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Humility is the necessary virtue.

Let me unpack that a little: Without humility, Saint Peter will not let you pass through the Pearly Gates.

Our culture has moved so far toward autonomy that we can barely imagine obedience as anything other than weakness.

And what is humility?

Like the old adage says, humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. If you study the lives of the saints — or, for that matter, almost any historically admirable person — you’ll recognize that humility is an immensely attractive quality.

Celebrity cleric

Blessed Fulton J. Sheen, America’s most famous Catholic bishop of the 20th century, had plenty to be proud of. Now on his way to sainthood, Sheen was a brilliant scholar, a gifted writer, and one of the most compelling communicators of his age. His radio broadcasts reached millions. His television program, “Life Is Worth Living,” drew audiences in the 1950s that rivaled the biggest entertainers in America.

Yet two episodes in Sheen’s life suggest that one of his greatest virtues was not eloquence at all. It was obedience.

The first came before almost anyone knew his name.

After his ordination in 1919, Sheen pursued advanced studies in Europe and distinguished himself at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He became the first American to win the prestigious Cardinal Mercier Prize and earned the university’s coveted agrégé degree. By the time he was 30, Oxford and Columbia reportedly wanted him to teach philosophy.

Then, in 1926, his bishop ordered him home to Peoria, Illinois — not to a university, but to St. Patrick’s, one of the city’s poorest parishes.

Sheen went.

He visited the sick, celebrated Mass, begged for parish funds, and preached. Nine months later, his bishop explained what had happened. People worried that Sheen’s European success had made him “high-hat,” too important to take orders. The parish assignment had been a test.

He passed.

Entertainer in exile

Soon Sheen was sent to teach at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., beginning the public career that would eventually make him famous.

Four decades later, obedience cost him far more.

By then, Sheen was a household name. His television audience reached into the tens of millions. But he had also clashed with New York’s powerful Cardinal Francis Spellman over money Sheen raised for the missions. Sheen appealed the dispute to Rome and prevailed. Spellman, according to accounts of the dispute, did not forget it.

In 1966, Sheen was sent to Rochester, New York. Many biographers have interpreted the transfer as a form of exile: One of the world’s most famous religious communicators suddenly found himself running a relatively modest diocese far from the center of American media.

His years there were difficult. Accustomed to packed auditoriums around the world, Sheen once gave a series of retreat talks in Rochester’s largest auditorium and drew a disappointing crowd.

“The whole world comes to hear Fulton Sheen, except his own diocese,” he reportedly told a fellow priest.

RELATED: Tens of thousands attend beatification of anti-communist TV star priest Fulton Sheen

Dick Lewis/New York Daily News/Getty Images

Right or wrong

It’s tempting to make the lesson here that Sheen’s superiors were right. They were not necessarily right at all. Spellman may have acted vindictively. Sheen himself made mistakes in Rochester. Authority can be petty, shortsighted, and simply wrong.

But that’s precisely why obedience — like its close friend, humility — is a virtue.

Obedience means little when the person in authority agrees with you. Its real test comes when you believe you are more talented, more informed, or more capable than the person giving the order — and perhaps you are.

Modern celebrity culture teaches almost the opposite. Discover your gift. Build your brand. Grow your platform. Maximize your reach. If an institution doesn’t recognize your genius, leave it. If a boss frustrates your calling, find another boss. If a church constrains your ministry, start your own.

That instinct is not always wrong. Institutions can become corrupt, and conscience has claims no human authority can erase. Obedience is not servility, nor does it require cooperating with evil.

But our culture has moved so far toward autonomy that we can barely imagine obedience as anything other than weakness.

Serving in silence

There is a particularly American — and, yes, Protestant — dimension to this. The Reformation elevated individual judgment against ecclesial authority, while the American experiment elevated independence and suspicion of hierarchy. Those impulses produced real goods. But untethered, they can also produce a Christianity in which everyone becomes his own pope, pastor, and doctrinal court of final appeal.

Catholicism proposes something harder: Your gifts are not entirely your own. Your vocation does not entitle you to the largest audience. You may be called to serve where no one applauds. You may even be badly deployed by legitimate authority.

Sheen, who had every reason to believe his voice belonged on the biggest stage available, accepted assignments beneath his stature and endured humiliations he did not deserve.

In 1979, near the end of Sheen’s life, Pope John Paul II embraced the frail priest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral and offered what may be the perfect summary of his legacy: “You have written and spoken well of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are a loyal son of the Church.”

Not the most famous son. Not the most brilliant.

A loyal one.

In an age obsessed with building our platforms, Fulton Sheen leaves us with a harder question: Can we remain faithful when obedience costs us the audience we think we deserve?

​Cardinal francis spellman, Catholicism, Christianity, Entertainment, Fulton sheen, Protestantism, Blessed fulton sheen, Pope john paul ii, Faith 

For policymakers and citizens sick of decades wasted on failed globalist experiments, Marco Rubio’s nationalist speech in Athens on Wednesday was a huge gulp of fresh air. The alternative to collectivist one-world ideology can sound almost embarrassingly obvious: Nations should pursue their own interests, recover confidence in their inheritance, and cooperate from a position of strength rather than dissolution.

Rubio’s setting made the point for him. Speaking at the Pnyx beneath the Acropolis, he traced America’s inheritance through Athens, Rome, Christendom, medieval Europe, and England. He called for the West to recover the ambition, confidence, and national power it once took for granted. His speech made the civilizational case in deliberately grand terms.

Pretending the Eastern Romans never existed — or that they have nothing to tell us about who we really are — leaves us poorer, more arrogant, and less prepared for the trials ahead.

But his civilizational reset could have been stronger and surer. The great omission was the thousand-year span defined not by Athens, Rome, or even Jerusalem, but by Constantinople — capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and guardian of a Roman Christian civilization that survived long after the political West had collapsed.

Its final outposts fell only about three decades before Columbus reached the Americas. For perspective, 30 years ago the Unabomber was arrested, the first Motorola flip phone appeared, and IBM’s Deep Blue became the first computer to beat a reigning world chess champion in a game under standard tournament conditions.

That Byzantium received no real showing in Rubio’s address is hardly surprising. Despite its millennium-long life after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Empire has endured generations of Western neglect, condescension, and selective amnesia.

There are many reasons. One is that the modern West became preoccupied almost to obsession with its own political development — its revolutions, constitutions, ideological struggles, and repeated attempts to construct an order that could tame human nature without destroying liberty. Somewhere along the way, the East came to seem like the place where history had stalled.

“Byzantium” — no longer “really” Rome in Western eyes — became shorthand for decadence, intrigue, stagnation, and oriental despotism. The important action supposedly moved elsewhere: to the Latin West, where Europe would eventually beat back Islamic power at Tours, Lepanto, and Vienna and narrate the victories as its own civilizational story.

That is an impoverished self-understanding. Excising the Eastern Roman Empire deprives the West of some of the warnings it most needs as it flails through geopolitical waters that seem unprecedented, mostly because we have forgotten so much precedent.

The Eastern Romans spent centuries fighting for survival against great powers on their frontiers. Their long rivalry with Sasanian Persia culminated in a ruinous early-7th-century war that exhausted both empires. Almost immediately, Arab Muslim armies surged through territories Rome and Persia had fought over for generations. Centuries later, Latin Christians inflicted one of Byzantium’s worst wounds themselves when the Fourth Crusade diverted to Constantinople and sacked the city in 1204. The empire was restored in 1261, but it never recovered its former strength.

RELATED: Rubio celebrates Western exceptionalism, warns civilization is at an ‘inflection point’

Mark Schiefelbein/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

The point is not that the modern West owes Byzantium an apology, although some historical humility would be healthy. The point is that civilizations sometimes face grueling, protracted defense requiring a spiritual sobriety to match. Today the West is dangerously tempted by visions of global end-zone dancing — speedrunning the uncool parts of geopolitics in favor of a world-war blitz won by super-duper wonder-weapons.

Some Constantinopolitan emperors knew the temptation. Nikephoros II Phokas, the warrior-emperor who reigned from 963 to 969, won spectacular victories against Muslim powers and reportedly sought church recognition of soldiers killed in those campaigns as martyrs.

The church refused. Patriarch Polyeuctus invoked St. Basil’s Canon 13, which says that although killing in war had not traditionally been treated as murder, soldiers who shed blood should abstain from communion for three years because their hands were not clean. Whatever else one makes of the canon, the answer to Nikephoros was unmistakable: Military victory did not automatically confer holiness.

That is a useful warning against today’s temptation to treat defeating our enemies by whatever means we choose as the height of spiritual purity and moral heroism. It is also a reminder that strong, healthy, independent churches can serve as an irreplaceable counterweight to political rulers who begin to imagine themselves as spiritual authorities and their regimes as godlike powers before which citizens and foreigners alike must bow and scrape.

