Category: blaze media

​Women in combat, Culture, Humor, Quick draw 

Sexual liberation has been packaged and sold as just that — “liberating” — despite BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey seeing it as having the opposite effect on women, especially younger women.

“Aren’t we more, especially young girls it seems, more depressed than ever, more anxious than ever, even more suicidal than ever? And there are a lot of different factors, I think, that play into that,” Stuckey asks author Louise Perry.

“Young women especially are berated on social media with ‘Just love yourself’ … ‘Just discover yourself,’ ‘You are your own truth,’ ‘You’re enough for yourself,’ you would think that in an age where that kind of message is primary for women that we would be happier if that were the solution,” she continues.

While Perry agrees, she does believe there’s a resistance growing to the sex-positive, self-interested movement that’s taken over the youth.

“I think it’s a bit of a complicated picture, because you’ve got among Gen Z, for instance, you’ve got a combination of some members of Gen Z who are really into the sex positive stuff, and then you’ve also got some who are, I think, reacting against it, and there is a bit of a sexual counter-revolution brewing,” Perry says.

“For instance, there are a lot of young men who are reacting against porn and who are swearing off using porn at all. They generally are not doing so out of any kind of ethical motivation at all,” she continues.

Perry explains that one of the primary reasons appears to be that porn “is really destructive for the consumer” and “tends to have a really negative impact on your own mind” and “sexuality.”

“When something is bad for society, it tends to be bad for the individual and vice versa, and so to me, it just is another piece of evidence … that the mind and the heart and the soul and the body are connected,” Stuckey agrees.

“It might be self-interested, but as you said, the consequences are good of that kind of self-control,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

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Once an outspoken atheist, Stanford bioengineering professor Annelise Barron was deeply influenced by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens — before rediscovering God through personal tragedy and the limits of science.

“I lost someone super close to me in a very shocking way to suicide two and a half years ago. And because he had killed himself, I suddenly became super anxious — like, is he in hell? You know, because this is what you vaguely hear, like, if you kill yourself, this is a cardinal sin,” Barron tells BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan on “Back to the People.”

“So I started researching it and reading the Bible, and I just, you know, had an incredible revival of my own faith based on thinking about that question,” she explains.

And when Barron began hearing the testimonials of other believers who survived tragic circumstances that science couldn’t explain, her faith deepened further.

“What’s astonishing is, like, from one moment to the next, if you ask for help in a sincere way, you ask for healing, it can be given. And whether it’s an addiction or a disease or, you know, a habit that you’re not happy with — so I am just 100% certain that God is real and that He does love each one of us,” Barron tells Shanahan.

“All He wants from us is to be in closer relationship with Him. And I think it’s extraordinary how that can help your personal happiness,” she adds.

Shanahan couldn’t agree more, explaining that the healing she’s “found in full faith of Jesus as savior” can’t be replicated “through any other bioengineered mechanism.”

“I believe that,” Barron agrees.

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

To enjoy more of Nicole’s compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video, Free, Video phone, Sharing, Upload, Camera phone, Youtube.com, Back to the people, Nicole shanahan, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Faith, Religion, God vs science, Sciencism, Atheism, Christopher hitchens, Richard dawkins, Cardinal sin, Back to the people with nicole shanahan 

Hillary Clinton just proved what leftists truly fear.

Two weeks after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Clinton went on national television to pour salt in the wound. Instead of offering a reconciliatory message to the country, Clinton used the moment to attack conservative white Christian men, painting them as the true threat to America.

Leftist elites have trained our culture to believe that white Christian conservative men are villains, oppressors, and enemies of progress.

“The idea that you could turn the clock back and try to re-create a world that never was, dominated by, you know, let’s say it, white men, of a certain persuasion, a certain religion, a certain point of view, a certain ideology, is just doing such damage to what we should be aiming for,” she said.

Read that again.

Clinton didn’t denounce left-wing violence or condemn the twisted culture that openly celebrated the death of Christians like Charlie Kirk. Instead, she seemed to point the finger at conservative white Christian men who support President Donald Trump and believe that our country and culture should be ordered around biblical principles.

Clinton seems to believe that the real threat to America isn’t godlessness, violence, and hatred, but people of faith who dare believe in biblical truth and traditional values.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s death feels personal — even if you never met him

What she said is shocking. But what she left unsaid is even more so.

If white Christian conservative men are damaging the country and leading us down the wrong path, then, according to Clinton’s logic, she believes America would be better off without white conservative Christian men.

That’s not just offensive. It’s reckless — and dangerous.

Imagine for one second if Clinton had singled out any other demographic. What if Clinton had targeted black women, Jews, Muslims, or immigrants and called them the force doing “such damage” to America? The outrage would be deafening, and there would be wall-to-wall media coverage about her “bigotry” and “hate speech.”

But few people noticed Clinton’s remarks — and that’s just as alarming.

Here’s the truth: The media ignores Clinton’s comments because she seemed to target white Christian, MAGA-supporting men. Nearly every other demographic is untouchable, but because this target is the vilified “oppressor,” white conservative Christian men can be vilified without consequence.

The irony and double standard are nauseating.

Worst yet, rhetoric that constantly demonizes Christians sends a message: Hostility toward them is acceptable. Were you confused why so many leftists openly cheered the murder of a Christian leader like Charlie Kirk? Well, this is how we got there. Leftist elites have trained our culture to believe that white Christian conservative men are villains, oppressors, and enemies of progress.

And once you’ve branded them as the enemy, “fascists,” and “Nazis,” what the next logical step? Violence always follows dehumanization.

Perhaps most interesting is that Clinton’s words reveal more than contempt — they reveal fear.

Contrary to their claims, leftists don’t attack white Christian men because they are violent or oppressive. They attack white Christian men because they know strong and bold men stand in the way of their godless agenda. Christian men unapologetically uphold the values the left wants to erase: faith, family, freedom, moral clarity, and biblical truth.

The timing of Clinton’s attack says it all.

Clinton wants to intimidate Christians with her attack, but it won’t work.

As the nation mourns Charlie Kirk — the exact type of person Clinton seems to have targeted — Clinton appears to have singled out the group most committed to defending faith, family, freedom, moral clarity, and biblical truth. It’s not a critique, but an admission of fear. She fears people like Charlie Kirk, Christian men who stand in the left’s way, refuse to bow the knee, and will die defending what is good and true.

Let’s be clear: Christian men are not America’s problem. They are its best hope.

What truly damages America is not faith in Christ but contempt for Him, not traditional families but the collapse of the family, not biblical morality but the moral vacuum left when leftists erase God from public life.

Our country needs more conservative Christian men — not fewer. We need Christian men willing to lead with courage, humility, and conviction, who won’t apologize for their faith in Jesus Christ and commitment to biblical truth. The future of America belongs to them: bold and courageous Christian men who lead strong families, build flourishing communities, and sacrifice themselves for others.

Clinton wants to intimidate Christians with her attack, but it won’t work. We will not be silenced or shamed into submission.

So let the elites rage. Let them mock and condemn, for we know the truth: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). And in the end, Christ wins.

​American christianity, Christian, Christianity, Conservative, Conservative christians, Hillary clinton, Racism, Faith 

Corporate America is bending to conservatives’ market influence. Not out of sudden ideological sympathy, but because conservatives have more economic power than the left — and they’ve stopped pretending not to notice.

For years, corporations ignored conservative concerns. Worse, they often went out of their way to antagonize them, stripping away team mascots like the Redskins and Indians, embracing diversity quotas, and saturating entertainment with left-wing tropes. The squeaky wheel got the grease, and the left made all the noise.

Free markets punish bad bets more effectively than Washington ever could. Let them.

Conservatives, meanwhile, were taken for granted. Corporate leaders assumed they would keep buying no matter how many insults were thrown their way. For a long time, they were right.

That ended when conservatives started fighting back. Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney stunt turned into a disaster. Victoria’s Secret collapsed under its “new image” campaign. Cracker Barrel’s woke makeover backfired so badly its chairs stopped rocking. And when employees mocked Charlie Kirk’s assassination, corporations finally began to realize that “the customer is always right” still applies.

Numbers don’t lie

Corporations aren’t embracing conservatives because they’ve had a change of heart. They’re doing it because they need to survive.

The 2024 election was a wake-up call: Conservative voters outnumbered liberals 35% to 23%. Add moderates, and non-liberals outnumbered liberals more than three to one.

Conservatives overwhelmingly vote Republican. Ninety percent cast ballots for Trump. Pew data shows a majority of middle- and upper-middle-income Americans lean Republican — and 51% of Americans identify as middle class. That’s a lot of disposable income.

Family size makes the math even stronger. The Institute for Family Studies reports that counties where Trump won big also have higher birth rates: 1.76 compared to the national average of 1.63. Harris counties, by contrast, averaged just 1.37. Republicans also want bigger families: half want three or more kids, compared to only 31% of Democrats.

Bigger families and higher incomes mean bigger market clout. And the left’s most extreme advocates — the loudest drivers of corporate wokeness — are a small minority inside an already shrinking ideological bloc.

Why the shift happened

So why did corporations bow to the left for so long? Two reasons.

First, executives themselves lean left. Pew Research found upper-income Americans tilt Democrat, and CEOs have marched steadily leftward over the last two decades. Second, conservatives tolerated it. They didn’t punish woke messaging, making it appear costless for companies to indulge their leadership’s politics.

That illusion is gone. Conservative consumers are awake. And companies are finally capitulating to reality.

RELATED: The right message: Justice. The wrong messenger: Pam Bondi.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Don’t let government ruin it

This is why Republicans should resist the urge to meddle. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made a mistake threatening ABC over Jimmy Kimmel. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way”? Let’s not.

That kind of government action obscures the real shift — a market correction, not a political one.

Markets speak louder than regulators. If conservatives let economics do the work, corporations will continue adjusting out of necessity. But if government steps in, companies will chalk the change up to political coercion, not consumer demand, and drift back toward the left as soon as administrations change.

Already the left is trying to spin it that way, casting Jimmy Kimmel as a martyr for “free expression” instead of what he is: a bad business decision. The left wants companies to believe government, not consumers, forced the pivot.

Conservatives know better. Free markets punish bad bets more effectively than Washington. Let them.

