Category: blaze media

Ever since the COVID “Great Reset,” the American economy has functioned like a silent depression for two-thirds of households and most businesses. Washington pumped out biblical levels of spending and easy money, and a cycle of debt, high prices, and stagnation has crushed consumers.

Meanwhile, a handful of well-connected corporations — propped up by cheap credit, regulatory favors, and asset bubbles — keep the stock market afloat, creating the illusion of growth. The result is an economy that looks healthy on paper but feels like collapse on Main Street.

Enough. A nation cannot live on financial tricks and asset bubbles forever. Let the recession come.

The time has come to let it crash. No more bailouts. No more “too big to fail.” If we want a free-market recovery built on broad opportunity and wage-based wealth, we must let the bubbles burst.

The silent depression

Americans live under record-high prices for food, fuel, rent, and electricity. College graduates face the worst job market in decades. Payroll data shows just 1,494 new jobs were added in August — the weakest since the 2008 crash. Layoffs are up 38.5% this year.

For graduates, the outlook is even worse. Fortune reports that 58% of recent grads still can’t land a job or internship. Forty percent of the unemployed last year never even got an interview. One in five job seekers remained unemployed for 10 months or more.

Those already employed are struggling to make ends meet. Thirty-seven percent of workers have tapped retirement accounts for hardship withdrawals or loans. Personal spending, adjusted for inflation, fell 0.15% in the first half of 2025 — the sharpest decline since the financial crisis.

Families are drowning in debt. Household debt sits at $18.39 trillion, up $600 billion in one year. Student loans total $1.64 trillion, with more than 10% delinquent. Credit card debt has hit $1.21 trillion, with average APRs over 22%. Auto loans stretch to seven years for one in five new vehicles. Nearly half of renters now spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

A stock market built on sand

You’d expect Wall Street to slump alongside Main Street. Instead, the S&P 500 posts records. Why? Because 10 mega-cap tech stocks make up 40% of its total market cap. Strip them out, and the picture darkens.

More than 450 large companies filed for bankruptcy in the first half of 2025, the most since the Great Recession. Manufacturing has lost 78,000 jobs. Construction spending has fallen in seven of the past 11 months. Small caps fare even worse: 43% of Russell 2000 firms are unprofitable.

AI hype fuels the illusion. Nvidia’s data center revenue — half of it from just three shaky firms — drives much of the market. The S&P’s price-to-book ratio now tops the dot-com bubble. This is not sustainable growth; it’s speculation on steroids.

The housing bubble must pop

Housing has become the last pillar propping up the economy. Thanks to years of near-zero rates, federal subsidies, and trillions in mortgage-backed securities, the housing market ballooned to $55 trillion — $20 trillion more than in 2020.

But affordability is gone. The frozen market now shows cracks as prices fall in half the country. This is the moment to let it reset. Instead of lowering lending standards or declaring housing “emergencies,” the Trump administration should allow prices to match real wages.

Americans can’t keep using housing as a savings account or demanding 25% annual stock returns while complaining about inequality. You can’t have both free markets and endless asset bubbles.

RELATED: No peace without steel: Why our factories must roar again

Photo by sdlgzps via Getty Images

Stop feeding the beast

Wall Street already salivates over another round of stimulus to keep the AI bubble inflated. Evercore ISI predicts the S&P could hit 9,000 by 2026, even while warning this could become the “biggest bubble ever.” By then, the economy would be addicted to corporate welfare, and taxpayers would foot the bill for the richest companies in history.

Enough. A nation cannot live on financial tricks and asset bubbles forever. Let the recession come. Let the bubbles burst. Only then can America rebuild a market economy rooted in work, savings, and production — not in debt and fantasy.

Won’t somebody finally stand up and shout stop?

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, National debt, Broken families, Recession, Economy, Main street, Wall street, Stock market, Assets, Inflation, Interest rates, Jobs, Unemployment, Layoffs 

Among those who loved, respected, and were grateful to Charlie Kirk for everything he did is BlazeTV host Alex Stein — who in a rare moment appears to be all out of jokes.

“People don’t understand that Charlie Kirk could have canceled me a million times. A million times. I did some very boneheaded things. And he always stuck with me, even when I was not representing Turning Point in the best light,” Stein says through tears on “Prime Time with Alex Stein.”

“I am having trouble right now finding anything positive about this situation because I know there’s people out there, and it’s very true that Charlie’s legacy will live on forever, but the world is significantly worse today without Charlie Kirk than it was yesterday,” he continues.

“And Charlie had my back so much, and he didn’t have any motivation other than he actually believed in the First Amendment. He believed in the Second Amendment. He believed in the whole entire Constitution,” he adds.

While Stein says that everyone he has met in politics “has some sort of skeleton in their closet,” Kirk was “the closest thing to perfection when it comes to a human being and following God’s commandments and defending the Constitution.”

“There’s no better example in the entire universe than Charlie Kirk. And when you are perfect like that and when you don’t have skeletons in your closet and you cannot be blackmailed, they will publicly execute you in front of thousands of people, and they will make you scared on purpose,” Stein says.

Kirk was a husband and a father to two children, the founder of Turning Point USA, and only 31 years old.

“When you’re a 31-year-old man, father, that has accomplished more than 99.9% of the population, and you’re brutally murdered in front of your wife and two kids, that is a sick world that not even the most sinister Hollywood scriptwriter would write and produce,” Stein says.

“And that’s the current reality in which we live in. And nothing feels real. Me sitting here and saying Charlie Kirk is dead does not feel real,” he continues.

Not only is his death devastating to those who loved him, listened to him, were inspired by him — but Stein believes this will have a “ripple effect on society” that the leftists cheering on his death do not understand.

“Charlie Kirk would have been president of the United States of America,” he says, adding, “No doubt in my mind.”

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.

​Video phone, Upload, Free, Video, Camera phone, Sharing, Youtube.com, Prime time with alex stein, Alex stein, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Charlie kirk tpusa, Turning point usa, Charlie kirk martyred 

The Old Timer lives to rock his chair another day. In the latest of Cracker Barrel’s many reversals, the company assured customers the old interiors were here to stay. The physical has triumphed over the digital, the “realer” country store representation retained over gray-washed abstraction, and America is quite pleased. The country has managed to hold onto a facsimile of its tangible past, and this is not nothing.

Or is it?

We are nostalgic for being able to engage in the present sufficiently that we create memories.

The controversy over the Cracker Barrel logo reflects a new mood of victory on the resurgent New Right. A sense of humiliation felt over a decade of brands going woke has been replaced by a feeling of power that this pattern is being reversed. But what is the real meaning of this kind of social media activism? Is it really a victory, or rather a victory lap?

Pessimistically, one might say concern over corporate iconography testifies to a form of nostalgia shading into what writer Mark Fisher called Disneyfication. Analyzing Philip K. Dick’s novel “Time Out of Joint,” Fisher quotes Fredric Jameson’s “Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”: “the peculiar ache of nostalgia that ‘Time Out Of Joint’ engenders, a nostalgia for the present, which Dick achieves by constellating stereotypical images of the decade he was writing at the end of: ‘President Eisenhower’s stroke; Main Street, U.S.A.; Marilyn Monroe; a world of neighbors and PTAs; small retail stores (the produce trucked in from outside); favorite television programs; mild flirtations with the housewife next door; game shows and contests; sputniks directly revolving overhead, mere blinking lights in the firmament, hard to distinguish from airliners or flying saucers.'”

Cracker Barrel, though presenting itself as a portal to some bygone poultry farmer’s smoking lounge, now actually offers “a nostalgia for the present.” It offers this via immediacy, personal memory, and normalcy.

RELATED: Cracker Barrel caves even further to anti-rebrand outrage

Photo by Bloomberg / Contributor via Getty Images

The optimistic perspective on this Disneyfication? Digitality is defined in a sense by its lack of presentness. Time-stamped posts position the viewer in an exact relationship to the past, old thoughts bombarded constantly by new ones. One is constantly aware that they have missed something and always reminded they are about to miss even more (or encounter and quickly forget). Cracker Barrel, as a restaurant primarily reserved for family gatherings and social affairs, necessitates that one wipe his blue-light bleary eyes and look up. This immediacy separates it from the YouTube-fare of many other chains and accordingly sees us clinging to it all the more.

Presentness is a requirement to actually engage with the past. Our digital moments seldom become memories, and even more infrequently, memories we bother revisiting. By virtue of Cracker Barrel being an accessible space with an architecture of interaction (wall-items to discuss, games to play, widely palatable food, et cetera), it enables fond family-memory formation. We are nostalgic for being able to engage in the present sufficiently that we create memories.

America is now packed to the gills with all forms of unfamiliar tongues, peoples, and pastimes. Cracker Barrel stands out as a shelter with which the present can be fully enjoyed, removing the diner from recriminations over a Main Street now unrecognizable and inuring us against the tornadic spasms of culture outside its thick double doors. It is a bubble, which, in its wobbly fragility, serves as a funhouse mirror, reflecting a present that could be simple, light, and normal. Inside this sudsy salon is a miniature Target clad in kitsch, a menu that does not embarrass you to order from, and an encampment wherein deleterious social change seems to vanish. It answers a prayer that the country, right now, could be so clean-cut and corralled.

The New Right’s push to retain spaces like Cracker Barrel may blossom into a proper creative drive. Perhaps this is not actually required — it may just need to keep clutching the rocking chair tightly. As many feel their professional and personal lives slipping into the virtual, culturally designated “real world” oases will abound. But the simulacra of these spaces will proliferate, too. Perhaps the restaurant is a welcome reprieve from screen-world. In fact, it may be the definitive escape from the digital world. Or maybe it is just the digital world at an earlier stage of development, repackaged as a comforting and familiar experience.