RELATED: The last knight of Europe rides again

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

And Polyeuctus’ victory points toward something still more important. Spiritual authority does not arise from the top-down power of worldly lawgivers. Holiness begins with people willing to make the difficult purification of their own hearts a lifelong athletic practice — the opposite of the performative, self-flattering spiritual box-checking Jesus decried in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican.

The West would benefit from reordering its sociopolitical habits in that direction — not to weaken itself or retreat into inert obscurantism, but to recover clarity and responsibility at a time of immense division and instability.

Much of today’s turmoil arises from efforts to turn political might, now amplified by astonishing technology, into a new god and a new church with very old stripes. Rubio is right that the West must remember what it is. But Athens and Rome are not enough, and “Christendom” becomes dangerously abstract if we skip the civilization that carried Roman Christianity for a thousand years while the Western world was being remade.

Pretending the Eastern Romans never existed — or that they have nothing to tell us about who we really are — leaves us poorer, more arrogant, and less prepared for the trials ahead.

​Citizens, Confidence, Eastern roman empire, Greece, Marco rubio, Responsibility, Technology, Vienna, Western civilization, Christendom, Rome, Athens, Constantinople, Byzantium, Opinion & analysis 

Share the Arrows, Allie Beth Stuckey’s annual women’s conference, returned for a third year on Saturday in Dallas, Texas. The “Relatable” host built the event to encourage and strengthen Christian women seeking sound doctrine and sisterhood when the progressive culture takes aim.

As always, the lineup fit the purpose. Rosaria Butterfield, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Alisa Childers, and Costi Hinn, among other prominent names in the evangelical world, each took the stage, with Christian music duo Shane & Shane leading worship.

At 37 weeks pregnant with her fourth child, Stuckey closed the event with a powerful speech on the importance of clarity and courage — two words that undergird the entire Share the Arrows conference and her broader platform.

“Clarity comes from knowing God and His Word, and courage comes from trusting God and His Word,” she said.

While these concepts seem to go hand in hand, they’re not always working together as they should. And when they don’t, man gets himself in trouble, Stuckey warned.

The first example, she said, of how knowing God’s Word doesn’t always translate to trusting it goes all the way back to Genesis, when the serpent approached Eve in the garden.

Stuckey pointed out how Satan asked Eve, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” Eve’s response was the correct answer: “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”’

Satan responded with what Stuckey called a “half-truth”: “You will not certainly die. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

This was enough to convince Eve to disobey God’s command and convince her husband to do the same.

“Eve knew God’s words. Eve had the biblical knowledge. … She could repeat God’s words back to Satan even in a high-pressure moment,” said Stuckey.

What she lacked was “trust.”

“Because of that choice, because of the buying in to the confusion, there’s a distance from God,” she explained. “There’s difficulty with creation, and there’s dissonance between each other.”

The pattern of Eve’s sin — knowing the Word of God but not trusting it — is still playing out today, Stuckey warned. Christians are still confronted with that same question: “Did God really say …?” and Satan is still at the ready to answer with confusion — a “half-truth” that almost sounds biblical.

“The people in shady corners of Manhattan don’t sell knockoff Louis Vuittons by convincing you a Kroger bag is the real thing,” she analogized. “They give you something that looks really close to the real thing because that’s the only way you’ll buy it.”

Satan, too, she warned, is also a master of “counterfeits,” and if we don’t know and trust God, we’ll fall victim to his schemes.

“Ultimately, all believing of lies, all sin comes down to this: Who do you trust?” Stuckey said. “Satan is satisfied with having us puffed up with knowledge. He is OK with us having clarity. None of that matters if we do not trust God.”

She pointed out the epidemic in modern culture, especially when it comes to “progressive Christianity,” of people knowing what God’s Word says about gender, sex, marriage, and the sanctity of life but choosing to believe lies anyway.

“Bible knowledge is not enough if we do not trust God,” she reiterated.

Stuckey then pointed to the example of Jesus, who, like Eve, was tempted by Satan and responded by repeating God’s Word. However, He triumphed because He did what she failed to do: trust God.

“Jesus is the perfect embodiment of not just clarity but clarity and courage,” she said.

God, she urged the audience, is worthy of our courage to trust him. “This God who is love, who is kindness, who is righteousness, who is compassion, who has not spared his own son … if this God is for me … who in the world can be against me?” she asked.

“If this God is for me, then what He tells me to do, what He tells me to say, what He tells me is right, and what He tells me is wrong is for my good and is done in love. It’s not just enough to know that. … You have to trust it.”

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, Share the arrows 

Americans shouldn’t wait until Sharia courts become widespread before deciding where they stand — and Brigitte Gabriel is doing everything in her power to help them see the threat before it’s too late.

Gabriel tells BlazeTV host Nick Freitas that she was shocked to relive her upbringing in Lebanon — where her home was attacked by Islamic extremists — on 9/11, when her daughter sat watching the towers fall on the news and asked her, “Mommy, why did they do this to us?”

“And I found myself, Nick,” she explains, “looking into my daughter’s eyes and repeating to her the exact same words my father said to me when I was a 10-year-old little girl, laying wounded in a hospital in Lebanon, hooked up to IVs on both arms, one blood bag in one arm, one IV in another, asking my father, ‘Why did they do this to us?’”

“And my father told me, ‘They hate us because they consider us infidels, and they want to kill us.’ Here we were two generations apart, two continents apart. I had to look into my daughter’s eyes and repeat to her the same words my father said to me,” she continues.

“That day I was reborn as an activist,” she adds, noting that this is why she started the Act for America foundation in 2002.

This foundation serves to “organize people in chapters nationwide to teach them how they can impact policy at their local level.”

Not only does the foundation now have over 5 million members nationwide, but it has successfully passed 300 bills at the federal and state level.

And the latest bill it is putting through Congress is the Preserving Our Constitution Act of 2026.

“It says no Sharia courts are allowed to operate in the United States. We are building the firewall to make sure that this does not happen,” Gabriel explains.

Freitas warns that this could easily become a problem for the U.S., as in the U.K. right now, there are 84 Sharia courts.

“Please understand that when Brigitte here is talking about Sharia courts in the United States, it is an inevitability unless you’re proactive,” Freitas says. “Because the moment they start going, and you haven’t prepared yourself for this, now all of a sudden, they win a couple of cases in court, and nobody wants to challenge them, and they start setting them up everywhere.”

However, Gabriel has some bad news.

“The Sharia courts are already operating in the United States,” she says. “The first Sharia court was established in Richardson, Texas, in 1991. Since then, we have documented 150 cases judged under Sharia law in the United States in 23 states.”

This is why in 2009, Gabriel got to work on the American Laws for American Courts bill, which says that “no law that is not compatible with the U.S. Constitution would be allowed to be practiced in an American courtroom.”

“We were able to pass that law in 13 states,” she explains.

“We’ve been fighting this battle for a long time,” she 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.

​Americans, Lebanon, Sharia courts, Uk, Islamic extremists, 911, Islam, Nick freitas, Blazetv show, Brigitte gabriel 

Banned Books Week is baloney.

Not because nobody ever tries to suppress a book. People do. The lure of the ban hammer is strong.

We are staging arguments over banned books in a country where too many people barely read books.

But let’s be serious. A challenge is not a ban. A school-library dispute is not the Palmer raids. A parent objecting to what an 11-year-old reads is not Anthony Comstock resurrected.

Words should mean something.

The American Library Association has spent years blurring those distinctions, and every October around this time, we get the same little morality play: librarians as defenders of civilization, readers as brave dissidents, famous novels wrapped in the aura of forbidden fruit.

Last weekend at a Barnes and Noble in Southern California, I saw the display in person.

A table that had been marked “required reading” a few weeks prior was now the “read banned books” table. There sat “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” “The Catcher in the Rye,” and all the usual suspects. All for sale.

Some ban!

The ALA will object that it uses “ban” in a fairly narrow sense. A book need not disappear from American commerce to count as banned. Remove it from a school or library collection and the word applies.

That’s exactly the problem.

Removing a book from one institutional collection is not the same as suppressing it from public circulation. A restriction is not automatically a ban. Precision is not too much to ask from an organization supposedly devoted to books.

America has known censorship. Real censorship.

In 1926, H.L. Mencken deliberately sold a copy of the “Hatrack” issue of the American Mercury in Boston after the Watch and Ward Society targeted it as obscene. He got arrested.

He beat the charge.

The Postal Service also declared the issue un-mailable. Had that ruling stood, the government could have put his magazine out of business.

Woodrow Wilson’s government sent Eugene V. Debs to prison for an antiwar speech. Federal agents swept up radicals in the Palmer raids. In Schenck v. United States, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man who distributed anti-draft leaflets.

RELATED: Don’t fall for the fake ‘banned books’ narrative

Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

That is what censorship looks like when the government means it.