​Opinion & analysis, Consumers, Boycotts, Bud light boycott, Victoria’s secret, Redskins, Indians, Brands, Woke capital, Woke corporations, Conservatives, Liberals, Diversity equity inclusion, Cracker barrel, Middle class, Democrats, Republicans, Pew research center, Abc, Jimmy kimmel, First amendment, Fcc, Brendan carr, Free expression, Dylan mulvaney 

Loneliness has become an epidemic in America. Millions of people, even when surrounded by others, feel invisible. In tragic irony, we live in an age of unparalleled connectivity, yet too many sit in silence, unseen and unheard.

I’ve been experiencing this firsthand. My children have grown up and moved out. The house that once overflowed with life now echoes with quiet. Moments that once held laughter now hold silence. And in that silence, the mind can play cruel games. It whispers, “You’re forgotten. Your story doesn’t matter.”

We are unique in our gifts, but not in our humanity. Recognizing this shared struggle is how we overcome loneliness.

It’s a lie.

I’ve seen it in others. I remember sitting at Rockefeller Center one winter, watching a woman lace up her ice skates. Her clothing was worn, her bag battered. Yet on the ice, she transformed — elegant, alive, radiant.

Minutes later, she returned to her shoes, merged into the crowd, unnoticed. I’ve thought of her often. She was not alone in her experience. Millions of Americans live unseen, performing acts of quiet heroism every day.

Shared pain makes us human

Loneliness convinces us to retreat, to stay silent, to stop reaching out to others. But connection is essential. Even small gestures — a word of encouragement, a listening ear, a shared meal — are radical acts against isolation.

I’ve learned this personally. Years ago, a caller called me “Mr. Perfect.” I could have deflected, but I chose honesty. I spoke of my alcoholism, my failed marriage, my brokenness. I expected judgment. Instead, I found resonance. People whispered back, “I’m going through the same thing. Thank you for saying it.”

Our pain is universal. Everyone struggles with self-doubt and fear. Everyone feels, at times, like a fraud. We are unique in our gifts, but not in our humanity. Recognizing this shared struggle is how we overcome loneliness.

We were made for connection. We were built for community — for conversation, for touch, for shared purpose. Every time we reach out, every act of courage and compassion punches a hole in the wall of isolation.

RELATED: What fatherhood has taught me as my children move on

Photo by oatawa via Getty Images

You’re not alone

If you’re feeling alone, know this: You are not invisible. You are seen. You matter. And if you’re not struggling, someone you know is. It’s your responsibility to reach out.

Loneliness is not proof of brokenness. It is proof of humanity. It is a call to engage, to bear witness, to connect. The world is different because of the people who choose to act. It is brighter when we refuse to be isolated.

We cannot let silence win. We cannot allow loneliness to dictate our lives. Speak. Reach out. Connect. Share your gifts. By doing so, we remind one another: We are all alike, and yet each of us matters profoundly.

In this moment, in this country, in this world, what we do matters. Loneliness is real, but so is hope. And hope begins with connection.

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​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Loneliness, Loneliness epidemic, Digital age, Social media 

In an age of madness, we need fearless people. The United Kingdom, a country that has slowly slipped into authoritarianism, has found a maverick in British comedian and political commentator Katie Hopkins. Her unapologetic truth-telling and hilarious politically incorrect jokes have gotten her deported from Australia, detained in Africa, threatened with jail time in England, and nearly beheaded by jihadi terrorists. But Katie remains unbowed.

“I choose all of it and more. If I’m arrested when I return home, please know I choose it because this is the time, and we will be dragged through more coals, but this is the time to be alive,” she says.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Podcast,” Katie shared the wildest stories from her extraordinary life and explained why she refuses to stay silent.

South Africa, 2018

After realizing that the genocide of white South African farmers at the hands of black gangs was going unreported, Katie did what most would never even consider: She moved to South Africa and lived on white farms for three months.

With a trustworthy camera and security crew, Katie filmed a documentary capturing the truth about the horrendous plight of white farmers in South Africa — a place she says is a far cry from the “multicultural glory pot” the media and global governments pretend it is.

“At night in South Africa on white farms is where the monsters come,” she tells Glenn.

“Gangs of black men armed with weapons that were laid down by whites during the time of apartheid” come to torture and kill white farmers and their families in ways Katie says are too barbaric to describe. The entire “targeted campaign” is “aided and abetted by black police forces.”

Although she entered the country “securely and secretly,” a month into her stay, Katie began releasing the documentary footage. “Because I was determined to be heard,” she says. The African National Congress, privy to her whereabouts and purpose, then began “chasing” her as she traveled between farms.

“By the time I went back to the airport, the ANC had caught up with me,” she tells Glenn.

When she tried to board the plane back home, she found that her passport had been flagged. Airport officials confiscated it and detained Katie. Knowing that if she was taken to a South African jail, she would never come out again, Katie’s security detail was prepared to “open fire on the South African police.”

But luck or divine providence was in her favor that day. The police chief was off duty, and Katie was eventually allowed to board the plane and return home.

Australia, 2021

In 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Katie was granted a special visa exemption to appear as a contestant on the reality TV show “Big Brother VIP.” Upon arrival in Sydney, she was placed in mandatory 14-day quarantine in accordance with the country’s lockdown mandates.

They sent “Australian military men to get me off the plane to put me in a quarantine prison for 14 days,” she says.

The rules enforced upon her were beyond severe: “I was not allowed a key. I was not allowed to touch the front door of my hotel room. I was not allowed to come out for food,” she tells Glenn.

“When they delivered the food, they would knock on the door. I was given a little egg timer. … I had to turn the egg timer, wait six seconds (because obviously COVID would know), and then I was allowed to go to the door to get my food.”

Three days into her quarantine, Katie had reached her limit. She went “full-blooming Winston Churchill mode” and livestreamed a YouTube video to 3 million viewers, calling for the Australian people “to rise” up against the country’s COVID tyranny.

Being a comedian, Katie joked, “I am going to strip myself naked. I’m going to cover myself in vegetable oil, and I’m going to make a run down the 29th floor, and I’m going to grab a member of that military, and I’m going to drag him into my room, and I’m going to do terrible things to him.”

Even though no such thing happened, major media outlets, including Al Jazeera, CNN, and BBC, reported that Katie indeed violated a military officer.

“Within a moment, my life went very dark indeed. So they turned off the water, the lights, no more food,” she says, adding that the Australian government then denied having issued her a travel visa, framing her as “an illegal immigrant.”

“Eventually two minibus full of men came, rounded me up, put me in the back of a white van, took me to the airport, and walked me onto the plane,” she recounts, noting that her passport now has a giant red “DEPORTED” stamp on it.

But the craziest part came next. After her deportation, Katie went to a tattoo shop and had the red deported stamp tattooed on her rear end. “And then I sent the picture of my ass to the deputy prime minister of Australia,” she laughs.

To hear more of Katie’s wild tales and her take on the Pakistani rape gangs in the U.K., Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Donald Trump, and other topics, watch the full interview above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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​The glenn beck podcast, Glenn beck, Katie hopkins, Uk, England, Britain, Tommy robinson, Covid tyranny, Blazetv, Blaze media 

California, your days driving U.S. emissions policy are numbered.

That’s the message behind House Bill H.R. 4117, the Fuel Emissions Freedom Act — and it’s shaking up the automotive world.

Even if it clears Congress, lawsuits are certain. California has never been shy about using the courts to defend its regulatory turf.

First introduced on June 24, 2025, and now under review by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the legislation seeks to repeal federal and state motor vehicle emission and fuel economy standards under the Clean Air Act and related laws.

Its stated goals? Lower costs for consumers, simplify compliance for automakers, and revive U.S. competitiveness. But behind the legal jargon lies a direct challenge to one of the most powerful forces in U.S. auto regulation: California.

Game changer

The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Roger Williams of Texas and co-sponsored by Republican Reps. Michael Cloud (Texas), Brandon Gill (Texas), and Victoria Spartz (Ind.), takes aim at Section 202 of the Clean Air Act (federal emissions standards) and portions of Title 49 of the U.S. Code (CAFE standards).

But the sharp end of H.R. 4117 is pointed directly at state-level mandates like California’s Advanced Clean Cars II program, which requires 100% zero-emission vehicle sales by 2035. If passed, the bill would prevent California — and any other state following its lead — from setting their own emission or fuel rules, putting Washington and Sacramento directly at odds.

FEFA fix

Supporters argue the current system of EPA rules layered with California’s mandates and CAFE standards create a regulatory maze that raises costs and limits choice.

The Fuel Emissions Freedom Act promises to fix this by:

Lowering prices for drivers: Meeting the EPA’s 2023 rules, which require a 49% emissions cut by 2032, could raise new car prices by thousands. Repealing these standards would ease costs for buyers and keep more affordable gas-powered vehicles on the market.Simplifying regulations: Automakers currently juggle federal requirements and California’s dictates, plus a patchwork of states copying California. The result? Confusion, higher compliance costs, and supply chain strain. H.R. 4117 promises a single, unified system.Strengthening U.S. industry: Instead of funneling billions into forced EV development, manufacturers could refocus on consumer demand, job growth, and homegrown production.Restoring choice to consumers: With California mandating EV adoption, critics argue consumers are losing the freedom to buy the cars they actually want — trucks, SUVs, or traditional sedans. This bill restores that choice.

RELATED: The Stop CARB Act: A bold move to rein in California’s control over emission rules

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Waiver goodbye?

Crucial to that power is the state’s unique authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own emission standards, with other states free to follow its lead. For decades, this waiver has allowed California to dictate national auto policy by sheer market size.

H.R. 4117 would revoke that authority, ending California’s role as the de facto regulator for the entire U.S. auto market. Supporters call this a win for fairness and consumer freedom; opponents call it an assault on states’ rights and climate progress.

As of September 2025, the Fuel Emissions Freedom Act sits in committee, facing heavy opposition from Democrats, environmental groups, and California lawmakers. Even if it clears Congress, lawsuits are certain. California has never been shy about using the courts to defend its regulatory turf.

The sheer viciousness of the fight ahead is a testament to how much is at stake: this is about nothing less than who controls America’s automotive future — Washington, Sacramento, or the free market.

​Gavin newsom, Lifestyle, Carb, Emissions, California, Ev mandate, Fuel emissions freedom act, Auto industry, Align cars 

A large protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Portland has been heating up Saturday, and the escalation in resistance is aimed at pushing back against the possibility of President Donald Trump sending National Guard troops there to quell left-wing violence and unrest that’s been ongoing on at the city’s ICE facility.