​Tech, Cracker barrel 

Disney still prints money, but creatively it feels like a company on borrowed time. Marvel and Star Wars once powered revenues, yet a collapse in quality and a relentless release schedule have dulled both brands. The animation studio that set the global standard now leans on sequels and live-action remakes.

Worse, Disney struck a devil’s bargain by cultivating the “Disney adult.” By chasing the childless consumer, the company bought short-term profits while starving its future. At this rate, the company will have no next generation to buy into its nostalgia-based market.

Disney once sold childhood to children and, by doing so, sold a future to parents. By pivoting to the childless super-consumer, it sold out both.

Walt Disney’s dominance came from talent and timing. He had a gift for stories that delighted children and amused their parents. He also built in an era when mass media suddenly reached every living room, the postwar baby boom swelled the audience, and families had disposable income for the first time. Walt converted that moment into a network of theme parks that became rites of passage. In America, childhood meant Disney, and Disney meant childhood.

The empire grew after Walt’s death. Parks multiplied. The company expanded into television, music, sports, and games. Disney stretched its reach to older kids and teens, building an ecosystem where a child could live almost entirely inside one brand. That was the genius: Every formative memory wore a set of mouse ears, and nostalgia was guaranteed on the back end.

But invention is hard. Replicating Walt’s spark isn’t a system you can scale. Disney wanted every demographic and every dollar. Children had been the untapped market, but kids don’t control income; parents do. Marketing directly to adults looked unrealistic — until executives realized nostalgia could do the work.

Nostalgia as strip mine

Nostalgia feels like striking gold. You don’t need to create; you need to repackage. Decades of artistry built so much goodwill that the faintest echo could trigger warm feelings: a musical cue, a costume redesign, a cameo. For young adults who discovered the world is harsher than childhood promised, revisiting Disney’s stories and parks delivered comfort on demand.

That same generation had fewer children, often none. The old route — enchant the kids to unlock the parents’ wallets — narrowed. Disney pivoted. Sequels, reboots, and remakes pushed out originality. Marvel briefly rescued the strategy, but social justice sermons plus a firehose of content burned out the audience. Lucasfilm looked like another bottomless mine, yet once the initial excitement faded, fans saw the studio couldn’t craft new myths. The product kept coming; the magic didn’t.

From children’s parks to adult playgrounds

The parks followed the money. Regular attendance became a status symbol among young adults eager to flaunt luxury consumption online. Disney obliged, hiking prices and layering on exclusive experiences squarely aimed at childless visitors with cash to burn. Elite dining clubs, after-hours parties, and “premium” line-skipping converted nostalgia into a subscription lifestyle. Even Walt’s no-alcohol rule vanished. Spaces designed for families became curated playgrounds for nostalgic adults.

Nothing exposed this shift like the Star Wars hotel. The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser promised full immersion — actors in character, missions, staged set pieces, and themed cabins — at an eye-watering starting price of $5,500 for two nights for two people, but often much more. Families had no chance. The corridors filled with adults paying thousands for a few days of role-play and an Instagram dump. When the novelty faded and the numbers stopped working, Disney shuttered it.

RELATED: Disney’s woke ‘Snow White’ on life support

Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Eating the seed corn

For a while, the nostalgia economy worked. Remakes still posted strong weekends. Parks extracted more revenue per guest. But the company stopped enchanting children. Re-skinning “Beauty and the Beast” or “Aladdin” keeps cash flowing for a season; it plants nothing for the future. You can only harvest memories if children are making new ones now. Disney has been eating seed corn instead of planting for tomorrow.

That creative retreat shows up in the audience. The company trains adults to consume experiences rather than build households. Disney adults don’t just buy tickets and merch; many postpone or abandon the basics of civilization — marriage, kids, a home — so they can keep chasing the next “exclusive.” Some even treat continuing their bloodline as evil. Disney is not solely to blame for this wider phenomenon, but it reinforces it and profits from it.

None of this means Disney’s executives are uniquely foolish. They followed the incentives. The audience that most reliably spends money was the one you made last generation: the kid who grew up inside Disney’s ecosystem and never left it. Social media turned that audience into free marketing. Wall Street demanded predictable growth, and nostalgia delivered on time. The trap is that nostalgia always cannibalizes tomorrow to feed today.

The moral is bigger than one company. A civilization that feeds on recycled memory while sneering at renewal is a civilization drifting toward hospice. Disney once sold childhood to children and, by doing so, sold a future to parents. By pivoting to the childless super-consumer, it sold out both.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Disney, Disney remake, Live action remake, Woke hollywood, Nostalgia, Marvel, Star wars, Children, Galactic starcruiser, Snow white, Marriage, Family, Entertainment 

Scientists have made a discovery that should shake the foundations of modern biology.

When organisms die, some of their cells might not simply shut off like light bulbs. Instead, they reorganize, build new structures, solve problems, and make decisions. These researchers call it a “third state” of existence.

Once you accept that life itself shows signs of intention, you must also acknowledge that there is an Intender.

But to anyone steeped in Christian thought, it sounds less like a new scientific category and more like an old truth, a glimpse of the life that refuses to be reduced to chemicals and chance.

Mind in matter

Consider the strange case of xenobots, tiny clusters of frog cells lifted from their natural role and placed in a lab dish. They were expected to wither.

Instead, they began to move, formed patterns, and worked together in ways that showed clear intention.

Dr. William Miller calls this consciousness. Not the kind of awareness you and I possess, but the raw ability to adapt, to choose, to pursue a purpose. When placed outside their usual role, cells don’t behave like blind molecules colliding at random. They behave like agents. They cooperate. They solve problems. They move toward goals.

That fact alone shatters one of materialism’s deepest dogmas.

The evolution lie

For more than a century, the reigning narrative has been that consciousness is a late arrival on the evolutionary stage. It’s nothing more than an accidental byproduct of brain complexity, born only after countless mutations stumbled into neurons, then into networks, then into awareness.

The atheist worldview depends on this sequence. It argues that life has no inherent meaning because what we call “mind” is simply chemistry scaled up. In this view, free will is an illusion generated by firing synapses.

But these cells expose the lie of that story.

If consciousness exists at the cellular level, then it doesn’t wait for brains. It doesn’t emerge as a lucky accident after billions of years of trial and error. It’s present from the beginning, written into life at its smallest scale.

That flips the entire evolutionary tale on its head. Instead of matter groping toward mind, we see mind animating matter. Instead of dead particles producing life, we see life infused with purpose at the very first step.

The intender revealed

What if mind, not matter, is primary? This is a profoundly important question, one that doesn’t just challenge the materialist narrative but annihilates it. Once you accept that life itself shows signs of intention, you must also acknowledge that there is an Intender.

The real shock is that these cells don’t compete; they collaborate. They don’t claw for survival but sacrifice for a greater whole. Every one of the 30 trillion cells in your body could, in theory, serve itself — yet they don’t. They choose unity. Skin cells shield. Heart cells pump. Brain cells think. All of them working in harmony with no central command.

RELATED: The Dawkins delusion: Why atheism can’t explain the one thing that matters

vchal/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Random mutation cannot account for this. Natural selection doesn’t explain why self-interest gives way to selflessness billions of times a day inside your body. Something is directing the orchestra.

And consider the scale of the information problem. DNA contains more information than our minds could possibly fathom. Cellular machinery reads, copies, and executes these instructions with astonishing speed and near-perfect accuracy, millions of times every second. Our best computers look painfully clumsy beside such precision.

Materialists insist that this miracle of information arranged itself over billions of years. But information doesn’t just organize itself. A letter always points back to an author, a painting to a painter, and a symphony to a composer.

God’s living code

The xenobot research confirms this reality. It’s what some scientists call “biological agency.” And where does this awareness come from? Scientists can describe what it does, but not where it begins. They can measure its effects, but not locate its source.

Christianity, on the other hand, has always given the only coherent answer: Consciousness originates in God, the eternal, self-existent Being who imprinted His image on creation, a God who designed life not as machinery but as community.

The Bible says humans are made in God’s image, reflecting His consciousness, His creativity, His moral compass. What Miller and others are now uncovering is that this reflection stretches deeper than we imagined. Every cell of your body participates in it. Right now, as you read these words, trillions of cells are making choices, collaborating without rest, preserving your existence.

Some might view this as a fortunate accident, another curious quirk in the endless lottery of evolution.

But randomness doesn’t yield purpose. Blind collisions don’t generate systems that adapt, collaborate, and surrender for one another with unfailing order. What we see isn’t chaos but choreography, not accident but authorship.

I see it as divine purpose. The God signal has been there all along, humming beneath the fabric of life. And now even the microscopes are beginning to see it: design in the details, direction in the data, destiny in the DNA.

​Christianity, Atheism, Science, Christian, Bible, Jesus, God, Faith 

Vanity Fair once called me “the masculinist health guru,” which is kind of cute, I guess. I suspect the outlet really wanted to call me “the misogynist health guru” and to lump me in with the Andrew Tates of this world, with their rented sports cars, Freudian cigar obsessions, and poorly tailored suits whose trousers end three inches too short above the ankles.

If you’ve actually followed my work for any length of time, you’ll know that large amounts of the advice I give to men apply equally to women. I take pains to say this.

Researchers recently showed that hormonal contraceptive use shrinks the brain. Yes, that’s right: The brain gets smaller.

With regard to the harmful effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals, which are simply everywhere today, I say, “The end of men is the end of women.”

Estro-gentleman

We might like to think all those estrogenic chemicals are only a danger to men — because estrogen is the female hormone, right? — but actually they’re just as large a danger to women. Women can have too much estrogen in their bodies as well, and overexposure has a range of very nasty effects, from menstrual disruption, endometriosis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome to cancers of the breast, vagina, and uterus.

I also give advice specifically to women too. For example, I’ve written about the dangers of sanitary products, which have been found to contain massive doses of harmful chemicals and heavy metals. What’s worse, because sanitary products are in contact with sensitive vaginal tissue, greater quantities of these chemicals are absorbed by the body.