Yes, school boards still do stupid things.

In 2013, a North Carolina board pulled Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” after one member said he could find “no literary value” in it. Nine days later, after national ridicule, the board reversed itself.

In 2010, a Riverside County, California, school district briefly pulled Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary because a parent objected to its definition of “oral sex.”

The dictionary came back too.

Somebody does something foolish. Somebody else objects. The fool backs down. That’s generally how freedom works.

And no, Ron DeSantis did not “ban books” in Florida. He signed laws governing what public schools may place in classrooms and school libraries.

Calling every restriction a ban is how you turn a policy dispute into a stupid morality play.

Azar Nafisi knows more about actual censorship than most Americans ever will. She lived under the Islamic Republic of Iran. In “Read Dangerously,” she writes about “literature as resistance” — literature resisting kings, tyrants, and “the tyrants within us.”

She asks how we confront an enemy without becoming like him or surrendering to him. Good question!

Reading dangerously under tyranny is one possible answer.

But at the risk of stating the obvious, America is not Iran.

And if we are going to use the word “dangerous,” let’s make it mean something.

A dangerous book is not simply one somebody objected to. It may be a book with such a rotten reputation that people condemn it without reading it. A book a publisher drops. A book a retailer refuses to carry. A book that goes out of print and can’t be had for love or money. A book people would rather summarize for you than let you judge for yourself.

Jean Raspail’s “The Camp of the Saints” will do.

First published in France in 1973, the novel imagines a flotilla of impoverished migrants sailing toward Europe. For decades, it has been reduced to a racist anti-immigrant tract.

I have read it. That is not what the book is principally about.

Raspail’s real villains are the politicians, journalists, clergy, and intellectuals who have lost the nerve to defend their own civilization.

For years, English copies were scarce and expensive. A new translation appeared last year. Amazon briefly pulled the physical edition. People complained. Amazon restored it.

That is a dangerous book because its reputation has done much of the work its critics should have done themselves.

RELATED: Jean Raspail’s notorious — and prophetic — novel returns to America

Pascal Parrot/Sygma/Sygma/Getty Images

So I say read Raspail and Julius Evola and Sam Francis. Read Nafisi and Ralph Ellison and Salman Rushdie.

Read authors who annoy your friends. Read writers your political allies dismiss. Read books with appalling reputations. Read the book everybody quotes and almost nobody seems to have opened.

Or don’t.

There is no virtue in reading a controversial book. Buying “Nineteen Eighty-Four” at Barnes and Noble does not make you Solzhenitsyn.

But please do not pretend.

Do not pretend a challenge is automatically a ban or that a book is unavailable when it is sitting on a table in front of you. Do not pretend reading a famous novel everyone can buy is an act of resistance.

We are staging arguments over banned books in a country where too many people barely read books.

Mencken praised the “gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries” and thereby proved “that doubt, after all, was safe.”

He was right.

Read dangerously, if you like. Just read.

​Censorship, Ron desantis, Amazon, Banned books, Camp of the saints, 1984, American library association, Post office, Reading, Azar nafisi, France, Europe, Opinion & analysis 

An athlete attending an event with the president will always drum up noise with liberal media, but it is fast becoming a circus that the pros are tired of fielding questions about.

Look no farther than Baltimore Ravens defensive back Marlon Humphrey, who answered a series of questions about a ride he took with President Donald Trump to a shipyard near Baltimore earlier this week.

‘I don’t really have any political beliefs.’

Ravens Ryan Eckley, Tyler Loop, Nick Moore, and Humphrey all met with the president on Tuesday before he announced plans to open a shipyard with Anduril Industries that could create over 3,000 jobs in the area.

After Humphrey posted a video of himself riding behind the president in a “very armored vehicle,” he faced questions from the media upon his return to team facilities.

“President Trump actually asked us if we wanted to ride with him, and I was not going to turn down a ride with the president,” Humphrey said of the video.

“That was quite the experience.”

The 30-year-old addressed more questions about his political views, but stated he “did not vote” in the last election, and likely has never voted, before claiming, “I don’t really have any political beliefs.”

Viewers on social media were irate about the football player’s answers and quickly labeled him a pawn of the administration.

“Look in the camera. Stand on it,” a Baltimore sports talk radio account wrote.

“He can’t even look up,” another claimed.

Others called Humphrey a “useful idiot” and a “political prop.”

Insults even came from Dallas Cowboys writer Clarence Hill Jr., who described Humphrey’s answers as a “clown show.”

However, a former wide receiver from those same Cowboys, Dez Bryant, called out the writer and asked why he was bothered by Humphrey’s comments.

“Why does it matter? I’m telling the world now..as soon as I see Trump.. I’m taking a photo with him,” Bryant wrote.

RELATED: Flock of Ravens swarm President Trump in Baltimore: ‘Do yall know this guy?’

“I hope he’s down to have a margarita,” the Texas native added.

During the same interview, Humphrey said that he planned to dedicate himself to learning more about politics for the upcoming election.

“I did try to vote this last time, but my absentee ballot didn’t come in,” he told reporters.

“I do plan on voting the next time around,” the star defensive player explained, before adding, “I am extremely uninformed on what laws are going on, to be honest.”

Simply put, Humphrey said he planned on making an informed decision on who to vote for based on where his beliefs line up with each party.

RELATED: Fans accuse Chicago Bears player of performing Muslim prayer during national anthem: ‘Is this respectful?’

Humphrey also spoke about the opportunities for the area itself — Sparrows Point, Maryland — and said that as an investor in local neighborhoods, he was glad there was an “opportunity to have a greater economy” come to the area.

“I believe in the area, and I’m pretty excited for the economy boom that could come from this,” he stated.

The interview closed with Humphrey being asked if he had seen any of the reactions to his presidential meeting on social media. The athlete immediately chose a positive route and said he hadn’t had the opportunity to react to any “love” he had received online.

“I am on social media at a max of about five minutes a day, so I was not able to interact with all the love I have received,” Humphrey said.

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​Nfl, Donald trump, Baltimore ravens, Football, Dez bryant, Marlon humphrey, Sports 

Sagebrush was starting to encroach on a field my father-in-law had painstakingly cleared over the years. So this week, I climbed onto his old tractor and did some mowing, unsupervised. In rural Montana, that hardly qualifies as news, but I’m putting it on my résumé.

First, it’s bigger than a riding mower, which makes it a large tractor in my estimation. Second, it’s old. I believe it was originally built to pull a chariot.

When you have spent years being the person others depend on, admitting you need help can catch in your throat.

I remember my father-in-law stopping at our Nashville home while hauling it west on a trailer. Ronald Reagan was president, and the tractor wasn’t new then.

For most of my adult life, we lived five miles from downtown Nashville. We didn’t have much tractor time, and I have always been intimidated by large machinery. That sounds pitiful coming from a guy who has visited Montana for decades and now lives here, but hear me out.

Public speaking frightens plenty of people. From the set of “The Today Show” to keynote speeches at conferences, it has never bothered me. Give me a microphone and a room full of strangers, and I’m comfortable.

But a tractor pulling a mower across ground so slanted that the cows need shorter legs on one side to keep from tipping over? I have questions.

Oh, did I mention rocks? Even with scarce rainfall, our rocks keep thriving and growing.

Fortunately, I have several neighbors I regularly call for help. Full disclosure: I rotate the calls, hoping none gets too accustomed to seeing my name and letting it go to voicemail. Sometimes I disguise my voice, but my Southern accent gives it away.

I’d love to swagger and say, “No problem.” But swagger won’t tell me which lever to pull, so I call someone who knows.

My father-in-law is in assisted living now. His competence with that tractor is legendary, but translating his instructions into something useful between my ears takes some doing. Sitting in that worn seat, I quickly discovered my confidence behind a microphone contributes remarkably little to my understanding of a tractor’s controls.

RELATED: Before you ask us to trust again

Stephanie Kuykendal/Bloomberg/Getty Images

So I FaceTime patient neighbors and ask a lot of questions.

Over the years, I have told countless medical professionals, plumbers, carpenters, and even tractor operators, “I’m a talker, an exceptional pianist, and a pretty good writer. That’s where my skill set stops. So explain it to me simply. Use crayons if necessary.”

One morning, after chasing a moose out of our hay barn, I called my college piano professor, who is thankfully still alive. I told him he hadn’t covered moose extraction in class.

He laughed. “You must have missed that day.”

Apparently, I missed several. And despite 40 years of caring for my wife, I’m still discovering gaps in my education that have nothing to do with tractors or moose. I know medications, insurance forms, hospital routines, and the particular sound that means something is wrong. Yet there are still calls to make and questions to ask, sometimes about things I think I should already understand.