A social media post claims Trump’s stated aim to protect the facility and law enforcement is “nothing more than fear mongering and an intimidation tactic meant to stop Portland from resisting ICE and all of Trump’s repressive policies. Portland will not stand down, and we will not be quiet. We must follow in the footsteps of Chicago and firmly reject federal troops, and stop them from coming here in the first place.”

‘I hope your children f**king hate you!’

Blaze Media’s National Correspondent Julio Rosas has been on the ground Saturday — right in the middle of the protest outside the Portland’s besieged ICE facility — and he recorded exclusive video.

Rosas reported that federal agents deployed tear gas to repel the anti-ICE crowd blocking the ICE facility’s driveway. Check out his clip below:

RELATED: Portland police spark outrage after ‘wrongful’ arrest of journalist Nick Sortor, allegedly victimized by Antifa; DOJ to investigate

Content warning: Language:

— (@)

Rosas added that agents also hit the Antifa mob with “pepper balls” and the leftists threw “tear gas canisters back” at the agents — who finally had enough and “rushed into the crowd to make arrests.”

Some members of the potty-mouthed militant crowd could be heard frequently dropping F-bombs upon the agents.

As the agents advanced and cleared away many anti-ICE protesters, one individual — apparently on a bullhorn and attempting to frustrate law enforcement — could be heard sarcastically hollering, “Okay, congratulations! You’ve conquered an intersection! Good for you!”

In another one of Rosas’ videos, he reported that agents at the ICE facility made an arrest after forcing the Antifa-fueled crowd blocking a driveway to retreat; indeed numerous agents are seen piling on top of the arrested militant:

— (@)

In another one of Rosas’ videos, he reported that arrests continued as the crowd kept trying to heckle and badger a line of agents.

Content warning: Language:

— (@)

One of the leftists — apparently a female with an unquestionably powerful voice — can be heard screaming over and over for the arresting agents to “get off of her!”

A screaming leftist also added to the agents that “I hope your children f**king hate you!” Another asked them, “You go home to your wife, and you brag about this s**t?”

On Thursday night, journalist Nick Sortor was on the ground in Portland documenting Antifa militants harassing federal agents at the ICE facility — and Sotor said the far-left crowd attacked him, and Portland police even arrested him.

In response, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Friday that the “Antifa-affiliated” militants in Portland as well in Chicago would feel the presence of “the Department of War” in the “next 24 hours.” Noem noted there would be “backup from our military … so what we saw happen to that journalist will not happen again.”

Indeed, there is reportedly “chaos” in Chicago on Saturday as well. DHS said Saturday morning that “Border Patrol agents were conducting a routine patrol, near the intersection of 39th Place and S. Kedzie Avenue, when they were attacked and rammed by vehicles and boxed in by 10 cars. The officers exited their trapped vehicle, when a suspect tried to run them over, forcing the officers to fire defensively. This is an evolving situation. FBI is on the scene.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon also announced that a full investigation into the Sortor’s arrest is underway.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a media briefing Friday that “President Trump will end the radical left’s reign of terror in Portland once and for all. The president has directed Secretary [of War Pete] Hegseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland and any ICE facilities under siege from attack by Antifa and other left-wing domestic terrorists.”

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​Anti-ice, Arrest, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Federal agents, Ice, Ice facility, Ice protests, Julio rosas, Nick sortor, Oregon, Portland, Violence, Politics 

The sudden wave of grief and admiration from young people after Charlie Kirk’s death caught many parents and grandparents off guard. High-schoolers and college students didn’t just know his name — they were fans. They followed him closely, quoted him, and saw him as a guide in confusing times.

But why? Kirk was not a movie star, athlete, or pop-culture influencer. He didn’t set fashion trends or headline concerts. What made him connect so deeply with a generation?

Silence does not comfort the searching. It leaves them adrift.

The answer is simple: Charlie Kirk had answers.

While America’s pulpits too often fell silent about cultural issues, Kirk spoke plainly about them. And young people, desperate for clarity and confused about the way forward, finally had a leader.

Silence in the pulpit

I once interviewed a 19-year-old in Madison Square Park who was visibly frustrated. He insisted he didn’t hate women or minorities and wasn’t extreme politically. He simply wanted the chance to live his life without being branded a “bigot” because of his identity as a white male. His frustration wasn’t anger — it was despair.

What struck me was not just his words, but the hopelessness behind them.

If he attended most evangelical churches in America, he would not have found answers. Many churches, even when disagreeing with progressive ideas, avoid speaking against them. Instead, they sidestep controversy, hoping silence will win them credibility.

But silence does not comfort the searching. It leaves them adrift.

What young people face

Several years ago, a megachurch youth pastor asked me what challenges high-schoolers face. I told him this generation is drowning in questions of identity. They don’t know who they are, how to discern truth, or how to recover from failure. Depression and suicidal thoughts are widespread.

He dismissed my concerns until days later, when both gender-identity questions and suicidal struggles appeared in his ministry. Even then, when I offered to help equip his students, he rejected the offer — in anger.

RELATED: Charlie Kirk’s legacy exposes a corrosive lie — and now it’s time to choose

WoodyUpstate/Getty Images Plus

This isn’t an isolated story. For decades, many youth leaders have minimized cultural and moral questions, reducing Christianity to behavior management and vague encouragement. Students are left unprepared for the real battles they face.

Of course, I’m grateful for the pastors and leaders who reject this trend, but make no mistake: The trend was very real. Students needed answers. Charlie was giving them.

A hunger for clarity

That’s why Kirk struck a chord. He didn’t shy away from questions about gender, identity, politics, and morality. Agree or disagree with his conclusions, young people heard in him something they rarely heard from pastors: conviction.

When I was once given 50 minutes to “equip” high-school seniors for college with apologetics, I found the proposition laughable. You’ve had services twice a week for four years, and you think 50 minutes of apologetics is enough to prepare them for the lies and untruth they will face day in and day out?

But it illustrates the deeper problem — leaders who thought silence is safe. They were told by all the church gurus that if they were silent, somehow that would turn into gospel opportunities.

Big mistake. It isn’t until people know the truth that the truth will set them free. Silence brings slavery. And into that vacuum stepped Charlie Kirk.

The lesson for the church

Kirk’s popularity among young people should encourage us: This generation’s young people are hungry for answers, and they are not turned off by clarity.

At the same time, it should warn us: If pastors will not equip the next generation with biblical truth about cultural issues, someone else will step in to fill the void.

Charlie Kirk did not captivate young people because he was trendy. He did it because he was clear. And that is precisely what too many pastors have been unwilling to be.

I’m thankful for the exceptions. Men like Rob McCoy, Jack Hibbs, David Engelhardt, and many others have been faithful to equip their congregations.

The challenge is before us now. Will the church continue in fearful silence? Or will it recover the courage to declare what scripture says — not just about heaven and hell, but about identity, morality, truth, and life in the public square?

Young people are listening, and they are desperate for your voice. Let’s learn from the life of Charlie Kirk and boldly speak truth in love.

​Church, Pastors, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk legacy, Christianity, Christians, Bible, God, Truth, Faith 

Inbreeding is bad, actually.

You’d think that would go without saying. Not in the United Kingdom, where the Genomics Education Programme of NHS England recently published guidance touting the supposed “social advantages” of cousin marriages.

In Redbridge, East London, one in five child deaths was linked to consanguineous parents.

This is what happens when a subject becomes so controversial that no one dares to speak plainly. For years, journalists avoided discussing rampant cousin marriage for fear of alienating the Pakistani population. Even right-leaning newspapers mostly looked the other way.

Imported dysfunction

Last year, however, the Daily Express broke ranks, running a story headlined: “Pressure mounts for marriage ban for first cousins over birth defect fears.” The paper urged Britain to follow Scandinavia’s lead and outlaw the practice. Conservative MP Richard Holden even proposed legislation to that effect.

But both efforts skirted the central truth: The overwhelming majority of cousin marriages in Britain occur within the Pakistani community. Pakistan itself has one of the world’s highest rates — up to 65% — and immigrants have carried the custom with them.

Scandinavia, by contrast, is moving decisively in the opposite direction. Sweden’s nearly 150-year-old law permitting cousin marriage is about to be repealed. Denmark has announced similar plans. Norway went first, declaring its own ban earlier this year. These changes were spurred by rising rates of cousin marriage among Pakistani immigrants and the health risks — and forced marriages — that accompany the practice.

RELATED: UK health service says inbreeding has ‘potential benefits,’ ban would stigmatize Pakistani community

HANNAH MCKAY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Honor violence

The situation in Britain is no less alarming.

Academic Patrick Nash estimates that about half of British Pakistanis are married to their first cousins. In Bradford, the figure is closer to 75% — compared to just 1% among white Britons in the same town.

The costs are not only medical but social. Consanguineous marriages often entrench cultural isolation, fuel inter-family conflicts, and spark honor violence when women refuse to comply.

Consider the case of Somaiya Begum, a 20-year-old biomedical science student at Leeds Beckett University. At age 16, her father threatened her with violence if she refused to wed her cousin in Pakistan. She resisted and obtained a court order blocking the marriage.

Years later, her defiance led to atrocity. On June 25, 2022, Somaiya vanished from her Bradford home. Her body was found weeks later, wrapped in a rug, a four-inch metal spike driven into her back. Her uncle, Mohammed Taroos Khan, was convicted of her murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Somaiya’s story is not an isolated horror. In 2022 alone, police recorded 2,594 cases of honor-based abuse — including rape, forced marriage, and assault — a 60% rise since 2020 and nearly triple the number reported in 2016.

Tribal ties

Cultural relativists insist that we must not judge other traditions by Western moral standards. Yet the evidence shows otherwise: Not all practices are equal, and some import measurable harm.

History proves this point. Afghanistan, with one of the world’s highest rates of cousin marriage, remains a rigid tribal society. When kinship ties dominate, democracy fails. By contrast, in early medieval Europe, the Catholic Church’s ban on incest and cousin marriage broke down tribal barriers, fostered cooperation, and laid the groundwork for national identity and democracy itself. That prohibition was abandoned in England with the Marriage Act of 1540 — nearly five centuries ago.

It is time to revisit it.

Preventable harm

A modern ban would protect women from coercion, reduce genetic disease, and strengthen social cohesion. The medical evidence is stark: Children of first cousins face double the risk of congenital defects, rising from 3% to 6%. In Redbridge, East London, one in five child deaths was linked to consanguineous parents.

