Category: blaze media

A bombshell report from the New York Times accused the federal government of working with data processing company Palantir to develop a database of Americans’ private information.

The idea has been criticized as a way for the government to compile sensitive data against naysayers, detractors, or immigrants who could get the boot over their politics. Another interpretation is that the government is simply sharing data between agencies to make processes more efficient, like streamlining tax data or locating illegal immigrants.

‘Palantir never collects data to unlawfully surveil Americans.’

In March, President Trump signed an executive order “ensuring Federal Agencies share critical data, consistent with applicable privacy protections.”

By April, the New York Times was warning that this compilation of data could mean the government would have hands on civilian information like alimony payments, IP addresses, or student loan defaults, all in the same place.

A lot of the data listed would come as no surprise to the average person, given that his Social Security number or criminal history is already firmly in the government’s purview. However, the issue rises with the company Palantir — founded by Trump-supporting mega-donor Peter Thiel — gaining access to all this data and compiling it through government contracts.

As Newsweek reported, Trump may have allegedly tapped Palantir to create a database of Americans’ private information.

RELATED: CNBC host tries to get Palantir CEO to side against Rubio, Musk on European speech — but gets a surprise response

Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel speaks at the Cambridge Union on May 08, 2024, in Cambridge, England. Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images

Palantir was founded in 2003 by Thiel and Alex Karp, but did not go public until 2020. Karp has publicly boasted about stopping the “far right” in Europe through Palantir’s software and the company’s work with COVID-19 vaccine distribution.

That work is just one of many integrations with the federal government pointed out by the New York Times in a subsequent investigation.

For example, Palantir engineers have worked with the IRS since April to organize data on taxpayers, according to two unnamed government officials.

According to Wired, Palantir also has a $30 million deal to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement to implement software to achieve “near-real-time” tracking on illegal immigrants.

The Social Security Administration and Department of Education are also using Palantir’s data integration and analysis tool called Foundry, according to Yahoo.

Palantir’s response to this firestorm of accusations from left-wing outlets started with directing the Times to a blog post from 2020. Titled “Palantir Is Not a Data Company,” the blog states that the company is not a data broker or seller.

“Unlike many tech companies, our business model is not based on the monetization of personal data,” the tech company wrote. “We do not collect, store, or sell personal data. We don’t use personal data to train proprietary AI or machine learning models to share or resell to other customers.”

On June 3, five days after the report accused Palantir of undermining Americans’ trust, the tech company took to its X page to accuse the New York Times of publishing “blatantly untrue” content.

Echoing its years-old blog post, Palantir said it “never collects data to unlawfully surveil Americans, and our Foundry platform employs granular security protections. If the facts were on its side, the New York Times would not have needed to twist the truth.”

RELATED: Oculus creator fires back at ‘politically obsessive journalists’ as hit-piece culture dies

— (@)

“The Times seeks the facts and the truth,” the outlet replied. “Our article is based on excellent, factual reporting, including conversations with Palantir employees and federal officials who have knowledge of Palantir’s business before the U.S. government.”

Palantir’s Bill Rivers then went on the attack the next day and accused the New York Times itself of collecting and selling data.

“Palantir doesn’t collect data on Americans but The New York Times does,” he wrote. “If you compare third party tracking on NYT vs Palantir websites, NYT makes 38 third-party requests. Palantir makes NONE. They bash Palantir for data privacy but sell and track customer data THEMSELVES.”

Blaze News asked the New York Times about its data collection and whether or not the outlet sells user data to third parties.

Spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said the outlet’s reporting on Palantir is based on “a pursuit of facts and truth about a company with large amounts of contracts with the U.S. government, paid for by American taxpayers.”

“Our reporting is driven by transparency, accountability, and insight for our readers to better understand the forces at play between the government and a large tech company,” Stadtlander continued. “Conflating run-of-the-mill corporate policies with the truths expertly uncovered in this reporting seems to be an attempt at deflection and distraction.”

Stadtlander did not address any collection or sale of user data.

Palantir has a point, though, even if it is a misdirection. News websites are havens of data collection, and the farther east you go, the more prevalent it seems to be.

A 2018 study from Nieman Lab found that European news outlets are rampant with third-party cookies tracking user data. U.K. and Spanish outlets were by far the worst offenders, followed by French, Polish, Finnish, and German news companies.

Websites in just seven European countries averaged 81 third-party cookies per page. Other popular websites (non-news) had just 12 on average.

In the battle of data, the left wing does appear to be winning the Pokemon-style game of collecting it all.

Google, Facebook, and Adobe were ranked as the top three companies collecting data in 2021, according to pCloud.

In 2022, Clario did a deep dive into which apps are tracking user data, including location and contact info. Apple Messages, Snapchat, Instagram, Apple Photos, Safari, and of course Google Maps all ask users for this data.

At the same time Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter (pre-Elon Musk), and Tinder were all using face recognition and environment recognition while seeking access to contacts and images. Of those, only Tinder was not taking in voice data/recognition.

These are not exactly right-wing companies.

‘… playing it safe is the most dangerous thing an administration like Trump’s could do.’

Return’s James Poulos explained that from a tech angle, the federal government is, and has been, in dire need of more security for its data.

“It’s been a rough century for civil libertarians, whose dreams of a Wild West web have been dashed at every turn,” Poulos said. “Almost always the justification has been the hardest one to challenge: national security.”

Poulos says that America is so vulnerable to a systemic attack by China that there is not much of an alternative other than to quickly secure its data all at once.

He added, “The ancients were well aware that in tough times people would often have to accept regimes of a type and severity that fell below normal hopes and expectations. Here we are again. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but with a hand this bad, playing it safe is the most dangerous thing an administration like Trump’s could do.”

While it will continue to be difficult to discern whether any political aisle is trustworthy with your data, it seems clear that while the left wing is busy pointing out right-wing intrusions — as it should — it may also be acting in self-service, introducing a welcomed distraction from its own data mining.

There does exist a third possibility, however: that President Trump is taking a calculated risk by allowing certain actors to secure sensitive information rather than have it fall into the hands of a hostile nation.

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​Return, Palantir, Data mining, Data collection, Data tracking, Democrats, Republicans, News outlets, Tech 

The Trump administration can claim many historic victories but none greater than securing the southern border. This wasn’t just the fulfillment of Trump’s signature campaign promise — it was a demonstration that “law and order” means nothing without real enforcement.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has become the face of that message. She appears in a series of high-profile ad campaigns — aired nationwide and internationally — warning illegal immigrants to self-deport or face permanent removal. The ads sparked predictable outrage, but the message remains clear: The days of catch-and-release are over.

After four long and chaotic years, this country is once again speaking up for our sovereignty, our citizens, and our way of life.

But the ads aren’t brazen — they’re brilliant.

Democrats have slammed the ads as a waste of money or a form of political advertising. But the truth is, they hate the ads because of how powerful they are.

These ads reflect a basic truth: DHS has a duty to enforce federal immigration law. Campaigns like these aren’t new. The Biden administration ran its own digital push in 2022 under Customs and Border Protection, urging migrants to “Say No to the Coyote.”

But the results now speak louder than any slogan. Trump and Noem haven’t just increased removals or tightened border security — they’ve changed the calculus entirely. Fewer migrants are even attempting to enter the country. That’s the power of clear, consistent messaging.

Biden told the world illegal entry wouldn’t carry consequences. Trump has made it clear those days are done.

As Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies once noted, the power of presidential messaging became undeniable in 2016. Compare the “Trump effect” to the “Clinton effect”: In November 2016, border agents logged more than 63,000 apprehensions. By March 2017 — just two months into Trump’s first term — that number dropped to just over 12,000.

By the end of that term, Trump had slashed both legal and illegal immigration by a staggering 92%. The world took notice.

It’s happening again. After four catastrophic years of Joe Biden, Trump’s return to the Oval Office has triggered a collapse in border crossings. Overall encounters have dropped 93% since he took office. In Panama’s Darien Gap — one of the most notorious corridors for illegal migration — crossings have plunged by 99%.

The message is getting through: America’s borders are no longer open.

Law and order depends, first and foremost, on clarity. It’s one thing to enforce the law, but it’s another thing to make sure everyone knows that you’re enforcing the law. The only way someone can play by the rules is if he knows what the rules are and what the penalties are for breaking those rules.

Why do we write down our laws? Any healthy human society already knows that things like murder, theft, and fraud are wrong. That law is written in our hearts. We write down laws and penalties so that everyone knows exactly what the rules are for living together and what happens otherwise. Advertising the information is the entire point of putting it down on paper in the first place.

RELATED: ‘Self-deport’ flights begin as some illegal migrants take advantage of Trump’s tempting offer

Photo by J. David Ake/Getty Images

If our laws are to be truly just, they must be stated clearly and enforced faithfully. This is the entire point of having a written set of laws, so that everyone knows the rules of the game and the penalties for breaking them.

Laws don’t enforce themselves. Without consequences, they’re just suggestions.

Kristi Noem understood that early. She was the first governor to deploy National Guard troops to the southern border in support of Texas during Biden’s open-border disaster. In one meeting with Border Patrol agents, she heard it straight: “There are no consequences right now. Without consequences, there is no enforcement, and there is no law.”

That’s changed.

Under Trump and Noem, consequences are back. And the whole world knows it.

We are no longer seeing mobs of illegal aliens rushing the border wearing Biden campaign T-shirts, expecting to receive free, taxpayer-funded handouts that candidate Biden promised them on the campaign trail. Instead, the corporate left-wing media is forced to churn out pearl-clutching sob stories about how illegal aliens are choosing to self-deport or how businesses that depend on immigrant traffic through the Darien Gap have collapsed due to the decline in immigration.