Vaginal and scrotal tissue is many times more absorbent than the skin on your stomach or hands, which is why the vagina and scrotum are often used as routes for drug delivery. Substances that enter our bodies through the vagina or scrotum also evade a process called “first-pass metabolism” in the gut and go directly into the bloodstream. Not good.

So while you won’t find me proudly sporting an “I’m with her” T-shirt or one that says, “The future is female,” nor will you ever find me donning a pink p***y hat or reading E. Jean Carroll’s autobiography, I do care about women.

Haphazard endocrinology

And it’s in that spirit of love for the fairer sex that I offer this week’s tidbit of advice for women only. It’s also unusual because it’s not a recommendation for a beautiful organic-wool pillow or the finest Mangalitsa pork or a red-light machine to tan your undercarriage.

I want you, ladies, to read a book.

Endocrinology — the science of hormones — has a deep history. Man has been fiddling around with hormones for many thousands, probably tens of thousands, of years, even if he had no idea what a hormone was until the beginning of last century.

The first castration was the first hormonal therapy, the first bloody flash of awareness that certain tissues within the body hold the key to sexual development and expression. A bull without testicles is no longer dangerously aggressive and uncontrollable — and the same goes for a poor unfortunate slave. A castrato’s voice remains angelic, like a child’s, until his death.

A kind of haphazard endocrinology went on for thousands of years. In some places, like Imperial China, where eunuchs had important roles to play in the imperial court and bureaucracy, castration took place on an almost industrial scale. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), there may have been as many as 100,000 eunuchs in the imperial service at any one time.

But it wasn’t until the 20th century that endocrinology emerged as an actual science, with the discovery of hormones and experimentation with new forms of therapy at a far less crude level than hacking off the testicles with a sharp piece of rock or a knife. Particular kinds of hormonal intervention could now create a whole new way of life.

Tough pill to swallow

Of course I’m talking about hormonal contraception, the invention of which, to my mind, constitutes the most significant hormonal intervention in human history. No hormonal contraception, no sexual revolution — with everything that counterfactual movement entails.

The scale of this intervention in the hormonal lives of women is staggering. It’s estimated that 39% of female contraceptive users in the U.S., or almost 18.5 million women in 2018, were using hormonal methods (pills, intrauterine devices, implants, injections, rings, or patches). A 2013 study claimed that 80% of all sexually active young women ages 25-34 in the U.S. would try hormonal contraception at some point.

When hormonal contraception was invented, nobody fully understood the biological consequences, let alone the social or political consequences, of fixing tens of millions of women in the luteal phase of menstruation for as long as they choose.

The truth is that we still don’t — not really. While we’ve got a better idea of some of the social outcomes, much of the biology remains a mystery, and there are powerful vested interests that prevent an honest investigation or discussion of them. Pharmaceutical companies make no money from abstinence or the rhythm method, and attacks on hormonal contraception are also perceived as a threat to women’s freedom and sexual choice, which, in an obvious sense, they are.

Ick trick

In recent years, with the advent of social media, there’s been growing backlash against hormonal contraception, as women — especially young women — share their experiences of weight gain, mood problems, and even falling out of love with their boyfriends and husbands when they stop taking it.

Yes, that’s a well-attested effect of taking hormonal contraception. Women’s sexual preferences change during their menstrual cycle. Women find classically masculine men — men whose appearance and bodily cues scream “TESTOSTERONE!” — more attractive when they’re ovulating and ready to make babies, for reasons that aren’t hard to imagine. And so if you meet your boyfriend or husband when you’re on hormonal contraception and your brain is telling you to find Timothee Chalamet types attractive, going cold turkey might cause you to stop finding your boyfriend or husband attractive. You might even find him disgusting.

This really happens, and people really do get divorced because of this.

An open book

I’m not going to read you the litany of negative health effects or roll out dozens of studies to convince you to think very carefully about the benefits and deficits of using hormonal birth control. Instead I’m going to tell you to buy the book “This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: How the Pill Changes Everything,” by Sarah E. Hill. This is the most comprehensive look at the biological changes that happen as a result of taking hormonal birth control, the changes you or your sister or your daughter won’t be told about when you go to the doctor to get a prescription. The changes that won’t be on the medication’s insert either. It’s a readable, accessible book, but that makes it no less shocking.

RELATED: Hormonal birth control: As bad for you as smoking

Brain drain

I will talk about one worrying recent study, though. Researchers recently showed that hormonal contraceptive use shrinks the brain. Yes, that’s right: The brain gets smaller. Scientists used MRI imaging to look at the brains of users and non-users, as well as men, and they found that a key region of the brain, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, was noticeably thinner in women on hormonal birth control.

This could have far-reaching implications for women’s behavior, and that includes their political behavior. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is involved in fear regulation and emotional processing. As I suggest in my forthcoming book, “The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity,” the thinning of nearly 20 million women’s brains in the U.S. could be helping to drive political polarization in the U.S., as women veer ever farther off toward the radical left and policies that endanger their own safety and well-being, while men cleave desperately to the center-right. I’m not joking. There needs to be more research, pronto.

Thankfully, the changes to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex appear to be reversible: The brain returns to normal thickness once women stop using.

Depression risk

However, other studies suggest that some alterations to the brain might not be reversible. While on hormonal birth control, women have a higher risk of depression. If a woman starts taking it in her mid-20s and then stops, the risk returns to normal levels. If, however, a woman starts taking it in her teens, she retains an elevated risk for the rest of her life. This is clear evidence that hormonal contraception causes permanent changes to the developing teenage brain. If you know anything about hormones and the kind of changes they can make in the body, this should come as no surprise.

Ultimately, it’s up to you. Your body, your choice — as the old feminist mantra has it. But the best thing you can do, the thing you owe to yourself as a (semi-)rational creature, is to be in possession of the right information so that you can make a fully informed choice.

So do yourself a favor: If you are using hormonal contraception or thinking about it, or if you have a daughter or other female member of your family who is or might, buy that book.

Expand your brain before you decide to shrink it.

​Hormones, Maha, Hormonal birth control, Lifestyle, Sex, Health, Men and women 

Can you feel it? Do you sense that something big is about to happen? And by big, I mean an event or events affecting people on a global scale.

I am convinced that Spirit-filled believers are detecting what the Puritans called the “quickening.” To quicken is to bring to life, accelerate, or incite. Pregnant women experience quickening with a baby’s first movements, and more importantly, the term also describes an advanced stage of pregnancy that alerts the mother that her long-awaited day is near — even imminent.

Christian, you and I have the greatest motivator ever — we have an appointment with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible says that people are spiritually quickened or made alive when they are born again and will be physically quickened at the resurrection.

Now, ask yourself: Are there signs that events are accelerating before us, moving us toward the end of the age? Is there a tension that seems to indicate that God is about to intervene in our lives?

I would say: Yes! This quickening is a reminder to the church of what is soon to come. And it is a tremendous time to be alive. It is true that anti-Christian sentiment is rising — as we should expect — because believing in Jesus Christ divides. I can say any name at any given time, anywhere, and it’s not a problem. Yet division is guaranteed when anyone mentions the name of Jesus Christ outside the walls of a church. If believing in Jesus is divisive, believing in the rapture and its imminency creates an even greater divide.

How so? It was Jesus Himself who introduced the doctrine of the rapture in John 14:1-3.

The Bible tells us that the rapture will separate believers from non-believers. Suddenly, without notice or any prerequisite, believers will instantly vanish, being transformed and translated into the spirit realm.

Though believers are awaiting that day, many others are not. Sadly, husbands, wives, family, and friends who do not know the Lord will not experience this blessed hope. Many even mock the rapture as a fairy tale, the proverbial pie in the sky, or escapism. But being raptured is not without precedent. It has happened before.

Christians believe in the rapture because it is clearly taught in the Bible. It is a biblical doctrine. Some challenge that statement because the word “rapture” doesn’t appear in our English Bibles, but it does appear in the Latin Bible as rapturo. To be raptured is to be “caught up or pulled up suddenly.”

Remember, Jesus introduced the doctrine of the rapture in John 14:1-3, when He said: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”

RELATED: Is the rapture actually coming soon?

alessandro0770/iStock/Getty Images Plus

To skeptics who doubt the veracity of the rapture, I have a couple of questions. Following His resurrection, did Jesus ascend to heaven?

Yes, He did. According to Acts 1:9, the disciples watched as He was taken up. So is Jesus in heaven right now? Yes, He is. And did Jesus say He was going to prepare a place for us and come back just long enough to pick us up and take us back to where He is? Yes, He did, in John 14:2-3. I submit to you that the way Jesus will accomplish this is through the rapture.

Every Bible-believing Christian familiar with scripture understands that the rapture is a fact. They may disagree on the timing of it — before, during, or after the seven-year tribulation period — and that is OK with me. Believers can disagree on timing, but we cannot say, “There is no rapture.” To say that would mean deleting John 14:1-3 and numerous other passages right out of the Bible.

When God’s word speaks of the coming separation of the righteous from the unrighteous, it doesn’t leave us in the dark as to how it will happen. Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers, “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).

God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Paul understood the rapture to be imminent, meaning there is nothing more that needs to be fulfilled in biblical prophecy before this event occurs. This exciting news would have thrilled the hearts of the Thessalonians, as it should for us today.

Wherever you are right now, can you take a moment to say, “Thank You, God, for this ever-present blessed hope!”

God’s great gift to mankind was manifested in Jesus because God the Father “so loved the world that He gave” — gifted the world — “His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). A gift is meant to be received, but it cannot be received unless the recipient chooses to accept it.

‘Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

It is tragic when gifts are rejected with the words “return to sender.” Refusing an extravagant gift from someone who cares deeply about you is a heartbreaking form of rejection. Yet people do that with the gospel. The gospel goes out, and they say, “I don’t want or need it.”

