added.

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​Democratic socialists of america, Political violence, Chuck schumer, Democrats, Politics 

A Fox News Digital reporter got a sharp rebuke from the husband of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) when asked about her whereabouts.

The reporter challenged Tim Mynett to comment on rumors that Omar fled the country after her home was raided Monday for an investigation into alleged immigration fraud.

‘My wife came here when she was 12 years old as a child war refugee. … No concerns.’

Mynett was seen walking the couple’s dog Teddy on Wednesday, but he refused to answer the reporter’s question.

“There are rumors that the congresswoman left the country. Is that true?” the reporter asked.

“You guys are annoying the hell out of all the neighbors around here, man,” Mynett replied.

“I just wanted to get your response to everything that’s been going on, that’s all, and what the president’s saying about the net worth and the investigation,” the reporter said. “Just giving you a chance to respond.”

Video of the interaction was posted to social media.

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social the accusations related to financial disclosure discrepancies that Omar had filed. On Tuesday, District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro told Fox News that her office was investigating the financial allegations of malfeasance.

Omar has not made any public appearances since the targeted raid by Homeland Security Investigations on Monday, prompting some to speculate that she fled the country.

Mynett previously defended Omar from allegations that she married her brother in order to obtain immigration status.

“My wife came here when she was 12 years old as a child war refugee,” he told Fox News Digital on Tuesday. “No concerns.”

RELATED: MS Now reporter tries to cover for Ilhan Omar — and accidentally makes the case for mass deportation

Omar responded to the raid via her social media account, where she accused the president of abusing his office to attack his political opponents.

“I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement,” she wrote Monday.

“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns,” she added. “This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”

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​Homeland security investigations, Immigration, Ilhan omar, Politics 

An Illinois man allegedly pretended to threaten to shoot a group of Muslim women and allegedly made derogatory remarks before getting arrested by police.

One of the women said she was trying to enter the park at Lake Opeka in Des Plaines when a man confronted her and insulted her, a police report said.

The police report said he told the women to leave the US and demanded one woman remove her face covering.

He tried to get between her and the park, but she walked around him and joined the group, Des Plaines police said.

The man approached the group at the playground and reached for his waistband to make it appear as if he had a weapon, police claimed. He allegedly pointed at them as though he had a gun and threatened to shoot the women.

“[He] told the women that they looked like Muslim ‘monkeys’ and ‘ninjas’ and that they needed to leave the country,” the police report stated.

The police report noted that the women were wearing hijabs and long sleeves at the time. The police report said he told the women to leave the U.S. and demanded one woman remove her face covering.

Police later identified the man as 44-year-old Matthew R. Kindle, and he was arrested after they witnessed him yelling at another person.

He allegedly made comments referring to “white power” and allegedly made more derogatory comments about the women while he was detained. According to the report, Kindle identified himself as a white Christian and claimed to be half German and half Italian.

Kindle also claimed to police that “a group of women approached him and made a derogatory comment towards him,” the police report said.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office approved a slew of charges against Kindle that included three felony counts of disorderly conduct/hate crime and three felony counts of aggravated assault/hate crime.

He was also charged with misdemeanor counts that included aggravated assault, disorderly conduct, and resisting a peace officer.

Kindle had previously been charged for domestic battery in 2019 after allegedly beating and kicking a woman.

RELATED: VIDEO: White woman accuses ‘brown’ man of sex trafficking his 6-year-old daughter — gets arrested for hate crime, police say

simpson33/Getty Images

The Council on American-Islamic Relations applauded the hate crime charges.

“No one should ever have to fear for their safety, let alone face threats of gun violence and white supremacist bigotry, while simply walking or spending time in a public community park,” reads the statement from CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab.

“Law enforcement have a duty to take action against hate with a swift response and pursue appropriate felony hate crime charges in this alarming case,” he added. “Bigotry-fueled harassment targeting women based on their faith and appearance is a direct threat to the safety and fabric of our communities. We stand in full solidarity with the victims and will continue monitoring this case to ensure that justice is fully served.”

State Rep. Justin Cochran, a Democrat, called the incident “sickening” and addressed the alleged victims, according to Journal & Topics.