The famous chart from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) proves that President Trump accomplished in just 100 days what it took him four years to do last time. And he’s just getting started. These results are not just a function of enforcement. They are a result of messaging.

When America speaks, the world indeed listens. Now, after four long and chaotic years, this country is once again speaking up for our sovereignty, our citizens, and our way of life.

​Opinion & analysis, Kristi noem, Department of homeland security, Donald trump, Mass deportations, Self deportations, Advertising, Law and order, Messaging, Democrats, Center for immigration studies, Customs and border protection, Immigration and customs enforcement, Illegal immigration, Illegal aliens 

Democrats all over the country have been outraged by the right’s perspective on banning certain books — and the town of Denton, Texas, is no exception.

Denton Mayor Gerard Hudspeth was among those on the right expressing concern, and for good reason.

The book in question, titled “Let’s Talk About It,” is so graphic that, when presented to the city council, certain images had to be censored.

Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan’s book, published by Random House Graphic, is subtitled “The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human” — and advises readers to “research fantasies and kinks safely” on the internet in order to find like-minded communities that share the same sexual interests.

The book also contains advice on how to use sex toys and perform sexual acts, but just as bad as the language used are the graphics.

“The problem I had was the images were disturbing,” Hudspeth tells BlazeTV host Alex Stein on “Prime Time with Alex Stein.”

The book shows a naked man sitting on another naked man’s face, as well as close-up images that detail how to masturbate and include sex toys like butt plugs.

“I said, ‘Hey, look, you brought this to my attention. We should just put it behind the counter. Not saying we have to ban the books.’”

“And they were like, ‘No, it’s for everyone,’” Hudspeth explains, adding, “It’s in the teen section, but anyone can go in there.”

Stein, who looked at a copy that Hudspeth brought, is equally disturbed.

“There’s kids — those are naked teens,” Stein says, adding, “I’m kind of shook from just even looking at it.”

Want more from Alex Stein?

To enjoy more of Alex’s culture jamming, comedic monologues, skits, and street segments, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Upload, Video, Sharing, Camera phone, Free, Video phone, Youtube.com, Prime time with alex stein, Alex stein, Prime time #99 alex stein, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Gerard hudspeth, Denton texas, Denton texas mayor, Banned books, Lets talk about it teens guide, Lets talk about it, Pride month, Inappropriate books for children 

Republicans have a bad habit of passing major legislation without thinking through the consequences. The “one big, beautiful bill” suffers from one big, ugly dose of shortsightedness. It’s an ambitious package loaded with short-term tax cuts and spending increases, followed by a cliff’s-edge drop into fiscal and political chaos just three years down the road.

That’s right. The expiration dates baked into the bill all but guarantee a showdown with Democrats during the 2028 election season, with Trump still in the White House, handing them enormous leverage and setting up Republicans for another round of fiscal self-sabotage.

Another fiscal cliff in the making

To keep the bill’s official price tag under control, drafters built in a series of sunset provisions. The goal: Limit the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate to just three years of deficits, even though they fully intend to extend those policies later. That gimmick allows Republicans to pretend the bill adds “only” $3 trillion to the national debt.

Republicans just built a bomb — and they are poised to hand over the detonator to their political enemies at the worst possible time.

But the policies don’t just disappear in 2028. If history is any guide — see the Bush and Trump tax cuts — most of the expiring provisions will be renewed. And when that time comes, Republicans will argue that these are now “current law” and therefore don’t count as new spending. It’s baseline budgeting sleight of hand, and everyone in Washington knows it.

Let’s look at what’s on the chopping block at the end of 2028:

$320 billion in extra defense and immigration spendingA larger standard deduction for all taxpayersA $500-per-child bonus tax creditA deduction for auto loan interest$1,000 “Trump accounts” for newbornsA higher standard deduction for seniorsExemptions from tax on overtime and tipsImmediate expensing for business structures

On top of that, several key business tax provisions — 100% bonus depreciation, enhanced interest deductions, and the R&D credit — will expire in 2029. That timing coincides with the possibility of a Democrat retaking the presidency, leaving Republicans with even less control over what happens next.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, extending the 2028-2029 provisions would add another $2 trillion to the national debt. That would push total costs above the original Trump tax cuts. And it would come just as the U.S. confronts mounting interest payments and an economy likely in no condition to absorb more debt.

A perfect storm in ’28

The timing couldn’t be worse. Democrats are already poised to take back the House in 2027. The GOP’s majority is razor-thin, and Democrats sit just a few seats away from regaining control. If recent special elections offer any clues, the midterms won’t be kind to Republicans.

That means Trump will likely face a Democrat-controlled House in 2028, as his administration scrambles to extend the bill’s most popular provisions: child tax credits, overtime and tip exemptions, baby accounts, business deductions, and elevated defense and homeland security spending — all of it set to disappear just as voters head to the polls.

Trump won’t want to campaign on tax hikes or cuts to defense and border security. He’ll push to renew the provisions — and Democrats will know it. They may agree with many of these policies, but they’ll still demand concessions, knowing Trump has no choice but to deal.

RELATED: I was against Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ — Stephen Miller changed my mind

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Expect ransom demands. Democrats could insist on undoing the repeal of Green New Deal policies. They might push to roll back modest Medicaid reforms included in the bill. They could demand changes to immigration enforcement or extract new spending commitments, especially if the economy continues to falter. Nothing would be off the table.

In short, Republicans have given Democrats the upper hand in a high-stakes negotiation just as Trump is trying to shape his legacy and tee up a successor. They didn’t just walk into the trap — they built it.

Lessons not learned

Republicans keep making the same mistake. Rather than structurally reforming the federal government, they pass short-term tax cuts and temporary spending increases while pretending deficits don’t matter.

This bill could have tackled the cost of health care, the explosion of federal spending, or the burden of inflation. It could have included structural reforms to entitlements, energy, or higher education. Instead, the GOP opted to pass a tax cut bill that tries to game the budget window.

If they believe growth will eventually offset the deficit — fine. But in that case, why not go all in? Make the cuts permanent. Expand them. Flatten the code and eliminate more deductions. Build a case for supply-side reform rather than hiding behind fiscal gimmicks.

Instead, they did the opposite. They chose a politically popular mix of spending and tax breaks and timed it to explode during an election that will determine Trump’s legacy, hoping no one would notice.

The bottom line

The one big, beautiful bill doesn’t reduce spending. It doesn’t rein in the bureaucracy. It doesn’t fix the structural problems crushing the middle class. It temporarily cuts taxes while baking in a debt explosion and surrendering future negotiating power to Democrats.

If Republicans think deficits don’t matter, they should at least have the courage to admit it. If they think Trump’s policies will spark enough growth to pay for themselves, then make those policies permanent. But don’t pretend to care about fiscal restraint while quietly handing the next Congress a multitrillion-dollar mess.

Republicans just built a bomb — and they are poised to hand over the detonator to their political enemies at the worst possible time.

​Opinion & analysis, Big beautiful bill, Donald trump, Congress, Deficit, Debt, Tax cuts, Gimmicks, 2028 election, Bad deal, Green new deal, Medicaid, Tax deductions, Economy, Small business 

Have you been canceled? Have you lost your family, your social circle, your job, your reputation?

I have.

People who had known me for years, including people I’d met in real life, mused online about how I was likely to become a ‘spree killer’ who murdered women.

Just like the countless Americans who had their lives and livelihoods uprooted or destroyed over the past five years or so, my story is unique. But also depressingly familiar.

Today, I want to talk about how I came out on the other side.

Painful lessons

There’s no sense in sugarcoating the issue: It absolutely sucked. It was one of the hardest periods in my life, and I am not the same person I was before it happened.

RELATED: Death is inevitable — getting stiffed by the funeral home isn’t

Corbis/Getty Images

After seeing clearly for the first time how duplicitous, selfish, and downright evil humans can be, there’s no going back. For me, it won’t be possible to trust other people, including loved ones, the way I did before.

But painful life lessons have their compensations.

What we call the woke left has been around for a long time. While the most egregious abuses by radical leftists occurred during the past 10 years, the problem started decades ago. You might say that the seeds planted in universities in the 1960s by leftist European Marxist intellectuals finally reached full flower by 2020.

With the alleged pandemic, those with actually fascist inclinations in their hearts made themselves known, and for many of us, that group turned out to include family and friends.

Spoiler: The liberals are the real authoritarians.

Closet Marxist

Back in the 1990s, I was studying at the most liberal of liberal arts schools, Sarah Lawrence College in New York State. If you haven’t heard of it, the school is hard leftist like Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and similar small colleges.

What I didn’t know when I attended was that it was Marxist, and so was I. The intellectual architects of postmodernism — the idea that there’s no such thing as the truth, that everything is only about oppressor and oppressed — were the mainstays of the curriculum.

We studied Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and many others. These “intellectuals” are the patron saints of the radical “queers,” “trans” activists, and other seething malcontents who believe all of their problems are because of capitalism instead of their own resentful laziness.

Among the libs

After graduation, I spent a few years as a newspaper reporter during the last period in which any semblance of actual reporting and objectivity was still valued. Then, I took a job at a nonprofit consumer organization. Yes, I entered the dreaded NGO sector.

The group I worked for was a consumer education organization focused on helping grieving people plan funerals and burials without going into debt. With the average American funeral costing $10,000 easily, financial heartache gets piled onto grief for many families. The mission was a worthy one, and I don’t regret my time working to better protect people in mourning from aggressive mortuary sales pitches.

But while the organization was officially nonpartisan, it was staffed and governed almost exclusively by Democrats and hard liberals.

