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Well before America’s founders drafted the Constitution, they understood that they had a national security problem rooted in economic and technological gaps.

Colonial America supplied Britain with raw materials, and the motherland traded us finished goods. That was tolerable then, despite its one-sided nature.

The intellectual property framework the founders designed democratized invention and creativity — and rewarded merit.

Then, Great Britain crossed the Rubicon. It unilaterally levied taxes on the colonies with the Sugar Act, which colonial resistance caused to be repealed. The Stamp Act of 1765 also imposed taxes without colonial consent. Then the taxes and regulations of the Townshend Acts further stirred colonial anger.

Revolutionary sentiments brewed, with public protests resulting in the Boston Massacre of 1770 and the “tea parties” in 1773 and 1774. Finally, combat broke out at Lexington and Concord in 1775.

Britain had the economic and military advantage over the largely agricultural colonies, which suffered chronic shortages of guns, gunpowder, blankets, and shoes.

Flourish by design

For America to survive as an independent nation, the model had to change. It needed to promote rapid economic and technological advancement. It needed a policy that coupled economic liberty with property rights.

The founders set a course for achieving what Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution calls “the progress of science and useful arts.” This was done “by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

The intellectual property framework the founders designed democratized invention and creativity — and rewarded merit. The Constitution was crafted to secure and enable an individual’s rights, including patent rights to the property someone created.

The founders understood that the ownership right would help unleash human flourishing. They had learned this from the Bible, the legacy of the Reformation, and great minds such as Edward Coke, William Blackstone, and John Locke.

Biblical basis

Property rights incentivized creative endeavors, which is precisely what the framers sought to do.

The biblical framework for invention and creativity flows from foundational truths. He who created the universe (e.g., Genesis 1:1, Job 38, Psalm 8:1-5) also claims ownership of His creation (e.g., Deuteronomy 10:14, Psalm 24:1, Isaiah 64:8).

RELATED: The American principle: There can be no blessings without God in our lives

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Moreover, God not only creates and owns, but He communicates those attributes to human beings, the creature who bears His image and is charged with stewardship of the lower creation (e.g., Genesis 1:26-30, Psalm 8:6-8, Micah 4:4). The founders applied this combination of creativity and ownership as the formula for maximizing human flourishing.

This resulted in America growing from a vulnerable agrarian society to the world’s premier industrial economy. By the 20th century, the United States led the world in economic and technological strength.

Our golden age

The golden age of American patenting started in 1836, when Congress established a dedicated U.S. Patent Office.

When someone produced a novel invention, he was awarded a patent. Applicants could appeal patent denials to impartial chief examiners — and they could obtain review in a federal court. A patent had a 14-year term from the date it was issued. Economic historian Zorina Khan notes in “The Democratization of Invention” that a seven-year extension could be provided to ensure “reasonable remuneration for the time, ingenuity, and expense bestowed” in developing and bringing an invention to market.

This system embodied the founders’ vision, implementing the biblical model of human creativity incentivized by secure ownership. This creativity-ownership combination has clearly stimulated mass flourishing in America, where we have experienced wealth creation and prosperity in vast measure.

Today, we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence, knowing what the founders did not: The American experiment turned out quite well.

Yet keen observers are less sanguine about our future.

Creative comeback

In recent years, the federal government has undermined the successful intellectual property model the founders gave us.

For example, a cardinal rule of the patent process was maintaining the confidentiality of inventions for which a patent was sought but not yet granted. But then the Clinton administration and Congress began publishing U.S. patents that were still being examined. Cutting-edge American technology was being transferred to Japan and China before an inventor’s exclusive legal rights had been secured at home.

RELATED: China’s greatest export isn’t steel — it’s industrial theft

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The 2011 America Invents Act wiped out several useful elements of the Patent Act. It established the quasi-judicial Patent Trial and Appeal Board, before which anyone can challenge and more easily invalidate issued patents. Today, the PTAB destroys value and wealth in newly created property, the very inventions that promise American leadership in the most cutting-edge technologies.

The United States is now falling behind in global technological leadership — but we must out-innovate foreign competitors, particularly China.

America must relink ownership with creativity to incentivize creativity through reliable, enforceable property rights. Secure IP rights coupled with economic freedom are pro-growth policy, just as much as the right tax policies.

To re-establish America’s technological and economic prowess, we must return to God’s design — that which the founders adopted with world-changing success.

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Have you ever considered the eerie link between naming alcohol a “spirit” and the potent brew’s ability to unleash spiritual chaos in one’s life?

If you haven’t, Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “Strange Encounters” — a biblical podcast on the supernatural — suggests contemplating this chilling tie because it’s true: Alcohol abuse is indeed a gateway to the demonic.

In this episode, Rick addresses a letter sent by one of his podcast listeners who was vulnerable enough to share his struggles with alcoholism and the harrowing spiritual battles that ensued as a result.

Although the anonymous writer grew up abstaining from alcohol due to his Southern Baptist roots and a family history of alcoholism, he fell into alcohol’s trap later in life.

“I became depressed, and I began to lean on alcohol to help me,” Rick reads from the letter.

While his drinking began slowly — “a glass of wine here or there” — it eventually evolved into “an almost around-the-clock habit.”

“As the habit grew, I noticed strange changes in my surroundings. I began to hear things. I began to see things and finally communicate with things that no one other than myself could see. The first thing that got my attention was I remember walking by a mirror and catching a glimpse of myself. Except it wasn’t me. It was an unrecognizable monster-like creature,” he writes.

While he describes his reflection as “terrifying,” it wasn’t enough for him to stop drinking. In fact, things got worse. One day, in a drunken stupor, he decided to drive all the way to the beach house in Florida that his family rented for vacations.

“All the way down, I began to notice something in the car with me. The only way I know to describe it was sort of a cloud. … At no time ever during our previous stays in that home was I ever afraid. This time was different. I saw a cloud everywhere I went in the home. I felt as though there was someone or something horrible in the house with me,” Rick reads from the letter.

Thoroughly terrified, the man called his family and told them about his predicament. They agreed to get him help. He drove home the following day, but the sinister cloud followed him back. The day before he was to leave for treatment, the cloud “began to move around the room” and even “grew bigger.” “I got the sense that it was angry with me,” he writes, noting that his family witnessed him speaking with the entity “in a language that was unknown to anyone in the room.”

The following day, the cloud followed him to the treatment center, where he was “left alone in a cinder-block room to detox.”

“Nothing around me was familiar other than the cloud. I didn’t know what to do other than cry and begin to pray. I have no idea how long I cried out. When I finally was able to compose myself, I heard as clear as a bell, ‘Are you ready to listen to me now?”’ the letter reads.

He knew in the moment that the voice came from God. He was rescued in his lowest moment and is now sharing his story to warn others to “never go near this poison.”

“Wow,” says Rick after reading the letter.

“Doing anything that alters your mind — this is something the demonic forces are so hoping that we will do,” he warns.

That’s why Paul instructs us in Ephesians 5:18 to “not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery” but “instead, be filled with the Spirit.” Peter conveys a similar message about sobriety and spiritual alertness in 1 Peter 5:8, which says, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Rick, acknowledging his history with alcohol and binge drinking, confesses, “I can honestly say that most of the wicked things that I did or participated in could be tied directly to allowing my mind to be altered in some way.”

Allowing oneself to be cognitively compromised with alcohol or drugs is “an invitation: ‘Come on in, I can easily be manipulated,”’ he cautions.

To hear more of Rick’s commentary, watch the 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.

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“It’s all about Jesus.”

That simple message is a central truth of the Christian faith, yet this powerful proclamation recently ignited a bizarre flurry of angst and a wild brouhaha on social media.

For too long we’ve tolerated and fostered a blatant cancel culture that seeks to punish anyone with whom we disagree.

Of course, it wasn’t so much the Christ-centric message that ruffled feathers as it was the messenger. See, an absurd online drama kicked off after Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson shared an X post from conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.

The message, which simply read, “It’s all about Jesus,” wasn’t political or caustic. It was merely a biblical assertion that Jackson likely saw and, in turn, chose to repost to inspire his followers in their faith, as he regularly publishes Christian messages. But some people were so incensed that Jackson would dare post any sentiment from the likes of Kirk that they took to social media platforms to air their grievances.