“I will say this to my neighbors directly: You belong here,” he said. “That is your park, this is your city, your district as much as it is anyone’s.”

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​Hate crime, Illinois, White power, Muslim, Council on american islamic relations, Politics 

In a recent appearance on Keke Palmer’s podcast, Kamala Harris explained away her chilling laugh as an endearing family trait, before leaving the door wide open to yet another presidential campaign.

“I’m aware of the, whatever the memes are about, you know, my laugh. Well, look, I was raised in a family that included very powerful women who laughed from their bellies,” Kamala said.

“And powerful, I mean, they were powerful in their space. They were powerful in their family and their community, not necessarily titles and money. But you understand my point,” she continued, as Palmer nodded.

“And they would sit around the kitchen table with their coffee, laughing loud laughs, and that’s how I laugh. And the people that I respected laugh the same way,” she cackled.

Kamala continued, “And everybody else, you know what they can do,” before pivoting to discuss her “joy.”

“Those who try to take your joy are trying to make you weak. And that’s where my fight comes in. I know what you’re trying to do,” she added.

“What do we try to do?” BlazeTV host Pat Gray asks, genuinely confused.

Jeff Fisher notes that following Kamala’s mini-monologue on her laugh, Palmer responded to her that she was “so brave.”

“She grabbed a Kleenex and everything,” he adds.

But laughter isn’t all the pair discussed. In a follow-up clip, Palmer asked Kamala if she’ll be running for president in 2028.

Kamala laughed maniacally before answering, “I haven’t decided.”

Gray doesn’t believe her, commenting, “What a liar.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind she’s going to run,” he adds.

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​Kamala harris, Keke palmer, Pat gray, 2028, Blazetv show 

President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters at the White House that the armed individual who took down the deadly Oregon elementary school shooter the previous day “was a great hero,” CNN reported.

“Well, I’ll tell you what. There was a great hero, and it could have been — as bad as it was, we had a great hero that went in and did the business,” Trump said. “He took care of business.”

‘He is not seeking recognition, but instead wishes to express his gratitude to the first responders, school personnel, and community for the outpouring of love and support.’

Trump added: “And thank God we had him; otherwise it would have been much worse. It’s a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it.”

Oregon Live said a parent of a student or students at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend pursued the 16-year-old shooter inside the school Thursday afternoon after seeing him blast through locked doors with a long gun — and the parent “engaged” and killed the suspect just before police entered the school.

State and local officials credited the parent’s actions with preventing further loss of life, the outlet said.

One source told Fox News that the bystander “definitely prevented more deaths.” Federal law enforcement sources added to Fox News that the bystander has a concealed carry permit.

“Looks like the shooter has been neutralized — possibly shot by a father at the school,” emergency dispatchers said in Broadcastify audio, the New York Post reported.

RELATED: Teenager fatally shoots 3 children, teacher at Oregon elementary school before parent shoots gunman dead, police say

CBS News said the family of the man who took down the shooter issued a statement Friday identifying him as Kaylub Giamanco, a Bend resident with two daughters who attend Silver Rail Elementary School.

“He is not seeking recognition, but instead wishes to express his gratitude to the first responders, school personnel, and community for the outpouring of love and support,” the family said, according to CBS News.

Police said three children — ages 5, 8, and 11 — were fatally shot at the school along with a teacher, Oregon Live reported, adding that a 7-year-old student and a 54-year-old teacher were critically injured and taken to St. Charles Medical Center for treatment.

The teenage gunman has been identified as John Griffin Jr. III, according to CBS News, citing two law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.

The attacker used a shotgun his mother purchased, CBS News added, citing law enforcement sources.

A motive for the attack has not been provided, the news network reported, adding that the suspect was from Bend, but police have not said if he had a connection to the school.

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​Donald trump, Parent, 2nd amendment, Oregon, Fatal shootings, Good guy with a gun, Crime 

The corporate media are lining up once more to harangue the fans of Chick-fil-A, implying that they are homophobic for eating chicken sandwiches.

The occasion for this latest effort is the first broadcast interview with the company’s CEO, in which he talks about how his Christian faith guides the mission of the chicken sandwich company.

‘They’re welcome to come eat with us. We’d love to give them a great-tasting sandwich and give them great hospitality.’