That was “fine” when I was one of them, but if you’ve ever disagreed with a liberal, you know how fast a disagreement can turn into a bloodbath.

Growing up

By 2020 to 2021, I had changed my mind politically. Today, I’m a conservative traditionalist. The shock of watching transgenderism capture children, and the lying and hatred directed at conservatives in general and Donald Trump in particular, pushed me to belated political maturity in my 40s.

RELATED: Why is the media out to get Jonathan Keeperman?

Jonathan Keeperman

In 2021, I launched a weekly show called “Disaffected” with a friend and business partner. The show looks at politics and culture through the frame of warped personal psychology. In brief, I believe that the same narcissistic and unstable personal characteristics that drive domestic and child abuse (the same characteristics that ruled the home in which I grew up) drive the left.

“Disaffected” directly critiques transgenderism, anti-capitalist agitation, fake victimhood for attention, and warped states of mind such as Trump derangement syndrome.

Cast out

When volunteers and staffers at my job discovered what I put out in my private time, they engineered a coup from within. Satellite offices put out press releases calling me a misogynist and a bigot who was a danger to “trans” people and women and a public health menace for my stance against forced vaccination.

At the same time, my online friendship group circled the wagons and made sure my reputation was thoroughly trashed. People who had known me for years, including people I’d met in real life, mused online about how I was likely to become a “spree killer” who murdered women. These were the people I thought of as friends.

At the end of 2023, I finally lost my job. It’s true that I resigned, but had I not, I would have been fired. My board of directors would not defend me, and only a handful of colleagues from two decades of working together sent any messages of support.

Fighting back

Did it hurt? Yeah. It also scared the daylights out of me. For the first time in 20 years, I didn’t have a steady paycheck. My name was ruined in the consumer advocacy field; there was no point in even showing my face in the nonprofit sector. Not only did these people cancel my job, but they made sure I was unemployable even though I was the top legal expert in consumer burial and funeral law in the country.

What to do? I spent a few months in despair and depression, but that can’t last forever. You have to put your life back together but in a new way.

Here’s what I did:

Lying and duplicity exercise me to the point of hot anger pretty quickly. I channeled that into exposing the abusive practices of the left even more acutely on my weekly show.I launched a Substack blog to supplement the show and offer essays on topics that didn’t make it “on air.”After 20 years of counseling grieving people by phone on the worst day of their lives, I started a private coaching and consulting practice. Now, I offer private conversations and advice for those facing social and family ostracism in abusive or leftist (I repeat myself) households. Clients can come to me for affordable funeral planning, too.When one door closes, another opens. I used to be a screeching leftist liberal, and now I write a weekly column for Align (hello).

Going from a biweekly paycheck with health benefits to working four or five freelance jobs is a hell of an adjustment. Work isn’t guaranteed when you make your living this way.

But that’s the price of actual freedom. And I am free today mentally, emotionally, and politically in a way I never had been before as an unreflective “Democrat from birth.”

Hard as it was, I wouldn’t go back.

​Wokeness, Cancel culture, Lifestyle, Culture, Trans, Disaffected, Podcasting, Intervention 

MAHA Man to the rescue?

Hundreds of healthy ostriches owned by a small family farm in Canada are marked for death — unless U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can win them a stay of execution.

‘What thugs could show up to kill your almost 400 animals that you’ve raised for 35 years?’

Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski’s Universal Ostrich Farms in the Kootenay region of British Columbia has become an international touchstone for hysteria over avian flu, government overreach, and the property rights of farmers.

Cull me, maybe

On Dec. 19, 2024, the couple noticed that one of their ostriches had symptoms of what appeared to be pneumonia. That bird recovered, but 69 other ostriches, introduced to the farm after 2020, died of apparent avian influenza.

Just under two weeks later, federal agents from the Canada Food Inspection Agency descended upon the farm to conduct tests on two of the dead ostriches. When they confirmed bird flu as the cause, they issued a cull order for the remaining 399 birds to be killed.

This is in keeping with the CFIA’s policy of “stamping out” any bird populations in which avian flu is detected.

Yet Espersen and Bilinski claim that there have been no further incidences of sickness, something they credit to natural herd immunity. The CFIA, however, ignored their requests to have the healthy birds tested.

MAHA on a mission

Universal Ostrich Farms’ lawyer argues that the CFIA has no reason to order the cull, as the farm’s ostriches are not raised for their meat. Instead, their genes are used in valuable antibody studies.

When Espersen and Bilinski conducted their own testing, a local veterinarian identified the cause of death as resulting from pseudomonas, a bacteria that can be found in soil and water. This prompted the CFIA to issue an order restricting the farm owners from conducting any further testing at the risk of receiving a $200,000 fine and six months in jail.

Katie Pasitney. Photo: David Krayden

It was then that Espersen and Bilinski’s daughter Katie Pasitney — who has since become the farm’s spokesperson — reached out to RFK Jr., who immediately responded to the farmers’ plight. The Make America Healthy Again architect sent a letter to the CFIA, urging the Canadian government to allow science and not politics to govern its decision about culling the ostriches.

“It’s our hope that this collaboration will help us understand how to better protect human and animal populations and perhaps lead to the development of new vaccines and therapeutics,” Kennedy said in a post to X accompanying the letter, reported by a host of mainstream media.

Stay of execution?

That letter apparently moved Canadian Agriculture Minister Heath MacDonald, because he announced that the government was reconsidering its decision to kill the birds. But he has been silent since that announcement.

Since then, it has been a standoff between the CFIA and the farm, where about 50 journalists and activists are camping out in order to dissuade the government from killing the birds.

RELATED: ‘Karma is a b****’: Trump taps epidemiologist targeted by Biden admin and censored online to run NIH

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images

Speaking to Align on Wednesday, Pasitney said she is attempting to enlist a host of prominent people to express their support for the farm in person.

“We were inviting Elon Musk and we were inviting RFK out, trying to get that word out there a little bit more with education and awareness about how big this issue is. … RFK is still monitoring the issue, as well as Dr. Oz. So that is kind of an interesting situation.”

Pasitney said the number of people staying at the farm fluctuates from 50 during the week to over 100 on the weekends.

“Just this last weekend, we had over 200 here. … People come and go and take pictures of the big, beautiful, prehistoric ostriches. And it’s really nice to be able to meet so many kind people who all … feel like we deserve the change that we’re fighting for,” she tells Blaze Media.

Like a thief in the night

According to Pastiney, communication with the CFIA is not so open.

“We don’t even personally hear from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency any more. They don’t email. … There’s no communication [except via] a media release that they went and sent out to all the media,” Pasitney said.

The CFIA’s message, however, remains chillingly clear: The culling could happen at any time.

“You can imagine the shock and trauma and the anxiety that a family would feel, living on the edge of their seat every day, not knowing if they’re going to show up. … I guess they hire vendors to do it, but what thugs could show up to kill your almost 400 animals that you’ve raised for 35 years?”

But for Pasitney and her parents, this goes beyond the personal.

Not only does the “stamping out” policy destroy the livelihood of farmers, said Pasitney, it’s also tampering with nature’s built-in mechanism for controlling pandemics.

“We’re wiping out natural immunity, herd immunity, which has existed for millions of years,” said Pasitney. “If we do lose our natural immunity, we’re setting ourselves up for a catastrophic bad chain of events in the future.”

​Maha, Rfk jr, Bird flu, Culture, Ostriches, Canada, Department of health and human services, Herd immunity, Letter from canada 

Last month, a 25-year-old named Guy Edward Bartkus set off a bomb at American Reproductive Centers, an IVF clinic in Palm Springs, California. Four people were injured, and the FBI said that Bartkus was killed in the blast that tore through the building.

Akil Davis, assistant director of the FBI Los Angeles field office, called it “the largest bombing scene that we’ve had in Southern California.”

Without any standard, we should not be surprised when man begins to act like the animal that secular atheism claims he is.

Though the clinic endured heavy damage and a nearby car was crumpled in a burned heap, Dr. Maher Abdallah, who leads the clinic, said that no eggs or embryos were harmed.

“Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients,” said Abdallah. “We are heartbroken to learn that this event claimed a life and caused injuries, and our deepest condolences go out to the individuals and families affected. Our mission has always been to help build families, and in times like these, we are reminded of just how fragile and precious life is. In the face of this tragedy, we remain committed to creating hope — because we believe that healing begins with community, compassion, and care.”

Abdallah’s view of life stands in stark contrast to the bomber’s, as the FBI has confirmed this was an intentional act of terrorism spurred by his ideological position.

In an online manifesto, Bartkus said he was a “pro-mortalist.” Pro-mortalism is the belief that death is better than life and is supposedly motivated by the desire to end suffering.

It is related to anti-natalism, or efilism, as Bartkus called it, which is the belief that it is morally evil to have children.

His manifesto shows that Bartkus viewed humans as parasitic to the planet and other life forms. He also showed a hatred toward religion and God, stating that he preferred Satan over God.

Though he is being called a nihilist, Bartkus saw a difference between his views and nihilism, saying that “religion is retarded but there is objective value in the universe and it lies in the harm being experienced by sentient beings.”

Bartkus also said that “we need a war against pro-lifers.”

He referred to a friend he called “Sophie,” who allegedly had recently committed suicide, and that the two of them had agreed that if one died, the other would also die soon after. He claimed that they both had borderline personality disorder.

In an audio recording, he said that he was committing the attack because “it just comes down to I’m angry that I exist and that, you know, nobody got my consent to bring me here” and “I’m very against [IVF], it’s extremely wrong. These are people who are having kids after they’ve sat there and thought about it. How much more stupid can it get?”