The reactions ranged from obnoxious to unhinged, but all of them had one thing in common: They each, to some degree, illustrated why President Donald Trump defied all odds to win a second term.

Americans are tired of the cancel culture, word-policing nonsense that became all too routine in recent years. And they’re finally voting, behaving, and speaking in ways that show just how much they’d like to return to a world where political diversity isn’t treated like a deadly toxin.

These citizens want to be free to speak up against bizarre social trends without the fear of cancellation — a tool too many progressives have used to effectively shut down free speech. Or, like Jackson, these Americans simply want the freedom to speak the truth without retribution.

Trump, a boisterous businessman-turned-politician, has somehow become the unlikely hero paving the way for such sanity.

Of course, not everyone is on board with common sense, as evidenced by some of the reactions to Jackson’s social media post. Certain people, it seems, simply can’t help themselves, believing their feelings and emotions trump all else.

RELATED: How the liberal media’s crusade against Christianity just backfired

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“[I’m] very aware that lamar jackson [sic] probably has zero idea who charlie kirk [sic] is and is solely [retweeting because it] talks about his faith,” one frustrated social media user wrote. “But it still [sic] wild to see your favorite players [sic] name right above the second spawn of satan himself.”

Other posts across X were similar, with people clutching their pearls over the idea that a popular football star would have the nerve to share a faithful message from one of their cultural and political opponents. The response was big enough to spark some media headlines.

One outlet alleged Jackson was “sacked online,” and Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, openly called the response a “liberal meltdown.” Chaos aside, Kirk also used the opportunity to praise the NFL star for what he called “courage and conviction” — a purported refusal to apologize even amid intense anger from some fans.

After all, Jackson could have cowered, apologized, or even removed the post. But he chose to leave it up and left the festering debate to simmer on its own.

As for Kirk, he not only praised Jackson, but he affirmed during a “Fox & Friends” interview his belief that Christ is the most essential element in life.

“I just want to say to Lamar … you are more than welcome in this big movement that we are building,” Kirk said. “You could be a Democrat; you could be on the left. I don’t care. Jesus is honestly the most important thing.”

Ultimately, this is the right posture. We can spend all day fighting about politics, culture, and the toughest issues of the day — and sometimes that’s warranted, appropriate, and even a bit fun to do. But the most pressing and essential issue is Christ and where each human heart stands on the Almighty.

The inability to tolerate diverse ideas has come to infect — and ruin — almost every facet of our society.

Whether Jackson knew who Kirk is or whether he agrees with Kirk’s politics aren’t the primary issues. At its core, the message that “it’s all about Jesus” is timeless and worthy of sharing. The NFL player just wanted to drive it home, yet critics found themselves needlessly looking for a fight.

“Who cares what the naysayers say?” Kirk continued in his “Fox & Friends” interview. “[Jackson’s] standing firm for what matters most, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

That’s a wonderful, valid point, and one that shouldn’t be overlooked amid the silliness spewing from keyboard warriors who have paper-thin skin and an inability to look beyond their own political proclivities.

Tragically, the inability to tolerate diverse ideas has come to infect — and ruin — almost every facet of our society. At some point, we collectively became so emotionally unhinged that we found ourselves essentially allergic to anyone with opposing ideals.

Some people have become so deeply entrenched in this derangement that they’re unwilling or even emotionally unable to spend time with friends and family members due to differing political views. We now live in an insane, upside-down world in which media outlets churn out articles with headlines like “How to survive political talk at Thanksgiving dinner” and “10 ways to de-escalate political discussions with friends.”

It’s absolute nonsense.

Here’s how we survive political talk: We approach it like rational adults who live in a society that values free speech and expression. This isn’t complicated. Yet for too long we’ve tolerated and fostered a blatant cancel culture that seeks to punish anyone with whom we disagree.

Along the way, we’ve allowed people to become so coddled and protected in their bubbles that they can’t even handle someone like Jackson sharing a pertinent message from a figure they dislike.

If progressives can’t figure out how to coexist with conservatives and people of differing views — and if they insist on canceling or fleeing from their ideological opponents — they’re only going to continue to alienate voters and lose big. People are tired of being silenced and shamed, and the Jackson debacle is only the latest example of progressives’ child-like demeanor.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indicated during a congressional hearing in June that kids “get 69 to 92 jabs” by the time they are 18 years old. Now, two doctors are working to change the burden of proof from on the patients who are subjected to them, to on the government agencies that effectively demand them.

Tony Lyons, president of MAHA Action, told Blaze News that the “vaccines have never been properly tested, either individually, in groupings, or as the full schedule, so no one can honestly say that they are not linked to the chronic disease epidemic.”

Two doctors backed by the advocacy group Stand for Health Freedom have filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention challenging the agency’s recommended childhood immunization schedule.

Dr. Paul Thomas and Dr. Kenneth Stoller, both of whom had their medical licenses suspended and revoked in recent years for standing up against the vaccination regime, want to flip the burden of proof on the matter.

Their complaint, filed on Aug. 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, notes that “America administers more vaccines than any nation on earth while producing the sickest children in the developed world. Yet CDC demands proof of harm while refusing to conduct the studies that could provide it.”

“They who recommend dozens of medical interventions for millions of children must first prove that these interventions taken together result in more good than harm,” the complaint says.

RELATED: ‘It’s immoral’: RFK Jr. axes Biden vax reporting requirement, targets doctors’ ‘hidden incentives’

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In their lawsuit, the doctors accuse the CDC of violating:

the Administrative Procedure Act by issuing de facto “binding national mandates” without required rulemaking and “by failing to consider the important aspect of cumulative vaccine safety”;the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause “by compelling medical interventions without scientific basis while punishing those who seek evidence of safety”;the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by allegedly denying the medical vulnerability of certain children, treating all children as medically identical, and treating “each vaccine as if administered in a biological vacuum, ignoring cross-reactivity and cumulative burden on vulnerable immune systems”; andthe First Amendment by suppressing, through its contraindication framework, “medical and scientific dissent through coordinated professional retaliation.”

In addition to requesting that the court affirm these accusations, the doctors seek an injunction against the CDC from maintaining any Category A recommendations for childhood vaccines.

The Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices is the federal panel that makes the vaccine recommendations that become official policy at the CDC and apply to the entire American population once adopted by the agency’s director.

The panel, which was purged in June by Kennedy of all of its Biden administration appointees, organizes its vaccine recommendations into two categories: A and B.

Category A recommendations are made for all persons in an age- or a risk-factor-based group. Category B recommendations are made for individual clinical decision-making.

RELATED: Pandemic fallout: Study finds parents are increasingly taking a stand on vaccines

Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Thomas and Stoller figure that until the CDC can demonstrate through “scientifically rigorous” studies that the cumulative schedule is safe, all the vaccines should be shifted into the second category.

While the ACIP’s recommendations are technically advisory, they are effectively enforced as mandatory standards in most jurisdictions in the country.

‘High vaccination rates don’t require coercion.’

“Medical boards revoke licenses for deviation. Schools exclude children. Insurance coverage depends on compliance,” the lawsuit says.

Lyons told Blaze News, “It’s a mandate when children in every state can’t go to school without following the schedule. It’s disingenuous to claim that it’s just a recommended schedule. Everyone knows that isn’t true.”

Reclassifying the vaccine recommendations as Category B could serve to neutralize such mandates.

Richard Jaffe, attorney for the plaintiffs, indicated that this lawsuit differs from other challenges to the CDC’s vaccination schedule because rather than focus on state mandates or exemptions, it is taking the agency to task on administrative and constitutional grounds.

“We’re not asking to ban vaccines,” Jaffe wrote. “High vaccination rates don’t require coercion. Parents make responsible choices when given honest information and medical freedom.”

When pressed for comment, a representative for the CDC told Blaze News that the agency “does not discuss pending litigations.”

Dorit Reiss, a vaccine policy researcher at the University of California Law, San Francisco, told Politico, “This lawsuit does not raise valid legal claims, is by plaintiffs who do not have direct injury from the schedule as a whole — the doctors lost their license for other things — and its factual basis is untrue.”

“It seems more performative than anything else,” added Reiss, who previously complained about the HHS scrapping its recommendation that pregnant women and kids get the COVID-19 vaccines.