The Guardian itself reported that one-third of birth defects among Bradford’s Pakistani population stemmed from cousin marriages. Children born into such unions are ten times more likely to suffer from conditions such as heart disease, cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, and missing limbs.

Cousin marriage is not just antiquated — it is indefensible. Britain should follow Scandinavia’s example and end the practice. How many more preventable tragedies will it take before the law catches up with reality?

​Honor killings, Immigration, Culture, Cousin marriage, Pakistan, Health, Letter from the uk 

For most people, haunted houses sound like the stuff of folklore or movies and television. Naturalists, as well as a number of Christians, doubt that houses or people can be haunted.

But for those who have experienced it firsthand, it’s a very real and frightening phenomenon — and it’s also more widespread than most people realize.

An infestation is often the result of a door that has been opened, giving the demonic permission or authority to do their work.

A 2022 YouGov poll found that one in four Americans say they’ve lived in a house they believe was haunted. Thousands of YouTube videos purport to show people recording paranormal activity in their homes. At the same time, there is a deluge of bad advice online and in print of what to do when you discover negative spiritual activity in your home.

I want to offer advice from a Christian perspective on how best to respond if you ever find yourself in a haunted house while also discussing what shouldn’t be done.

The demonic truth

Two important points of clarification. First, the kind of haunting I’m referring to is one in which the phenomena being produced cause fear and distress for the people in the home. Some people report mild experiences, like the occasional feeling of a presence.

But the type of haunting I’m addressing is characterized by frightening and sometimes violent activity. These include banging or scratching sounds, disembodied voices, foul odors, sudden drops in temperature, objects disappearing or moving on their own, dark figures or other apparitions, and physical attacks, to name a few.

Second, I believe this type of haunting is always the work of demons. It does seem to be the case that God allows some human spirits to linger or make appearances on earth. In my view, these may be the souls of the unsaved whose punishment in the intermediate state includes spending additional but distressing time on earth.

But the phenomena mentioned above, which are aimed at inflicting psychological distress, are always, in my view, perpetrated by the demonic. This accords with scripture and reflects the experiences of Christians who work in this area.

What not to do

First, don’t hesitate to talk to people you trust about your experiences.

Most people understandably fear being labeled “crazy” or “attention-seeking” if they reveal what they’re dealing with. But this serves the purposes of the demonic, who want to isolate an individual or family so that they suffer alone and don’t receive help. Share your circumstances as soon as possible with trusted family and friends, and especially seek out mature Christians and clergy.

On the other hand, there are people it’s best to avoid talking to. This includes nearly all paranormal investigators and books or articles by non-Christians on the paranormal.

Some paranormal investigators or ghost hunters are charlatans, while others are well-meaning. Even with the latter, there is nothing these folks can do to help. They can try to capture paranormal activity on cameras or other devices, but that does nothing to help someone under demonic attack. These teams often include people who describe themselves as mediums or psychics who can convey false information demons want them to relay.

As I’ve written about previously, when a medium was called in to help with the real-life Annabelle doll case, the demon concocted a story about being a 7-year-old girl who had died. This was a ploy to gain the sympathy of the doll’s owner, and it led to the owner giving the demon permission to inhabit the doll.

Talk to trusted pastors or other mature Christians who can actually help fight the enemy. Non-Christians will have endless mistaken theories about what’s happening and what should be done, but only those steeped in scripture who walk closely with Christ can help.

What to do

I’ve been saying that it’s important to talk to Christian clergy, but I also have to offer the warning that some will not believe you or will you tell you they can’t help.

There are a few reasons for this. Some clergy don’t believe that Satan exists but instead believe he’s a symbol or just the product of a superstitious ancient culture. Others will be too fearful to help, or think they lack the necessary training or experience. Some will think it will damage the reputation of their church if word gets out that they’re in the business of dealing with demons.

As a result, it may be necessary to talk to several different pastors or priests before you find one who is willing to help.

This is an important step, because the ideal solution to a demonic infestation is for a Bible-believing, spiritually mature pastor to come and bless the home and cast the demons out. This usually involves prayers and reading scripture passages and sometimes the use of holy water or anointing oil, along with commanding the demons to leave by Christ’s authority. It may take multiple visits and blessings to fully rid the home of the infestation.

If a pastor can’t be found to help, a strong, devoted, spiritually mature Christian can also perform the blessing. This should never be taken lightly, however, because whoever does it will enter into serious spiritual warfare and likely face attacks in their own lives.

RELATED: The Annabelle doll tour is a demonic death trap — but nobody’s taking it seriously

Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Another important step is to try to determine why a particular person, family, or home is under attack.

An infestation is often the result of a door that has been opened, giving the demonic permission or authority to do their work. Probably the most common way a door is opened is through activities related to the occult.

Attempts to interact with the spiritual world in ways forbidden by scripture (see, for example, Deuteronomy 18:10-12) can easily open doors to the demonic. One pair of Christians who did work in this area said that 70% of their cases involved someone using an Ouija board.

In some cases, there doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why a particular family or home is targeted. But if the occult is involved, whoever has participated must ask God’s forgiveness and turn away from it. This includes doing away with any occult objects.

Finally, ultimate deliverance from the demonic will only come through a genuine saving relationship with Jesus Christ. This involves acknowledging that one has sinned against God and accepting Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross in which he took the punishment for our sins (1 Peter 2:24). It also requires making Jesus the Lord of one’s life (Luke 9:23-24).

One of the chief reasons Christ came was to “destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8) and to rescue people from “the dominion of darkness” and bring them into his kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13). The born-again follower of Christ is given authority to “overcome all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19).

Christians will sometimes face dark spiritual battles, but through Christ we can emerge victorious (Ephesians 6:11-13).

​Christian, Christianity, Demonic activity, Demons, God, Haunted houses, Jesus, Jesus christ, Satan, Faith 

One of the least understood but most consequential aspects of American government is the United States Federal Reserve System. Bankers, investors, and even the president sit with bated breath, waiting to see how the Fed will manage interest rates.

The Fed is so important to the world economy that the president sometimes may feel the need to voice his administration’s position and hope the chairman of the Federal Reserve will acquiesce to his wishes. Sometimes, however, he may point out issues with the chairman’s performance, puncturing the claim of central bank independence. President Donald Trump recently accused Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell of being too late with interest rate cuts “except when it came to the Election period when he lowered [interest rates] in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected.”

Powell was clearly willing to play political games that cost Americans their businesses and their ability to feed their children.

Americans had suffered through continued elevated inflation, in part, because Jerome Powell wanted to keep his job.

With the president’s attempted firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, Powell has jockeyed himself a position as the white knight of central bank independence. He alleges that tariffs, which have no connection with monetary policy on their own, are the cause of an increase in inflation. He seems intent on keeping interest rates high.

Whether that is a good decision is a different subject altogether (the Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken takes on that idea). But what is clear is that Jerome Powell is not the principled opponent to Trump he claims to be; he is just as much a political actor as the president and Congress.

Powell’s politicization

Powell’s politicization is clear in how the Fed functions today. Economists and political scientists stress the importance of central bank independence as a hedge against what is called “political business cycles.” These cycles occur when monetary authorities pump the economy full of easy money to suppress employment problems and create an illusion of prosperity. This eventually results in higher inflation. Politicians reap the benefits of this illusion and blame inflation on something else: energy shocks, supply shocks, disasters, tariffs, etc.

The root of the problem is when new money is created to push down interest rates. Politicians who have control over the monetary authorities are incentivized to push for easier monetary policy to relieve unemployment in the face of elections. If they lose, their opponents reap the consequences; if they win, rates might be allowed to rise to fight inflation, and the illusion is dispelled.

By insulating the central bank from political pressure, the Fed is supposed to be able to pursue its mandates such as low and stable inflation or low unemployment. While this appears sound at first glance, reality shows that the Federal Reserve has never truly been independent.

A history of faux independence

The crowning moment that defines U.S. central bank independence is the Treasury-Fed Accord of 1951, which severed the support the Fed had given the Treasury Department in financing World War II and the Marshall Plan. But as Jonathan Newman has uncovered, this accord was a declaration of independence in name only.

The chairman of the board of governors, Thomas McCabe, by all accounts did appear to favor the separation of the Federal Reserve’s functions from that of the Treasury’s. Yet McCabe was not present at the Accord meetings. Moreover, McCabe resigned in protest soon after they concluded.

Treasury stooge William McChesney Martin Jr. was then appointed Fed chairman. Martin paid lip service to the idea of an independent Fed but ultimately revealed his cooperation with the Treasury Department in a 1955 interview. President Kennedy even renominated him for having “cooperated effectively in the economic policies of [his] administration.”

The Treasury and the Fed have had a revolving door ever since. Martin had chaired the Export-Import Bank in addition to serving as assistant treasury secretary. G. William Miller left his role as Fed chairman to serve as the secretary of the treasury. Paul Volcker served in Nixon’s Treasury Department before joining the Fed.

Particularly egregious was Janet Yellen, who served on President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and then was appointed to the Federal Reserve by both Clinton and later President Barack Obama. She ultimately would become secretary of the treasury under President Joe Biden. Even Jerome Powell served in President George H.W. Bush’s Treasury Department before returning to the private sector. Barack Obama appointed Powell to the Federal Reserve Board, and President Trump later nominated him as Fed chairman.

The constant revolving door between the CEA, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve is no different from agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, and Department of Energy. It reeks of corruption and political influence and certainly proves the Federal Reserve is not truly independent.

Playing political games

Examining Jerome Powell’s own actions when his job was on the line shatters the illusion of so-called central bank independence.

In 2021, as inflation began to climb, Powell dubbed the phenomenon “transitory.” The Biden administration had just taken office a few months prior, and rampant inflation was likely to stick around for the midterm elections. Thus, blame had to be cast elsewhere. It’s also noteworthy that Powell’s four-year term was set to expire in 2022. If you are up for a performance review, you might choose to kiss up to your boss so that you aren’t fired. Central bankers are no different.

Inflation continued to rise through November, climbing to 7% year over year. Americans demanding relief could not turn to Jerome Powell, who kept the Federal Funds Rate at 0%, attempting to hide the real state of the economy for Biden, who renominated him that same month. It was only then that Powell dropped the term “transitory” to describe inflation.