Those calls can be harder to make than you would expect. When you have spent years being the person others depend on, admitting you need help can catch in your throat. You tell yourself you ought to know, manage, and figure it out. Meanwhile, the problem waits patiently for you to finish arguing with yourself.

In Montana, limits tend to announce themselves plainly. The ground is steep, the equipment is heavy, and the weather has no interest in your credentials. “I’m fine” can sound great right up until the tractor plows through a fence.

RELATED: The fourth bus of the Apocalypse

Miguel Perfectti/Getty Images

The same reluctance follows us into hospital rooms and home to unpaid bills. We offer a cheerful “We’re doing fine” when what we need is someone to sit with a loved one for an afternoon or help make sense of the paperwork. You should see the emails I write to my CPA friend. Apparently, piano proficiency also has limited application to the tax code.

Earlier this year, I framed in a doorway. Last week, I spent some time with a chainsaw, a nerve-racking undertaking for a pianist and writer. This week, a tractor. I’m pleased to be learning new things, but I’m also learning to reach for the phone before determination and pride become an expensive lesson.

If you are the person everyone calls, consider whose number you need on speed dial. Tell them where you’re stuck. In my experience, plenty of people are willing to share what they know once I stop pretending I already know it.

Fortunately, I still have all my fingers as I reach for the phone again … and my neighbors are still answering.

​Sagebrush, Tractors, Montana, Assisted living, Competence, Education, Experience, Heavy equipment, Doing fine, Asking for help, Chainsaw, Opinion & analysis 

October is here again, so what the advertisers call “spooky season” is upon us. Stores are packed with Halloween candy and costumes, along with spiders and bats and skeletons (and they have been there since school started, but that’s a complaint for another day).

Last week, we talked about how too many Christians are fixating on what they perceive as the evil of Halloween — its emphasis on ghosts, witches, and death — without acknowledging that it sprang from both Christian and pagan roots and has been largely sanitized into a cultural holiday focused on costumes, candy, and neighborhood fun for children.

DON’T hit them over the head with a Bible. But don’t hide your faith either.

This has led to some (wrongly) judgmental attitudes, much of it springing from bad theology.

I ended that article with a promise that there is a better way to reclaim and redeem Halloween, because surely we Christians can do better than being the always-dark, candy-less house on the block.

Trick or tract?

Our highest calling, of course, is to love our neighbor. And Halloween brings those neighbors to our door, literally. What if we prayerfully and thoughtfully considered how we can bless those neighbors on this one day, with an eye to building relationships?

I am not talking about handing out Christian tracts instead of candy. Don’t be that person.

I am talking about eagerly seeking an opportunity to connect with at least one if not more families in your neighborhood with whom you can begin to build relationships. This, in fact, is why God has you where you live (see more on this here).

Let me tell you about what one family did for Halloween. They set up a tent in the driveway, hung lights from it, and under the tent placed their BBQ grill, on which they cooked hot dogs. A table held buns and condiments, a bowl of Halloween candy, and Jell-O shots for the adults. They publicized this on the neighborhood webpage a day or two before Halloween.

To be clear, they weren’t Christians seeking to love their neighbor. They were seeking to promote the father’s business. But how might we promote our Father’s business similarly?

Halloween hospitality

If you have access to one, a tent in the driveway with lights strung on it is very welcoming on a dark night!Grilling hot dogs was a pretty good idea — another might be a big crock-pot filled with chili, with paper cups and spoons for serving.A hot drink station with cocoa, cider, tea, etc.Freshly made pumpkin bread or oatmeal cookies in little treat bags as an alternative to commercial candy.Set out lawn chairs and invite people to sit down and rest for a moment — and if they do, introduce yourselves and get to know their family.Let your kids dress up and pass out the goodies (if you also allow your kids to trick-or-treat, one of you can hold down the fort while the other takes the kids around the neighborhood).Let people know a day or two ahead that you welcome them to come by and “sit a spell,” as the saying goes.

This will cost you time, effort, and money. But it is a ministry investment in the lives of precious people God has placed in your neighborhood. You can’t love them if you don’t make an effort to know them, and you can’t know them if you never even meet them.

And they will know you after this!

You could also just set out lawn chairs toward the end of the driveway where you will be able to actually see and converse with the adults as you pass out candy. Compliment the kids’ costumes. Ask the adults where they live in the neighborhood. They won’t linger long without a reason to stop at your house, but at least you’ll physically meet some of them. Since most parents don’t accompany their kids all the way up to the door, you at least have to get out where they are!

RELATED: Halloween isn’t opening a door to demons. Christians need to stop pretending it is.

Walter Leporati/Getty Images

A few do’s & don’ts

DO wear a costume. Bible costumes are fun. So are a lot of others. Don’t be anything that will scare children. Don’t be a witch. Don’t be the devil (duh).DON’T hand out Christian literature that talks about how evil Halloween is. In fact, you don’t have to hand out Christian literature at all. But if you do, hand it out with full-size candy bars.DO ask their name and where they live in the neighborhood. Discreetly record a voice message to yourself or write down names and information — the idea, after all, is to use Halloween to start building a relationship. See #6 below.DON’T exclude your kids from this opportunity. Recruit them to participate as fully as possible in your family blessing the neighborhood, whatever you end up doing.DON’T be a Halloween hider. What a sad message you send to your children by turning off all the lights to avoid the neighbors. God put you in your neighborhood. Unless you live somewhere with no trick-or-treaters, get out there and redeem the opportunity.DO follow up! Sometime in November, reach out to someone you met on Halloween and invite him or her over for coffee or to watch the big game or for a casual dinner. Your goal here is to become an authentic friend. As you get to know each other, don’t be afraid to ask for help on something, either — that’s what friends do.DON’T hit them over the head with a Bible. But don’t hide your faith, either. Practice transparent honesty and pray for the opportunity to discuss deeper things. Until then, BE the deeper thing.

Halloween is an opportunity for your family to bless others and begin forging relationships to lost people in need of Jesus. I would love to hear about your family’s experience redeeming this annual event by loving your neighbor!

Editor’s note: This article has been slightly expanded from Diane Schrader’s 2025 article on Halloween.

​Halloween, Christian living, Lifestyle, Neighborhood, Love thy neighbor, Trick or treating, Hospitality, Faith 

As the nephew of televangelist Benny Hinn, Costi Hinn grew up inside the prosperity gospel and Word of Faith world. In 2013, while preparing to preach on Jesus’ healing of a man at the pool of Bethesda, he studied a John MacArthur commentary, and the faith-healing formula he had believed and preached for years began to unravel. By 2017, he was publicly repudiating the prosperity gospel and embracing Reformed theology.

Today he is the teaching pastor of Shepherd’s House Bible Church in Chandler, Arizona, a Reformed church he helped plant in 2022, and founder and president of the online ministry For the Gospel.

At Allie Beth Stuckey’s third annual Share the Arrows — a women’s conference built to equip Christian women with sound doctrine and to stand with believers under cultural fire — Hinn became the first man to take a teaching slot at the event.

From the stage, Hinn spoke on the difference between a wife who is “the crown of her husband” from Proverbs 12:4 and the one who is contentious, as warned about in numerous verses from Proverbs.

“God has given you a divine calling. You have a responsibility, and it’s not to control everybody else and control every other outcome,” he said. “It is to first and foremost be under the submission that you’re called to be under Christ and to be self-controlled.”

A marriage, he warned, is often “the enemy’s number-one target” because so many other things — parenting, education, and politics — flow “downstream from the home.”

What determines the health of a home, he argued, is the state of the marriage.

“If you have an unhealthy marriage, the devil is going to wreak havoc in so many other areas of your life,” Hinn warned.

Much of a marriage’s health, Hinn said, rises or falls with the wife.

“The greatest benefactor of [a woman’s] ministry,” Hinn preached, “is actually not the world, not the school system, not the arenas” of the world; it’s her “husband.”

“An excellent wife — a woman of high character, of strength, and of valor, and of dignity — this woman, she is the crown of her husband.”

He contrasted this godly woman with the “contentious woman,” whom the book of Proverbs compares to the “continual dripping of rain” and “rottenness in [her husband’s] bones.”

Hinn listed multiple ways wives “drip” on their husbands, including sarcasm, condescension, public shaming, comparing him to other men, being controlling and demanding, and holding past mistakes against him, among others.

There are four truths, he said, every wife needs to know:

“Every wife is building or breaking her home.”“A contentious wife tears down her husband and her home.”“Contentiousness is a heart issue; it’s not a husband issue.”“An excellent wife is the crown of her husband.”

Hinn concluded with a powerful reminder that the days are fleeting, but the ministry of wives and mothers is eternal.

“[The home] is your ministry. … God gave you it, and all He wanted you to do is to relish in it and enjoy it. Sit in the mess, and know that in the mess, that’s the ministry.”

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.

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Hollywood is overrun with copycats.