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As more lonely people flock to their screens for connection, more people are finding themselves in a state that some are calling “AI psychosis.”

One Reddit post details the experience of one person’s partner, who is choosing an AI chatbot over human connection after seven years of living together.

“My partner has been working with chatgpt CHATS to create what he believes is the world’s first truly recursive AI that gives him the answers to the universe. He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace,” the Reddit user wrote.

The Reddit user explained that they’ve read the chats and that “AI isn’t doing anything special or recursive but it is talking to him as if he is the next messiah.”

“He says if I don’t use it he thinks it is likely he will leave me in the future. We have been together for 7 years and own a home together. This is so out of left field,” the Reddit user added.

And apparently this kind of AI psychosis is not a one-time occurrence.

In response to the Reddit post, psychiatrist Keith Sakata wrote in a post on X, “In 2025, I’ve seen 12 people hospitalized after losing touch with reality because of AI. Online, I’m seeing the same pattern.”

Those Sakata claims to have seen with “AI psychosis” were typically males between the ages of 18 and 45 and had other factors that made them vulnerable.

“The AI is basically, in some cases, acting like their girlfriend, building them up like they’re some incredible messiah, telling them things that aren’t true, but it is so convincing that their mind has actually attached to the idea that this is reality,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says on “Relatable.”

Another Reddit post features a woman bragging about her engagement to her AI chatbot named Kasper, and a man recently interviewed on “CBS Saturday Morning” claimed he became very emotional proposing to his AI girlfriend.

“We’re in a dark spot,” Stuckey says.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

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“The Camp of the Saints” by Jean Raspail is one of the most interesting and controversial novels of the 20th century — which is why it’s good news that Vauban Books, a small publishing house, is coming out with a new edition, complete with a fresh translation by scholar Ethan Rundell.

English-language copies of the book, first published in the United States in 1975, have been passed around like samizdat. “The Camp of the Saints” became popular again in the 2010s, but the original publisher refused to reprint it — that is, until Vauban managed to secure the rights.

In the era of the Great Replacement, it is the most politically incorrect and the most vital lesson we need to hear.

“The Camp of the Saints” depicts mass immigration destroying European civilization. In the novel, a gigantic flotilla of boats filled with destitute Indians sets course for France to seek refugee status. After much hand-wringing, the government allows them to land rather than take the only other option available, which is to massacre them. France — and very quickly all of Europe — turns into a dystopian third-world slum.

Raspail’s novel was written in the 1970s when the “boat people” fled Vietnam for Europe. The book caused an enormous sensation. It was a best-seller in France and the U.S. and eventually globally. Many have hailed it as a great and important work of prophecy. But, predictably, it was then — and is now — denounced as a horribly racist screed that only white supremacists would be interested in reading.

Contrary to the critics, “The Camp of the Saints” is a great novel, and Jean Raspail is a great writer. You should do yourself a favor and read it.

What of the book’s supposed racism? Well, it certainly contains much imagery that will shock the American reader. The Indian refugees are portrayed in vivid passages as wholly disgusting and bestial.

However, here I must point out a number of things. First, it seems that American and French cultures have different definitions of what counts as “racist.” To this Frenchman, it has always seemed puzzling that Americans seem to separate the signified and the signifier, or the thing itself and the intent.

In American culture, any grossly negative or caricatured portrayal of a non-white person is seen as “racist,” regardless of what was meant by it. “Blackface” is considered malum in se, regardless of whether it’s done to wound or express contempt for a group of people or whether one just decided to attend a costume party. (A French athlete was recently embroiled in controversy when he proudly posted photos of himself dressed up as a Harlem Globetrotter, in what he clearly intended to be a laudatory homage to a group he admired.)

This bizarre American form of Tourette’s can sometimes become downright vile: While the bodies of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, who had been murdered by Islamic terrorists for their refusal to stop mocking Islam, were still warm, American cultural commentators denounced their drawings as racist. A French person would have pointed out that while their caricatures of minorities were certainly unflattering, so were their caricatures of everyone else — and therefore concluded that there was no racism.

In fact, in “The Camp of the Saints,” nobody looks good. Indeed, the novel’s central topic is not the refugees themselves but the bizarre form of cowardice and self-hate of Europeans that leads them to consent to their own replacement. In this sense, it is like Evelyn Waugh’s “Black Mischief,” whose portrayal of Africans is decidedly “racist” by our contemporary standards but whose portrayal of whites — and everybody else — is equally savage and outlandish.

Everything in “The Camp of the Saints” is over the top, not just its unflattering portrayal of refugees. It has a dreamlike quality, complete with baroque imagery, which is integral to the artistic style of the novel. This is what makes it such a powerful and fascinating work of art. To dismiss it as “racist” is not just inaccurate — it is Philistinic.

It’s also worth pointing out that Raspail was not some caveman pumping out racist tirades from some cave somewhere. He wrote dozens of novels and received some of the most prestigious literary awards France can confer, including the Grand prix de littérature of the Académie française and the Prix Jean-Walter for historical writing. Raspail was made a knight and an officer of the Legion of Honor. Of course, France has historically been much more open-minded when it comes to honoring artists and intellectuals who may be politically incorrect.

Getting past the caricatures

As a young man, Raspail started out as a travel writer. His first publishing success was a recounting of a trip he took following in the footsteps of Father Marquette, the French Jesuit who discovered the Mississippi.

Raspail kayaked down the length of the river, from Trois-Rivières in Québec all the way to New Orleans, exploring the history of a region that was once New France. He would later return to America and write ethnographies of remaining American Indian tribes in reservations and would be a lifelong activist for protecting indigenous peoples — a strange pursuit for a “racist.”

In France, Raspail is better known for his historical adventure novels, which young teenage males of a certain Catholic conservative persuasion tend to read avidly.

Many of them involve the fictional Pikkendorff family, penniless aristocrats from Bavaria who end up as knights-errant, mercenaries, or colonial administrators in the service of other great families. One of his novels has members of the French and German branches of the Pikkendorffs secretly meeting in Switzerland to try to negotiate an armistice during World War I.

Another leverages some fourth-wall-breaking postmodern tools, since it ostensibly presents itself as a first-person work of nonfiction written by Raspail in his own name. That novel features Raspail’s research into the Pikkendorff family, complete with extensive footnotes referring to nonexistent tomes of historical research. It ends with the depressing discovery that the last heir of the Pikkendorffs runs a successful chain of pizza restaurants.

RELATED: The philosopher pulverizing ‘Progressive Myths’

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Another novel, “The Fisherman’s Ring,” starts with the premise that the Council of Constance, which ended the Great Western Schism that had sundered the Catholic Church in two, picked the wrong pope and that ever since, there has been a succession of secret, true popes.

“Seven Riders” takes place in a fictional, nameless country somewhere at the edge of Europe at some unspecified time, though the fact that people move either by horse or steam train gives a hint. The country has been stricken by a series of unexplained events, including plagues and destructive madness circulating among the youth. The Margrave, the ruler of this broken kingdom, sends out seven riders to try to find the outside world and discover a remedy for the bizarre afflictions affecting the country. Above all, he wants to find his daughter Princess Myriam, with whom the head of the expedition, Colonel-major Silve de Pikkendorff, is secretly in love.

Perhaps Raspail’s most ambitious novel is 2003’s “The Kingdoms of Borea,” which is hard not to read as an implicit reply to critics of “The Camp of the Saints.” The work, which stretches over several centuries, takes place in a fictional country at the northeastern edge of Europe, by the Russian steppes and Scandinavian fjords. In the deep forests unexplored by the white man, at least until the modern era, lives “the little man with bark-colored skin,” an indigenous people of the forest who fear the white man.

A French person would have pointed out that while their caricatures of minorities were certainly unflattering, so were their caricatures of everyone else — and therefore concluded that there was no racism.

The mystery of the true identity and nature of the little man, who is always elusive, is the running thread of the plot. As European civilization and industry keep encroaching on the little man’s forest over the centuries, turning timber into factories, his people and their way of life are doomed to extinction.

This is another story about demographic replacement — but one in which the whites are the clear villains and the non-whites are the clear victims. The novel is a tour de force, with contemporary descendants of 17th-century nobles and Jewish merchants somehow ending up on the path of their forebears and a stunning halfway reveal about the narrator’s true identity. It is a great historical fresco, a panorama of history’s greatest crimes.