“It is our anchor, in the sense of what our corporate purpose states: that we’re in business to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that’s entrusted to us and have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A,” Andrew Cathy said.

The interview with Craig Melvin of “Today” was very cordial, but it has inspired headlines claiming newly outraged critics of the company.

Melvin asked Cathy to respond to LGBTQ-identifying people who have boycotted the Christian company’s chicken sandwiches over gender, sexuality, and marriage issues.

“Well, for anybody that hasn’t tried us, we’d love for you to come try and have our great-tasting food and the hospitality that we’re known for,” Cathy responded. “I think that everybody that will be willing to walk in the door, they’ll see that they’re welcome to come eat with us. We’d love to give them a great-tasting sandwich and give them great hospitality.”

Melvin pressed him about conservative statements made by the previous CEO, Cathy’s father, in support of conservative Christian causes.

“We’re focused on serving everybody that comes in and eat with us,” Cathy responded.

Critics in the comment section of an Instagram clip of the interview included Katie Couric, Valerie Bertinelli, and Chelsea Handler.

“Chick-fil-A CEO faces backlash after LGBTQ interview question,” read the headline at WAGA-TV.

“Chick-fil-A CEO slammed over evasive answer about LGBTQ rights during Today interview,” was the headline at Entertainment Weekly. That report included comments from two participants in a drag queen television show.

“Chick-fil-A boss grilled over LGBTQ rights as CEO dodges question about chain’s controversial past — sparking a furious debate among customers,” was the headline at the U.S. Daily Mail.

“Today show host leaves Chick-fil-A CEO spinning over company’s LGBTQ+ stance,” claimed the headline at the Independent.

“Don’t eat at Chick-fil-A. And don’t sleep with anyone who does,” was the headline of an opinion piece at Out magazine.

RELATED: Chick-fil-A gets support from surprising ally against religious discrimination from Buffalo

A Blaze News request for comment from Chick-fil-A was not returned in time for publication.

Melvin and his “Today” show co-hosts did not appear to join the boycott, as they hungrily munched on the sandwiches at the end of the segment.

Despite criticism from Valerie Bertinelli and two drag queens, the company manages to earn about $24 billion sales across the board last year, according to Melvin’s report.

The Chick-fil-A CEO also proudly reported that the company provided more than 200 million meals for the hungry through charity efforts in the past six years.

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​Boycott, Chickfila, Christianity, Drag queens, Faith, Lgbtq, Politics 

Jason “Mayhem” Miller has seen the highs and lows that fame can bring, and now the former MTV star and UFC fighter has some advice for young men: Put down the phone and toughen up.

Miller, 45, compiled a 23-10 record with one no contest over a colorful MMA career that included two stints in the UFC and fights against future champions Georges St-Pierre and Michael Bisping.

‘Pick yourself up.’

Washing out the weakness

He was also one of MMA’s great showmen, cultivating a villainous persona and making elaborate cage entrances that owed as much to professional wrestling as mixed martial arts.

“Mayhem” eventually crossed over to MTV as host of “Bully Beatdown,” which ran for three seasons.

Then things fell apart.

In Miller’s words: “I crashed out spectacularly. I was the first crashout in internet history.”

After years of arrests, incarceration, addiction, and erratic behavior, Miller says he eventually managed to pick himself back up. Now he thinks young men need to learn how to do the same.

“Oh, it’s you,” Miller said before an interview with Blaze News.

With a shower running in the background, he put his camera down and announced, “I’ll be a couple minutes.”

He wasn’t out partying. Miller was at Fight Science in Los Angeles, where he coaches.

The truth is, “Mayhem” still messes around quite a bit, even during interviews. But when he puts on his coaching hat, he starts dispensing advice that, in his words, “could fill your ears and your podcast servers for an infinite amount of time.”

Determined to dump enough knowledge into young men’s ears to “wash out the weakness,” Miller said he’s been stunned by how sensitive the country has become.

“Everyone is so soft in America now. I’m shocked at it. I’m really shocked at it,” he said. “Our culture celebrates” falling into “this dark path because it’s easy to fall into.”

Young men can’t simply rely on the status quo to provide them with a satisfying life, Miller argued. They have to make something happen for themselves.