The first rate hike of 0.5% happened in May 2022, after the Senate Banking Committee had advanced Powell’s nomination. Soon after, with rates still low, Powell was confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate. Only two months after his confirmation, the Fed finally began to hike interest rates at historic speed. Inflation had peaked in June at 9% year over year. Americans had suffered through continued elevated inflation, in part, because Jerome Powell wanted to keep his job.

RELATED: Ron Paul exposes how the Federal Reserve keeps up its scam

Photo by Laura Segall/Getty Images

A Fed that was hawkish on inflation would have raised interest rates higher and faster than Powell did, not allowing inflation to run rampant. Powell was clearly willing to play political games that cost Americans their businesses and their ability to feed their children.

The Fed has never been independent — it has always been political. Economists would do well to admit this and argue their case rather than pussyfoot around the question of what interest rates should be or if interest rates should be set at all.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Federal reserve, Federal reserve board chairman jerome powell, Jerome powell, Interest rates, Politics, Ron paul, 1951 accord, Fiat currency, Joe biden, Kamala harris, Donald trump, Economy, Business, Inflation, Lisa cook, Independence, Export-import bank, Paul volcker, Bill clinton, Council of economic advisers, George h.w. bush, Barack obama, Deep state 

My friend and journalist Ben Kawaller went cruising the streets of Manhattan for “sex workers.”

To talk to. Just to talk.

You can tell that Mamdani truly believes that sex work is work, because, like actual work, you can’t find any on his resume.

In a video filmed for the New York Post, Ben gets a stripper, an OnlyFans model, and some hookers — see, there’s a spectrum of sex work — on camera to give their thoughts on mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s support for the decriminalization of sex work. (Stripping ’round the pole and on screen are already legal, so what we’re really talking about is decriminalizing prostitution.)

The video is worth the watch, but if you don’t have two minutes and 52 seconds to spare, spoiler alert: The sex workers Ben spoke to will be voting for Mamdani.

No Cuomo

I don’t know how many members of the skin trade are registered to vote in the five boroughs or what their johns will do at the polls — like, are you allowed to vote against your dominatrix? — but it doesn’t bode well for Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign.

Cuomo can take off his shoes in every mosque in the city and attempt to publicly shame Mamdani for holding supposedly contradictory fundamental beliefs in Islam and the “fundamental belief that sex work is work,” but I don’t think it’s going to harm Cuomo’s 33-year-old opponent.

When it comes to delivering this message of hypocrisy to the faithful, Cuomo is no Angel Jibrīl. No, Andrew is a heavily flawed politician, who looks like a successful funeral director who decides to open a diner.

Forget the blood he has on his hands from the COVID years. On the issue of sex work, Cuomo is the New York governor who “signed a repeal of a prostitution loitering law,” which made it easier for streetwalkers to set up shop on the corner than hotdog vendors.

What’s ironic is that while Cuomo never paid with money for his scandals of inappropriate touching, he paid big-time with his career. And unfortunately, New Yorkers are going to pay an even bigger price when their city is under the control of Mamdani, the comically “African-American” chic communist who wants to seize the means of production and pimp the most productive members of society like cheap whores.

Collectivist ’em all

I’m not the one to make an argument for or against sex work, but I am the one to imagine Mamdani’s future New York City, where sex work is legalized and his collectivist policies are written into law.

Let’s be honest: The goal of decriminalization is eventual legalization — just like the goal of socialism is communism. Mamdani might call himself a Democratic Socialist on “The View” — and the ladies are dumb enough to fall for the rebranding — but we all know that Democratic Socialism is simply socialism on Lupron.

You can tell that Mamdani truly believes that sex work is work, because, like actual work, you can’t find any on his resume. Now while I don’t see him joining any brothel co-ops, decriminalization will lead to more taxpayers for the government to squeeze, and thanks to the world’s oldest profession, no one will have an excuse to be unemployed. If you have a body — in whatever condition it’s in — no doubt there’s a freaky customer out there for you.

But with all the new sex workers, competition will be tight (or loose?), so I see sex work becoming yet another genital in the gig economy. In addition to migrants zipping down avenues on e-bikes for UberEats, you’ll now have them delivering flesh takeout against traffic. Just think what this will mean for congestion pricing!

RELATED: Socialist Mamdani’s $65M plan to turn NYC into ‘gender-affirming’ sanctuary for ‘transgender youth’

Noam Galai/Getty Images

Breast equity

But the expanded tax base could help fund Mamdani’s promise to provide $65 million in funding for gender-affirming care. That means prostitutes of all gender identities can get the bodies they need to better serve the public. But to maintain NYC’s breast equity, top surgeries and breast implants will have to balance out.

Phasing out the city’s gifted-and-talented programs in government schools is going to hurt public education, and replacing the school-to-prison pipeline with a school-to-whorehouse pipeline is going to make for some awkward conversations between educators and students.

Imagine being a high-school guidance counselor having to break the news to a student, “You don’t have the grades for college or the work ethic for trade school — but there’s always the corner.”

The barriers to entry are low to nonexistent in sex work. For now. But when the state seizes the means of reproduction, licensing will ultimately follow, and in order to combat corporate greed, there will need to be price controls. Your body, your choice — except when it comes to price-gouging.

Laid off

Until Mamdani decommodifies housing, you’ll be able to exchange sex for rent, right? But the specifics will have to be ironed out to protect tenants’ rights. No one wants to be evicted from their home because a landlord snuck a kissing clause into the lease.

The first time I heard “sex work is work” was in a sex-and-gender studies class I took as an undergrad at NYU. Supporting sex work between consenting adults has been the hip stance to take. But any time I offered minimum wage to a date sympathetic to the cause, she’d get offended. Even though I agreed to pay for the full hour — even if I didn’t use it all.

I also learned that marriage is a form of sex work — which I didn’t stop believing until I actually got married. In short: There are so many things I put up with with my wife that I would never put up with a ho. Neither a pimp nor a john I be. Plus, no guy has ever thought, “I really want to get this hooker pregnant!”

My family and I no longer live in New York, but I come in often to work. It’s an expensive commute, and I may need to take on a side hustle to afford it. As the saying Karl Marx popularized goes, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

If sex work is work, then the same applies. And under Mayor Mamdani, everyone is f**ked.

​New york city, Lifestyle, Culture, Comment, Zohran mamdani, Socialism, Trans, Sex work, Prostitution, Vice, Only fans, Letter from fun city 

Camp Lejeune was a Marine Corps base in North Carolina where Virginia Robinson dedicated 25 years of her life to working and raising her family — unaware that they were drinking, bathing, and living with poisoned water the entire time.

But the government knew, and despite the sickness that plagued the inhabitants, they never told them.

“I had three cancers I was fighting at one time,” Robinson tells BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan on “Back to the People.”

Robinson not only had three cancers at the same time, but she also survived leukemia, colon cancer while pregnant, and two separate diagnoses of breast cancer. And she wasn’t the only one in her family affected.

Her husband passed away in 2014, her daughter followed shortly after, and her father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Another daughter of hers was born with a spinal tumor and died young from bladder cancer.

All of them were exposed to Camp Lejeune’s water.

“What kind of levels of toxicity were in the water? Was it trace amounts or were there periods where there were large dumps and increases of contamination?” Shanahan asks.

“There was dumping involved, because there’s some videos. I don’t know where they’re at. My brother told me about them because he’s been doing a lot of research about this, and he said there was sites where there was trucks going on base and dumping from the laundromat,” Robinson explains.

“We’re talking about levels, Nicole, that are 10 times, 30 times, 50 times, 150 times EPA limits. We’re not talking about trace amounts of these chemicals. We’re talking about, as you would expect, the kind of amounts that are causing way elevated risks of a whole host of conditions,” she continues.

And unfortunately, when Robinson has gone to the government for help, it has turned her away.

“I have no doubt that they caused your cancer, your pain and suffering, the deaths, just horrific lives, right? Because they’ve done it to millions of Americans through faulty vaccines,” Shanahan says, adding, “I don’t know if there is justice in this country or we have a real justice system.”

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

To enjoy more of Nicole’s compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, 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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Five years ago, misleading narratives regarding policing and racism were waiting at every turn. And even then — in the midst of COVID-19 lockdowns and craziness — Charlie Kirk was out fighting to make the truth known.

“Three hundred eighty-five million police interactions happen every single year in America; 385 million. And 15 unarmed black men die. Fifty-two police officers were killed last year in 2019. Twice as many black police officers have died in the last two weeks than unarmed black men,” Kirk told BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

Kirk then named two police officers, David Dorn and David Patrick Underwood — two men, one a police officer and one a federal security officer.

“Do you think Black Lives Matter activists know those two names? Do you think they know the names of the 179 individuals that have been shot due to black-on-black crime in Chicago, Atlanta, and Philadelphia?” Kirk asked.

“So I think if we’re serious about having this conversation about unjust death in America, we can’t allow an entire emotive quasi pathological conversation to hijack the entire narrative in our country,” he continues. “And I think it’s very dangerous, and also, it leads us to a place that does not create good public policy and divides the country unnecessarily.”

However, when people bring up statistics to prove their point, it’s often met with accusations and personal attacks from the left.

“Something I’ve been really sad about is seeing women, and especially Christian women, say that it is callous to talk about those facts and to talk about the statistics or to bring up the side of the police officers at all, the good police officers, because it is not showing proper compassion or it’s not showing enough sadness surrounding the tragedy,” Stuckey said.

“But what I want people to understand is that you don’t bring up statistics to say, ‘Oh, no bad people exist or no bad cops exist or we can’t talk about racism ever.’ It’s because exactly what you said. If we allow narratives to go unchecked without talking about statistics or facts, that’s how people, especially on the left, build public policy,” she continues.

When the left can run with these false narratives, Kirk explains that it becomes the “Ferguson effect.”

This was when the media lied and said, “Michael Brown put his hands up and said, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot.’ Never happened. Did not happen. And it’s been proven through witness testimony and also through an autopsy,” Kirk explains.

“But still, that lie became a narrative within the media, and the Ferguson effect in Ferguson, Missouri, ensued, which essentially is the police retreated,” he continues.

“People said, ‘We don’t want the police.’ Fine. Crime went up, rapes went up, violent arrest went up, violent crime, I should say, went up,” he says, adding, “Every sort of category of crime went up imaginable.”