But believe me, when the day of separation comes, you will want to have received the gift of salvation through Christ. He is your passport to heaven.

I cannot stress this enough: No one will want to be an earth-dweller when Jesus Christ returns at His second coming!

The Lord knows who you are and how to deliver you, dear saint. In this age of facial-recognition technology, air travelers can now move through international customs by facing a screen and allowing it to scan their faces, which it does instantly. If a green light appears, the customs door opens. No identification or passport is needed.

If we, through technology, can identify others, how much more can God identify us who are marked by His Holy Spirit? We will not be forgotten or left behind when Christ comes for His own! “Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36).

What stimulates, encourages, provokes, and compels you to do what you do? In other words, what motivates you in life?

I don’t know about you, but when there is a special appointment or a long-awaited event I’m looking forward to, I am motivated to get ready for that day. Christian, you and I have the greatest motivator ever — we have an appointment with the Lord Jesus Christ.

How do we get ready for such an important date?

“Do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light” (Romans 13:11-12).

Excerpted from “Called to Take a Bold Stand.” Copyright © 2025, Jack Hibbs. Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon. www.harvesthousepublishers.com

​End times, Christianity, Bible, Jesus, Jesus christ, Ratpure, Faith 

In 1989, Justice Antonin Scalia cast the deciding vote to overturn the conviction of Gregory Lee Johnson, who was arrested and found guilty of violating a Texas statute after he burned the American flag outside the Republican National Convention.

The author of the 5-4 opinion was Justice William Brennan, the leading liberal and advocate for the “living Constitution” on the Supreme Court. For conservatives, it was one of the two most widely criticized votes of Justice Scalia’s illustrious career (the other being his vote refusing to recognize that parents have a natural, constitutionally protected right to direct the upbringing of their children).

The president’s executive order is not only much needed and long overdue, but is also very likely to be upheld by the Supreme Court when the inevitable challenges arise.

But the opinion by Brennan, which Scalia joined, is not as absolute as it has subsequently been portrayed.

The historical context

It specifically held that Texas violated the First Amendment by prosecuting Johnson “in these circumstances” — that is, expressive conduct or symbolic speech as part of a political protest that was not designed to incite a crowd (nor did it have that effect). It also held that the “government generally has a freer hand in restricting expressive conduct than it has in restricting the written or spoken word.” Only laws directed at restricting the communicative nature of expressive conduct implicate the First Amendment, and even then they can be upheld for a valid governmental interest.

Texas offered two governmental interests in defense of its flag-burning statute: 1) preventing breaches of the peace and 2) preserving the flag as a symbol of national unity. The court rejected the second because it was related to the suppression of expression, and it rejected the first because “it was not implicated” in the case.

That is the important caveat in Texas v. Johnson that President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag,” seeks to capitalize on.

A needed change

After articulating why the flag is such a cherished symbol, one for which “many thousands of American patriots have fought, bled, and died to keep … waving,” the order asserts, “Desecrating it is uniquely offensive and provocative,” and is “a statement of contempt, hostility, and violence against our Nation.”

It then invokes the Texas v. Johnson caveat: “Burning this representation of America may incite violence and riot. American Flag burning is also used by groups of foreign nationals as a calculated act to intimidate and threaten violence against Americans because of their nationality and place of birth.”

The order correctly points out that the Supreme Court “has never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action or that is an action amounting to ‘fighting words’ is constitutionally protected.” And it laudably directs the attorney general to prioritize the enforcement of civil and criminal laws against flag desecration, quite correctly limiting it to flag-burning conduct that causes harm “unrelated to expression” in order to be consistent with the First Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Texas v. Johnson.

RELATED: College students say American flag symbolizes ‘genocide,’ ‘extremism,’ ‘injustice,’ and ‘sins’ we’ve committed against others

Photo by BRANDONJ74 via Getty Images

Maintaining precedent

After 35 years of timid responses to the flag-burning case, in which elected officials and law enforcement at every level thought flag-burning was constitutionally protected no matter the circumstances (an erroneous view repeated ad nauseam by many critics of the president’s order), President Trump has taken a long-overdue stand to protect the flag. He is seeking to safeguard it from those who would burn it to incite violence, provoke with “fighting words,” or more broadly, seek to intimidate Americans from expressing patriotism and applauding American exceptionalism.

The incitement, fighting words, and intimidation exceptions have sometimes themselves been limited to acts targeting particular individuals rather than groups. But as the Supreme Court recognized in Virginia v. Black, a cross-burning case that was decided 14 years after Texas v. Johnson, the First Amendment doesn’t necessarily protect such conduct when targeting groups rather than specific individuals.

The aggressive use of American flag-burning as a tactic of incitement and intimidation, which has been on display in cities across the country in response to President Trump’s efforts to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, demonstrates that “in these circumstances” (as distinct from the milquetoast circumstances at issue in Texas v. Johnson), the president’s executive order is not only much needed and long overdue, but is also very likely to be upheld by the Supreme Court when the inevitable challenges arise.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Flag burning, Flag, Flag burning executive order, Supreme court, First amendment, Texas v. johnson, Antonin scalia, Donald trump, Fighting words 

Dr. James Dobson left a 14-year career on faculty at the University of Southern California Medical School to embark on a far more speculative quest to combat progressive influences on family formation and the rearing of children.

It was an unusual choice for a man born to a generation that prized security and institutional membership. After decades of successful organization, audience building, book sales, and political influence, Dobson accurately perceived the opportunity before him when he made the leap.

Of all the evangelical attempts to participate in America’s mass media culture, Dobson’s projects may have been the most successful.

But it was more than an opportunity to be successful that Dobson grasped. It was the chance to contribute to the common good, to demonstrate obedience to God, and to speak prophetically to the nation and the world.

Spiritual guide

Dobson was known primarily as an expert on family and the raising of children. His early work made an impact as a kind of counternarrative to the tradition-busting, more permissive views of Dr. Benjamin Spock (not the one from “Star Trek”).

His influence, however, grew far beyond the realm of family even as the umbrella organization of the work was and still is called Focus on the Family.

Dobson was also a true spiritual guide and encourager for Americans of all ages. Young people listened to stories encouraging virtue and Christian faithfulness on Focus on the Family’s outstanding “Adventures in Odyssey” series.

Millions of adults listened to the radio broadcast Dobson did with a series of co-hosts. While his broadcasts often focused on advice for raising children or for building a flourishing marriage, he also platformed Christian testimonies and effective Christian advocates and ministries. Being featured on his broadcast could lead to an explosion of interest and support for an organization such as the still-flourishing Summit Ministries.

Of all the evangelical attempts to participate in America’s mass media culture, Dobson’s projects may have been the most successful.

Faith in motion

Someone who preceded Dobson in changing evangelical thought was the missionary turned author and filmmaker Francis Schaeffer.

There is a kind of narrative some Christian academics promote about Schaeffer, which is that he was on the right path until he began to engage in political activism. It is certainly the case that, as Schaeffer aged and experienced more influence, he felt the need to use it for political ends.

A similar narrative is applied to Dobson. After his death, many people demonized him. But others argue that he had the right ideas early on, only later succumbing to the temptation to get involved in politics and the culture war. But I think those narratives about Schaeffer and Dobson are wrong.

Schaeffer wrote mostly about Christian theology and worldview more broadly until 1979, when he made the film and wrote the book “Whatever Happened to the Human Race?” in conjunction with C. Everett Koop.

Schaeffer and Koop — a pediatric surgeon who would eventually become the most famous surgeon general in United States history — toured together to promote the film, answering questions from audiences in an effort to appeal to American consciences and stop the killing of unborn children by the millions unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

There is little question that taking on abortion drew Schaeffer more deeply into American politics and into alliance with Republicans.

Turning point

It certainly didn’t have to be that way.

Schaeffer was hardly a libertarian or someone predominantly concerned with limited government. Instead, he had natural sympathies with workers and was a kind of environmentalist. The life issue drew him further to the right because that was the way the issue evolved. Early on, politicians such as Al Gore, Teddy Kennedy, and Jesse Jackson had pro-life sympathies. At the same time, there were plenty of pro-choice Republicans.

But over time, the American political binary did its work.

Ronald Reagan declared forcefully for the pro-life cause even though his own advisers often tried to tamp down his support. Nevertheless, the life issue became a Republican issue. As it did so, it gained purchase with figures like Schaeffer and the previously progressive Richard John Neuhaus, who found himself surprised that commitments to civil rights and opposition to war violence in Vietnam did not translate into determination to protect the unborn.

Dobson also found himself powerfully committed to protecting the child in the womb. That issue, more compellingly and powerfully than any other, drew him into the political fray. Early on, he would make noise about liberal sympathies exhibited at the White House Conference on the Family. But it would be abortion that really pulled Dobson into the political limelight.

Dobson’s threat

There was a time when many Republicans considered the pro-life issue to be a liability, as, for example, various Reagan handlers pushed hard to prevent him from centering the life issue in his speeches.

And after hoping desperately that Republican nominees to the Supreme Court in the 1980s and early 1990s would lead to the overturning of Roe, pro-lifers were badly stung by the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision — co-authored by three Republican appointees — that cemented Roe’s status.

The dealmaker knew this was one deal he had to make.

GOP pro-choicers likely hoped that would be the end of the matter. It wasn’t. Battles over Supreme Court nominations continued with ferocity, including the bizarre debacles we witnessed in confirmation hearings for nominees from Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas to Brett Kavanaugh.

Dobson was one of the major reasons the Republican Party did not abandon pro-lifers and relegate the issue to the margins. In the late 1990s, Dobson proved just how serious he was when he threatened to leave the Republican Party and to take as many people with him as possible.

The threat was impossible to ignore and resulted in a decisive shift in political gravity.