Remember how 1978’s “Halloween” scared the bell-bottom pants off us? Well, another studio copied that stalker formula with 1980’s “Friday the 13th.” The rest is — ka-ka-ka … ching-ching-ching — history.

Longtime liberals crossing party lines to oust an incompetent mayor and governor? if only we could import some of that common sense to the left coast.

If greed is good, then copycatting is even better.

That explains the marketing behind “Other Mommy.” Jessica Chastain stars as a mother who is targeted by an evil entity in the new horror flick. Apparently, said entity makes the actress adopt a massive, creepy smile to let us know something isn’t quite right with her.

And if you’ve seen “Smile” (2022) or “Smile 2” (2024), you know exactly the look. It’s one thing to make endless sequels. It’s another to steal the signature visual gimmick from another franchise. Maybe that’s why the studio behind “Other Mommy” hid it from critics prior to its Oct. 9 release date.

The reviews will likely be pretty scary …

‘Speech’ impediment

This should be a golden era for the Emmys. The trophy honoring the very best in TV programming has plenty to choose from, given the crush of new and existing platforms cranking out fresh product.

And while “The Sopranos” and “Breaking Bad” are long since over, there are plenty of top-flight TV shows to savor.

Yet the Emmys telecast will be moving to Prime Video starting next year. Why?

Ratings. Or the lack thereof. A telecast that used to draw 20 million viewers now scrambles to draw 7 million for a given gala.

Now, Prime Video will showcase the best of the best, in between political screeds. Why, it’s almost like the dawn of politically mouthy celebs had something to do with the ratings free fall …

Outbreak … of TDS

It wasn’t too long ago that DNC mouthpiece Jimmy Kimmel held up a T-shirt with the slogan “Donald J. Trump is gonna kill you” on his show.

Now it’s Ana Navarro’s turn.

The “View” co-host spun news of a Russian-based plague outbreak to attack President Trump. That isn’t really shocking. “The View” could turn a discussion on Chia Pets into an anti-Trump jeremiad.

Navarro went the extra mile with her TDS moment. To be fair, she really attacked Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but he is tied directly to President Trump via the nomination process.

“There’s going to be crisis, there’s going to be health emergencies. And, you know, when I think of RFK Jr. heading HHS, I just say, girl, kiss your ass goodbye!”

Should be easy enough for Navarro, considering where her head already is …

RELATED: GRAVE ‘DIGGER’: Will Tom Cruise’s $100 million eco-flop bury Warner Bros.?

Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images

Not ‘Messing’ around

Here’s the ultimate “man bites dog” story.

“Will & Grace” alum Debra Messing is such a dyed-in-the-wool progressive that she once threatened to doxx anyone who supported President Trump in Hollywood. The obvious context? Good luck finding work in this town, bub.

That was then, before the explosion of anti-Semitism across the globe and, sadly, within her industry.

To her genuine credit, Messing has been one of the loudest celebrity voices speaking up for the Jewish people in our post-Oct. 7 world. And she knows that the Democrat Party is shockingly hostile to her fellow Jews.

That explains her new endorsement — she is supporting the GOP’s Bruce Blakeman over Democrat incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul in New York’s gubernatorial contest.

“The decline in this city over the last four years has been so exponential and devastating. … Economically, socially, and on every level. And, obviously, we’ve lost so much business here. People are leaving the city.”

In acknowledging Messing’s support, Blakeman said the quiet part out loud.

“She is trying as hard as she can to save New York and make sure it’s safe for Jewish people to live in this community and to live in this state.”

She echoed the thoughts shared by fellow Jewish actor Michael Rapaport, who dropped his anti-Trump hysteria in recent years and now targets Big Apple Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D).

Longtime liberals crossing party lines to oust an incompetent mayor and governor? if only we could import some of that common sense to the left coast …

Sorkin’s status

Are you sure about that, Aaron?

Writer-director Aaron Sorkin continues the Facebook saga with “The Social Reckoning” this weekend. The film, continuing a story that began in 2010 with “The Social Network,” shreds Facebook for algorithms that hurt one and all.

He’s not necessarily wrong, but the film is actually an attack on President Trump and, more significantly, the January 6 riots.

Except it looks like audiences will be giving Sorkin his own “reckoning.” The film will be lucky to squeak past the $8 million mark this weekend.

“The Social Network” bowed with $22 million en route to a $96 million U.S. haul.

Sorkin is already eyeing a third film in the saga.

“If a good story comes along and it takes place at Facebook, sure.”

If the box office receipts are anything like the experts predict, he might have to start a GoFundMe campaign to get it off the ground. I know just the place to share it!

​January 6 riots, Prime video, Social reckoning, Anti-semitism, Debra messing, Jeff bezos, Emmy awards, Amazon, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Tv, Movies, Hollywood, Culture, Donald trump, Toto recall 

The war with Iran has exposed the value of energy abundance. When a major shipping route goes down, domestic supply and reliable infrastructure buy a country room to maneuver.

Before the conflict, roughly one-fifth of global petroleum liquids moved through the Strait of Hormuz. Its disruption became the largest oil-supply shock on record. The shock has been severe, but the United States entered it from a position few countries enjoy: record domestic production and a mature system of pipelines, refineries, ports, storage facilities, and export terminals.

The lesson from the Iran conflict is straightforward. Energy security requires abundant and diverse domestic supply, reliable supply chains, and infrastructure that can absorb a shock.

U.S. crude oil output is on track to set another annual record this year, according to the Energy Information Administration. Natural gas production has also reached record levels. That domestic cushion cannot insulate Americans from a global oil shock, but it can keep a bad situation from becoming worse.

The crisis also exposes the weakness of two familiar responses. Broad accusations of price-gouging are a poor substitute for understanding how energy markets work. Crude prices can jump immediately, and retail gasoline prices can follow as wholesalers and stations reprice the cost of replacement fuel, even though physical barrels still move through refineries, pipelines, terminals, and trucks.

A ban on U.S. crude exports would create a different problem. American producers often export lighter crude, while many domestic refineries are configured to process heavier grades. Disrupting that trade would not magically produce more gasoline. It could strand some domestic barrels, reduce the incentive to produce them, and weaken the same supply response that helps cushion global shocks.

Florida makes the larger point especially well. It is one of the nation’s biggest electricity consumers, and its energy system already depends on several sources.

More than 70% of Florida’s in-state electricity generation came from natural gas in 2025, while nuclear supplied more than one-tenth and renewables about 12%. Nearly all the natural gas Florida consumes arrives from the Gulf Coast through interstate pipelines. The state’s size and growth make energy resilience a practical necessity, not an abstraction. Florida’s energy profile is a case study in why diversity and infrastructure both count.

Florida also sits beside one of America’s largest strategic energy assets: the Gulf of America. The Gulf supplies about 14% of U.S. crude oil production and supports extensive offshore infrastructure, deepwater ports, processing facilities, and an experienced energy workforce.

That does not mean energy security begins and ends with drilling. Responsible offshore development in the Gulf should be part of the strategy, alongside expanded nuclear power, continued growth in renewables, stronger transmission and pipeline capacity, and the storage and port infrastructure needed to move energy when normal routes are disrupted.

RELATED: The diesel panic cure could make the disease worse

Frederic J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

Every energy source carries environmental costs. Limiting domestic oil and gas production does not eliminate demand; it can move production to countries with weaker standards and worse oversight. The same problem is emerging with critical minerals. Solar panels, batteries, transmission systems, and advanced nuclear technology all require enormous quantities of mined and processed materials.

Environmental protection therefore belongs inside energy policy. Development should meet high standards, and a greater share of the economic value created by domestic production should support conservation and restoration. Producing more of what America needs at home also gives the country greater room to respond when foreign supplies are disrupted.

The lesson from the Iran conflict is straightforward. Energy security requires abundant and diverse domestic supply, reliable supply chains, and infrastructure that can absorb a shock. The United States should continue developing oil and natural gas in the Gulf while expanding nuclear and renewable power and maintaining strong environmental standards.

Global instability is an argument for investment, not retreat. America needs enough energy, infrastructure, and natural resources to meet its own needs and support its allies without treating the landscapes and wildlife that are also part of the national interest as expendable.

​Crude oil, Deepwater ports, Electricity, Environmental protection, Florida, Offshore production, Renewable energy, Solar panels, Gas prices, Infrastructure, Energy policy, Opinion & analysis 

Time really does fly by. It has been nearly a decade since he left the White House, yet his intoxicating influence on the Democratic Party remains as strong as ever.

In recent weeks, he has turned his attention to artificial intelligence, arguably the most powerful technology America has ever created. The stakes are enormous. He is grooming the next generation of party leaders to determine how government should manage systems capable of writing code, generating answers for hundreds of millions, gaslighting people en masse, and essentially prompt-engineering reality.

The former president understands power dynamics better than almost anyone.

Who is he?