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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When Jeffrey Clark was tapped to lead the second Trump administration’s chief regulatory review office, it marked an astonishing redemption.

For years, congressional investigators and prosecutors had pursued the former Department of Justice official primarily over an unsent letter he drafted in support of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election challenge, calling for Georgia to consider launching a last-minute legislative session to review its results.

The president’s adversaries who weaponized the justice system through ‘lawfare’ have opened another front in their war through ‘barfare.’

Trump’s return to power has not ended Clark’s troubles. Washington, D.C.’s legal disciplinary authority has recommended that he be disbarred over his conduct from five years ago. Lawyers for Clark claim that the effort seeks to punish “thought crime” regarding their client’s belief in potential irregularities in an election that authorities declared devoid of widespread fraud.

Even as Trump’s critics now claim he is engaging in retribution against a wide range of past assailants, including former FBI Director James Comey, his supporters say Clark’s case reveals there is an ongoing, politically motivated push to punish MAGA advocates. In their telling, the president’s adversaries who weaponized the justice system through “lawfare” have opened another front in their war through “barfare.”

The rise of barfare

Since 2020, Democrat officials and progressive groups established specifically to target conservatives have lodged bar complaints against dozens of Trump-allied attorneys such as Clark. While supporters of these efforts say they are trying to hold officeholders and advocates accountable for actions that betrayed the canons of ethical legal practice, conservative opponents say the push to punish their political foes via bar complaints, often brought in politically partisan jurisdictions, threatens not only the ability of presidents to receive counsel but the American legal system itself.

“The most politicized situations are the ones where the bar should be the most reticent” to consider punishing attorneys over their work, James Burnham, former DOGE general counsel, said during a recent panel discussion on alleged bar weaponization hosted by the right-leaning Federalist Society. “That’s when lawyers are supposed to be the most creative and the most aggressive. … But it’s not the kind of situation where we want lawyers to be afraid to even engage in advocacy in the first place.”

The Clark complaint concerned his activities in the final weeks of the first Trump administration, while he served in part as acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division. Clark, an environmental and regulatory lawyer by background, believed that there were potentially election-altering fraud or irregularities in Georgia and other states, requiring resolution before the fast-approaching January 6, 2021, election certification date.

In response, he wrote a draft letter dated Dec. 28 and addressed to Georgia leaders recommending that the state legislature convene a special session to further probe potential irregularities and take remedial steps as necessary if they impacted the election outcome.

Clark circulated the letter to acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, who were responsible for probing 2020 election issues. Rosen and Donoghue disagreed with its thrust — especially the suggestion that there was potentially election-altering fraud — and declined to sign and deliver it.

Trump gets wind

As Trump’s election challenge proceeded, he got wind of Clark’s views. Apparently finding an ally, the president floated the idea of making Clark acting attorney general. Clark allegedly offered to decline any such appointment if Rosen would sign off on the letter, the then-Democrat-led Senate Judiciary Committee would later report — an allegation Clark would flatly deny. In opposition to a possible appointment, Clark’s superiors convened a Jan. 3, 2021, meeting with Trump and other officials, at which several said they and other colleagues would resign en masse should the president elevate him.

Ultimately, the president backed off, and Clark’s letter was consigned to the dustbin of history — until one or several ex-Trump administration officials leaked word of its existence and contents to the New York Times. The Times wrote about Clark’s efforts in a Jan. 22 article titled “Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General.”

RELATED: Democrats’ lawfare is on a collision course with hard reality

Photo by CatLane via Getty Images

A flurry of probes pertaining to the president’s election challenge followed. Clark — a Harvard- and Georgetown-educated litigator who had spent the bulk of his career as a partner at white-shoe law firm Kirkland & Ellis — spent the next several years facing the scrutiny of congressional committees, including the Democrat-dominated Jan. 6 Committee, and prosecution in cases brought by Fani Willis in Fulton County, Georgia, and special counsel Jack Smith in Washington, D.C. In June 2022, he was forced to wait outside his home in his undergarments while federal investigators searched his suburban Virginia residence, seizing electronic devices in connection with their January 6 probe.

In July 2022, in response to a complaint lodged by the then-Democrat-led Senate, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility charged Clark with violating the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct. It accused him of engaging “in conduct involving dishonesty” by drafting the letter the board alleged contained false statements and for “attempt[ing] to engage in conduct that would seriously interfere with the administration of justice.”

The allegations against Clark rested in part on the argument that because his superiors disagreed with his views on potential election fraud in Georgia, Clark’s assertions in the letter were fraudulent.

Unprecedented case

In his defense, Clark invoked a slew of privileges and raised myriad procedural and substantive arguments — including that the local D.C. disciplinary board lacked jurisdiction over Clark’s conduct as a federal lawyer providing counsel to the president; that Clark enjoyed immunity from liability while rendering advice to the president; and that the purported false statements were merely proposed Justice Department positions for consideration by superiors — positions largely consistent, as his lawyers noted, with those raised by several U.S. Supreme Court justices and nearly 20 state attorneys general.

Clark’s lawyers argued during his trial that “no one has ever been charged by the D.C. Bar with attempted dishonesty in a draft letter that recommended a change in policy or position where that document was not approved and never even left the office.”

His lawyers made the point that sanctioning him for such conduct would lead to a limitless array of disciplinary actions against attorneys over private or internal deliberations on behalf of clients should they hold contrarian views.

Government “lawyers will be afraid to give their candid opinions for fear of losing their careers. Likewise, lawyers will not join government for the same reason,” Harry MacDougald, one of Clark’s lawyers, told RealClearInvestigations.

On July 31, 2025, despite acknowledging “that there are no factually comparable prior disciplinary cases,” a majority of the board recommended that Clark be disbarred. While rejecting Clark’s arguments, including that he was protected as a government lawyer giving advice, the nine-member board said that the charges against him “focus on the truthfulness of the factual assertions” in the letter that he authored.

Those who believe the bar is being weaponized against those who hold disfavored viewpoints — namely on the right — say corrective action is required.

Although Clark’s superiors had testified that Clark had “sincere personal concerns” regarding the integrity of the election, the board said, “they also agreed that the Justice Department had not identified potentially outcome-determinative issues in Georgia or other states.”

Therefore, his continued efforts to press officials to send the letter “constituted an attempt to make intentionally false statements about the results of the Justice Department’s investigation,” the board said.

The tribunal added that Clark “should be disbarred as a consequence and to send a message to the rest of the Bar and to the public that this behavior will not be tolerated.”

The disbarment decision is pending before the D.C. Court of Appeals, which has final say over such decisions in the nation’s capital.

Claims of unequal justice

In an August 2025 filing with the appeals court obtained by RealClearInvestigations detailing Clark’s exceptions to the board’s order, his counsel contrasted the disciplinary tribunal’s treatment of the Justice Department lawyer with that of FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. He received just a one-year suspension for doctoring a document submitted to the FISA Court supporting the government’s FISA warrant application that enabled surveillance of Trump adviser Carter Page.

“The disciplinary process in the D.C. bar is radically disparate according to the political affiliation and views of the respondent attorney,” Clark’s lawyers charged.

A preliminary review of public records indicates that a majority of the board that made the Clark recommendation was composed of registered Democrats, individuals who had contributed to Democrat candidates, or public advocates of progressive causes. Only one board member was publicly identifiable as a Republican.

The board recommendation followed a trial before a separate three-member panel, at least two of whom were registered Democrats and had contributed financially to Democratic Party candidates, public records show.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which handed down the original charges against Clark and effectively prosecutes such cases, is also headed by an attorney, Hamilton P. Fox III, who, according to public records, is a Democrat.

“D.C. voted Democrat more than 90% against Trump all three times he was on the ballot — the most lopsided margin in the country to have [its] own Bar,” MacDougald noted on X in a response to the disciplinary authority’s decision.

Many prominent Republicans also took issue with the actions of Trump and his confidants in challenging the 2020 election. This includes the sole publicly identifiable Republican board member, Margaret M. Cassidy, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association who concurred in the recommendation that Clark be disbarred.

After the panel handed down its recommendation to disbar Clark, MacDougald told RealClearInvestigations that “the reason Jeff has been singled out is lawfare — straight-up political persecution.”

With the Clark disbarment decision now in the hands of federal judges, the lawyer may have just gotten a big boost. On Sept. 25, three former attorneys general submitted an amicus brief in support of his case. William P. Barr, Jeff Sessions, and Michael Mukasey — all Republican-appointed prosecutors, but not all supportive of Clark’s conduct — echoed his arguments in writing.

“The District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility … has no business — indeed, no authority whatever — in policing internal deliberative discussions and documents exchanged within the federal Executive Branch for containing purportedly ‘dishonest’ (yet somehow also ‘sincere’) ideas or assertions,” they said.

They added that “immunity for top advisors is necessary to ensure that the President may receive candid and necessary advice prior to acting.”

“Although we are not persuaded by Mr. Clark’s proposed legal strategy, and former Attorney General Barr has publicly criticized it in no uncertain terms, disbarring or otherwise disciplining Mr. Clark for those actions would set a dangerous precedent that would significantly interfere with Executive Branch functions,” while sending a “biting chill throughout the federal government,” they concluded.

Not alone in the dock

On the same July day that the D.C. tribunal formally made its recommendation to disbar Clark, three current Justice Department officials were hit with ethics complaints lodged with the bar disciplinary authorities where they are licensed to practice.

The parallel complaints — targeting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton, special counsel Brad Rosenberg, and trial attorney Liam Holland — allege they made “intentionally and materially misleading statements” in litigation over the Trump administration’s attempt to curtail the work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The complaints note that presiding Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the D.C. District Court upbraided the lawyers over certain representations made to the court.

Several ex-Justice Department staff members have defended their colleagues, writing that “our former colleagues took immediate steps to correct the record in response to plaintiffs’ evidence,” while noting that “leaving any such inquiry in the first instance to the court and the parties, who have intimate knowledge of the facts and circumstances that state bar authorities lack, would be a far better approach for determining whether sanctionable misconduct occurred.”

The Justice Department did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries regarding the complaints against its employees.

The three complaints were filed by the Legal Accountability Center. The advocacy group’s executive director, Michael J. Teter, has said its efforts are aimed at “going on offense in defense of democracy” at a time when “the rule of law is under direct assault.” The organization maintains it is merely seeking to hold to account “attorneys who abuse their power and violate professional conduct rules.” Its financials are unavailable. A broken web link appears to tie the nonprofit to progressive tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund.