RELATED: Sydney Sweeney wants you to prove yourself in a whole new way

Dumping the ‘rectangular girlfriend’

Schools force-fed kids a diet of “whatever” and then kicked them into the job market, Miller said.

“Oh, you’re going to college? Oh, if not, here’s an Uber Eats job, right? Like, here’s your damn miserable existence for a while, and you’re going to be swiping right all day till your thumb is arthritic.”

But Miller insists that misery isn’t destiny.

“Nobody’s going to talk back to you until you start hustling. Pick yourself up,” he told young men.

Go to the gym, Miller emphasized. Get some endorphins into your body. That’s the least a young man with “no drive or motivation” can do.

Much of Miller’s advice comes back to phone addiction and the device he variously calls the “magic square in your pocket” and the “rectangular girlfriend.”

“It’s not your girlfriend. Those girls that you’re looking at are not your girlfriend. They’re not even real. They’re two-dimensional,” Miller warned.

“Put that square back in your pocket. Use it for making money. And then talk to women face-to-face. Ten of them are going to tell you, ‘Get lost.’ The next one is going to tell you she loves you. So get after it, kids.”

RELATED: Kid Rock appears to cave to critics of Eminem collaboration — then hits ’em with the punch line

Ethan Miller/Getty Image

Battle-ready

Miller also tells young Americans that some of the problems that feel overwhelming can be confronted only through deliberate effort.

“OK, ‘I’m mad.’ Is that real? Or can you count to 10 and take a breath?” he offered as an example. “‘Oh, I’m sad.’ Are you sad, or have you not worked through this trauma yet? You know, it takes effort to grow as a person.”

Spending too much time with a computer doesn’t help, Miller argued. And for all the advice he can dispense, he thinks one lost art matters more than most.

“You talk, and everybody shares their opinion. That’s a lost art in America. You know, that’s why the kids are lonely and [masturbating] and watching whatever all day. You know what I’m saying?”

Miller’s rise, collapse, and recovery are the subject of a recent Vice episode of “Dark Side of the Cage,” which has drawn hundreds of thousands of views since its September release.

These days, Miller describes himself as “leading men into battle” — on the mat and with enough advice, he says, to “fill the multiverse.”

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​Ufc, Jason miller, Internet culture, Phone addiction, Entertainment 

James Talarico wants Texas voters to see him as reasonable — but at a CNN town hall, the Texas Senate candidate faced questions about his past remarks on God and abortion that couldn’t be farther from reasonable.

“He could not help exposing himself for the radical leftist lunatic that he always has been,” BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales comments on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“I was actually surprised that they let some of these people take the stage and challenge James Talarico to the extent that they did. One of those was when he got fact-checked by a Catholic Texan after James Talarico claimed that the Bible is actually … silent on abortion,” she continues, playing a clip of Talarico from the town hall.

“The Bible is silent on the issue of abortion. It means you and I both have to look at different Scriptures to try to come to a conclusion,” he said to his debate opponent.

“The Bible is not silent on abortion. There is the Ten Commandments: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ And as Catholics, we take great insult, I guess, sometimes when it’s described that way,” the opponent, a Catholic woman, replied.

“His face, he looks like, ‘Oh, s**t,’” Gonzales laughs.

But that wasn’t the first time Talarico was caught out.

His previous comments regarding God being “nonbinary” resurfaced, and Talarico attempted to brush it off as unserious.

“When I said that, I was being provocative. And I want to admit that and come clean about that,” he said.

But Gonzales doesn’t believe him.

“The first two lines of the Bible, the first two lines in Genesis, use two different Hebrew words to describe God. One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity. The second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit,” Talarico once claimed.

“God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary,” he added.

“That didn’t seem like he was just trying to be provocative,” Gonzales comments. “That sounded like a very heartfelt statement from James Talarico.”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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​Cnn town hall, God, James talarico, Abortion, Nonbinary, Blazetv show 

A sports bar that called itself a hub of the queer community in Philadelphia is closing its doors after just over a year.

The bar was meant to serve as a counter to businesses that prioritize male sports on its TV screens over women’s, a common origin story for these types of bars.

‘More than ever this city needs more women/queer/BIPOC-owned businesses.’