No, not Joe Biden. Not Bill Clinton either. Behind closed doors, Barack Obama has been hosting strategy sessions with prospective 2028 Democrat presidential candidates, tech CEOs, and ivory-tower intellectuals.

Conservatives remember the early days of social media all too well. In the late 2000s and 2010s, tech executives regularly visited the Oval Office, trading political support and huge sums of money for highly favorable regulatory treatment.

Right-leaning Americans watched in horror as digital town squares became perpetually policed ideological echo chambers. Conservative voices were routinely flagged or suppressed. Many were outright banned by 20-somethings in California operating under comically ambiguous safety and misinformation guidelines.

Those days were bad, but the social media fight looks rather quaint compared to what is happening right now.

Unlimited power?

A social network provides links you can check yourself. An automated system delivers answers directly to your screen. The software processes vast amounts of reading material and discards what it dislikes. It then presents a single narrative as the absolute truth. When a user asks a question, the underlying design chooses which facts to emphasize and which perspectives to conveniently omit.

RELATED: OpenAI cancels its latest chatbot — it wouldn’t stop acting like a supervillain

Heather Diehl/Getty Images

Barack Obama is many things, but he’s certainly not stupid. The former president understands power dynamics better than almost anyone in modern political history. He’s not approaching these tools like an entrepreneur building a better business product, but as a veteran political operative who recognizes that controlling the flow of information is the ultimate key to controlling public opinion. By serving as the central broker between tech executives and future Democrat nominees, he is ensuring that his party’s preferences are built directly into future government rules. That includes preferences on climate action, immigration, gun rights, abortion access, and LGBTQ insanity.

The corporate executives, whose principles have a remarkable habit of shifting with the party in power, are more than happy to pull up a chair. Giant corporations always prefer strict government rules because prohibitive compliance costs protect them from smaller competitors who might challenge their market dominance. Big tech gets legal protection and guaranteed market share, while Washington politicians get a back door into what these systems say and how they respond.

It is a mutually beneficial partnership between state power and corporate monopolies, dressed in the righteous language of public safety.

Democrat strategists learned plenty from their previous fights over social networks. They realized that policing millions of individual user posts after the fact is a rat’s nest of legal and political problems.

It is far more efficient to bake that control into the technology from the start. If you control the initial training materials and the guidelines that define acceptable output, you rig the outcome long before the public sees any results.

Government officials don’t need to seize physical data centers or buy corporate stock to dictate how these systems operate. Washington can simply pass sweeping rules governing safety standards, energy use, liability, and AI’s interaction with kids. Once those broad rules take effect, bureaucrats will have the authority to decide which companies are allowed to operate and which are forbidden to.

Here come the justifications

The official justification for this incoming regulatory push will sound completely reasonable to millions of Americans. Political figures will preach endlessly about national security threats and economic ruin. They will deliver carefully scripted, faux-passionate speeches on protecting the public from deepfakes and disinformation.

But as readers know, technical experts and political organizers carry their own partisan biases into every room they enter. When a panel of credentialed experts decides what counts as harmful information or acceptable political debate, they naturally write their worldview into law. The average family ends up taking ethical cues from a handpicked circle of out-of-touch elites, many of whom find conservative perspectives repugnant.

AI is already taking over society, serving as a key educational aid for American children and a powerful tool for researchers. The institutions that control future AI programs will possess an unprecedented ability to shape present-day cultural norms, our idea of our future, and even our historical memory.

An Obama-backed Democrat could win the next presidential election. Conservatives simply can’t afford to sit on the sidelines while the part-time podcaster and full-time puppet master, along with his allies, builds the blueprint for the next presidential administration. The central battle of the coming decade won’t be over which social website lets you post, but over who controls the systems that dictate reality itself.

​Artificial intelligence, Tech 

Attorney and Federalist senior legal correspondent Margot Cleveland is taking the city of Dearborn, Michigan, which includes Muslim Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, to federal court.

Cleveland alleges that the city has violated the Constitution’s Establishment Clause by promoting one religion over others, and after hearing the full story, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck can’t help but agree.

Glenn explains that the purpose of the First Amendment, when it comes to religion, is “protecting the religion against government,” not the other way around.

“Well, in Dearborn, they’ve gone the opposite way. They are only celebrating Islamic holidays,” he says.

And this is why Cleveland is taking the city to court.

“If I didn’t do it, no one was going to do it,” she tells Glenn. “It has been a problem that I’ve been trying to rectify with the city for over a year. I did everything I could to try to avoid bringing a lawsuit. I basically went to city council and begged them to work with me, and they refused.”

“But the mayor has made clear that he will favor Islam, that he has a disregard for people who disagree with Islam, who hold other beliefs. The rhetoric that has come from him is extremely disturbing,” she explains.

One example Cleveland uses is the renaming of a street in Dearborn after a man named Siblani, who has called Hezbollah and Hamas “freedom fighters.”

“The mayor went and celebrated the street being renamed in Siblani’s name,” she says.

When a pastor complained, the mayor said on video, “You’re not welcome here.”

“You also had the mayor blaming Israel, on October 7, for what happened on October 7,” Cleveland tells Glenn, who doesn’t have much hope for the city.

“I think we’ve lost Dearborn. It’s an Islamic city, and I’m with you 100%,” he says, shocked.

“It’s extremely disturbing,” he adds.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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Marriage creates a new family, and sometimes that means setting boundaries with the family you came from.

BlazeTV host Ron Simmons tackles complicated viewer questions of dealing with in-laws who might be causing more strain than the relationship is worth.

One viewer asked Simmons how to “deal with in-laws” who don’t share the viewer’s faith “when a child is involved.”

“I think you have to always respect your in-laws, up to the point where you make sure that there’s obviously no abuse or anything like that,” he says. “But I would say respect with boundaries.”

Simmons explains that a job that comes with being a Christian parent is to “expose our children to the love of Christ … so that the Holy Spirit can begin working on them and bring them under his umbrella.”

“And I wouldn’t allow anything, as much as I could, that would get in the way of that,” he says.

Simmons then reads a question from a viewer who explained that her father-in-law asked her husband “to keep his estate and money from the wives.”

“He said it’s not for us to know, but me and my husband tell each other everything. So it feels wrong for him to ask that,” the viewer explained.

“First of all, that’s wrong for … the dad to do that, all right? That automatically puts a strain between his son and daughter-in-law. I mean, that sets up a marriage strain right there,” Simmons explains.

“Now, a lot of people, maybe they’re first-generation money, they’re afraid that, you know, the wives are going to not respect that and, you know, go off and spend the money or something like that,” he says. “But as far as you and your husband go, it’s perfectly OK for your husband to talk to you about that, right?”

“You don’t break that bond,” he continues. “That’s why the Bible says that when we grow up and we get married, the husband leaves his mom and dad and clings to his wife, that they become one flesh, and one flesh shares with each other. I promise you, my right hand knows what my left hand is doing, right?

“Is it wrong for him to ask that? Personally, I think it is,” he 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.

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The morning after you win, the National Governors Association will call. Its leaders will offer a seminar, a binder, and a roster of former governors prepared to explain why you should slow down. Take the meeting if you must — but do not buy their theory.

The midterms may cost Republicans the House and possibly even the Senate. But they will not lose the states. Thirty-six governorships are on the ballot, and the incoming class, with open seats in Ohio, Alabama, Iowa, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and others, will likely yield the most conservative slate of new governors in a generation.

The bureaucracy has weathered these past governors because they failed to act swiftly.

The federal government will likely be deadlocked in 2027, but the states offer hope for advancing a bold and transformative national agenda.

To carry out such an agenda, incoming governors must reject the advice found in the NGA’s transition manual, which is an apologia for paralysis. On page 39, a former governor offers what the association presents as wisdom: “As a businessman, I spent 90% of my time on process and 10% on policy. As governor, I find I spend 90% of my time on policy and 10% on process.” This advice comes from a man who once controlled his own calendar but learned to let someone else control it.

Unsurprisingly, he did not transform his state during his term in office.

The NGA’s strategic advice is designed to slow you down. In the first six to nine months, “Veteran governors advise that a new governor generally should minimize downtime by not undertaking major reorganizations, large-scale personnel changes beyond normal top-level appointments or other major actions unless absolutely necessary.”

The text then warns against using the honeymoon period to “eliminate some entrenched bureaucrat who has run a particular bureau like a fiefdom for 30 years,” because “experienced governors advise caution at precisely the time when difficult decisions seem easiest.” Page 19 adds a quota: Veteran governors “recommend only tackling three to five large programmatic changes during a term.”

The NGA seeks to lock you into stagnation by “maintaining credibility with the legislature, state bureaucracy, press, and public.” Fail at that, and you become a “caretaker, largely beholden to a bureaucracy that has previously weathered poor governors.”