When faith leads

The Republican Party became a pro-life party virtually full-stop. Notably, the one Republican star who thought he could safely stay pro-choice was Rudy Giuliani. But he failed, as his 2008 presidential campaign proved. In 2012, Mitt Romney ran as a pro-life candidate, which he didn’t do in 1994. And in 2016, even Donald Trump, who had never pronounced himself to be pro-life, made the turn and subsequently won the nomination. The dealmaker knew this was one deal he had to make.

Dobson’s eventual support of Trump in 2016 and beyond is often used as proof that Trump forced conservative evangelicals into a position of deep and unjustifiable compromise. After all, they repeatedly criticized the philandering of then-President Bill Clinton in the 1990s only to look past the alleged same behavior by Trump.

But I think we’re telling the wrong story.

The simple truth is that Dobson helped bend the will of the Republican Party in the direction of opposing abortion reliably and consistently. And when Trump finally declared himself pro-life, it was he — not Dobson — who found himself in a new substantive policy position.

We all know how the story ended. Roe was finally overruled. Abortion returned to the moral and democratic consideration of the American people. And I would argue that Dobson got far more than he gave and with the highest stakes on the line.

People mocked Dobson’s hope that Trump had become a kind of “baby Christian,” but it reflected his own desire to believe in the possibility of redemption and a changed life.

​Abortion, Christian, Christianity, Focus on the family, James dobson, Pro-life, Republican party, Faith 

Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, lived with a transgender-identifying roommate, several reports have confirmed. The findings could point to a potential motive.

‘This had to have been a motivation for Tyler Robinson.’

The two, who resided in an apartment in Saint George, Utah, had a “romantic relationship,” Fox News Digital first reported.

The roommate is a biological male who claims he is transitioning to a female. The FBI stated that he has been “extremely cooperative” with the agency’s investigation. He allegedly “had no idea” Robinson had planned the fatal shooting and has not been accused of any criminal activity in connection with the assassination.

Several sources told Axios that investigators initially did not want the roommate’s so-called gender identity to be leaked to the public since he was cooperating with investigators.

One of those sources claimed that the roommate was “aghast” to learn about the assassination and provided authorities with message exchanges he had with Robinson.

“That’s what happened? Oh my God, no,” the roommate allegedly said. “Here are all the messages.”

RELATED: Officials file affidavit with intended charges against Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin: Report

Photo by ROMAIN FONSEGRIVES/AFP via Getty Images

Robinson had wrapped the rifle in a towel and hidden it in some bushes near Utah Valley University, according to the messages.

“It’s pretty clear that Robinson’s roommate knew a lot and didn’t say anything after the killing, so they’re a person of interest officially and are cooperating,” a second official told Axios. “We want to keep it that way.”

Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R) confirmed that Robinson’s roommate identified as transgender, indicating that this information may assist investigators in determining a motive, although he noted that Robinson’s motive remains unclear.

“It’s very clear to us and to the investigators that this was a person who was deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” Cox told the Wall Street Journal.

RELATED: VIDEO: Erika Kirk makes first public remarks since the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

Cox also noted that Robinson has not confessed to authorities that he committed the assassination.

“He is not cooperating,” Cox said. “All the people around him are cooperating.”

“The FBI is investigating a record number of tips,” an FBI spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “Every connection, every group, every link will be investigated and anyone involved in this matter, anywhere in the world they might be, will be brought to justice.”

Terry Schilling with American Principles Project told Blaze News that there is “a serious mental health crisis that America needs to address.”

“Transgenderism is obviously a mental illness. It was classified as a mental illness for decades, and then the science on this and the medicine got politicized,” he continued. “Now, with Charlie getting shot, it’s clear that this is causing serious problems. This had to have been a motivation for Tyler Robinson. Even though he doesn’t identify as trans, he’s directly related to it.”

Schilling blamed legacy media for lying to the American public about transgenderism.

“They tell these people that there is a trans-genocide going on, simply because there’s a large group of Americans who don’t want to give sex change procedures to children, or don’t want boys in their daughters’ sports or boys in their daughters’ showers and locker rooms,” he added. “[Transgender-identifying people] think their lives are at stake because they’ve been lied to, and they’ve been whipped up in hysteria.”

“We need to get these people the proper help they need,” Schilling concluded.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, Charlie kirk assassination, Charlie kirk, Turning point usa, Tpusa, Fbi, Utah, Spencer cox, Politics 

I’ve concluded that the British left would be happy if the entire population of the country were replaced with foreigners. Since these people are so virtuous, I would not be surprised if some of them decided to self-deport and hand their home over to a family of 24 Somali refugees.

It’s not a lie to claim that our chronically inept government has developed an addiction to immigration.

Allow me to state the obvious: There is no need to import drag queens. Unlike nurses and midwives, drag is one field of employment where there is no significant labor shortage.

Both main political parties have been completely incapable of enforcing the borders. Between 2018 and 2024, the Conservative Party oversaw the arrival of more than 150,000 undocumented migrants. Meanwhile, more than 50,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel in small boats since Labour took power in July 2024.

Are you experienced?

Aside from jumping on a rubber dinghy or hiding in the back of a truck, one surefire way to enter Britain is with a skilled-worker visa. The Home Office frequently grants these to highly qualified individuals with years of training and experience in a field that this country requires.

So whenever someone argues that immigration is too high, the left always responds: If we had low immigration, we’d run out of doctors and nurses (20% of the NHS is composed of non-U.K. nationals).

It appears that we are not only experiencing a lack of homegrown labor in the medical field. Britain requires radical supply-side reforms in other, more important areas. Apparently, we’re running out of drag queens.

God save the queens

Yes, the Home Office has given five-year Global Talent visas to drag queens from Turkey.

The Global Talent visa program aims to attract some of the world’s top artistic talent to live and work in Britain. Unfortunately, the government’s definition of “skilled” appears to encompass lip-syncing and parading around in high heels.

Recently added to the U.K. talent pool is transgender drag queen Kübra Uzun, known as Q-BRA. His back catalog includes a ditty about searching for casual sex partners as well as a reworking of an aria from Carmen in “Turkish queer slang.”

Another one of these visas was issued to Akis Ka, whose artistic objective is to “leave queer marks on art history.” I’m sure they will both leave a lasting cultural legacy, something the United Kingdom has unfortunately lacked since J.M.W. Turner’s death.

RELATED: NFL platforms ‘child-friendly’ drag queen cheerleaders

Todd Kirkland / Contributor | Getty Images

No drag drain

Allow me to state the obvious: There is no need to import drag queens. Unlike nurses and midwives, drag is one field of employment where there is no significant labor shortage. Besides migrants, one thing we do have a surplus of is native drag queens. I know this because the BBC constantly informs me it is the case.

As of writing, there are currently 24 stories this year on the BBC’s Drag Queen page tag. That’s almost one per week. Recent headlines include “Meet the Deaf Drag Queens Keeping Gay Sign Language Alive,” “How a Former Slave Became the World’s First Drag Queen,” and “As a Female Drag Queen, I Had to Fight for Work.”

I can already hear them now, employing the same low-level racism they frequently attribute to us: “Those damn Turks, coming here and stealing our jobs.”

Exceptionally broken

There is rising concern about the use of Global Talent for artists, as the scheme has witnessed a 178% increase in successful applications over the last five years. Since 2019, Nigeria has emerged as the leading country of origin for application submissions, with a startling 2,225% rise, mostly from self-identifying rappers and poets.

These visas are meant for individuals with “exceptional” talents in music, theater, and dance. Apparently, exceptional is the new norm, as more than 70% of applicants are approved. It allows the recipient — and their dependents — to stay in Britain for at least five years.

With thousands of migrants already working illegally in the U.K. labor market, this is further proof that our immigration system is an absolute joke. We should tell the men risking their lives on the dangerous Calais to Dover journey that it’s a lot easier to put on a pink wig and apply some flamboyant makeup.

There may well be some fields in the U.K. that could benefit from importing foreign talent. But more men in wigs lip-syncing Gloria Gaynor? We will survive with our current supply.

​Drag queens, Global talent visa, Immigration, Culture, Letter from the uk 

Iryna Zarutska’s suspected killer wasn’t a productive citizen who just snapped one day — the man had over a dozen prior arrests — yet somehow was still walking the streets freely.

And the crime he is suspected of committing is not an isolated incident.

“I don’t even know his name. I’m not that interested in his name. He’s unimportant individually, but what he represents is very important,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says on “Jason Whitlock Harmony.”

While Whitlock admits it might sound crazy, his major takeaway after watching the video of Zarutska’s horrifying murder is that her killer was “demon possessed.”

“And because we have become so secular, we don’t even understand demons and the wickedness, the evilness that we’re seeing. We don’t interpret things the way that we used to interpret things previously … when our worldview was much more Christian, much more biblical, much more rooted in the spiritual nature of this world,” he explains.

“Now everything is very secular, and so we don’t think this way,” he adds.

Many Americans have responded to the tragedy by pointing to the need for mental institutions or fixing the justice system that let a violent criminal out to do what he pleased, but Whitlock notes that the solution is much deeper than that.

The entire “culture” that the alleged killer was created by is “demonic” in itself — and needs to be completely changed.

Whitlock notes that rap music has long glorified murder within the black community, saying, “It flirts with all this demonic, devil worshipping, all of this stuff.”

“And then we look out and see someone like Decarlos Brown Jr., who clearly to me, if he were trying to rob this woman, and kill her, I think we’d all sit back and say, ‘Oh man, this is a terrible tragedy, lock this dude up for life, give him the death penalty’ … but just killing a young woman that got on a train and sat in front of you, and then saying something about ‘I got that white girl,’ this is demonic,” Whitlock says.

“And it’s the fruit of a demonic culture,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video, Camera phone, Upload, Free, Sharing, Video phone, Youtube.com, Fearless, Jason whitlock, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Demonic, Iryna zarutska, Decarlos brown, Charlotte stabbing, Charlotte murder, Black culture, Demonic culture, Possession, Demonic possession, Fearless with jason whitlock 

Turning Point USA announced that it plans to hold a massive public memorial service in honor of founder Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated on Wednesday while speaking to students at Utah Valley University.