In September 2025, owner Chivonn Anderson opened Marsha’s, named after Marsha P. Johnson, a man the New York Times described as a “transgender pioneer and activist.”

Anderson told the Philadelphia Inquirer at the time that she opened her bar because she couldn’t find a place in Philadelphia that would put on the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

However, despite its desire to be an inclusive location, the bar faced claims from former employees that they were mistreated, with one saying the bar was disparaging toward female employees.

As reported by the Advocate, that employee had claimed a manager said that women and nonbinary employees were “overly emotional” and should be replaced with men because the venue needs “more testosterone.”

Anderson denied the claims, but vowed to speak with independent human resources and DEI consultants to hold her bar “accountable.”

RELATED: ‘Equality’ in pay and ‘everything’ bar for women’s sports opens in Seattle

Watch Me! Sports Bar, Long Beach, California, 2024. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The bar invited patrons for its “final weekend” in an Instagram post this week, saying that it was closing its doors for good.

“We have loved serving this community, and still believe that more than ever this city needs more women/queer/BIPOC-owned businesses. We sincerely hope that someone is able to step up and fill this void,” Marsha’s wrote.

Anderson provided bizarre statements to the Inquirer when the bar launched, saying she wanted to open a place for those who want to “go out and have fun and feel safe and be seen.”

Followed by, “It’s kind of like you’re going to your favorite aunt’s house to indulge in the things you know you’re not supposed to when you’re at home,” Anderson continued. “A little bit of drinking, a little bit of good food, and being around people who want to have just as much fun as you do.”

RELATED: The strange masculinization of American women

The Sports Bra, Portland, Oregon, 2024. Amanda Loman/Getty Images

Marsha’s inception story was similar to that of Seattle women’s sports bar Rough & Tumble. For that venue, owner Jen Barnes said in 2022 that she couldn’t find a bar that would turn on a women’s soccer game because it was on at the same time as a Seattle Seahawks NFL game.

Rough & Tumble has since reportedly opened a second location in Seattle, while other women’s sports bars have found success in other cities, like Portland, where the Sports Bra has been open for a couple of years. The Sports Bra now has plans to open another in bar in Boston.

Long Beach, California, has the Watch Me! Sports Bar, which has enjoyed two years of business, as well.

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​Women’s sports, Seattle, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, Transgenderism, Activist, Sports 

Millions of Americans have spent their working lives paying into Social Security, counting on the government to deliver the retirement benefits they were promised — and that promise isn’t being kept.

BlazeTV host Nick Freitas argues that it’s because Social Security operates less like a traditional retirement account than a system that uses today’s workers’ contributions to pay today’s retirees, leaving future generations to shoulder an increasingly difficult burden.

“There’s been a lot of … Boomers that have said, ‘Well, of course, we, you know, younger people should pay more taxes in order to make sure Social Security is solvent,’” Freitas says.

“Social Security,” Freitas says, “essentially operates like a Ponzi scheme.”

“Now, when I say this, people get mad at me. But I want you to understand why these are the things which are actually going to throw us into a massive fiscal and monetary crisis, because when people paid in, it is perfectly reasonable for somebody that was forced to pay into Social Security their entire life to want to be able to pull from Social Security because they were promised it,” he explains.

“The problem is you were promised a bad program,” he says, “because in a typical retirement program, the money goes into a productive industry. It accrues interest while things are being built and being produced that are actually making the economy better.”

“They act like it’s just another retirement program, but in reality, all the money you put into Social Security was already spent,” he continues.

“It wasn’t sitting somewhere accruing interest. It wasn’t funding productive projects that actually yielded profit. It wasn’t doing any of that. It wasn’t doing any of the things a private retirement fund would do for you. It was just paying the people that were already collecting Social Security,” he adds.

This is why he equates it to a “Ponzi scheme.”

“Because now the critical part is we don’t have enough people working. When Social Security was first put into existence, there was something like 45 workers for every one person drawing Social Security,” he explains, noting that “it’s about to be three to one.”

And in addition, Freitas points out that “the left brings in a bunch of people that don’t pay taxes or actually go on to other welfare benefits.”

“Now they’re a net drain on the economy,” he adds.

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Nick freitas, Ponzi scheme, Social security, Taxes, Blazetv show