Among the Legal Accountability Center’s initiatives is the 65 Project. The “dark money” outfit was launched in the wake of the 2020 election to “shame” lawyers who represented Trump in some 65 lawsuits challenging the election and “make them toxic in their communities and their firms,” according to Democrat operative David Brock, founder of the partisan watchdog group Media Matters, who is one of the group’s advisers.

Billed as a bipartisan effort, the 65 Project is led by staffers with ties to Democratic Party campaigns and causes. Teter, who also serves as its managing director, has worked for candidates including John Kerry and counseled the liberal American Civil Liberties Union. Its senior adviser, Melissa Moss, is a former Clinton appointee and finance director of the Democratic National Committee.

The 65 Project was originally run through another nonprofit, Moss’ Law Works, which achieved notoriety for hosting a stage adaptation of the Mueller Report performed by Hollywood stars. According to archived websites, the 65 Project was sponsored by the Franklin Education Forum, a supporter of progressive causes previously chaired by Brock and a grant recipient of Omidyar’s Democracy Fund.

Neither Teter nor the organizations with which he is affiliated responded to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries in connection with this story.

Justice or harassment?

More senior officials, as well, have gotten hit with bar complaints in recent months. In September, the center filed a bar complaint against Deputy U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, claiming, among other things, a conflict of interest in his interviewing of Ghislaine Maxwell. It also filed a complaint against Ed Martin, the former U.S. attorney for D.C., asserting he had abused his position and conduct rules by engaging in politically motivated investigations, among other matters.

Martin, now a Justice Department special attorney, also faces scrutiny from the D.C. disciplinary body. During his tenure as U.S. attorney, he had requested information of that office, citing in part the Clark case, indicating his concern that it might be biased against conservatives.

Elected Republican officials around the country, including Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Lawrence VanDyke, the former solicitor general in Montana and Nevada and a current judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, have also been targeted.

RELATED: Meet the evil mastermind targeting Trump with lawfare

Photo by hapabapa via Getty Images

Judging by their disposition, most of these accusations were of dubious legal merit. A recent analysis of nearly 80 complaints filed by third-party organizations like the 65 Project against attorneys who represented Trump or related causes — many of them Republican state attorneys general — found that in only three instances did attorneys face public discipline.

The conservative group America First Legal filed a bar complaint against Teter last fall for his 65 Project work, claiming he was abusing the bar disciplinary process in targeting attorneys associated with Trump. It is unclear whether the Utah Bar, which received the complaint, has taken any action.

De-weaponizing the bar discipline process

Those who believe the bar is being weaponized against those who hold disfavored viewpoints — namely on the right — say corrective action is required. They assert that beyond pursuing arguments regarding the immunity that federal lawyers ought to have from state and local authorities, there is a First Amendment right to viewpoint diversity that quasi-governmental entities, such as state bar associations, are currently violating.

Some, such as Michael Francisco, an appellate litigator who formerly clerked for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, believe that “attorneys are not capable of regulating themselves.”

America First Legal’s Gene Hamilton echoed these remarks, adding during the Federalist Society panel: “I really do think that each of the state bar associations need to take a really hard look at the rules and to modify them to prevent abuses of the disciplinary process.”

Clark’s lawyer, MacDougald, told RealClearInvestigations that ultimately, lawyers advocating for Republican and Democrat causes will be losers if the weaponization of discipline doesn’t end.

“Lawyers have a job to do and should be allowed to do it,” he said. “State legislatures and state bar associations must reform themselves and commit to political neutrality, or they will destroy themselves and the profession.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

​Opinion & analysis, Lawfare, Barfare, Weaponization, Weaponized justice, Weaponization of the federal government, Jeffery clark, Ethics complaint, Washington dc, Democrats, Department of justice, Donald trump 

Being a writer, I lived for many years in New York City. During that time, I always enjoyed watching the local news. I liked the tough, hard-nosed style of the local anchors. They didn’t mince words. Muggings, murder, mayhem: They gave you the news, and they gave it to you straight.

They also didn’t play favorites politically. They reported on conservative mayors like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg the same way they covered liberal mayors like Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams.

Now, it’s common to see female reporters focusing on the psychological effects of news events. How do people ‘feel’ about the fire/robbery/bridge collapse?

The local TV broadcasters treated all politicians the same. There was a kind of disciplined professionalism in their coverage. You got the feeling if they showed any kind of consistent bias, the highly intelligent New York audience would cry foul.

The green, green grass of home

During my New York years, when I would travel home to my parents’ house in Portland, I would enjoy watching the local news there, since it was so different. Portland, being a low crime/high trust city for most of its existence, didn’t have much news to report.

And so I would sit and chuckle to myself as I watched stories about a bake sale at the senior center, or a feel-good piece about a disabled person who learned to ski, or maybe there was a fire and the local firemen rescued the neighborhood’s favorite cat.

And of course, the local newscasters were folksy and upbeat. This was the Pacific Northwest. There was always a hiking story. Or a fish story. Or the opening of a new artisanal coffee shop story.

In terms of politics, our TV news was always respectful of whoever was the governor or mayor, regardless of their political orientation. That was expected. It was the right thing to do.

Besides which, the only politicians anyone noticed in Portland were eccentric amateurs like Mayor Bud Clark, who was a popular tavern owner and made a famous poster of himself: “EXPOSE YOURSELF TO ART,” it said and showed him naked in a trench coat flashing a statue outside an art museum.

I sigh just thinking about it. Portland, when it had a sense of humor.

The winds of change

Now, in Portland, there is a firm and obvious left-wing bias in all the local TV news. When did that happen?

I remember when Trump was first elected, there was a big push by the national media to vilify the new president in every way possible. But Trump was such an unusual president, it seemed to come with the territory.

I assumed the hysteria would die down eventually and that Trump would get the same treatment as Ronald Reagan. Attacked as a crazed “authoritarian” at first, but eventually, the media and his detractors would see that he was just a normal conservative.

At the same time, I fully expected my local media to not take sides. Their beat wasn’t Washington, D.C. They would continue with their cat stories and their ski reports.

George Floyd did nothing wrong (or did he?)

It was the George Floyd incident that began the politicizing of the local news in Portland. When we were told that Floyd was murdered by an evil white policeman, the local media felt obligated to express some form of outrage.

This was no time for nuance or objectivity. George Floyd was the victim of horrible police abuse (supposedly). So even the local news people, who didn’t know anything about the case or what actually happened, felt obligated to join in, with emphatic denouncements of police brutality.

Who can be in favor of police brutality?

Interestingly, when the summer riots of 2020 began in Portland, the local news stations returned to a more objective perspective.

Every night, they would send reporters downtown to check on the wild skirmishes and nocturnal riot-subculture that dominated Portland during the “100 Nights of Protest.”

Much of this reporting was genuinely objective. What was odd though, was that these local newsrooms almost exclusively sent women downtown to report on the violence. That always seemed strange to me. Not that women can’t withstand tear gas and flash bombs and being hit by flying objects. I’m sure they can.

But I noticed this, because it was another example of progressive values permeating the local TV news establishment.

These outlets were so determined to demonstrate their belief in equity and equality, they were willing to send young, inexperienced female reporters into the midst of a professional riot.

RELATED: Portland police spark outrage after ‘wrongful’ arrest of journalist Nick Sortor, allegedly victimized by Antifa; DOJ to investigate

Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images

Not your grandpa’s local news

Twenty years ago, the lineup of most local news programs was fairly uniform. A one-man/one-woman team of anchors, with a woman doing the weather and a man doing sports. Usually, it was men out in the field, covering crime, death, and car accidents.

Now though — at least in Portland — we are in an era of mostly female anchors, men doing the weather, sports being co-ed (we have a lot of women’s sports teams), and sending mostly female reporters into the field.

These female reporters are different from male reporters in that they tend to ask victims and eyewitnesses about their emotional response to whatever has happened to them.

The “emotionalization” of the news seems to have happened at all levels of the news business. Now, it’s common to see female reporters focusing on the psychological effects of news events. How do people “feel” about the fire/robbery/bridge collapse?

This new approach to news, emphasizing emotions over facts, also seems to suggest an increasingly leftist-oriented local media.

Trump’s invasion

Lately, Portland is in the news again, with Trump threatening to “send in the troops” if our local authorities can’t stop the attacks on ICE agents and clean up Portland’s dystopian streets.

Though our local news programs make half-hearted attempts to appear neutral, they are quick to amplify the idea that Trump’s plan to send troops is an “invasion.”

They further promote their leftist version of the situation by never mentioning the presence of Antifa or even calling them by name. This creates the impression that the people harassing and attacking the ICE officers are just concerned citizens, though it is pretty obvious from the news footage that they are not.

And of course, for every one interview they show of people supporting Trump’s plan, they show three interviews of people denouncing him and claiming that Portland is doing just fine. (It’s not.)

No, in Portland the local news is now an appendage to our leftist establishment. And you know that in those newsrooms, in those studios, there are plenty of people who don’t agree with the continued destruction of Portland. But they have to go along with it, or they’ll lose their jobs.

‘Portland Strong’

The craziest thing of all is that the new catchphrase being pushed by the left is “Portland Strong.” This is hilarious, considering Portland is the most touchy-feely, socialistic, nanny city in the country.

The last thing Portland is is “strong.” If we were strong, we wouldn’t have drug addicts, the homeless, and anarchist radicals in total control of our streets.

​Portland, Lifestyle, Culture, Local news, Progressivism, Essay, Men and woman, Emotionalization, Boob tube 

When 20-year-old loner Thomas Matthew Crooks ascended a sloped roof in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and opened fire, he unleashed a torrent of clichés. Commentators and public figures avoided the term “assassination attempt,” even if the AR-15 was trained on the head of the Republican Party’s nominee for president. Instead, they condemned “political violence.”

“There is absolutely no place for political violence in our democracy,” former President Barack Obama said. One year later, he added the word “despicable” to his condemnation of the assassin who killed Charlie Kirk. That was an upgrade from two weeks prior, when he described the shooting at Annunciation Catholic School by a transgender person as merely “unnecessary.”

Those in power are not only failing to enforce order, but also excusing and even actively promoting the conditions that undermine a peaceful, stable, and orderly regime.