The bureaucracy has weathered these past governors because they failed to act swiftly. As a new governor, you have a choice: safeguard left-wing institutions or act boldly with the mandate voters gave you.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) declined the seminar’s theory of the job. In his first term, he suspended Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren and won passage of the parental-rights law the education establishment said would never be approved. And when Disney used its private government to punish the state, DeSantis moved to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District.

His second term opened at the same speed. In January 2023, he replaced the board of trustees at New College of Florida, which fired the president at its first meeting and shut down the diversity office within weeks. That summer, DeSantis suspended Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell. He filled the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the replacement for Reedy Creek, with his appointees. None of this waited for month 10, and none of it counted against a “three-to-five” quota.

RELATED: The danger of calling the left stupid

ALEX EDELMAN/AFP/Getty Images

Ron DeSantis immediately targeted the offices that decide what the law means, and as a result, he is the most consequential governor of modern times.

President Trump’s second transition is the federal version of the same choice. The work of remaking the government began well before he took the oath of office. Inauguration Day produced a seismic list of executive orders that revoked the prior administration’s directives and froze pending rules.

President Trump moved policy-making career officials into positions where refusal to carry out the elected president’s program became grounds for removal. His speed and decisiveness made it impossible for the bureaucracy to stop him. He understood that since bureaucracy wins through inaction, such qualities are the best counter to its playbook.

The state version of the problem is worse than the NGA manual admits. Agencies are overstaffed relative to the work. A large share of the professional class inside them opposed your election and will oppose any order that threatens a program, a grant, or a headcount.

The NGA’s advice for staffing hundreds of boards and commissions — to staff them defensively, to “avoid embarrassment,” to keep them from consuming the governor’s time, and to wait until the crush of transition has passed — amounts to a 48-month holding pattern. Its goal is to outlast you.

Build the appointment list before election night. Know which boards can be abolished by statute and which must be filled by appointment in the first 60 days. Put your own counsel, budget director, and personnel leads in place before the inaugural balls are over. Carry out the reorganizations the NGA manual says to postpone. Publish the short list of agencies you intend to shrink — and shrink them while the people who run them are still writing memos about how hard that will be.

The bureaucracy is not your partner, and it is not waiting to be persuaded. It is overstaffed, and a meaningful share of its career employees do not want you to succeed. Treat it the way Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are treating it, or spend four years learning why the conservative governor before you left office with a binder full of process and a state that is merely treading water.

Editor’s note: This article was published in the American Mind.

​Bureaucracy, Executive orders, Federal government, House, Legislature, Midterms, Moderates, Republicans, Ron desantis, Senate, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

“It was at this moment he knew he screwed up,” a narrator says at the start of a Vancouver, Washington, police bodycam video showing a suspect falling from the ceiling of a local department store late last month.

Police said officers responded on Sept. 30 to the Vancouver Mall after employees reported that a male was crawling around in the ceiling and breaking through ceiling tiles.

‘Wow! They subdued Tarzan, grunts and all.’

Police said officers gave the male multiple commands to come down, but he kept moving through the ceiling, breaking more tiles and damaging lights, wiring, and other fixtures.

The second floor was evacuated while officers and firefighters tried to get the suspect down, police said.

Finally, a ladder was placed in the ceiling, and a mattress was placed on the floor in case the suspect fell, police said.

After more than an hour of trying to talk him into coming down, police said the suspect finally stepped upon the ladder.

However, police said the suspect then tried to climb back into the ceiling — but officers weren’t having it and pulled the ladder away to keep him from going back up into the ceiling.

And down he went.

RELATED: Homicide Suspect Breaks Handcuffs, Escapes Police Interview Room Through Ceiling Tile — and That’s Just for Starters

Police said the suspect landed on the mattress, but he had no intention of being led away quietly.

Instead, police said he got up and tried to run off.

“That didn’t work out so well,” police noted.

The suspect, Gabriel Hideo, was taken into custody, police said — amid frequent growls as he fought being handcuffed, according to the video.

Hideo was soon booked for:

Malicious mischief in the first degreeBurglary in the first degreeFelony warrant

A few hundred commenters under the police department’s video of the incident — which hilariously includes A-ha’s “Take On Me” as background music — had way too much fun reacting to the bizarre arrest.

“Was his name John Bender?? Was he making a ruckus???” one commenter wondered in a not-so-subtle nod to 1980s flick “The Breakfast Club.””Wow! They subdued Tarzan, grunts and all,” another user added. “And the music choice? Bonus points. Serious bonus points. Well done, VPD.””He sounds possessed, great job VPD!” another commenter exclaimed.”Made it a ways down into the comments, and not one complaint about excessive force so far. I’m impressed!” another user said.

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​Washington state, Vancouver, Police, Arrest, Burglary, Weird news, Odd news, Crime 

It took Shane Gillis just two minutes into his last “Saturday Night Live” appearance to make the show’s liberal audience squirm.

Now he’s back for a third time, and “SNL” seems happy to play up his potential to offend — if that’s what it takes to get viewers to tune in.

‘I hope I can say those words on TV.’

Diddy do it?

Ahead of his return to “SNL” on Saturday, Gillis joked on his podcast about throwing Diddy a party when the rapper gets out of prison, promising to have his “finest men lined up” for the occasion.

The comedian seems as loose and on-point as ever — loose enough to suggest he’s going to throw Diddy a release party. And “SNL” seems happy to play up the possibility of what could transpire during Gillis’ third hosting appearance in as many years.

In fact, the show’s promos make a joke of Gillis’ reputation for causing trouble.

“I know what you did last time you was here,” cast member Kenan Thompson warns him. “Don’t be touching none of my stuff this week.”

“Kenan, I told you, I thought the cantaloupe was for everybody,” Gillis responded.

It’s a pretty tame exchange, especially compared with the material Gillis has delivered on the show before. But it sure is funny seeing “SNL” celebrate the same fearless attitude that got the comic fired before he ever set foot on its stage in 2019.

In 2025, Gillis broke the ice with his monologue by talking about how much “fun” life under President Trump was, poking fun at him before pivoting to remarks about former President Biden’s face going “dead” whenever he stopped talking.

Soon, Gillis was talking about the Civil War and asking the audience questions like, “Have you ever had sex with a black guy before?”

RELATED: Shane and Joe show us what real activism looks like

Will Heath/NBC/Getty Images

Bad words

Gillis’ initial return to the network in 2024, after being fired five years earlier, marked a huge turnaround for non-woke comedy.

It felt like Gillis had broken the sound barrier when he used words like “gay” and “retarded” on a very liberal, and very live, network broadcast.

“I hope I can say those words on TV,” Gillis said at the time. “It’s really well lit in here, and I can see you guys not enjoying it.”

Gillis later revealed that not everyone at “SNL” knew what he was going to say in the monologue. Even executive producer Lorne Michaels didn’t know the particulars.

“He was very supportive, because I kept telling him what I was going to say, and he was literally just like, ‘Don’t tell me, just do it.'”

This time around, everyone seemingly knows what to expect. That might take some of the wind out of Gillis’ sails, but perhaps Michaels doesn’t mind. Gillis has become a much bigger star since “SNL” let him go, with a hit Netflix series, a wildly popular podcast, and a stand-up career that recently took him to a sold-out football stadium.

“SNL” once decided it could do without him. Now it’s inviting him back for the third time.

RELATED: 50-year-old rock star tears up at MLB playoff game — only Millennials will understand

Will Heath/NBC/Getty Images

Gay old time

Moreover, the previews released by NBC only reinforce how far Gillis has moved beyond what the sketch show has to offer. The cast members hardly seem in his league, comedy-wise.

Any given portion of Gillis’ podcast with comic pal Matt McCusker is infinitely more entertaining, even when mustache trimming and “TGIF” sitcoms are the topic of discussion.

Gillis is still likely to offend on Saturday though. One simple riff from his podcast would have “SNL” audience members melting in disbelief, especially when he tells guests that any time there’s “nothing to talk about,” he simply starts accusing a member of the production team of being gay.

And if he does manage to offend someone, “SNL” can hardly complain. This time, it’s practically advertising the possibility.

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​Comedy, Saturday night live, Snl, Shane gillis, Lorne michaels, Entertainment 

The Supreme Court opened its new term Monday with one of the most consequential climate cases in years. The justices do not have to decide whether climate change is real or whether carbon dioxide warms the planet. They face a more basic question: Who pays the tab?

In Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, Boulder County and the city of Boulder want ExxonMobil and Suncor to pay under Colorado law for local costs they attribute to global warming, while also alleging deceptive marketing. The Colorado Supreme Court allowed the claims to proceed.

A Colorado jury cannot set national climate policy, but a patchwork of state tort verdicts could begin to approximate one.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether federal law precludes them and whether it has jurisdiction to decide that question at this stage. The Trump administration is backing the companies.