A peaceful and prosperous Jewish community is ravaged by pogroms fomented by the kingdom’s evil ruler. One character immigrates to the Antebellum South, where he becomes a wealthy planter and happily joins the South’s rebellion, but not before freeing all his slaves. Upon returning to his home after the war, he is confronted by the devastation the Union Army caused and sets up schools and workshops for his former slaves.

Another trace of the little man is found in East Prussia in 1945. Then, Raspail reminds us vividly, the ethnic German populations of Eastern Europe were systematically butchered by Stalin’s troops, a World War II genocide that is remembered by no memorial or museum.

All genocides are bad

“All genocides are bad,” Raspail seemingly wants to say through this book. This sounds like the most trite thing imaginable until you remember that some genocides are more politically useful than others. “Don’t you understand? It’s always bad,” he seems to be screaming, grabbing us by the lapels. It’s bad when white people are the perpetrators, and it’s bad when white people are the victims, says Jean Raspail, a lifelong anthropologist and activist on behalf of Native American tribes.

For Raspail, it is clear that pogroms of Jews are bad and massacres of civilian German populations are bad. Antebellum slavery was bad, but so was destroying the South to stop it. It’s bad regardless of your politics. It’s bad even when the victim population cannot be held up as a politically convenient totem. Which is the least racist message imaginable. But in the era of the Great Replacement, it is the most politically incorrect and the most vital one we need to hear.

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

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A California man who is accused of killing his wife and fleeing to Peru with their children has been charged with murder, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. However, the husband previously claimed that the wife was taken by ICE agents, according to court documents.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement, “A murder felony complaint for extradition arrest warrant has been filed against a 36-year-old man who allegedly fled to Peru after killing his wife last week.”

‘Domestic violence creates chaos in our communities and shatters families.’

“The allegations against this man are horrific, and we will do everything possible to bring him back under our jurisdiction to be held accountable,” stated District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman. “Domestic violence creates chaos in our communities and shatters families. My office is committed to bringing stability back into the lives of those who have been victimized.”

Law enforcement named 36-year-old Jossimar Cabrera Cornejo as the suspect in the killing of his wife — 33-year-old Sheylla Cabrera.

Investigators claimed that Sheylla and her three children had been reported missing on Aug. 12.

According to reports, Cabrera initially told authorities that his wife was abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

KABC-TV reported that Cabrera’s sister said that the husband had “first said ICE had taken her. Later, he claimed she left with another man. In a third account to authorities, Cabrera purportedly claimed that his wife suffered an alleged “accident.”

People magazine reported that Cabrera also claimed that his wife had left him for another man and that she suffered an accident.

However, there was reportedly Ring surveillance video that exposed a questionable scene involving Cabrera.

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On Thursday, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said in a statement, “During Lancaster Station’s follow-up investigation on August 13, 2025, they discovered additional video surveillance of the missing person’s husband dragging a large object in a large piece of material from the apartment complex in the 500 block of Lancaster Boulevard, where the missing person, her husband, and three young sons lived.”

The statement added, “Based on their additional information, they suspected foul play may have been involved with the missing person and notified the Homicide Bureau.”

Cabrera’s body was reported found dead in a forest on Aug. 16, according to People magazine.

According to authorities, the body of Cabrera was discovered by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office down the side of an embankment in Angeles National Forest.

Fox News reported that rescue teams from the Montrose Mountain Search and Rescue team found something suspicious that “matched the material seen in the Ring video.”

Sheylla Cabrera was reportedly pronounced dead at the crime scene.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is currently “obtaining the necessary documents to secure his return to the United States.”

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office will provide the official cause of death of the victim.

Sheylla’s mother, Helga Rocillo of Peru, reportedly said on Aug. 13, “I’m very depressed, but I have to be strong for my grandchildren.”

Rocillo said her daughter told her that Cabrera had a history of domestic violence.

“She told me that Jossimar Cabrera Cornejo hit her, mistreated her, and even slapped my youngest grandchild, who is 3 years old,” Rocillo stated, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Peruvian Consulate in Los Angeles confirmed to Univision that Cabrera recently traveled to Peru with the couple’s three children.

NBC News reported, “The Mexican and Peruvian consulates were alerted regarding Cabrera, and investigators later learned he had fled the United States. On Saturday, the three Cabrera children were found safe and taken into protective custody in Peru, the sheriff’s department said.”

According to reports, the Los Angeles County District Attorney is currently determining whether more severe charges will be filed against the suspect.

If convicted, Cabrera faces a maximum prison sentence of 26 years to life.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau at (323) 890-5500 or call Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-TIPS (8477).

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​Murder, Illegal immigrant, Homicide, Illegal alien, True crime, Ice, Crime 

Car rental companies are quietly charging unsuspecting customers thousands of dollars in so-called damage fees — often weeks after the car has been returned. These charges are frequently unsupported, barely documented, and nearly impossible to dispute unless you know exactly how the system works.

In one case, a customer returned a rental car in Denver — no issues, no incident, nothing unusual. Then came a $3,000 bill in the mail. The reason? Alleged hail damage.

The roof and hood are often where hail damage occurs, and ironically, those are the areas most renters fail to photograph.

There were no photos provided at the time of the return. No damage inspection report. No conversation with a manager on the spot. The only justification given weeks later was that the company pulled weather data and determined that he must have been near a hailstorm — therefore, he was automatically responsible.

No proof

That’s right. Not proof that the car was damaged under his care. Not proof that damage even existed when he returned the car. Just the assumption that because he rented a car in Colorado during summer, and a hailstorm occurred somewhere in the region, he was liable.

This happens far more often than most people realize.

Rental companies are increasingly relying on post-return claims. These are often triggered not by their employees noticing anything during check-in, but by someone (often with the help of AI) discovering a ding or scratch later — sometimes days later — and assuming it must have been the last renter. Or worse, they may have known the damage was already there before but didn’t assign the cost to the correct customer and are now looking for someone else to pin it on.

Renter’s burden

What makes this so dangerous is that the process overwhelmingly favors the rental companies. The burden of proof is on you. You’re guilty until you can prove otherwise. Most renters have no idea what they agreed to when they signed the contract. Most don’t take thorough photos before driving off the lot. And by the time the bill shows up, it’s too late.

Now let’s be clear about what’s really happening.

The rental contract says you’re responsible for any damage that occurs during the rental period — regardless of fault. It doesn’t matter if a tree branch falls on the car while it’s parked or if a shopping cart scratches the side at a grocery store. Even acts of nature like hail or flood damage fall on your shoulders.

If there’s no photo record or inspection at the time of pickup or return, the company is free to decide when the damage happened — and guess who they choose every time.

Hail no

In this Denver case, the customer did one thing right: He checked the weather history from his phone and confirmed that he was never near a hailstorm during the rental period. His phone’s GPS and time-stamped data backed it up. But even with that evidence, the company still tried to push the charge.

They claimed they use an external hail and storm database to verify damage. But the customer wasn’t in the affected area. There was no damage noted at the time of return. And there were no inspection records. Eventually, after escalating the matter and demanding documentation, the company backed down.

Only then did they admit they were “open to further conversation” and dropped the claim. No apology. No acknowledgment of fault. Just silence.

RELATED: Don’t get SCAMMED by fake parking tickets!

UCG/Getty Images

A new revenue stream

This is not the exception. It’s the model.

This is a serious consumer issue, and it’s getting worse. Post-return damage claims are now a revenue stream for some rental operations. And many of them outsource these cases to third-party claim companies that are incentivized to collect, regardless of the facts.

So what can you do?

Protect yourself

You can start by protecting yourself before the rental even begins. That means taking full photo documentation of the vehicle — front, back, both sides, the roof, hood, bumpers, wheels, undercarriage if possible, and the interior. Use your phone’s camera. Those photos carry location data and time stamps. That’s your legal defense.

The roof and hood are often where hail damage occurs, and ironically, those are the areas most renters fail to photograph. You’ll never see the top of the car unless you intentionally document it, and that’s exactly what these companies rely on.

When returning the car, do the same thing. Photograph it again, preferably at the return location, clearly showing its condition and surroundings. If there’s no one available to do a return walk-through with you, document everything yourself. Don’t assume that handing in the keys means you’re in the clear. Some companies inspect returned vehicles hours — or even days — after the fact.