‘Show up patriots! Let’s fill it up!’

“Join us in celebrating the remarkable life and enduring legacy of Charlie Kirk, an American legend,” TPUSA wrote in a social media post announcing the event.

The memorial, “Building a Legacy,” will be held at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, on September 21. The door opens at 8:00 a.m. and the program will begin at 11:00 a.m. The stadium, home to the Arizona Cardinals, can be expanded to hold up to 73,000 people. Details of the event can be found at FightForCharlie.com.

“Charlie Kirk’s life was a testament to faith, courage, and conviction,” the website read. “From his earliest days, he believed America was worth fighting for, and he dedicated every moment of his 31 years to that cause. He lived with eyes fixed on eternity, grounded in the truth of God’s Word, and driven by a calling bigger than himself.”

RedWave Press responded to the memorial announcement, stating, “Show up patriots! Let’s fill it up!”

“This is a Turning Point for our country,” Martin Walsh, the editor in chief of the Conservative Brief, wrote.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will change us in ways this generation has never seen

Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Many individuals reacted to TPUSA’s memorial post by expressing their intention to attend the event.

“Hope to see you there!” wrote investigative reporter Nick Sortor.

Former Cardinal kicker, Jay Feely, who is running for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District, called for patriots to “fill State Farm stadium.”

“Spread this far and wide. I want that stadium packed like a NFC championship game. We need to honor Charlie Kirk in his home state,” Feely said.

RELATED: VIDEO: Erika Kirk makes first public remarks since the death of her husband, Charlie Kirk

Photo by PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images

Vigils and other local memorial events honoring Kirk’s life have been held all over the country.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Thursday that he plans to attend Kirk’s funeral in Phoenix.

“They’ve asked me to go and I think I have an obligation to do that,” Trump stated. “Whenever it is, I’ll be going.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​News, Charlie kirk assassination, Charlie kirk, Arizona, State farm stadium, Utah, Turning point usa, Tpusa, Politics 

Thirty-seven years ago, an executive at Monsanto named Harold Corbett delivered a speech titled “Chemical risk: Living up to public expectations.” The 1988 speech called out an industry that delivered miracles and devastating mistakes.

Corbett described two chemical industries. One was responsible for safe drinking water, higher crop yields, medicines, and a better standard of living. The other was responsible for contamination, waste, and health crises: “The public doesn’t care how far we’ve come. They care how far we still have to go.”

MAHA is about returning to a Republican Party that answers to voters, not corporate boards, and that means telling the truth about the harm caused when Big Health dictates our policies.

It still rings true today. Harold Corbett was my grandfather.

Lost trust

To turn a profit, pharmaceutical companies suppress unfavorable data and mislead consumers with predatory advertising. Food manufacturers sell metabolic dysfunction; hospital systems consolidate care; and chemical conglomerates litigate instead of innovate.

Now, a growing number of Americans are speaking out decisively against the quartet of Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Food, and Big Health. This coalition of “Make America Healthy Again” voters is targeting a crisis of institutional credibility and a growing unease with an industry that is no longer trusted and seems more focused on profits than on people’s health.

As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, I see these problems firsthand. With the MAHA coalition powering Republican victories up and down the ballot, we as Republicans have a generational opportunity to take back our health system. We can make changes and save American lives, but we need to agree on the problems to start.

More than two-thirds of all Missouri adults are overweight. Synthetic opioid overdoses claimed nearly 850 lives last year, with local St. Louis and St. Charles Counties ranking at or near the worst in the state. And should we forget the COVID mandates that caused overdoses to spike, caused childhood anxiety and depression to rise, and kept healthy toddlers in masks? Such measures stunted their development for years, as dissenting scientists and members of the public were told to “trust the experts” and shut up.

Dismissing people is the quickest way to continue to diminish what little trust remains. In my practice, I encounter this lack of trust in our medical establishment every day with my patients. After years of being told to trust “the science” — meaning “don’t question us” — many people no longer trust anything the medical establishment has to say.

A prescription for healing

This is where the MAHA movement can help heal our nation. The Trump administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have been making significant strides to regain public trust, both through the MAHA Commission and through medical reforms in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Trump signed in July.

Republicans need to get on board, and Congress needs to act, to do much more on this crucial issue.

On food transparency and clean labels, Americans deserve full disclosure of the chemicals, additives, and pesticides that are going into our foods, particularly those banned in Europe and Canada. This includes food dyes and glyphosate, a pesticide and carcinogen that is found throughout our food system.

RELATED: It’s been a year since Kennedy and Trump joined forces. Here are MAHA’s top 3 wins.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

On preventive care and lowering costs, we have made great strides by prioritizing direct primary care in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. We should work to expand choice even more so that individuals and families have direct access outside our bloated and opaque insurance system.

Finally, our country needs a national plan for longevity and health: a real approach to wellness beyond relief for chronic symptoms, focusing instead on treatment of root causes. This must include protecting our kids from harmful food additives, encouraging beneficial physical and social activities, and stopping the grasp of powerful social media companies that are harming their health.

Until the scientific community admits past failures and entanglements, trust won’t return. Our public officials must lead as well, instead of following whatever Big Pharma and special interest groups have to say. Liberty thrives when truth is public and trust is earned.

Making health care thrive again

The same problems facing Americans are the problems facing our government. We keep swapping out treatments — new politicians, new leaders, new promises — but the patient keeps getting worse. The solution is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but to improve the system so that it works for regular people. That is how we restore faith in our institutions and return to responsible, trusted capitalism.

I don’t want to dismantle the health care industry. We need it to thrive. MAHA is about returning to a Republican Party that answers to voters, not corporate boards, and that means telling the truth about the harm caused when Big Health dictates our policies.

This movement can and will win broadly if we deliver on these promises.

In his speech, my grandfather quoted Mark Twain: “When in doubt, tell the truth.” To that, I would add: When the truth is clear, act. The restoration of trust and survival of these industries, our government, and our people depend on it.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Maha, Make america healthy again, Rfk jr, Rfk, Big pharma, Big pharma corruption 

I am the Turning Point USA faculty adviser at Arizona State University. As a philosophy professor, what Charlie Kirk was doing stood out to me immediately. It also stood out to the ideologue professors who didn’t like being questioned. That’s why they tried to stop him.

Charlie did something no one thought possible. He walked into the heart of the modern university — where the left claims to hold the keys to knowledge — and did what their professors should have been doing all along: He asked questions. He challenged assumptions. He demanded clarity. He gave logical arguments.

Charlie wasn’t there to score points or win applause. He cared about students’ souls.

He was the American Socrates.

Modeling the Socratic dialogue

Like the Athenian philosopher, Charlie confronted those who claimed to be wise. He took questions — hundreds of them — on camera for all to see. Students asked about gender, economics, faith, and politics. He asked if they could rationally defend their views.

Again and again, Charlie turned the tables, and we saw that the content of the leftist classroom is irrational.

On gender ideology, he exposed what I call the “transsexual heresy,” showing students that reality — not ideology — defines what it means to be a man or a woman. He warned against letting confusion dictate truth. Objective reality matters, and he ensured that students knew it. The mentally ill should not be able to dictate to the rest of us what reality is. And anyone who doesn’t know basic things, such as the difference between a man and a woman, isn’t ready to teach students.

On economics, he dismantled Marxist clichés students had absorbed from their professors, showing that personal responsibility — not socialism — is the bedrock of human flourishing. They came at him with Rousseau, stating that private property and “the system” force the “oppressed” to live lives of crime. In one video, a student told him the poor and marginalized have to become criminals, and Charlie demolished this by simply asking if they have free will. It was brilliant, and everyone watching knew it.

On Christianity, he confronted the narrative that faith is merely patriarchy and white supremacy in disguise. The background narrative is that these professors hate the Bible. Professors had planted these lies in the minds of students to prevent them from reading it.

An untold multitude of students had their faith shipwrecked by such professors while their parents paid the tuition. The unbelieving profs thought they had sufficiently salted the ground and planted tares in the field. Charlie tore them out, root and branch, preparing the ground for the gospel itself to be heard.

The professors’ ire

And that’s why the professors despised him.

I’ve been in those faculty meetings. I’ve heard professors laugh about “deconstructing” the faith of Christian students. I’ve watched them assign books praising witchcraft while condemning Christianity as “oppressive.” I’ve seen them try to ban Charlie Kirk from speaking on campus by declaring him a “white supremacist.”

ASU “honors faculty” successfully prevented him from speaking at the honor college even while they held events on the benefits of witchcraft — while the outlet Jezebel bragged about hiring “Etsy witches” to hex him. If the witches hated him this much, it tells the good guys he was on to something.

The spiritual battle lines could not be clearer.

Charlie wasn’t there to score points or win applause. He cared about students’ souls. He stood in the breach against professors who see students not as young men and women searching for truth, but as recruits for their ideological crusades. He laughed at the degree programs that promised jobs for students such as “radical advocate.” He was there because he believed those students were worth saving from the godless ideologies peddled in classrooms.

Blatant hypocrisy

When Charlie was murdered, some on the left rushed to say, “Let’s all calm down.” There is no moral equivalency here between the right and the left. Yet the left is the one who heated it up by calling him a white supremacist. The left controls the American university, where conservatives and Christians are called “fascist white supremacist patriarchs worse than Hitler” all day and night.

Where was that call for calm after George Floyd’s fentanyl overdose? Violence erupted. Cities burned. Professors excused it all. They used class time to tout Black Lives Matter.

But you won’t see TPUSA students burning cities BLM-style. They will do what Charlie taught them: Use logic and reason to expose falsehoods. Like the students of Athens after Socrates’ death, they will remember the example of the man who confronted their professors — and won.