How did we get here?

Though the philosophies to which Bartkus ascribed are not commonly known, they are gaining popularity, even being taught in university courses and recently being platformed by outlets such as the New Yorker.

I believe that these philosophies are not new, but are the logical progression of secular atheism and a society that increasingly is entitled, despises religion, and sees no meaning in life.

Our culture has been systematically stripped of its religious and moral values and our very foundation for what makes life meaningful.

When you tell people from the time they are children that the universe is an accident, life is hopeless, and that man, who is no different from animals, is a parasite destroying the planet, you cannot then expect that they will grow into happy and fulfilled people.

When you lie to people daily that we are in imminent peril of a man-made climate cataclysm that will destroy ourselves and all life on Earth because we are selfish and use fossil fuels, you should expect that at least some of them will begin to believe you.

When you champion the idea that the only life that has value is one free of suffering and promote euthanasia as a solution, you should not be shocked when young people act on such an idea and seek not only to kill themselves and the unborn but to harm those who would bring life into the world.

The reality is that secular atheism — with its desire to eliminate God and any objective morality and meaning grounded in religion — has effectively doomed mankind. All secularism has to offer is: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

Unfortunately, that isn’t enough, as most people will still seek meaning and purpose. And many will still find that all the supposed fun to be had doesn’t outweigh the hardships and suffering in life.

Without any standard, we should not be surprised when man begins to act like the animal that secular atheism claims he is.

What is the answer to the questions of life, meaning, and suffering?

In short, thankfulness — not thankfulness alone, but thankfulness to God.

G.K. Chesterton — the great author, philosopher, and apologist of the 19th and early 20th centuries — discussed this idea throughout his life, but I want to focus on what he said near the end of his life in his autobiography. You can read the book for free here.

In the final chapter, entitled “The God with the Golden Key,” Chesterton wrote that the “chief idea of my life” was “the idea of taking things with gratitude, and not taking things for granted.”

From his childhood, Chesterton said he had an almost “violently vivid sense of those two dangers; the sense that the experience must not be spoilt by presumption or despair.”

“To take a convenient tag out of my first juvenile book of rhymes, I asked through what incarnations or prenatal purgatories I must have passed, to earn the reward of looking at a dandelion,” he wrote. “But in substance what I said about the dandelion is exactly what I should say about the sunflower or the sun, or the glory which (as the poet said) is brighter than the sun. The only way to enjoy even a weed is to feel unworthy even of a weed.”

Chesterton noted two other perspectives on the dandelion: that of the pessimist, who saw the dandelion as meaningless, and the “offensive optimist,” who complained by comparing the dandelion to what one may find elsewhere.

He reasoned that such comparisons are “ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all; and above all no wonder at being thought worthy to receive them. Instead of saying, like the old religious poet, ‘What is man that Thou carest for him, or the son of man that Thou regardest him?’ we are to say like the discontented cabman, ‘What’s this?’ or like the bad-tempered Major in the club, ‘Is this a chop fit for a gentleman?’”

Chesterton said that younger generations had developed a sense of entitlement to their “right to happiness” and “right to life,” all while claiming that there was no divine source for those rights.

Chesterton responded by saying that rights “came from where the dandelion came from; and that they will never value either without recognizing its source.”

Life includes suffering, but that doesn’t mean it is without meaning or that it isn’t worth living.

He added, “And in that ultimate sense uncreated man, man merely in the position of the babe unborn, has no right even to see a dandelion; for he could not himself have invented either the dandelion or the eyesight.”

Secular atheism, he argued, logically leads to the types of despairing philosophies that Bartkus ascribed to, which undermine the beauty of life.

“When first it was even hinted that the universe may not be a great design, but only a blind and indifferent growth, it ought to have been perceived instantly that this must for ever forbid any poet to retire to the green fields as to his home, or to look at the blue sky for his inspiration,” Chesterton stated.

“There would be no more of any such traditional truth associated with green grass than with green rot or green rust; no more to be recalled by blue skies than by blue noses amputated in a freezing world of death,” he wrote. “When there is no longer even a vague idea of purposes or presences, then the many-colored forest really is a rag-bag and all the pageant of the dust only a dustbin. We can see this realization creeping like a slow paralysis over all those of the newest poets who have not reacted towards religion. Their philosophy of the dandelion is not that all weeds are flowers; but rather that all flowers are weeds. Indeed it reaches to something like nightmare; as if Nature itself were unnatural.”

Chesterton did not mean that everything in life is always pleasant or beautiful, but that overall, life is a gift from God.

Life includes suffering, but that doesn’t mean it is without meaning or that it isn’t worth living.

But the only way for life to have meaning, or to make sense of the troubles in life, is through God.

The way forward

I sympathize with those who have been failed by the secular philosophers, teachers, politicians, and other “experts” who have given them nothing to look forward to but suffering.

I am a man who has suffered little but does not suffer well. I understand why people like Bartkus feel as though they wish they had never been born. In their worldview, there truly is nothing to give them hope through life’s toils and tribulations.

But for the Christian, there is always meaning, purpose, and hope.

And when one becomes a Christian, it is with the knowledge that we do not deserve anything but God’s wrath for eternity. The key to life is understanding this and knowing that every good thing we experience is the result of God’s grace.

I share with you an anecdote from the 18th-century preacher Matthew Henry that has helped me when I have been suffering.

Henry was on his way home one night when he was robbed. That night Henry wrote in his journal:

I thank Thee first because I was never robbed before; second, because although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because it was I who was robbed and not I who robbed.

As a Christian, there is always something to be thankful to God for — even if in the moment it doesn’t seem like it.

To avoid future tragedies like that of Guy Edward Bartkus, let us endeavor even more to counter the lies of secularism and our pro-death culture with the truth and hope of Jesus Christ and to teach people that peace and happiness will only come from humbly thanking God for every good gift He chooses to bestow on us.

This article is adapted from an essay originally published at Liberty University’s Standing for Freedom Center.

​Fertility clinic bombing, Guy edward bartkus, Atheism, Secularism, Faith 

Why did the alligator cross the road?

For two motorcyclists in Florida, there was no punch line, as one alligator that crossed a busy highway in Florida sent the pair “flying” headfirst after slamming into the reptile last weekend.

The motorcyclists found themselves in the dangerous situation on an interstate in Orange County — roughly 30 miles north of Orlando.

‘I didn’t even have a second to do anything.’

A group of bikers were riding on Interstate 4 on May 31 when they encountered the toothy road hazard.

An alligator was crossing the busy interstate when one of the motorcyclists crashed into the gator.

Motorcyclist Cameron Gilmore told WESH-TV, “I saw it, like, 10 feet in front of me, and I just, you know, I thought — I knew I was going to hit it.”

“It kind of just happened so quick,” Gilmore explained to WESH. “I didn’t even have a second to do anything. Couldn’t put on the brakes or not. And I just had to hold on.”

The collision with the alligator sent the biker flying.

“I flipped over the handlebars and landed on my head on I-4 and rolled,” Gilmore added to the station. “Somebody said two or three rolls on, you know, head-first, and then I start flying for a long way.”

A 25-year-old female motorcyclist trailing Gilmore also smashed into the gator, WESH said.

Video recorded by a fellow motorcyclist shows the alligator and a person in the middle of the highway. The clip shows the bikers pulling off to the shoulder and then helping the injured bikers.

RELATED: Deputies shoot growling Florida man dead after ‘bizarre’ standoff — and just moments after he survived alligator attack: Cops

Gilmore and the woman were both rushed to the HCA Lake Monroe Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to WFLA-TV.

Gilmore told WESH his right leg was “real numb and hurt,” and the station said he suffered a couple of broken bones.

A 67-year-old from DeLeon Springs, Gilmore noted to WESH that the crash will not deter him from getting back on his bike: “Nobody wants me to, but I, yeah, I will. I’m not scared.”

Meanwhile, agents with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission were dispatched to check on the injured alligator, WESH said. The condition of the gator was not known, according to WFLA.

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​Strange news, Alligators, Florida, Weird florida, Weird news, Animals, Why did the alligator cross the road, News, Human interest 

While surrogacy is largely used for parents who are struggling with infertility, there are other reasons one might use a surrogate — and they border on the dark.

Perinatal nurse Kallie Fell, who started her professional career as a scientist in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is deeply concerned with the ethics of surrogacy, as well as IVF.

She warns that it’s not just sunshine and rainbows and that the reasons one might hire a surrogate can get a little creepy.

“A recent study that looked at data from prior to 2020 saw that most of these transactions were above 32, 34% from independent parents outside of the United States, predominantly from Asia, predominantly male, and predominantly over the age of 40,” Fell explains.

“Alarm bells should be going off,” she continues. “Why are we letting women in the United States sell or rent their wombs to foreign nationals so that those children can then be sent or taken overseas to men over 40?”

And it’s not just single men to look out for.

“As a labor and delivery nurse in San Francisco, I’ve had women — not surrogacy cases, but women from Asia — that come over to San Francisco and deliver their babies so that they can have a baby that has United States citizenship,” Fell tells Shanahan.

“And so, the same thing is true of couples, or single people, men or women, that might purchase a child from a surrogate in the United States, that those children are United States citizens,” she continues.

“And that’s their own path to citizenship,” Shanahan chimes in, noting that there are no laws regulating this.

Gay couples are another demographic that tends to use both surrogates and IVF to have children and start their own families.

“Two men who are wanting to have a family, they’ll often use an egg donor as well as a surrogate mother,” Fell explains. “They’ll use two separate women, so then there’s no claim who really is the mother. It’s on purpose that this is done.”