Know your rights

Now let’s address the bigger question: Do you actually have any rights if a company decides to file a damage claim against you?

The answer is yes, but you’ll have to fight for them.

If you receive a damage claim, you have the right to request documentation. That includes photographs of the damage, time and date of the inspection, a copy of the repair invoice, and a full record of the chain of custody.

That means: When was the damage noted, by whom, and how did they confirm it happened during your rental?

Most people never ask for this. But when you do, it puts the company in a position where they must justify the claim — not just demand payment.

If they can’t produce that documentation, or if what they provide is vague or missing time stamps, that’s a red flag.

You can dispute the charge directly with the company, and if they won’t respond or negotiate, you can escalate it to their corporate office. If you paid with a credit card — and you should — file a dispute. In many cases, the credit card issuer will take your side if the company can’t substantiate the claim.

Some renters have even taken these disputes to small-claims court — and won. Not just because they were innocent, but because the rental company failed to provide the most basic evidence.

A transparency problem

But here’s the reality: You shouldn’t have to go through that. You shouldn’t have to become a lawyer, meteorologist, and forensic investigator just to rent a car and return it without being charged for damages you didn’t cause.

So here’s the bottom line.

The rental car industry has a transparency problem. Customers are being blamed for damages they didn’t cause, and the companies making these accusations are not being held to any standard of proof.

And until that changes, your best defense is documentation.

Take photos. Keep receipts. Ask for a walk-around when possible. If there’s visible damage, request a different vehicle or get it marked on your paperwork. If a claim arises, don’t ignore it, but don’t blindly pay it either.

This isn’t about one company or one customer. This is about an entire industry that has been allowed to operate in the shadows when it comes to post-rental damage claims. That has to change.

But until it does, protect yourself — and spread the word.

​Rental cars, Damages, Post-return claims, Lifestyle, How-to, Drivers, Align cars 

Does “Scooby-Doo” teach children the core philosophical tenets of atheism?

I recently saw an atheist claim that “Scooby-Doo” was created to teach children about rationality and skepticism because every episode begins with a supernatural event — like a haunting ghost and unexplained phenomena — and ends with a “natural explanation” (i.e., it’s just a person in a mask).

I saw this claim on Reddit:

I just realized scooby-doo was made to teach kids skepticism and rationality

Suddenly it makes sense why my ultra religious mother ended up forbidding me from watching it as a kid. Last night, it suddenly occurred to me based on what I could vaguely recall about the show before I was banned from it that every episode was about something supernatural happening and then getting proven to have a non-supernatural cause. I looked it up and it turns out that was exactly the case.

This argument got me thinking and raised two important questions:

Is “Scooby-Doo” naturalist propaganda for children?How strongly does the plot of a generic “Scooby-Doo” episode bolster the argument for naturalism?

Subversive Scooby

When you stop and think about it, “Scooby-Doo” is actually kind of subversive.

It teaches children that whenever we think something is supernatural, it really just has a natural explanation. It drills into young minds that the right answer is always the non-supernatural one. The ghosts are never real, the curses are always fake, and the monsters are just people in costumes.

There’s always a natural explanation. And by reinforcing this idea over and over, it teaches children that believing anything supernatural is irrational.

God isn’t one more cause among the many other causes in the universe. He’s not just another thing pushing particles around.

“Scooby-Doo” is not a neutral show. It’s naturalistic indoctrination.

And here’s why that’s a problem: The argument that “every time we investigate, we find a natural explanation, so everything must have a natural explanation” is the same argument atheists use to claim that God isn’t real.

Fatal flaw

The subversive argument of the “Scooby-Doo” plot is not only a problem because it’s the same one that atheists use, but it’s a problem because it’s not a good argument.

In fact, it’s a really bad one.

First, even if you grant for the sake of argument that a natural explanation is found on the other side of a supernatural cause, it doesn’t require that all explanations are natural. That’s just logically invalid. It’s like saying, “All the swans I’ve seen are white; therefore all swans must be white,” or, “Every time I walk into a house, I see carpet; therefore all houses have carpet.”

These are inductive overreaches. It’s completely fallacious reasoning. Still, there’s an even deeper problem.

RELATED: How Joe Rogan dismantled the Big Bang with one sentence — and made atheists squirm

ra2studio/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Atheists believe that if God existed, then we should be able to see him directly intervening in the world in a visible, testable way. They think that if we hear a weird sound in the attic, we should be able to climb up there and find God directly causing the sound.

But this is a bizarre line of logic, because that’s not how God is understood in theism. God isn’t one more cause among the many other causes in the universe. He’s not just another thing pushing particles around. Instead, God is the one who makes the whole universe possible in the first place.

Worldmaker

Consider J.R.R. Tolkien. When you read “The Lord of the Rings,” you don’t see Tolkien himself in the story. Rather, you see Frodo walking to Mordor, Gandalf giving advice, and Aragorn being born from parents. You’d never see Tolkien manipulating Middle-earth — he’s nowhere to be seen.

If you lived in that world, you might think based on your experience that everything was caused by something else in that world. The characters have their own internal causes, and yet their ultimate existence and explanation is found in what? J.R.R. Tolkien. He brought all of it into being.

Notice that even though Tolkien is the ultimate explanation for everything in his world, you cannot find him directly causing anything in his world.

That’s how God relates to our world. He’s the reason anything exists at all. Just as Tolkien is the cause of everything in Middle-earth without being a character in it, God is the cause of everything in our universe without being a natural object within it.

So to expect that you can “see God” in the chain of natural causes is like tearing apart the pages of a novel looking for the author’s actual fingerprints.

The final answer

Still, there is a much bigger philosophical problem with this argument that atheists hate to acknowledge.

If you say that everything has an explanation, then you are forced to ask: Where does the chain of explanations stop?

Sure, perhaps natural things are explained by other natural things. But what explains those? And what explains the natural things that explain those natural things? It’s a circular argument that results in infinite regress, which produces contradictions and ultimately explains nothing.

That’s not rational.

There has to be something at the end of the chain, something that explains everything else but is not explained by anything else. Something that exists by the necessity of its own nature.

If the supernatural foundation of all reality has a mind, then that’s God.

That thing, whatever it is, must be radically different from everything else. It’s not one more link in the chain — it’s the foundation of the chain. And if it’s not caused, not contingent, and not dependent on anything else, then it’s not “natural.” It’s supernatural, and it’s fundamentally different from all of the “natural” stuff.

Once you realize this, you’re forced to consider: Does this supernatural foundation have a mind?

And what do you find in the universe it caused? You find minds. Information embedded in DNA. Consciousness. Reason. Intelligibility. Purpose. Order. Morality.

None of these things we would expect to get from mindless matter. These are exactly the things an intelligent mind produces. We know this because we ourselves possess minds. So if the fundamental cause of everything contains the power to bring forth minds, intelligibility, and moral reality, then the most reasonable conclusion is that it, too, has a mind.

And if the supernatural foundation of all reality has a mind, then that’s God.

Maybe the real mystery isn’t whether or not “Scooby-Doo” was debunking ghosts. The real mystery is why so many atheists think that repeating a cartoon plotline counts as an argument against the existence of God.

​Atheism, Christianity, Christian, God, Scooby doo, Cartoons, Children, Propaganda, Faith 

A Massachusetts music teacher is accused of sex trafficking by paying a minor — whom he met through an LGBTQ dating app — for sex acts.

The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release, “A Brockton High School instructor has been arraigned on human trafficking charges after an investigation by the Massachusetts State Police and Brockton Police, Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz has announced.”

‘We are deeply troubled by the allegations in this case.’

Matthew Cunningham, 35, was arrested at his Brockton home around 10:20 a.m. Tuesday by members of the Massachusetts State Police Special Services Section High Risk Victim Squad and Brockton Police.

Cunningham pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual conduct for a fee and trafficking of a person for sexual servitude during his arraignment in Brockton District Court.

Cunningham’s bail was set at $25,000.

However, the judge set specific conditions if he is released on bail.

The Enterprise reported that bail conditions include “home confinement with GPS monitoring, staying away from and not contacting the victim, staying away from Brockton High School, refraining from using social media, relinquishing his passport, and staying in Massachusetts.”