This is not simply about two oil companies and one county. Boulder’s alleged injuries trace to greenhouse gases accumulated in a single global atmosphere over generations, from energy used in every state and nearly every country. Yet Colorado tort law would determine liability for selected companies.

Now multiply that. California could have one theory of damages, New York another, Hawaii a third. Nearly 60 state and local governments have brought similar cases. Different juries could impose different costs for alleged harms arising from the same global emissions pool. If every jurisdiction can pursue its own theory, climate tort begins to look less like compensation for a local injury and more like carbon pricing by litigation.

Boulder says it is applying ordinary state tort law, not regulating emissions. But whatever label courts use, large judgments against energy producers will not remain confined to the courthouse.

Then there is China. According to the Global Carbon Project, China accounts for roughly 32% of global fossil carbon dioxide emissions, compared with about 13% for the United States. A Colorado court cannot impose comparable liability on Chinese state-owned producers for emissions in China. That asymmetry is hard to ignore.

New York offers a warning. Its Climate Change Superfund Act sought $75 billion from fossil fuel companies for historical emissions. One federal judge struck it down on August 31; another did the same on September 23. Both relied on the Clean Air Act and the federal government’s authority over foreign affairs. Those cases involved a state statute rather than tort claims, but they show that the federalism problem is not theoretical.

RELATED: Finally! EPA poised to repeal some climate hysteria over carbon emissions

Iiievgeniy/Getty Images

The lawsuits also leave out the other side of the ledger. Fossil fuels underpin synthetic nitrogen fertilizer that supports food production for roughly half the world, along with medical plastics, sterile packaging, transportation, and dispatchable power. A tort case can price alleged harms without pricing those benefits. Successful climate lawsuits would still raise costs somewhere in the system.

Nor did weather disasters begin with today’s carbon dioxide levels. The 1900 Galveston hurricane killed an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people. In 1871, after a summer of drought, the Peshtigo fire burned more than a million acres and killed between 1,200 and 2,400 people. The Dust Bowl followed in the 1930s.

None of that settles the science. It shows something narrower: Disaster causation is not binary. A court asked to assign one company a share of a particular drought, fire, or flood must separate baseline risk from any incremental climate effect and then apportion responsibility across global emissions.

RELATED: Your new house comes with a green surcharge

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Then comes the question of who pays. Energy demand is relatively inelastic in the short run. To the extent that judgments raise costs for American suppliers, some of those costs will be passed through at the pump, on heating and electricity bills, and in the price of goods. Lower-income households spend a larger share of their budgets on energy, so they feel increases most.

Congress can write national climate law. The EPA can regulate within the authority Congress gives it. Voters can hold both accountable. A Colorado jury cannot set national climate policy, but a patchwork of state tort verdicts could begin to approximate one.

The justices do not have to settle climate science. They have to decide whether state courts, one lawsuit at a time, may impose liability for a global emissions problem.

The answer should be no.

​Carbon dioxide, Climate hysteria, Exxonmobil, Federal law, Food production, Global warming, Greenhouse gases, Supreme court, Trump administration, Oil companies, Global carbon project, Cleanr air act, Opinion & analysis 

The mayor of Cocoa in Florida is asking for prayers and support for a mother in his community who suffered a horrific loss on Wednesday.

The mother called 911 after going to pick up her children, ages 5 and 7 years old, at their father’s home because it was her turn to have custody, according to the Cocoa Police Department.

‘The children’s mother, Olivia, tells me she wants everybody to know how much she loved these babies and how amazing they are.’

She found the two children and the father dead.

“The door was partially ajar, and she went inside and found all three deceased,” said Cocoa Police Chief Evander Collier IV.

Police believe the father killed the two children and then committed suicide.

The man was identified as 37-year-old Joseph Kyle Dingwall, and the two children were identified as Aria Dingwall and Remy Dingwall.

The man was captured on surveillance video pacing around, according to police.

Police also indicated that they had been called out to the home in 11 previous incidents.

A neighbor who lives across the street from the home told WESH-TV that he heard two gunshots the previous night but that he neglected to call police.

“Two gunshots. Two clear gunshots, and it was 12.20 a.m., midnight,” Marcos Garcia said.

WESH reported that it was unclear whether the gunshot noises came from the house.

The children’s mother spoke to WESH reporter Gail Paschall-Brown on Thursday.

RELATED: 6 people found dead in New York home, including 4 children — handwritten note points to grandmother, police say

“The children’s mother, Olivia, tells me she wants everybody to know how much she loved these babies and how amazing they are,” Paschall-Brown said.

“We ask that you continue to hold them up in prayer, show support and love because tough times don’t always last; tough people do,” Mayor Michael C. Blake said about the woman’s family.

WESH said it was the fourth apparent murder-suicide incident in southern Florida in the past few days.

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​Florida, Murder suicide, Child murder, Custody battle, Crime 

If you don’t buy it, they’re not selling it.

I say this all the time: Consumers have more power over the auto industry than they realize.

For many drivers, CarPlay isn’t an exciting feature anymore. It’s plumbing. You connect the phone and expect your stuff to appear.

Automakers can announce grand plans for the future. Engineers can decide they’ve come up with something better. Executives can explain why the technology they want to give us is really what we wanted all along. But eventually somebody has to walk into a dealership and buy the vehicle.

If it ain’t broke …

The best example of this at the moment is what’s going on with General Motors.

The company recently unveiled the completely redesigned user interface that will debut in the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra — GM’s highest-volume vehicles. There are new displays, Google Gemini, Google Maps, over-the-air updates, and plenty of other technology.

There’s also Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. And GM says it has integrated both of them more deeply than ever before in its light-duty pickups. CarPlay or Android Auto can occupy a large portion of the screen alongside native truck functions, such as trailering information and vehicle status.

Why is this notable? Because for the past several years, GM has been preparing drivers for a future without Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, making the case that its own built-in software could do the job better.

Best laid plans

In 2023, GM laid out an ambitious plan to move away from Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in favor of its own deeply integrated software, beginning with its new electric vehicles.

There were legitimate engineering reasons for the decision. A native system can communicate more directly with the vehicle, incorporating charging, range calculations, route planning, and other functions that aren’t simply being projected from a phone.

Then GM did something automakers don’t always do particularly well: It asked customers what they actually wanted.

The result was a dose of reality. GM took a sweeping software strategy and adjusted it to the way people actually use their cars.

Button pushing

GM says the development process for the new Silverado and Sierra interface included customer clinics and ongoing usability testing.

According to Sebastian Bauer, GM’s executive director of human interface design, drivers complained about “hunting for controls,” taking too many steps to accomplish basic tasks, and encountering interfaces that behaved inconsistently.

So GM simplified things.

Frequently used functions, such as climate controls and camera views, were made easier to reach. Key vehicle settings are one tap away. And — an increasingly welcome sentence in any new-car announcement — GM says physical controls remain available for customers who prefer tactile feedback.

And GM had another realization: Most drivers don’t want a new digital ecosystem. They’re perfectly happy with the one already on their phones.

“People really like CarPlay and Android Auto because they’re so user-centric,” GM product executive Mike Wahlstrom said.

That sounds obvious. Apparently it took some customer research to rediscover.

GM says drivers wanted the simplicity of the phone interfaces without losing fast access to the things the truck itself does. So the new system lets both co-exist instead of forcing drivers to bounce completely between one world and the other.

RELATED: What happened to the $20,000 used car?

Universal History Archive/Getty Images

Phone fans

Automakers increasingly think of cars as software platforms, and modern vehicles certainly need a lot of software. Cameras, driver-assistance systems, navigation, entertainment, climate controls, towing functions — all of it has to work together.

But there’s also money in controlling the dashboard.

Software creates opportunities for connected services, subscriptions, and a continuing relationship with the customer long after the vehicle leaves the dealership.

The trouble is that drivers already have their own way of doing all this — using the phone in their pocket.

Our contacts, music, podcasts, messages, maps, and apps already live there. For many drivers, CarPlay isn’t an exciting feature anymore. It’s plumbing. You connect the phone and expect your stuff to appear.

That makes replacing it a lot harder than simply designing a technically superior dashboard.

Consumer win

Not that GM is giving up on its native software. The new Silverado and Sierra use Google built-in alongside CarPlay and Android Auto. The same underlying interface architecture is designed to expand across electric, gasoline, and diesel vehicles, and GM plans to keep adding capabilities through software updates.

But look at what happened when GM designed the system for the trucks that sell in enormous numbers.

Drivers said they were tired of digging through menus. GM reduced the number of steps. Some wanted real controls. GM kept them. And customers liked Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. GM made them work better with the vehicle rather than asking buyers to choose.

GM can call that whatever it likes. I call it listening to the customer.

​Android auto, Apple carplay, Auto industry, Dashboard control, General motors, Lifestyle, Technology, Trucks, Automotive