“So, they’ll use an egg donor, and so this woman is healthy,” she continues. “We’re going to put this really healthy young woman on high doses of medications and hormones to extract really as many eggs as they can from her. There are supposed guidelines for how many eggs they can extract, but in my conversations with egg donors, that’s not followed.”

According to Fell, some egg donors have had upwards of 50 or 60 eggs extracted.

“It’s going to affect each of these women differently, these drugs, but one of the risks is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can cause its own myriad of issues, including stroke, infertility,” Fell warns. “A lot of these cases aren’t reported. Women who are egg donors, once they give their eggs, they are, we like to say, ‘lost in medical history.’”

“We are born with all the eggs that we are ever going to have,” she continues, adding, “so there’s no studies on her fertility as she ages. There’s no studies on her risks of developing breast cancer or any other types of cancer for being put on hormones at such a young age.”

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.

​Camera phone, Sharing, Upload, Video phone, Video, Free, Youtube.com, Back to the people with nicole shanahan, Back to the people, Back to the people podcast, Nicole shanahan, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Kallie fell, Surrogacy, Ivf, Side effects of ivf, Dangers of surrogacy, Path to citizenship 

Police in Orlando, Florida, said officers responded to a pizza restaurant after reports of disturbance around 10:45 p.m. Monday, WOFL-TV reported.

Employees of the Corner Pizza Bar on Magnolia Avenue said a customer refused to pay his $50.50 bill, the station noted.

‘I was in fear that great bodily injury or death would occur.’

When the customer — later identified as Daniel Robinson, 22 — was asked to pay up, he allegedly shoved the female owner and departed the restaurant, WOFL noted.

Employees called 911, WFTV-TV reported, and investigators said a pair of Orlando police officers confronted Robinson across the street from the restaurant.

Robinson said he intended to pay his restaurant bill with his phone but that the device was dead, WFTV said, adding that police said his phone — on the contrary — was visibly lit.

As the officers attempted to arrest Robinson, one officer hollered, “He’s choking me,” WFTV reported, adding that Robinson is about 6’2” and weighs 280 pounds.

RELATED: Florida street takeover thug arrested, accused of being part of mob that stomped on, broke bystanders’ windshields, set fire

The other officer at the scene noted in a police report that “I was in fear that great bodily injury or death would occur,” WFTV said.

With that, the fellow officer said he punched Robinson in the face until the choking stopped, WFTV said, adding that police also maced Robinson.

Police said when medical personnel arrived, Robinson spat in an officer’s face amid an attempt to restrain him on a stretcher, WOFL reported.

Orange County Corrections Department records indicate Robinson was booked into jail Tuesday. He’s facing multiple charges, including attempted homicide of a law enforcement officer, WOFL said.

More from WFTV:

Court records show Robinson was also maced by officers last year after he allegedly stalked a woman. She said he started touching her on a bus as she went to work last November, then followed her off the bus. That’s when she called 911.

“I am upset and kind of in shock because that could have been me,” last year’s victim Mariah Gilbert told WFTV in an interview, adding that “now I have the opportunity to testify against him.”

What’s more, WFTV said records show Robinson last year also was arrested for battery upon a different woman and petit theft.

RELATED: Florida thug caught on video violently snatching lottery winnings from 83-year-old woman, who falls to the ground amid fight

WOFL said the Corner Pizza Bar issued the following statement: “Fortunately, the Orlando Police Department responded quickly and handled the situation promptly and professionally. We’re very grateful for their support. While we’re still processing the impact — since we never imagined something like this happening — we’ve decided not to speak further on the matter at this time.”

The Orange County Corrections Department on Friday told Blaze News that Robinson’s bond total is $17,650 and that his first court appearance was Wednesday.

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​Orlando, Physical attack, Restaurant, $50 bill, Choking police officer, Arrest, Florida, Repeat offender, Attempted homicide on law enforcement official charge, Crime 

Over the past few nights, violent clashes have erupted between protesters and federal agents as Immigration and Customs Enforcement carries out enforcement actions against violent illegal immigrants. In a press release, the Department of Homeland Security called the aliens captured as “the worst of the worst.”

Viral video emerged Saturday of a caravan of vehicles carrying federal agents being attacked by rioters that day with what appears to be rocks. Blaze News has obtained footage from the Department of Homeland Security of the view from inside its vehicles as the attacks happened.

‘These rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets. Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer.’

The video shows federal agents trying to steer through the streets of Los Angeles as the rioters throw what also could be pieces of concrete at them.

Video from Friday on social media showed rioters breaking down concrete pillars near federal offices, possibly so that the concrete could be used to attack federal agents.

Another video shows the shattered windshield glass with a Border Patrol agent inside a vehicle that had been attacked.

— (@)

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin vehemently criticized local Los Angeles officials for downplaying the political violence.

“Why do Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass care more about violent murderers and sex offenders than they do about protecting their own citizens?” she asked. “These rioters in Los Angeles are fighting to keep rapists, murderers, and other violent criminals loose on Los Angeles streets. Instead of rioting, they should be thanking ICE officers every single day who wake up and make our communities safer.”

President Donald Trump ordered 2,000 troops from the California National Guard to address the rioting.

“Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest. We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual (just look at how they handled the fires, and now their VERY SLOW PERMITTING disaster. Federal permitting is complete!), unable to to handle the task,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED,” he added. “Also, from now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why??? Again, thank you to the National Guard for a job well done!”

RELATED: Los Angeles descends into chaos after police chief says officers will not aid ICE agents; Trump sends National Guard troops

Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

DHS Sec. Kristi Noem also defended the actions of the federal agents in Los Angeles from critics.

“The gang members we have picked up in L.A. because of their hard work are horrible people — assault, drug trafficking, human trafficking. They are now off of those streets, and they are safer because these ICE operations are ongoing.”

Mayor Bass initially released a statement against the ICE raids, but later issued a statement decrying the violence as well.

“We’ve been in direct contact with officials in Washington, D.C., and are working closely with law enforcement to find the best path forward,” she wrote.

“Everyone has the right to peacefully protest, but let me be clear: violence and destruction are unacceptable, and those responsible will be held accountable,” she added.

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​Attack on federal agents, Video los angeles attack, Attacks on ice, Los angeles ice rioting, Politics 

There was a time, for a brief second, when Netflix felt like a genuine escape. No ads. No distractions. Just a moment of sacred silence before the next episode auto-played. YouTube, on the other hand, has always been the neighborhood hawker, jamming five-second countdowns and “skip” buttons between cat videos and clips of Candace Owens speaking with Harvey Weinstein. But Netflix? It felt different. Intentional. Entirely neutral.

Not any more.

We now know that YouTube, owned by Google (the company that famously deleted “don’t be evil” from its code of conduct), uses AI to analyze your viewing habits in real time. The company calls it Peak Points, a system that detects when you’re most emotionally invested. Not so it can recommend better content. No, it’s so YouTube can slice in an ad. A perfectly timed disruption — just as you’re crying, laughing, leaning in. Not after. During. Essentially, it’s manipulation dressed as optimization.

Soon you won’t be choosing shows. You’ll be chosen by them.

If Google pulling this stunt doesn’t surprise you, that’s because nothing Google does should surprise you. What should worry you, however, is Netflix quietly following suit, disguised beneath its polished UI and faux prestige. To be clear, this isn’t a case of algorithms nudging you toward rom-coms or action thrillers. This is full-blown behavioral harvesting, run out of what’s called “clean rooms,” a fancy way of saying they’re still collecting everything, just behind closed doors. They promise it’s private. But they still track your habits, reactions, pauses, and clicks. They’re not watching you, they insist. Just everything you do.

Netflix’s ad-supported tier allows third-party data brokers — including Experian (more on this notorious credit score company in a minute) — to build a psychological profile on you. Your stress tells them what to sell. Your loneliness tells them when to sell it. Your late-night binge-watching isn’t just a pattern; it’s a profile. You think you’re relaxing, when in reality, you’re participating in a lab study that you never signed up for. Not knowingly, anyway.

Netflix used to sell impressions. Now, however, it’s selling intimacy — your intimacy. It’s the kind of advertising that doesn’t feel like advertising because it’s been trained to mimic your tone, your mood, your hesitation. Mid-roll ads now talk back. Pause screens offer prompts and tailored suggestions based not on your genre preferences but on your emotional volatility.

Even rewinds are a metric now. Linger too long on one scene? It wasn’t just memorable — it was actionable. Every flicker of interest, every second you lean forward, becomes a flag for monetization. A signal to tweak the pitch, change the lighting, or modify the ad delivery window.

You’re not the customer any more. You’re the subject.

This is much more than targeted marketing. It is emotional extraction. Netflix and YouTube are conditioning you and your loved ones. The goal is no longer passive consumption. It’s emotive response mining. Once satisfied with getting your eyeballs, they now want what’s behind them.

And here’s the most worrying part: Their devious plan is working.

RELATED: Netflix shares blunt message to woke employees offended by its content: ‘Netflix may not be the best place for you’

ROBERT SULLIVAN/AFP via Getty Images

You feel it when your pause screen suddenly knows you’re restless. You sense it when an ad knows you’re anxious. But you can’t prove it, because this isn’t surveillance as we used to know it. It’s ambient, implicit, and sanitized. Framed as “user experience.” But make no mistake, the living room has been compromised.

Netflix used to say, “See what’s next.” But increasingly, the real motto is “see what we see.” Every moment of attention, every flicker, flinch, or fast-forward, is a data point. Every glance is a gamble, wagered against your most vulnerable instincts.