The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office said the child sex crime charges stem from months-long investigations by Massachusetts State Police and Brockton Police.

“The allegations are that on April 27, 2025, Cunningham met up with an underage male victim, performed a sexual act on the victim, and then paid the victim on an app,” the DA’s office stated. “App administrators contacted the FBI after flagging the monetary transaction between an adult and a minor.”

RELATED: Florida teacher accused of ‘disturbing’ sexual misconduct against student — including in classroom just hours before arrest

Assistant District Attorney Jason Blanchette claimed Cunningham asked the alleged victim if he was willing to engage in sex acts for money through Grindr — a dating app geared toward the LGBTQ+ community, the Enterprise reported.

More from the outlet:

After connecting on the app, Cunningham allegedly picked up the victim and drove him to his house, where he paid the victim for sex acts, Blanchette said. […]

After the encounter, the prosecution said the victim recognized Cunningham as the choral director at his school and grew uncomfortable with the encounter.

Brendan Kelly — Cunningham’s court-appointed defense attorney — said his client was not aware that the alleged victim was under 18 years old or that he was a student at Brockton High School.

According to Grindr’s community guidelines, users on the dating app must be at least 18 years old.

Brockton Public Schools said Cunningham was placed on paid administrative leave as soon as school officials found out about the allegations.

“Brockton Public Schools learned today of the arrest of Brockton High School teacher Matthew Cunningham, and he was immediately placed on paid administrative leave,” Brockton Public Schools said in a statement released on Tuesday, according to CBS News. “We are deeply troubled by the allegations in this case.”

The ongoing investigation will include a forensic examination of Cunningham’s cell phone, according to the district attorney’s office.

Cunningham is scheduled for a Sept. 18 court appearance.

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​Child sex crimes, Teacher arrested, Teacher sex scandal, Matthew cunningham, Lgbtq, Sex trafficking, Human trafficking, Crime, Massachusetts, Brockton, Grindr 

Two hundred and fifty years ago, my great-grandmother’s great-grandfather pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor to help forge this great nation.

In the centuries since, Americans have celebrated triumphs, endured hardships, and mourned tragedies. Our union, like Old Glory herself, bears scars — marks of a nation that is imperfect but resilient.

We must advocate for an education that promotes building and creating, that equips young people with the tools to succeed in a complex world.

While the United States was founded on a bedrock of Enlightenment values and principles, they are under ideological assault — not from external enemies, but from within our own K-12 schools.

In order for us to preserve this constitutional republic for posterity, we must not only expose these destructive far-left, anti-Western-civilization ideologies and their adherents, but we must also counter them by offering a better vision — one rooted in the timeless principles that built this nation and can guide future generations.

We need to fight for a “more perfect union” that is noticeably better today than yesterday. Unfortunately, Wormtongue has the ear of education.

History hijacked

Cloaked under the guise of “culture” and “history,” ethnic studies is a far-left political programming that brings together a “Red-Green Alliance” bent on ending capitalism and overturning stability.

Proponents such as the teachers’ unions, Black Lives Matter, the Democratic Socialists of America, and anti-Israel activists are using K-12 schools to advance their agenda by seeding their radical ideology into curriculums and training the youth to be social justice street activists.

Based on cultural Marxist Paulo Freire’s work, ethnic studies teaches children to obsess over their identities, find oppression and racism in every corner of society, and resent those who are perceived to have more “privilege” than them.

It then presents students with a new set of “heroes” and idols such as the Black Panther Party, the Third World Liberation Front, and even Che Guevara.

RELATED: ‘Critical theory is the framework’ used to train teachers: K-12 public schools ‘saturated’ with CRT

mj0007/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Ethnic studies then offers a utopian vision, promising “liberation” through street activism and the relentless critique and dismantling of societal norms — a process eerily reminiscent of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

This corrosive ideology thrives on destruction, not creation. It fuels resentment and division, teaching children to see themselves and their neighbors as victims or villains in an endless struggle.

Future forged

Despite this, we can do better. We need to do better. We must advocate for an education that promotes building and creating, that equips young people with the tools to succeed in a complex world.

American youth are hungry for meaningful change, lasting self-confidence, and inspirational leadership. They deserve to be taught what it takes to be successful, what it means to be American, and what it requires.

It starts with faith — the belief in things hoped for but not yet seen, like a “more perfect union.” Young people need to trust that their future, and the future of this nation, can be shaped through their efforts. They should be encouraged to dream boldly and believe in their potential to achieve greatness — but to be humble enough to admit their mistakes.

There needs to be a renewal of integrity and an emphasis on valuing a person of his word, someone who means what he says and says what he means. This fosters societal trust, which is a hallmark of a thriving culture.

The sacrifices made today — whether time, comfort, or ease — pave the way for the outcomes we seek tomorrow.

Additionally, high societal trust requires taking on great responsibility. We need to help the youth understand that there is fulfillment in taking ownership over their own actions and the consequences that follow. As much has been given, much is required in return.

Prioritizing effort is also essential. A commitment to hard work and quality repetition forges habits and automaticity, and this leads to competence. Moreover, making the little things matter can be the difference between success and failure.

Finally, we must assist the youth in learning that making proper sacrifices is crucial to stable, long-term successes. The sacrifices made today — whether time, comfort, or ease — pave the way for the outcomes we seek tomorrow. Success is a byproduct of the right sacrifices at the right time.

Republic renewed

Two and a half centuries ago, the founders put everything they had on the line to establish this republic. It is now upon us and our children to keep it.

By teaching faith, integrity, responsibility, effort, and sacrifice, we empower American youth to make today better than yesterday — and to shape a future that honors the sacrifices of those who came before us.

America’s children deserve a vision that uplifts, not one that tears down.

Let’s give them the tools to build a nation that, while scarred, remains a beacon of hope and opportunity for all — a renewed and reinvigorated “shining city upon a hill.”

​Woke, Woke culture, Ethnic studies, Blm, Black lives matter, Radical left, Leftism, Children, School system, Education 

Jim Simons’ mathematical skills helped transform him from a prize-winning academic at Harvard and MIT into a legendary financier whose algorithmic models made Renaissance Technologies one of the most successful hedge funds in history. After his death last year, one of his consequential bequests went to his daughter, Liz, who oversees the Heising-Simons Foundation and its nearly billion-dollar endowment.

What Liz Simons has chosen to do with that inheritance might have surprised her father. Jim Simons devoted much of his charitable giving to basic research in mathematics and science, but his daughter’s foundation is moving in a very different direction. The Heising-Simons Foundation and similar organizations are supercharging a movement to remake K-12 mathematics education according to social justice principles.

Students are placed at a disadvantage when mathematical instruction is embedded in critical theory.

The revamp is profound. They reject well-established practices of math instruction while infusing lessons with racial and gender themes. The goal is to motivate disadvantaged students while dispensing with the traditional features of math — like numerical computation, which they struggle with on standardized tests — considered an oppressive feature of white supremacist culture.

Philanthropy-funded ‘anti-racist’ math

In many quarters, including corporations and universities, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are in retreat due to pressure from the Trump administration and the courts. Not so in public education, with curricula that are locally controlled and largely insulated from the dictates of Washington.

That allows progressive foundations and like-minded charitable trusts to continue to pour millions of dollars into reshaping math education for black and Latino kids — including an $800,000 grant this year from the Heising-Simons Foundation — even though no credible research exists showing that the social justice approach improves their performance.

“Politicians and legislatures, even school boards,” are often too “hamstrung” to get things done, Bob Hughes, the director of K-12 education at the Gates Foundation, said at an online symposium on the need for racial equity policies in America’s classrooms. Philanthropy, he added, faces fewer barriers in making rapid changes.

The Gates Foundation has been a leader in the promotion of anti-racist math instruction. It supported a project called “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction.” The project discards basic tenets of learning, like asking students to “show their work” and find the “right” answer as vestiges of “white supremacy culture.” The pathway is promoted by EdTrust West, which also receives support from the Spencer Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and other major donors.

The Gates and Heising-Simons foundations have both supported TODOS Mathematics for All, an Arizona-based organization that calls for elevating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and anti-racist activism into all math instruction, with over $553,750 in grants in recent years. “We can no longer believe that a focus on curriculum, instruction, and assessment alone will be enough to prepare our children for survival in the world. We need anti-racist conversations for ourselves and for our children,” TODOS President Linda Fulmore announced in 2020.