Anyone fluent in post-9/11 rhetoric knows that political violence is the domain of terrorists and lone wolf ideologues, whose manifestos will soon be unearthed by federal investigators, deciphered by the high priests of our therapeutic age, and debated by partisans on cable TV.

The attempt to reduce it to the mere atomized individual, however, is a modern novelty. From the American Revolution to the Civil War, from the 1863 draft riots to the 1968 MLK riots, from the spring of Rodney King to the summer of George Floyd, the United States has a long history of people resorting to violence to achieve political ends by way of the mob.

Since the January 6 riot that followed the 2020 election, the left has persistently attempted to paint the right as particularly prone to mob action. But as the online response to the murder of Charlie Kirk demonstrates — with thousands of leftists openly celebrating the gory, public assassination of a young father — the vitriol that drives mob violence is endemic to American political discourse and a perpetual threat to order.

America’s founders understood this all too well.

In August 1786, a violent insurrection ripped through the peaceful Massachusetts countryside. After the end of the Revolutionary War, many American soldiers found themselves caught in a vise, with debt collectors on one side and a government unable to make good on back pay on the other. A disgruntled former officer in the Continental Army named Daniel Shays led a violent rebellion aimed at breaking the vise at gunpoint.

“Commotions of this sort, like snow-balls, gather strength as they roll, if there is no opposition in the way to divide and crumble them,” George Washington wrote in a letter, striking a serene tone in the face of an insurrection. James Madison was less forgiving: “In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever character composed, passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob,” he wrote in Federalist 55. Inspired by Shays’ Rebellion and seeking to rein in the excesses of democracy, lawmakers called for the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787.

Our current moment of chaos

If the United States Constitution was borne out of political chaos, why does the current moment strike so many as distinctly perilous? Classical political philosophy offers us a clearer answer to this question than modern psychoanalysis. The most pointed debate among philosophers throughout the centuries has centered on how to prevent mob violence and ensure that most unnatural of things: political order.

In Plato’s “Republic,” the work that stands at the headwaters of the Western tradition of political philosophy, Socrates argues that the only truly just society is one in which philosophers are kings and kings are philosophers. As a rule, democracy devolves into tyranny, for mob rule inevitably breeds impulsive citizens who become focused on petty pleasures. The resulting disorder eventually becomes so unbearable that a demagogue arises, promising to restore order and peace.

The classically educated founders picked up on these ideas — mediated through Aristotle, Cicero, John Locke, and Montesquieu, among others — as they developed the structure of the new American government. The Constitution’s mixed government was explicitly designed to establish a political order that would take into consideration the sentiments and interests of the people without yielding to mob rule at the expense of order. The founders took for granted that powerful elites would necessarily be interested in upholding the regime from which they derived their authority.

Terror from the top

History has often seen disaffected elites stoke insurrections to defenestrate a ruling class that shut them out of public life. The famous case of the Catilinarian Conspiracy in late republican Rome, in which a disgruntled aristocrat named Catiline attempted to overthrow the republic during the consulship of Cicero, serves as a striking example.

In the 21st century, we face a different phenomenon: Those in power are not only failing to enforce order, but also excusing and even actively promoting the conditions that undermine a peaceful, stable, and orderly regime.

The points of erosion are numerous. The public cheerleading of assassinations can be dismissed as noise from the rabble, but it is more difficult to ignore the numerous calls from elites for civic conflagration. Newspapers are promoting historically dubious revisionism that undermines the moral legitimacy of the Constitution. Billionaire-backed prosecutors decline to prosecute violent crime.

For years, those in power at best ignored — and at worst encouraged — mob-driven chaos in American social life, resulting in declining trust in institutions, lowered expectations for basic public order, coarsened or altogether discarded social mores, and a general sense on all sides that Western civilization is breaking down.

Without a populace capable of self-control, liberty becomes impossible.

The United States has, of course, faced more robust political violence than what we are witnessing today. But even during the Civil War — brutal by any standard — a certain civility tended to obtain between the combatants. As Abraham Lincoln noted in his second inaugural address, “Both [sides] read the same Bible and pray to the same God.” Even in the midst of a horrific war, a shared sense of ultimate things somewhat tempered the disorder and destruction — and crucially promoted a semblance of reconciliation once the war ended.

Our modern disorder runs deeper. The shattering of fundamental shared assumptions about virtually anything leaves political opponents looking less like fellow citizens to be persuaded and more like enemies to be subdued.

Charlie Kirk, despite his relative political moderation and his persistent willingness to engage in attempts at persuasion, continues to be smeared by many as a “Nazi propagandist.” The willful refusal to distinguish between mostly run-of-the-mill American conservatism and the murderous foreign ideology known as National Socialism is telling. The implication is not subtle: If you disagree with me, you are my enemy — and I am justified in cheering your murder.

Fellow citizens who persistently view their political opponents as enemies and existential threats cannot long exist in a shared political community.

“Democracy is on the ballot,” the popular refrain goes, but rarely is democracy undermined by a single election. It is instead undermined by a gradual decline in public spiritedness and private virtue, as well as the loss of social trust and good faith necessary to avoid violence.

The chief prosecutors against institutional authority are not disaffected Catalines but the ruling class itself. This arrangement may work for a while, but both political theory and common sense suggest that it is volatile and unlikely to last for long.

The conditions of liberty

Political order, in general, requires a degree of virtue, public-spiritedness, and good will among the citizenry. James Madison in Federalist 55 remarks that, of all the possible permutations of government that have yet been conceived, republican government is uniquely dependent upon order and institutional legitimacy:

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.

In short, republican government requires citizens who can govern themselves, an antidote to the passions that precede mayhem and assassination. Without a populace capable of self-control, liberty becomes impossible. Under such conditions, the releasing of restraints never liberates — it only promotes mob-like behavior.

RELATED: Radical killers turned campus heroes: How colleges idolize political violence

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

The disorder of Shays’ Rebellion prompted the drafting of the Constitution, initiating what has sometimes been called an “experiment in ordered liberty.” That experiment was put to the test beginning in 1791 in Western Pennsylvania. The Whiskey Rebellion reached a crisis in Bower Hill, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles south of modern-day Butler, when a mob of 600 disgruntled residents laid siege to a federal tax collector. With the blessing of the Supreme Court Chief Justice and Federalist co-author John Jay, President George Washington assembled troops to put down the rebellion.

Washington wrote in a proclamation:

I have accordingly determined [to call the militia], feeling the deepest regret for the occasion, but withal the most solemn conviction that the essential interests of the Union demand it, that the very existence of government and the fundamental principles of social order are materially involved in the issue, and that the patriotism and firmness of all good citizens are seriously called upon, as occasions may require, to aid in the effectual suppression of so fatal a spirit.

Washington left Philadelphia to march thousands of state militiamen into the rebel haven of Western Pennsylvania. The insurrectionists surrendered without firing a shot.

Our new era of political violence rolls on, with Charlie Kirk’s murder being only the latest and most prominent example. Our leaders assure us they will ride out into the field just as Washington once did. Whether they will use their presence and influence to suppress or encourage “so fatal a spirit” remains an open question.

Editor’s note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Mob rule, Rob, Riots, Riots and anarchy, Founding fathers, Federalist, Shays rebellion, Freedom of speech, Free speech, First amendment, Incitement, Law and order, Thomas matthew crooks, Donald trump, Assassination, Political violence, Rhetoric, George floyd, James madison, George washington, Plato, Republic, Civil war 

If you’re looking for reliable information, Wikipedia is the last source you should consult. Branded as a free online encyclopedia of verifiable information, the website is actually a tangle of lies and left-wing bias, hence why it’s been embroiled in numerous scandals.

Recent controversies include a U.S. congressional investigation into organized manipulation of politically sensitive articles, exposés on Big Law firms hiring anonymous editors to scrub their pages, allegations of undisclosed paid editing by government agencies, and documented anti-Israel bias campaigns led by coordinated editor networks tied to pro-Hamas groups.

“This is information warfare that’s happening on Wikipedia,” says Liz Wheeler, BlazeTV host of “The Liz Wheeler Show.”

Investigative journalist and editor of NeutralPOV Ashley Rindsberg, who has extensively reported on Wikipedia’s recent scandals, concurs: “It’s information warfare conducted by ideological actors, by state-aligned propagandists, by groups that are tied to foreign terror organizations across the board.”

“It only takes about a dozen, maybe, dedicated editors to completely conquer or infiltrate a topic area and implant their own viewpoint on it and spread these kinds of falsehoods freely,” Rindsberg says.

One of the most alarming reports he has done on Wikipedia exposes a group of editors “acting on behalf of the Iranian regime,” who are “removing mentions of Hamas crimes, including terror attacks,” “whitewashing Hezbollah,” and “removing human rights abuses listed.”

For example, “one of these editors removed any mention of Hamas’ genocidal 1988 charter from dozens of Wikipedia articles,” he tells Liz.

This has helped shape the global narrative around Iran and its terrorist proxies. Once information is put on Wikipedia, it then gets “pulled into ChatGPT, into Gemini, into every frontier AI model,” says Rindsberg. “It basically populates all of Google on a topic search. It is what feeds into Alexa, into Siri, and what becomes ground truth for most of us without us actually ever knowing that.”

“As it relates to domestic politics here, who’s behind the Wikipedia editor efforts?” Liz asks.

Unfortunately, anonymity is one of Wikipedia’s greatest weapons. Rindsberg explains how anonymous Wikipedia editors can push biased narratives — like labeling Trump a fascist using far-left sources — without anyone knowing their identities or motives. This allows a small group to shape public views on major issues while the site enjoys trust and tax benefits as a “neutral” resource.

The other issue, he says, is that “a significant portion of the money that Wikimedia Foundation receives from donations … about $185 million in income a year — a lot of that money gets passed through to radical left-wing NGOs.”

“The other piece here is that there’s significant ties between Wikimedia Foundation and Hillary Clinton and also with George Soros,” he says.

“A lot of Soros’ most senior people were put into or came to Wikimedia Foundation in 2017, which is right at the time Wikimedia Foundation redefined the mission of Wikipedia from just being an online encyclopedia into becoming a social justice movement powered by DEI.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this point,” sighs Liz. “These radical leftist NGOs funded by billionaire leftists like George Soros or Roy Singham — they are behind everything.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The liz wheeler show, Liz wheeler, Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Ashley rindsberg, Blazetv, Blaze media, George soros, Hilary clinton