Which brings us back to Experian. By partnering with the same data broker that helps banks deny loans, Netflix is making a statement. A troubling one.

Experian isn’t just some boring credit bureau. It’s one of the largest consumer data aggregators on the planet. It tracks what you buy, what you browse, where you live, how often you move, how many credit cards you have, what you watch, what you search, and what you owe. It then slices that information into little behavioral fragments to sell to advertisers, insurers, lenders, and now … to Netflix.

With 90 million U.S. users, Netflix has now integrated with a company whose entire business model revolves around profiling you — right down to your risk appetite, spending triggers, and likelihood of defaulting on a loan.

So while you’re watching a true-crime documentary to unwind, Experian is in the back end, silently refining your “predictive segment.” Your favorite comedy special could now become a soft proxy for Experian to gauge how impulsive you are. That docuseries about minimalism? Great test case for your spending restraint. They don’t just want to know what you watch. They want to know what you’ll buy after. Or worse, what you’ll believe next.

RELATED: Upstart streamer Loor.TV is out to televise the conservative revolution

Loor.tv

The future isn’t one of generic binge-watching. It’s curated manipulation. Your partner just walked out? Cue romantic dramas … with targeted ads for dating apps. Watching a dystopian thriller? Insert ads for tech “solutions” to the very problems being dramatized.

Soon you won’t be choosing shows. You’ll be chosen by them. Not because they’re good, but because they serve a data-driven purpose. If you’re a Netflix subscriber, perhaps it’s time to consider whether it still makes sense to continue funding the violation of your privacy.

​Big tech, Data mining, Entertainment, Google, Lifestyle, Netflix, Social media, Surveillance state, Who watches the watchers?, Tech 

California politicians love to brag. GDP near $4 trillion. “Fourth-largest economy in the world.” Progressive pundits cite those numbers as proof that big government works.

But behind the glossy stats sits a system bloated with grift, distortion, and federal abuse. Nowhere does that dysfunction show more clearly than in California’s shell game with Medicaid reimbursements — a sleight of hand known as intergovernmental transfers, or IGTs.

Any private-sector CEO who ran a company like this would face prosecution. In Sacramento, these people get re-elected.

At first glance, IGTs look benign. Counties, fire districts, and public ambulance providers send money to California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal. The state then uses those funds to draw matching federal dollars.

In theory, it’s a cost-sharing mechanism to support care for low-income patients.

In practice, California weaponizes IGTs as a legalized money-laundering scheme. The state punishes private providers, guts rural health care, props up political patrons, and hides it all behind the banner of equity.

Here’s how the racket works: Private ambulance companies get stuck with the standard Medicaid reimbursement rate — $118 per ground transport. Public agencies, including fire departments and county EMS units, receive up to $1,400 per run. Same patient. Same service. Ten times the payout.

This isn’t health care policy. It’s a rigged system.

Private ambulance companies can’t compete. Most operate at a loss in low-income and rural regions. Once they go under, they don’t get replaced. The 911 calls still come — but the ambulances come slower. Or not at all.

And in emergencies, minutes cost lives.

California’s IGT scheme isn’t just a technical policy failure. It’s a public safety crisis disguised as social justice.

The people paying the highest price are the working poor — the same communities Sacramento claims to champion. These residents live in neighborhoods left uncovered. They suffer delayed response times. They watch public-sector unions cash in while their own emergency care collapses.

Meanwhile, the state expands Medicaid to undocumented immigrants — ignoring federal guidelines — while using IGTs to balance the budget. These patients can’t legally receive full Medicaid benefits, but California finds the loopholes. State officials cook the books to collect federal money anyway.

It’s a violation of the law. No one stops it.

Sacramento calls this fiscal ingenuity. Washington looks the other way. In truth, it’s federal fraud.

The cash goes to public agencies, which funnel it into inflated salaries, no-show contracts, and political favors. Rural ambulance crews shut down. Small hospitals cut staff. And working-class Californians wait longer to get help they used to take for granted.

RELATED: Every taxpayer ‘should be raising holy hell’

Blaze Media illustration

Any private-sector CEO who ran a company like this would face prosecution. In Sacramento, these people get re-elected.

This isn’t bureaucratic inertia. It’s engineered corruption. California’s 2024 and 2025 State Plan Amendments codify this scheme in black and white. They grant preferential reimbursement to government providers while sidelining the private sector completely.

That’s not policy. It’s pay-to-play.

And it’s working exactly as intended: Drive out private actors, centralize control, and soak the federal treasury while calling it compassion.

The fix is simple. Enforce federal Medicaid law. End special treatment for public agencies. Level the field so private ambulance companies — especially in rural areas — can survive.

Without reform, the collapse continues. The IGT scam rewards states for padding GDP with fake Medicaid spending. It rewards failure. It punishes success. And it leaves real people — sick people, poor people — waiting for ambulances that never come.

California can keep calling itself the world’s fourth-largest economy. But those numbers mean nothing when the foundation is rotten.

The ambulance isn’t coming. The budget is built on lies. And Gavin Newsom is on television doing Baghdad Bob impressions while the system falls apart.

​Opinion & analysis, Medicaid, Medi-cal, Fraud, Gavin newsom, California, Ambulances, Budget, Trick, Intergovernmental transfers, Sacramento, Money laundering, Social justice, Progressives, Loophole, Rural california, Taxpayers, Waste fraud and abuse 

Researchers in Colombia say they have studied an “artificial” sphere that was filmed floating through the air and is engraved with a message to humanity.

The mysterious metallic sphere was allegedly captured on video in the town of Buga, Colombia, in March. The sphere seen in the western Colombian town landed and was confiscated, according to the X account that posted the original Spanish-language report.

‘The origin of birth through union and energy in the cycle of transformation, meeting point of unity, expansion, and consciousness.’

Dr. Jose Luis Velazquez, a radiologist hired to examine the sphere, said that it had “no welds or joints” to indicate human origins and was hollow, with a low weight of 4.5 pounds.

“It is of artificial origin in that it shows no evidence of welding, and its internal structure is composed of high-density elements. More testing is needed to establish its origin,” Dr. Velazquez said, per the New York Post.

At the same time, the orb came with unknown symbols that researchers attempted to decipher using artificial intelligence.

RELATED: Why is the new media so obsessed with angels and demons? Christian paranormal podcasters explain sudden shift.

The decoding effort offered a purported message about the human consciousness and an eroding environment.

“The origin of birth through union and energy in the cycle of transformation, meeting point of unity, expansion, and consciousness — individual consciousness,” the message allegedly read.

The team said it interpreted the message to be “encouraging a collective shift in consciousness to help Mother Earth — especially considering the current issues with pollution and environmental decline.”

An X-ray revealed small dots inside the orb, which some believed to have been placed inside before the object was sealed shut. However, it showed no signs of assembly and had density similar to a human bone, the researchers said.

While the object was said to have defied traditional aerial movements, some of these claims have been downplayed due to the reporter covering the story, Jaime Maussan, who is alleged to have been involved in controversial research for almost a decade, the Daily Mail reported. Maussan claimed in 2017 that he discovered alien mummies in Peru.

RELATED: Chasing Sasquatch

As reported by YouTube channel Vetted, another video filmed near San Vicente del Caguan, Colombia, purported to show another orb.

“While hiking through a rural trail with wide visibility across farmland and forested hills, we noticed a highly reflective, metallic sphere silently hovering in the sky at a distance. Initially thought it might be a drone or weather balloon, but the object moved smoothly slowly and rapidly at times — with no visible means of propulsion, no wings, and no sound.”

Whether copycat or another finding of a similar nature, the second sphere was reportedly recorded on video in late May.

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When boxer Imane Khelif captured women’s welterweight gold for Algeria at the 2024 Olympic Games, conservatives everywhere spoke out against men competing in women’s sports, while Khelif and those supporting the boxer claimed he was a female.

“It was very obvious that this person was a male,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.” “There were several reports that this person was male. Many others said this person was male. And I was told by many people, including people on the right, that this was absolutely cruel, that this was inhumane, that the right is getting this wrong.”

However, a newly leaked report reveals that Khelif has had XY chromosomes all along.

“According to a 2023 medical report leaked this week — the report was previously rumored to exist, but a screenshot has now been released verifying the claim. The International Olympic Committee had decided to allow Khelif to compete in the 2024 games based on a female marker on his passport,” Stuckey explains.

“There was all this propaganda, like these pictures of him dressed up as a woman with a blowout and sparkly lip gloss to prove this person is really a woman,” she continues, noting that in a society like the one Khelif comes from, men are not allowed to treat women the way Khelif was being treated.

“At the same time, he comes from a very strict Islamic society, and you had all of these men hugging him, putting him on their shoulders. You’re telling me that they thought that this person was a woman? No,” she adds.

The now leaked test was conducted in 2023 at the request of the International Boxing Association, where he was subsequently disqualified from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships in New Delhi for failing the gender eligibility test.

“It was claimed at the time that Khelif had some kind of, quote, ‘intersex problem,’ that there was some kind of anomaly that he had, maybe with his chromosomes or his anatomy, that maybe made him look male, but that he was actually a woman,” Stuckey says.

“What does seem to be the case, that maybe possibly, if you want to be generous, the guess is that perhaps this man had some kind of mangled genitalia, unfortunately, when he was born, and because of that, in their society they decided to call him a her,” she continues.

“If that’s the case, that is very sad,” she says. “That doesn’t make you, like, half boy, half girl. That doesn’t make you a girl. It is your gametes and your chromosomes that determine what your gender is, and if that is the case, then he would have produced testosterone that men produce, and it is the testosterone that is produced in a man’s body during puberty that makes you a lot stronger.”