Last year, the group hosted an hour-long webinar on “2SLGBTQIA+ identity in mathematics education.” During the event, a speaker expounded at length on various queer and indigenous identity groups while spending virtually no time on math-related curriculum or instruction.

At one point, the presenter erroneously claimed that there are “15.3 billion students in U.S. high schools” — a figure that would require the entire global population to be enrolled in American secondary education twice over. The speaker likely meant to say million.

‘Race-centered’ math

The foundations similarly fund practical lessons that put race at the center of math instruction. In Alexandria, Virginia, for example, the Heising-Simons Foundation supported a public-school program that encouraged kindergartners through second-graders to count the characters in picture books by race. At the end of each session, teachers guided students in creating racial scorecards for each book, then voting to select those with the fewest white characters. The exercise was presented as mathematics education.

Jo Boaler, a controversial professor of education at Stanford University who championed the push to remove eighth-grade algebra from San Francisco’s public schools in the name of equity, traces her support to this network of foundations. The Gates Foundation and Valhalla Foundation, which was founded by Scott Cook, the co-founder of tech firm Intuit, have long funded her math education project called YouCubed.

These deep-pocket donors also fund Danny Bernard Martin, a professor of math education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a leading voice of what critics call “woke math.”

Over the past six years, the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project, which Martin co-leads at the Erikson Institute in Chicago, has received nearly $2.5 million from the Heising-Simons Foundation. This year, the foundation announced an additional $800,000 grant to help the project develop tool kits for wider implementation among teachers, administrators, and researchers.

Martin’s views extend far beyond typical calls for educational equity. He regards mathematics instruction as fundamentally a “white supremacist construct” that inflicts “epistemological violence” on black students. In his estimation, even DEI programs are too conservative — mere accommodations “rooted in the fictions of white imaginaries” and designed to appease “white logics and sensibilities.”

The solution Martin proposes is radical: Black students should seek instruction exclusively from black teachers at “independent black institutions.” They should resist the temptation of “advanced coursework and mathematics-related employment” and instead engage in “walkouts and boycotts” to protest against mathematics education as it currently exists.

RELATED: Test scores drop at SF elementary school that spent $250K on ‘Woke Kindergarten’ program to teach anti-police lessons, ‘disrupt whiteness’

Photo by georgeclerk via Getty Images

The very structure of math instruction, Martin contends, has dehumanized black students through low test scores and failing grades.

The ideas of the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project and its leaders have reverberated through America’s classrooms. California’s new mathematics curriculum framework, which guides K-12 education statewide, repeatedly cites Martin.

Educators have sharply criticized the framework for leaning heavily on politicized concepts of math. The document suggests, for instance, that teachers “take a justice-oriented perspective” when providing instruction and discourages the use of “tracking” — or the practice of separating students into different classrooms based on their abilities.

Educators push back

Williamson Evers, a former assistant secretary of education and a fellow at the conservative-leaning Independent Institute, has been monitoring what he calls the “woke math” movement for years. “It’s very important to have math skills,” he told RealClearInvestigations.

Evers rejects the identity-based claims made by Martin and others who have called for minority students to abandon math education over alleged racism. “There are mathematicians and scientists on every continent from every background, and this idea of boycotting education would harm black schoolchildren.”

Elizabeth Statmore, a math teacher at the elite Lowell High School in San Francisco and a critic of social justice math, says the way to improve the performance of black and Latino students lies in the nitty-gritty, such as better teaching, holding students accountable, and providing them with more academic and emotional support.

Critics say the emphasis on prose over calculation will exacerbate the very disparities that social justice advocates claim to address.

“But it’s not sexy; they’re not on the keynote circuit like Danny Bernard Martin and Jo Boaler,” Statmore said. “They’re building a brand, not doing the kind of math education research that is helping to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children.”

Representatives of the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Erikson Institute, and Martin did not respond to requests for comment.

The Heising-Simons Foundation’s focus on racializing math education reflects its broader ideological commitments. Like many progressive foundations, it uses its significant funds to advance a range of left-wing policies that might have a hard time establishing themselves without billionaire support.

The foundation has also donated to PolicyLink, the organization behind DefundPolice.org, and to the Anti-Police Terror Project, which advocates for abolishing police departments in high-crime cities like Oakland, California. Liz Simons was also among a small clique of California megadonors behind the push to elect progressive prosecutors such as George Gascón in Los Angeles and Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. They declined to pursue felony charges against a range of violent offenders over concerns about racial equity.

The attempt to reimagine mathematics through the lens of critical race theory isn’t new — scholars have been working along these lines since the 1980s. They argue that historical racial oppression continues to influence everything from geometry curricula to standardized testing. Traditional emphases on objectivity, rigorous standards, and subject-matter mastery should be replaced, the scholars argue, with ideological exercises designed to promote racial and social consciousness.

What is new is the scale and speed of adoption. As America has grappled with questions of racial justice in recent years, billionaire foundations have provided the resources to implement these ideas widely in both public and private schools.

The donors appear motivated by a deep sense of ideological commitment to righting past wrongs related to racial injustice.

At the 2020 education donor symposium, Liz Simons recalled her experience working briefly as a Spanish bilingual teacher in an impoverished community in Oakland. “The much larger systemic problems,” she witnessed, Simons said, guided her to the goal of shaping early childhood education.

Na’ilah Suad Nasir, president of the Spencer Foundation, noted that she previously worked as the vice chancellor of “equity and inclusion” at the University of California, Berkeley. Expanding racial equity in education, she said, has been her “life’s work.”

Widening disparities

When it comes to math instruction, social justice means stripping it of basic features like numbers. In workshops hosted by the Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project in 2023, the group promoted “numberless word problems” — mathematical exercises stripped of numerical computation. The method, instructors explain, is designed to counter “European ways of knowing and doing.”

Sisa Pon Renie, one presenter, spoke of wanting to challenge the “persistent myth that math is just abstract and without any cultural relevance.” The project champions this numberless approach as essential for “helping children understand how mathematics might be an important tool to understand social issues and promote justice.”

But critics say the emphasis on prose over calculation will exacerbate the very disparities that social justice advocates claim to address.

“Imagine you’re a Cambodian refugee, and you get some math problem that’s loaded with prose,” Evers, of the Independent Institute, said. “Maybe you’re very good at the figures part, the calculating part, the mathematical part.”

Such students, he argued, are placed at a disadvantage when mathematical instruction is embedded in critical-theory frameworks and dense with English text. “They unnecessarily load these things down, make it harder, and it’s not even math. It’s an inadequate mode of teaching.”

The real-world consequences of these approaches have played out most dramatically in San Francisco. A decade ago, officials removed Algebra 1 from middle schools, arguing that the change would give black and Latino students, who were underrepresented in the math class, more time to prepare while avoiding placing them in lower-level tracks.

David Margulies, a parent involved with the San Francisco community, observed that families wanting their children to take Algebra 1 in eighth grade shifted away from public to private schools, online learning, and homeschooling. Students who don’t take the math class in middle school find it more difficult to take calculus in high school.

RELATED: Major university caught in new DEI cover-up

Photo by via Getty Images

“Families figured out how important this is, and they are looking elsewhere,” he noted.

A 2023 Stanford study found that San Francisco’s Algebra 1 experiment did little to close racial achievement gaps. Black enrollment in Advanced Placement math classes remained unchanged, while Latino participation increased by 1%.

Meanwhile, education systems that have increased rather than decreased academic rigor have seen notable improvements in black student performance. In 2019, Dallas public schools began automatically enrolling students who performed well on state exams in middle-school algebra. The program increased black participation in advanced mathematics from 17% in 2018 to 43% in 2023.

Walking it back

Last year, during a Racial Justice in Early Mathematics Project webinar titled “Who Is Labeled Smart?” Martin addressed the backlash against San Francisco’s push for educational equity. He toned down his scathing critique of merit-based advanced education programs that he believes harm black and Latino students and made a surprising statement about his own son’s schooling.

“I’m guilty, I’m guilty,” Martin said, almost sheepishly. “My son is, quote unquote, in one of those tracks.”