And those professors will live knowing they were weighed in the balance and found wanting. They are the baddies.

Socrates’ prediction still stands

Before his execution, Socrates told his accusers they would face a heavier judgment than the one they inflicted on him. They killed him to silence him. But his death only proved their ignorance and wickedness. They were unable to give an account to explain themselves and were exposed as living the unexamined life.

The same is true here.

Charlie’s death will not silence him. It will amplify his example. Students will keep questioning. They will expose the foolishness of professors who despised Charlie’s example. And those radical professors will carry the shame of knowing they tried to cover ignorance with hatred.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will change us in ways this generation has never seen

Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

As a Christian pastor, I know Charlie saw that souls were at stake. Charlie publicly professed Christ to be his savior, and the ideological professors know it also. They saw students giving their souls in faith to Christ rather than John Money and hated it.

Now those professors think Charlie is silenced, but they must live with their own darkness. They can repent — or they will live in that darkness forever and face the judgment of God. The blood of martyrs has always been the seed of revival.

May the Lord use Charlie’s life — and yes, even his death — to raise up a generation of students who love truth, pursue wisdom, and refuse to bow to the false gods of the modern university. Let’s question godless professors to reveal to everyone watching that they don’t know clear truths about God and what is good.

Charlie Kirk was the American Socrates. The leftist professors hated him for it. And they will never escape the questions he taught a generation to ask.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Tpusa, Conservatives, Republicans, Diversity equity inclusion, Leftism, Universities, Activism, Professors, Religion, Philosophy, Socrates 

Moments after announcing Charlie Kirk’s death on Fox News’ “The Five,” Dana Perino, normally composed and unflappable, fought back tears. Her voice trembled as she pleaded for what she called a “circuit breaker,” something to break the rising current of fury now running through our culture.

Her words were not political. They were profoundly human. And they named what many feel: The world is burning too hot, and we are running out of ways to cool it down.

There is only One who has ever absorbed the full current of hatred and did not pass it on.

We’ve all sensed that current. It hums beneath politics, families, neighborhoods, even churches. Rage lurks like a storm, waiting for the next spark. Perino wasn’t just mourning a death. She was begging for relief from the relentless voltage of hate.

But no human circuit breaker exists. History proves it. Every attempt to interrupt the current — revolutions, reforms, resolutions — eventually fails. We reset the breaker, and the current surges again. Because the overload isn’t out there in the systems. It’s in here, in the human heart.

There is only One who has ever absorbed the full current of hatred and did not pass it on. Jesus Christ didn’t just defuse tension. He took the lightning bolt straight into Himself. The cross was the great interruption, where perfect love bore the full load of human rage and divine justice in one cataclysmic strike.

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saw it. As he was about to be stoned, he gazed into heaven and declared he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. That proclamation didn’t calm his killers. It enraged them.

Truth always incites the fury of hell.

We don’t make Jesus “Lord of our life.” He already is Lord, whether we acknowledge Him or not. And Scripture says that one day, “every knee will bow … and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:10-11). Some will bow in gratitude. Others will be brought to their knees by the rod of iron (Revelation 19:15). But all will bow.

Which means this: Hatred will not burn itself out. It will not abate. The closer Christ’s light comes, the more ferociously darkness will fight it.

King Théoden, in Peter Jackson’s “The Two Towers,” voiced the dread many feel: “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

Aragorn’s reply was simple and defiant: “Ride out and meet them.”

Charlie Kirk did just that. He rode out and met the storm head-on.

But greater still, Christ did that. He rode out from heaven into the teeth of our hatred and took the full charge of it upon Himself. The cross was not retreat. It was the countercharge that broke the power of darkness forever.

Centuries later, Martin Luther stood before the full weight of church and empire, knowing they could kill him for refusing to recant. He said simply: “Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.”

He wasn’t fearless. He was anchored. And as the storm closed in around him, he gave the church its battle hymn:

The body they may kill;
God’s truth abideth still.

Luther never believed the hate would abate. He simply knew it could not win. And that is where we must stand as well.

We do not stand with bravado. We stand with scars. We stand, not by denying the darkness, but by fixing our eyes on the One who already absorbed its full blast and still stands.

He doesn’t only stop the current from destroying us. He rewires the entire system. What was corroded, He makes new. What was dead, He makes alive. He is not just the breaker. He is the pure current, the very life of God now flowing through those who belong to Him.

I have lived long enough to see what hate does when it is unleashed. It devours not just its targets but its hosts. It corrodes from within. And it will not stop on its own. Hate is never satisfied. It must be interrupted.

RELATED: Why Charlie Kirk’s assassination will change us in ways this generation has never seen

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

That interruption has already come. The current has already been broken. And the one who bore it all now reigns, and one day, so will we.

We, like Aragorn of “The Lord of the Rings,” and like Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, are only shadows of that greater warrior, Christ, who rode out to meet the fury and shattered it at the cross.

And our response to Him is not with clenched fists, but with lifted eyes and steady voices:

Lead on, O King eternal,
We follow, not with fears;
For gladness breaks like morning
Where’er Thy face appears.
Thy cross is lifted o’er us;
We journey in its light;
The crown awaits the conquest;
Lead on, O God of might.

The hate will not abate. Charlie knew this.

But God’s truth abideth still.

And our King rides before us.

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Life, God, Jesus christ, Christianity, Hate 

Beatles don’t come cheap.

A quartet of movies based on the Fab Four is coming our way, and while the films aren’t close to releasing yet, we’re getting a peek at the price tag for the project.

$400 million.

‘By saying “Free Palestine,” you’re not admitting what you really think.’

Now, that may be the catering budget for your average Marvel movie, but it’s still an alarming figure for four dramatic features. All four films, to be shot over an extended 15-month period, will be helmed by Sam Mendes (“Skyfall,” “1917”).

“Can’t Buy Me Love,” perhaps, but money will get you some recognizable faces.

Let’s meet the Beatles: John Lennon (Harris Dickinson), Paul McCartney (Paul Mescal), Ringo Starr (Barry Keoghan), and George Harrison (Joseph Quinn).

The Liverpool lads remain a permanent part of pop culture — for us older folk. But is that the case for Gen Z, the generation most likely to visit theaters?

“Money (That’s What I Want).” And they’ll need plenty of it to recoup those exorbitant costs …

Spinal Nap

These reviews don’t go to 11. In fact, some are real “s**t sandwiches.”

“Spinal Tap: The End Continues” hits theaters this weekend, 41 years after the original mockumentary made this faux band immortal. We certainly didn’t need a new “Spinal Tap” movie. The original, directed by and co-starring Rob Reiner, gave us so many classic lines and gags, it feels like it never went away.

The new film features the key original cast members (Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Michael McKean) along with returning co-stars (Fran Drescher, Paul Shaffer) and copious cameos (Paul McCartney, Elton John).

Reviews have been mixed so far, with even the positive notices saying the sequel can’t come close to measuring up to the original.

What could?

One relief? It appears Reiner’s late-stage Trump derangement syndrome didn’t enter the frame, beyond a brief reference to Stormy Daniels. Phew.

The bad news is one distinct reality. Reiner’s directorial career fell off a creative cliff after a stunning run of movie classics (“Stand By Me,” “Misery,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “A Few Good Men,” “The Princess Bride”). He hasn’t had a hit since 2007’s “The Bucket List,” a film few would rank near the top — or even middle — of his filmography.

More than one critic cited a brutal line from the 1984 original in their reviews — the aforementioned sandwich …

Seinfeld stands up

For a guy who made a show about nothing, Jerry Seinfeld suddenly has something profound to say. And he’s virtually all alone in saying it, especially in the rarefied air of modern celebrity.

The legendary comic teed off against the pro-Palestinian movement, comparing it to the KKK. Except the latter group at least scores points for honesty.

Not this bunch, the sitcom superstar said.

Free Palestine is, to me, just — you’re free to say you don’t like Jews. By saying “Free Palestine,” you’re not admitting what you really think. So it’s actually — compared to the Ku Klux Klan, I’m actually thinking the Klan is actually a little better here because they can come right out and say, “We don’t like blacks; we don’t like Jews.” OK, that’s honest.

The comments come as nearly 4,000 of his industry peers pledge not to work with film groups with Israeli ties for their complicity with war crimes.

Seinfeld has all that sitcom money at this point. He also has a bigger moral compass than many of his peers, apparently …

RELATED: Grieving Charlie Kirk: How to cling to God in the face of evil

JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images

Sunny makes sense

“There are no words,” we often say in the face of tragedies like Wednesday’s shocking murder of conservative superstar Charlie Kirk. Unfortunately, the media generally insists on talking anyway.

Sometimes, miraculously, they get it right. Like “The View” host Sunny Hostin, of all people:

This man was 31 years old with two children, I think ages 1 and 3, a family man, a wife. Now, all these children will grow up without their father. This woman will grow up, you know, grow old without her husband. I just — this country — there’s just no place for this kind of violence in this country. I am heartbroken over it. … The First Amendment is the first amendment for a reason. We should be able to voice whatever opinions we have.

God bless Charlie Kirk and his family.

​Culture, Entertainment, Palestine, Jerry seinfeld, Spinal tap, The beatles, Movies, Rob reiner, The view, Toto recall 

Music originates in heaven. Scripture tells us that angels sing and play instruments. Life in heaven centers around eternal worship. Revelation foretells a time when, after Satan’s ultimate defeat, joyous songs of victory and triumph will resound in heaven, celebrating God’s glory.

It’s inarguable that music is a good gift from God that serves a purpose in His kingdom. But like all good gifts, it can be corrupted by Satan — and it has been. Today, a staggering amount of music, especially popular music, contains demonic messaging.

But it goes even deeper than profane, debaucherous lyrics and sin-promoting artists.

“Behind a lot of musical success are demon-possessed people,” says Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters,” a podcast that explores spiritual warfare.