A few days before the report was released, World Boxing had announced mandatory genetic screening for future competitions, which would require Khelif to undergo testing before competing again.

The statement also disclosed that the organization sent a letter to the Algerian Boxing Federation saying that Khelif may not participate in the female category until Khelif undergoes genetic sex screening in accordance with World Boxing’s rules and testing procedures.

“See, that’s the thing, is that a man, Khelif, won’t actually get the testing that is being specifically required by World Boxing. And why not, if you are a woman, if you’ve got XX chromosomes?” Stuckey comments, adding, “Because obviously, we know what the results of that test will be.”

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

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The Congressional Budget Office released a report Wednesday detailing the budgetary and economic impact of President Trump’s tariffs. The top-line result: Even the Democrat-controlled CBO concedes that tariffs will reduce the deficit over the next decade.

Trump has every reason to celebrate. Tariffs shrink the deficit in one of two ways. They either raise revenue directly — as tariffs are a form of tax — or they do so indirectly, by reshoring industry and expanding GDP.

History suggests both outcomes are likely. But if Trump stays the course and keeps tariffs high and stable, the United States could seize the opportunity of a generation: reindustrialize the economy, grow GDP, and restore prosperity for our grandkids.

The marshmallow test goes national

In the 1960s, Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel ran an experiment on self-control. Children were given a choice: Eat one marshmallow now or wait and receive two later. Those who delayed gratification generally fared better in life. Intelligence and future success correlated with restraint.

The implications extended beyond childhood. Researchers found similar behavior in animals, with more intelligent species — like crows — choosing delayed rewards.

Delayed gratification builds successful investors, entrepreneurs, and nations.

No one pretends tariffs deliver instant gratification. They don’t. They aren’t supposed to.

Tariffs function much the same way. They impose short-term pain in exchange for long-term gain. Like the marshmallow test, this moment asks whether Americans will accept some present discomfort to secure a far more prosperous future.

Fortunately, patience pays. Economic logic and historical evidence both show that tariffs expand the gross domestic product and create jobs over time.

What the trade deficit reveals

In 2024, America posted a net trade deficit of $918 billion. That figure represents more than a statistic. It reflects real, physical production now taking place elsewhere — mostly in China.

The math is simple: If Americans didn’t buy those goods from abroad, they would need to produce them at home.

Reshoring that production would raise GDP accordingly. When demand remains steady and supply shifts from overseas to domestic producers, GDP rises.

Demand drives supply. That’s basic economics.

This principle played out throughout American history. For over a century, high tariffs protected domestic industry. America’s economy grew faster than the global average. Consumption increased. Industrial output soared. Not until the 1970s, when the country embraced so-called “free trade” and abandoned the gold standard, did growth begin to stagnate.

Industrial production also benefits from increasing returns to scale. The more you produce, the cheaper each unit becomes. Part of the reason Chinese goods seem inexpensive lies in our own underproduction. As American firms ramp up supply, the cost gap narrows.

Financing habits support this trend. Americans fund trade deficits by selling assets or issuing debt. Those mechanisms would remain available in a closed trade system. True, consumers might get less “bang for their buck” in the short term, but the willingness to spend wouldn’t change.

Most Americans will continue to consume, no matter where production occurs. That behavior ensures demand will remain steady — providing the economic incentive for supply to shift back home.

Unused capacity, untapped opportunity

America’s industrial potential remains far from exhausted. Millions of citizens remain unemployed or underemployed. Hundreds of billions of dollars in productive capital sit idle.

The infrastructure exists. The labor pool exists. The only thing missing has been the incentive to build again. Or more accurately, the disincentive to rely on foreign labor.

The United States thrived for generations as a self-sufficient manufacturing power. It can do so again.

RELATED: Without tariffs, the US is defenseless in an economic war

Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Production follows consumption. That truism holds in both individual and national economies. No one works because they love harvesting wheat or running a forge. People work because they want to eat, live, and flourish.

In a globalized economy, countries can consume without producing. But once that system breaks — or gets reshaped by political will — production must rise to meet domestic demand. It cannot work the other way around.

This logic exposes a hard truth: America’s trade deficit reflects lost potential. We haven’t stopped consuming. We’ve just stopped building.

Trump’s tariffs aim to reverse that trend. By shrinking the trade deficit, the policy raises GDP. With production comes employment. With employment comes prosperity.

The patience to win

No one pretends tariffs deliver instant gratification. They don’t. They aren’t supposed to.

Tariffs offer a national test of will. Do Americans want long-term sovereignty, security, and wealth badly enough to endure a temporary adjustment? Or will they flinch the moment cheap consumer goods rise in price?

This question lies at the heart of the national debate. And the outcome will shape whether America reclaims its manufacturing base — or continues hemorrhaging power to rival nations.

The evidence favors success. But only if we stay the course.

Conservatives and nationalists should recognize what’s at stake. Tariffs don’t just serve economic goals. They advance a moral imperative — to rebuild the country we inherited and preserve it for those who follow.

The marshmallow test may sound childish. But its lessons hold: The future belongs to those who can delay gratification today to build something greater tomorrow.

America stands at that threshold now. As I show in “Reshore: How Tariffs Will Bring Our Jobs Home and Revive the American Dream,” reindustrialization isn’t a fantasy. It’s within reach. But it requires courage, consistency, and sacrifice.

Trump’s tariffs have set the stage. The numbers now support the policy. The question remains: Will the American people pass the test?

Let’s hope so. Because this country doesn’t belong only to us. It belongs to our children, our grandchildren, and every generation still to come.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Tariffs, Trade, Trade deficit, Debt, Economy, Reshoring, Reindustrialization, Manufacturing, Jobs, Employment, Technology, Production, America first, National interest, Nationalism, Consumers, Dollar, Buying, China 

For years, the stroke of midnight on June 1 triggered a corporate and bureaucratic avalanche of rainbow flags across America. Logos changed colors overnight. Government agencies raced to outdo each other in their displays of “inclusion.” From Walmart to the Pentagon, one message rang loud: Dissent from the LGBT agenda would not be tolerated.

This year tells a different story.

Conservatives tend to back off once momentum swings their way. They declare victory, let up, and give the left room to regroup. That reflex must end.

Pride Month 2025 has limped into view. The rainbow wave has receded quite a bit. Now is the time to send it packing — permanently.

The evidence lines up. Target, still smarting from last year’s boycott, scaled back its displays. Other major retailers stayed quiet. Their social media teams left June’s usual fanfare on the cutting-room floor. Under the Trump administration, government agencies that once issued rainbow-laced press releases now operate under strict orders to stand down.

The tone of the country has changed. Americans have grown tired of relentless cultural propaganda, and corporations — always sensitive to backlash — have noticed. When the incentives shift, so does the behavior.

This change marks a win. But it also poses a risk.

Conservatives tend to back off once momentum swings their way. They declare victory, let up, and give the left room to regroup. That reflex must end. The left doesn’t retreat — it regathers. Letting up now guarantees a resurgence later. We have Pride Month on the run. We need to chase it out of public life.

Don’t mistake temporary silence for surrender. The left hasn’t abandoned its agenda. School boards still promote radical curricula. Teachers’ unions haven’t backed down. Cultural elites remain committed to enforcing a worldview that blends LGBT ideology with abortion politics — united by their rejection of divine order. They’re wounded, not defeated. And this is the moment to press the advantage.

Victory doesn’t come from symbolic wins. It comes from sustained action.

Step one: We need bold churches. Pastors must speak clearly and unapologetically about what Scripture teaches. Romans 1:26-27 speaks plainly about rebellion against God’s design. The pulpit isn’t a platform for public relations — it’s a battleground for truth. If pastors go silent, congregations scatter.

We need men like Daniel, who stood firm in the midst of a corrupt regime and “resolved that he would not defile himself” (Daniel 1:8). A culture in crisis needs shepherds with spine.

If your pastor never addresses these issues, urge him to do so. The flock needs clarity. The country needs truth.

Step two: Congregations must reject the lie that LGBTQ ideology is normal. It isn’t. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture defines humanity as male and female and defines marriage as a covenant between one man and one woman. That’s not hate. That’s clarity.

Loving your neighbor doesn’t mean affirming sin. It means telling the truth with compassion — just as Jesus did when he told the woman caught in adultery, “Go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11).

Normalizing sin isn’t kindness. It’s cruelty.

Churches must function as sanctuaries of truth, not echo chambers for cultural conformity.

Step three: Take the fight to the institutions.

Run for school board. Run for city council. Run for state legislature. Support candidates who oppose the LGBTQ agenda and the abortion movement without apology. These aren’t separate fights — they’re two limbs of the same ideology. Both elevate the self above Scripture. Both distort what God created.

We need leaders like David, who stood before Goliath and said, “You come to me with a sword … but I come to you in the name of the Lord” (1 Samuel 17:45). That spirit must guide our political efforts.

RELATED: How Christians can take back what Pride Month stole

Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Every seat counts. Every school board, council, and committee sets policy that shapes culture. Leaving them uncontested means surrendering the ground our children stand on.

This is the moment. The left is reeling. Pride Month isn’t gone, but it’s staggering. We hold the high ground. We hold the truth. And we serve the God of whom the psalmist declares, “The Lord is my strength and my shield” (Psalm 28:7).

So hold the line.

Don’t compromise. Don’t wait. Don’t hand back what you’ve reclaimed.

Chase this agenda from our churches, our classrooms, and our public institutions.

Pride Month is on the run.

Finish the job.