The pervasive darkness in the entertainment industry has fueled a widespread conspiracy theory about the illuminati — a secretive, occult group believed to control the music industry, manipulating culture through artists, lyrics, and symbolism to advance a satanic agenda.

But is it really a conspiracy theory?

Rick plays a recent viral clip of an emerging American rapper and producer from Atlanta, Georgia, named Lil Tony, whose full name is Tekai Elijah Key. On evangelist and street preacher Bryce Crawford’s podcast, the artist shared the terrifying experience that convinced him that the illuminati, God, and Satan are all real.

“I got booked for a photoshoot. They took me all the way up this mountain. I was on top of the mountain. We finished the photo shoot. They have OD cars. They got a three-seater McLaren. They got a Ferrari. And I’m asking them, like, ‘How y’all get all this money?’ They like, ‘We do demonic rituals,”’ Key recounted.

When he pressed the crew on how they really obtained such wealth, believing their original answer was a joke, they doubled down. “The illuminati never talk to you?” they asked him, claiming that Leonardo DiCaprio conducts the initiation ceremonies, which involve sexual acts.

Weirded out, Lil Tony tried to call an Uber to pick him up, but because he was in the mountains, he had no cell service. He was forced to drive back with another person who was part of the photoshoot. On the way down, this driver suddenly took a different route.

“His face changed,” said Key, comparing the scene to how Spider Man’s face morphs into the sinister visage of Venom. “It threw me all the way off.”

Right as his creepy driver was backing into somebody’s driveway, his saving grace came in the form of a mailman.

“I start running up to him like, ‘Hey bro, let me get in the back of your truck,’” Key recounted, admitting that he resorted to practically begging the mailman to help him get off the mountain.

“It was God. He took me down to the bottom. … The people on camera, you ain’t gotta believe me. I don’t care. I’m not lying. I really saw this. That’s what made me know that the devil and God was real,” he told Crawford.

“I don’t know whether that is true or not true. … Now, do I know that these things are out there? I feel very strong about that,” says Rick.

To hear Rick’s in-depth analysis of the darkness in the music industry, as well as other topics, like spiritual house cleaning, watch the full episode above.

Want more from Rick Burgess?

To enjoy more bold talk and big laughs, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Strange encounters, Rick burgess, Demons, Demonic, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze, Lil tony, Illuminati, Spiritual warfare, Hollywood elites, Leonardo dicaprio 

Big news: California’s iron grip on the automotive market could finally be over!

The Stop CARB Act, introduced in the U.S. Senate as part of larger legislative efforts to address vehicle regulations, is generating a lot of buzz for its aim to curb the influence of the California Air Resources Board on national auto standards.

Whether you’re a truck enthusiast, a daily commuter, or an auto industry worker, this bill touches your life.

This bill seeks to limit CARB’s ability to set stringent emission rules that impact not just California but 17 other states. As debates over vehicle costs, consumer choice, and environmental regulations heat up, the Stop CARB Act could reshape how cars are built and sold across America.

What is the Stop CARB Act?

The Stop CARB Act is a proposed piece of legislation focused on restricting the California Air Resources Board’s authority to enforce its own vehicle emission standards, particularly those stricter than federal regulations.

While the bill is often discussed in connection with the Transportation Freedom Act (S.711), introduced on February 25, 2025, by Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), the Stop CARB Act specifically targets CARB’s waivers under the Clean Air Act. The bill aims to eliminate these waivers, preventing California from dictating emission policies beyond its borders and blocking other states from following its lead.

Currently, S.711, which includes provisions aligned with the Stop CARB Act’s goals, is pending in the Senate Committee on Finance, with no floor vote scheduled as of September 3, 2025.

Sponsored by Sens. Moreno, Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), and Jim Justice (R-W.V.), the broader Transportation Freedom Act also seeks to repeal federal emission standards, such as the EPA’s Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for 2027 and later model years and Phase 3 heavy-duty vehicle greenhouse gas rules, while offering tax deductions for auto manufacturing wages. The Stop CARB Act’s focus on CARB makes it a key component of this larger deregulation effort.

Why do we need it?

CARB’s influence stems from a unique provision in the Clean Air Act, which allows California to request waivers to set stricter emission standards than the federal government. Since the 1970s, CARB has used this authority to implement rules like the Advanced Clean Cars II program, which mandates zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

Seventeen other states, representing over 40% of the U.S. population, have adopted CARB’s standards, effectively giving California outsized influence over national auto markets — even though it arguably violates the Constitution.

The Stop CARB Act argues aims to remedy this in a few key ways:

Reducing costs for consumers: CARB’s strict standards require automakers to invest heavily in technologies like electric vehicles or advanced combustion engines. These costs often raise vehicle prices, with estimates suggesting compliance could add thousands to the sticker price of new cars. By limiting CARB’s waivers, the bill aims to lower these costs, making vehicles more affordable for everyday Americans.

Streamlining regulations: The patchwork of federal, California, and state-adopted CARB standards creates complexity for automakers. Companies must design vehicles to meet multiple requirements, increasing production costs and delaying innovation. The Stop CARB Act seeks to establish uniform federal standards, simplifying compliance and fostering a more predictable market.

Preserving consumer choice: CARB’s push for zero-emission vehicles by 2035 limits the availability of gas-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs, which many drivers prefer for their affordability, range, or utility. The bill aims to protect consumer choice by preventing California’s mandates from dominating national markets.

Supporting U.S. manufacturing: Companies like General Motors, Stellantis, Toyota — as well as the National Automobile Dealers Association — argue that CARB’s rules strain manufacturers, particularly smaller suppliers. By curbing CARB’s influence, the bill could reduce compliance costs, boost domestic production, and create jobs.

RELATED: Ride or die: How Ford, Honda, VW, and 3 more got stuck with California’s strict emission standards

Mandel Ngan/Getty Images

CARB counting

The bill’s progress is uncertain, given the polarized views on environmental policy and state rights. If scheduled and it passes the Senate, it must clear the House and gain presidential approval. Legal challenges from California or environmental groups could also delay implementation if the bill becomes law. The next goal is to get this bill on the floor to vote on it.

Whether you’re a truck enthusiast, a daily commuter, or an auto industry worker, this bill touches your life. Will it lower vehicle costs and preserve your choice of gas-powered cars? Or will California continue to tell you what to drive? It’s time to reach out to your senators and representatives to tell them to get this bill to the floor.

​Ev mandate, California, Donald trump, Zev, Carb, Transportation freedom act, Align cars 

If you are reading this, you should not be.

Because you are reading this on LED light. This is an abbreviation for Luciferian emission devices.

Knowing this, then … so what? Sew buttons on your underwear. This is what my mother would tell me. She is wonderful. Is your mother wonderful? Do you love her? Do you honor her?

Do you do her honor when you are on your iPhone? Or have you forsaken your mother in favor of an image of yourself curated by an algorithm?

This is why everyone who stays online for long enough goes insane, one way or another.

Surely, you know that this is being done to you every time you look at an LED device. But are you in control of your device? Or is your device in control of you? Either way — how would you know? You could know if you noticed. But noticing is hard. Have you, for example, ever noticed how hideous LED lights are? The harsh, bright white light. It is unnatural.

Here’s a trick question: When is the last time you did drugs? Here’s the trick: You are doing a drug right now.

A drug, according to one Joe Rogan podcast guest — or rather, a guest who was quoting a cynical but realistic professor of medicine — is a substance that when put into your body produces a measurable effect.

Light, then, is a drug.

Light comes not only into your eyes, but also bathes your skin. Sunbathing is fun. Have you ever bathed naked in a white room of LED light? It would be less fun and is not recommended. And yet, as doctors know, tanning salons can be healthy. It is all a question of Vitamin D. This is a hormone, actually, produced mostly endogenously — although it can be taken orally.

If you watch a sunset on a beach, you will sleep well that night. This is science. And you believe in science, do you not — anon?

If you believe in science, you should know that being in an LED-lit room and then just turning off the light, bathing your face in an LED-lit machine glow, reading articles, and looking at images will not help you sleep.

And if you believe in science, you should know that sleeping well is good, actually. So then why — pray tell — were incandescent lights banned by Obama? For the environment? Did anyone actually believe that?

RELATED: Sun’s out, guns out: Finally, therapy even men can enjoy

Photo by Luke Hales / Contributor via Getty Images

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he wasn’t there — it has been said.

Obama was the first president to tweet. His reign lasted eight years. Then the world caught on fire. The fire was orange. Everyone got deranged. Well, not everyone. But everyone who hated the color orange so much that their entire lives became consumed by a pathetic fiery pathos, summarized in three words: Orange Man Bad.

But Heraclitus said that the world is fire. And only fire.

Earth? Wind? Water? You do not feel these elements when you are inside, bathed in LED light. You do not feel these elements when you are outside, staring at your iPhone. Or Samsung. What are you, an Android? If so, do you even dream of electric sheep?

Every time you submit to the LED-lit algorithm, you trigger yourself. This is true. Because the algorithm is designed to trigger you. This is how the “apps” make money off of you. This is why everyone who stays online for long enough goes insane, one way or another. And usually in a bad way if they don’t log off and love someone or something real.

What does Hillary Clinton really love? Her adulterous husband? Her email server? The United States of America? At this point, what difference would it make?

She wrote her college thesis on a man who wrote a book that started with an epigraph honoring Lucifer in his own words. That man’s name was Saul Alinsky. She deeply disappointed him. He was right. She proved him right by being the biggest loser in American politics of the past half-century.

But her emails! Her emails were not good for her. She would have been better off if she stuck with incandescent light bulbs. But the world did not stay that way. She was defeated by a half-black man, who was cooler than she was because he mastered the LED light show. And then she was defeated by an Orange Man, so that you could log off and go outside and enjoy being in America once again.

Throw away your LED lights. Buy incandescent. It is more like fire and less Satanic.

​Digital superstitions