​Opinion & analysis, Pride month, Christianity, Christians, Gay pride, Sin, Culture war, Walmart, Pentagon, Rainbow flag, Conservatives, Bible, Romans, The church, Lgbtq agenda 

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) was confronted on a New York radio show about his past connections to a Chinese spy.

In 2020, an Axios report exposed espionage operations by Christine Fang, aka Fang Fang, who took part in fundraising activity for Swalwell during his 2014 re-election campaign. Swalwell was not charged with any wrongdoing and cut ties with her. However, the rumor mill has since swirled about his possible relationship with the spy.

‘I recognize that it’s everyone on the right’s favorite meme.’

Podcaster and radio host Charlamagne tha God, real name Lenard McKelvey, casually brought up the spy scandal during an interview on “The Breakfast Club,” with Swalwell casually brushing off the claims.

“Did the Chinese spy scandal hurt your credibility, or did Republicans just weaponize a nothing-burger, so to speak?” Charlamagne asked nonchalantly.

Swalwell quickly appealed to authority over the question and blamed disinformation.

“You know, the fact that the FBI and the House Ethics Committee said it was bulls**t. Like, I would hope that would be enough, but, like, in a disinformation society, like, I recognize that it’s everyone on the right’s favorite meme.”

Swalwell said it is an “honor” to have Republicans take shots at his character since, according to his wife, “the second they’re not going after you, you’re not effective.”

RELATED: US bans government employees from having romantic relations with Chinese people in China

“I wear it as a badge of honor that these guys would want to lie about me all the time because I think it means that I’m landing punches politically on them that sting,” the congressman stated.

His claims did not stop there, however.

Swalwell went on to make incredibly bizarre assertions about the GOP, perhaps even more bizarre than his claims that Republicans support people getting cancer.

“I think a lot of Republicans look at me as like, oh, that’s a straight, white, Christian male, son of a cop. Like, everyone else like him looks like me. So when he comes at me, it’s more of a betrayal to them,” Swalwell mumbled out.

“Oh, wow,” Charlamagne reacted.

Swalwell added, “I’ve heard that from them on their side; that’s why they take it so personally.”

RELATED: Eric Swalwell just had his own ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ moment during profanity-laden radio interview

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). Photo by AL DRAGO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Blaze News Capitol Hill reporter Rebeka Zeljko said the reason Swalwell is unpopular is not because “other white men view him as a race traitor” but because “his values are terrible.”

Zeljko continued, “Swalwell incorrectly assumes that white men operate as a monolith, prioritizing identity over ideology. He also fails to recognize the irony in saying, ‘The second they’re not going after you, you’re not effective,’ as if the Democratic Party has not dedicated the better part of a decade to going after President Trump.”

While rumors have persisted about Swalwell for years, a mix-up of facts may be responsible for misconceptions rather than simple “misinformation.”

As the Axios report revealed, Fang Fang had sexual or romantic relationships with at least two mayors of Midwestern cities in the span of three years, one of which involved a sexual encounter with a mayor from Ohio.

In relation to the Democratic congressman, the spy allegedly helped place at least one intern in his office. The report did not connect the two romantically, though.

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​News, Fang fang, Swalwell, Charlamagne, Spies, Spy, China, Congress, Republicans, Politics 

Pentecost — this is a day that’s gotten some bad press because the people associated with the name have some misguided ideas.

The Christian calendar outlines a series of annual events marking Jesus’ time on earth. It starts with Advent, which leads to Christmas, followed by Holy Week, which leads to Easter, followed by Ascension Day and, 10 days later, Pentecost, the day the Lord sent the Holy Spirit, precisely as Jesus had promised (John 14:16-31 and John 16:5-15).

This incredible day is described in Acts 2, surely one of the most dramatic chapters of the Bible. Take a moment and read it right now. Seriously.

Why is it called Pentecost? Because the Greek word pentekoste literally means “50th,” and the Holy Spirit came 50 days after Christ’s resurrection.

But did you know that Pentecost already existed as a Jewish holiday that was celebrated 50 days after Passover? Called the Festival of Weeks (or Shavuot in Hebrew), it commemorates God giving the Israelites His law at Mount Sinai, which Jewish tradition says took place 50 days after the Passover, or the Israelite deliverance from Egypt.

Much insight can be gained from comparing these two “Pentecosts,” so lets compare and contrast.

Exodus ‘Pentecost’ vs. Acts Pentecost

Exodus: Took place 50 days after God’s people were delivered from slavery by the blood of a lamb painted on their vertical and horizontal doorposts (Passover)
Acts: Took place 50 days after a far greater deliverance from slavery to sin by the blood of the Lamb painted on the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross
Exodus: God descends in fire on Mount Sinai — in effect warning people to keep their distance from His presence
Acts: Tongues of fire appear on all believers present as God’s presence draws near and fills them
Exodus: Loud thunder and sound of trumpets
Acts: Mighty sound of rushing wind
Exodus: God gives His law, leading to awareness of sin, condemnation, and death
Acts: God pours out His Spirit, leading to assurance of forgiveness and life, empowering people to obey Him
Exodus: The people rebel and worship a golden calf, resulting in 3,000 deaths
Acts: Peter boldly preaches the gospel, resulting in 3,000 people saved

But it wasn’t the Holy Spirit’s debut performance

The Spirit was active from before time began (see Genesis 1:2 for His first mention). He is who regenerated God’s people before Christ’s time, giving them the desire to obey.

As Barry Cooper writes:

Moses was given the Holy Spirit, and at one point he famously cried out, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets, that the Lord would put his Spirit on them!” But through the prophet Joel, God promised that the day would come when His Spirit would be given to all believers in a new and more powerful way: “It shall come to pass afterward [He says], that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh.”

Peter quoted that same passage in his Pentecost Day sermon (that you just read) as that precise prophecy was fulfilled in real time.

Here is perhaps the most critical distinction between the old covenant saints and new covenant believers: Not all of the old covenant saints were given gifts by the Holy Spirit for ministry — but every new covenant believer is gifted as He comes to dwell within us.

As Cooper notes, “That is the wonder of Pentecost: God coming to dwell more fully in each and every believer, to give them power and gifts for service.”

But what is the purpose of those gifts?

The first believers give us a hint: They immediately began declaring the glory of God in multiple different languages so that all present with them there in Jerusalem could understand.

Peter — the same man who, consumed with fear, had lied about his relationship to Jesus to protect himself just 50 days earlier — boldly proclaimed the gospel to all of Jerusalem, resulting in 3,000 souls joining God’s family.

This is the ultimate meaning of Pentecost. The same Spirit who emboldened Peter that day dwells within us for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel.

Taking Pentecost back

It’s important to understand that the emphasis should not be on the gifts.

I believe this is where many Christians get it wrong, including those who call themselves Pentecostals, because they emphasize speaking in tongues and other such manifestations as somehow being a “second act of grace” that Christians need to experience.

The whole counsel of the Bible teaches that the Spirit indwells us when God saves us, and certain gifts were clearly meant for the apostolic age — to help people verify who was actually representing Christ before the scripture was finalized. (Apostles, by the way, were the historical figures who personally experienced Jesus Christ in the flesh and whom Jesus sent out. There are no apostles today, although there are people claiming to be.)

Let’s celebrate Pentecost for the joyful reminder it is: that the very Spirit of God lives in us for the purpose of conforming us to Him in obedience and proclaiming Him fearlessly.

This Sunday, consider the wondrous gift of Him who is sometimes called the “forgotten God.”

This article was adapted from an essay originally published on Diane Schrader’s Substack, She Speaks Truth.

​Christianity, Holy spirit, Jesus, God, Pentecost, Exodus, Bible, Christians, Faith 

When young Georgia mother Adriana Smith began experiencing persistent headaches, she sought medical help. She was given medication and sent on her way.

Tragically, her family is now in mourning. Smith suffered severe blood clots to her brain, was found unresponsive, and then declared brain-dead. However, Smith was two months pregnant at the time and is now being kept on life support in order for her to still give birth to her child.

“Of course, you’ve got pro-choicers and pro-abortion advocates saying, ‘This is so awful, this is using this woman as a lifeless incubator, and they should have just let her off life support, let the baby die,’” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey comments.

“You’ve even got some of her family members saying, ‘Oh, we should have a choice,’” she continues, disturbed. “I have said, ‘Of course, we should give this baby a chance at life.’ And I actually thought that this whole situation was being made possible by Georgia’s pro-life law, anti-abortion law.”

“I was wrong about that. It actually has nothing to do with the Georgia abortion law, and that’s exactly what the left wants you to think, what pro-abortionists want you to think, that this is because of some draconian, archaic, pro-life law in Georgia, and that this has to do with the overturning of Roe V. Wade,” Stuckey explains.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office has released a statement clarifying that the hospital is not required by the pro-life law to maintain life support for a brain-dead patient, because removing life support is not an action with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.

“It’s not the law’s fault. It might be the lawyer’s fault, it might be the hospital administration’s fault, it might be the doctor’s fault, it might be you, the activist’s fault, but it is not actually the law’s fault,” Stuckey explains.

However, one Georgia law concerning life support may be to blame.

“So Georgia code 31329 from 2007 states that doctors can’t withdraw life support from pregnant patients unless both, one, the fetus is not viable, and two, the patient had an advanced directive explicitly stating she wanted withdrawal of life-sustaining measures,” she continues.

While the news coverage is clouded with assumptions, propaganda, and mixed responses on both ends of the political spectrum — Stuckey knows where she stands.

“In this case, there’s an opportunity to save this child, and I would think that her family would want this, that the father of this child would want this, and that the mother would want this,” Stuckey says, adding, “Yes, I would absolutely sacrifice my body so that my child could live, and so that is my perspective.”

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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