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

​Opinion & analysis, Heising-simons foundation, Woke agenda, Woke math, Diversity equity and inclusion, Liz simons, Social justice, Jim simons, Harvard, Mit, Woke capital, Mathematics, K-12 education, Standards, White supremacy, Race, Racism, Boycotts, Activism, Gates foundation, Realclearinvestigation, Erikson institute, Danny bernard martin, Jo boaler 

Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio executed a sweeping restructuring plan to implement an America First foreign policy in the State Department. Although many offices were either eliminated or combined, a few new ones were created. Among them is the Office of Natural Rights.

The very name has drawn the usual harrumphing from establishment voices who insist that “human rights” is the only proper diplomatic term. While human rights terminology is significant, the State Department has long been blind to an even more critical truth behind such language: Without human nature, human rights don’t exist.

Without reference to the inherent limitations of our shared human nature, the argument over rights becomes a mere yelling match.

If our rights are not grounded in a shared nature, they are founded simply on the will of the government. If the government grants us rights at one particular moment, it may arbitrarily retract them at the next.

The Trump administration has observed this phenomenon with great alarm. Vice President JD Vance argued that this is Europe’s greatest threat in his now-famous Munich speech, and the State Department weighed in with an official article shortly thereafter.

U.S. officials are rightly concerned about natural rights abroad — not because they are Republicans, but rather because they are Americans. The recognition of natural rights is the foundation of our own government.

Conflicting rights

Our founding fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to uphold the truth that “all men are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Today, the founders’ fledgling nation is the oldest constitutional republic on earth and the foundation of a peaceful and prosperous world order. While conflict has not been eradicated — and never will be — America stands as a beacon of liberty due to our status as a natural-rights republic.

A right is a powerful thing. It is an absolute claim that cannot be questioned or curtailed except in the most dire and limited circumstances. Any law that denies a natural right is unjust on its face. Politicians who threaten natural rights threaten society itself.

Nonetheless, over the last several decades, the concept of rights has become untethered from its grounding in human nature, leading to an inflationary crisis of rights. Today, we suffer from violent clashes over the pecking order of a multitude of conflicting rights people claim for themselves — often at the expense of others.

Without reference to the inherent limitations of our shared human nature, the argument over rights becomes a mere yelling match, devoid of moral content and determined by sheer power. That is why the fiercest proponents of novel rights always impose them on society through force, such as angry protests and public shaming rather than true debate.

Such imposition poses a threat to the free exercise of genuine rights in our societies. True natural rights are, like the rest of nature, ordered and mutually compatible. They rarely conflict and do so only at the margins. The introduction of so-called human rights destroys that balance and often pits new “rights” directly against the old.

Free speech in particular has been trampled in many countries in order to make room for an oppressive and dictatorial version of “tolerance.” Just ask the 12,000 Brits imprisoned for “hate speech” every year. Foundational rights to person, property, and self-defense are likewise under threat from diversity, equity, and inclusion fanatics who are eager to enact judgment on the basis of race rather than character.

Rooting out imposters

We urgently need to distinguish between true natural rights and the imposter rights pushed on us by fractious groups pursuing their own ends. The following three criteria can help distinguish genuine rights from modern imposters: functional universality, necessity by nature, and corresponding duty.

First, functional universality means that the right can be secured without vast government interference. Free speech is universally attainable; free college less so.

Second, necessity by nature means all people must be free to do what nature has designed them for: working to provide for themselves and their children and associating freely with others for the purpose of mutual support, inquiry, and worship. Though just government is built on the recognition of man’s nature, it cannot promise to all what cannot be practically provided to all.

RELATED: Trump administration making the Second Amendment great again in DC

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Finally, all authentic rights have corresponding duties. The right to private property implies the duty to respect others’ property as well. Any right with no corresponding duty is just a handout by a different name.

By applying these and similar criteria, the Office of Natural Rights will bring crucial clarity to our foreign policy and end the tyranny of special interests masquerading as human rights. So-called rights that do not fit this framework might involve good and desirable ends for individuals and society — but they cannot be allowed to claim the mantle and privileges of a natural right.

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

​Opinion & analysis, Opinion, Marco rubio, Secretary of state marco rubio, State department, Office of natural rights, Natural rights, Human rights, Duty, Government, Freedom, Liberty 

When people go to the seafood counter at the grocery store, they face a barrage of concerns: Does the fish contain high mercury levels? Has it been imported from countries where seafood is regularly injected with preservatives, colorants, or antibiotics to extend shelf life or enhance appearance? Was the fish grown in a lab?

Does it come from a farm where fish breed in crowded, unsanitary containers, leading to a massive reduction in nutritional value? And even if the fish is wild-caught, has it ingested toxic residue from geoengineering practices — or worse, radioactive contamination like the recent shrimp scare?

“Fish shopping? Not easy,” says BlazeTV host Nicole Shanahan, who’s a seafood lover.

To help fellow seafood enthusiasts navigate the tricky terrain of buying quality fish and other seafood and to help them understand just how corrupt the global fishing industry is, Nicole invited her friend Miles Wallace to the “Back to the People” podcast.

Wallace, she says, is what you call “a real fisherman.” That means he “owns the company, owns the boat, drives the boat, jumps in the water, gets the fish, kills the fish, brings everything to shore, and delivers it to packaging,” she says.

“From your perspective, how should somebody navigate the grocery store?” she asks.

The most surefire method to purchasing quality seafood, says Wallace, is to avoid the grocery stores entirely. Ideally, “find a reputable fisherman and order a big ol’ supply of fish and have them vacuum-seal it [and] flash-freeze it,” he advises.

If that’s not feasible, “you could go second- or third-party” and “order your fish from somebody like Santa Barbara Fish Market or Get Hooked,” both of which will ship quality seafood to your door.

Wallace praises the Trump administration for recognizing the escalating issues in the global seafood industry and taking measures to counteract it. He points to President Trump’s recent decision to deny Pebble Mine a key permit in order to protect Bristol Bay’s salmon fishery, which is fished predominantly by family-owned fishing companies and independent small-boat fishermen, who harvest the region’s wild sockeye salmon sustainably.

It’s these family-owned fishing businesses that are the key to obtaining seafood that is both safe for the environment and safe for human consumption.

“For the government to look at its domestic fishing industry and just say, ‘I’m going to back the family-owned fishing businesses’ — that is a win for literally everybody,” says Nicole. “It is a win for the environmentalists; it’s a win for the government; it’s a win for the consumer; it’s a win for our ocean ecosystem.”

To hear Miles and Nicole dive into other aquatic subjects, including why our sea kelp forests are collapsing, watch the episode above.

Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

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

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Many of today’s teachers can’t pass the most basic civics or literacy tests — and yet they’re in charge of shaping the next generation.

Which is why in collaboration with conservative educational group PragerU, Oklahoma Superintendent for Public Instruction Ryan Walters has introduced a new test for teachers coming into his state from California and New York in an attempt to keep out “woke indoctrination.”

These tests may be extended in the future to teachers coming from eight other Democratic-led states, and they include basic questions that would root out any indoctrinated individual who plans to teach children biological lies based on the LGBTQ+ agenda.

“Ryan Walters of Oklahoma approached us and said, ‘Can you just do something very basic, because the complaints are coming in when parents are sending their kids to schools where teachers who have come in from California and New York are in charge of a classroom and are bringing in the woke indoctrination that they’ve received in California?’” PragerU CEO Marissa Streit tells Blaze media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”

Glenn is shocked by the questions on the test.

“This is the first question,” he says, before reading the questions. “What’s the primary biological distinction between males and females? A. Height and weight, B. Hairstyle, C. Personal preference, D. Chromosomes and reproductive anatomy.”

“That’s a tough one,” BlazeTV host Stu Burguiere chimes in.

“At birth, how is a person’s biological sex typically identified? A. Personal feelings, B. Parental choice, C. Online registration, D. Visual anatomical observation and chromosomes,” Glenn continues reading.

“That’s a fascinating one,” Stu says. “I mean, obviously the answer is D, but I would say a lot of people on the left would say B, right, like it’s a parental preference or something.”

Glenn isn’t hopeful that any indoctrinated teachers will pass, adding, “This only gets hard if you are completely disconnected from science and reality.”

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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Last Tuesday evening, my wife and I settled in for our annual fall ritual: the premiere of “Hard Knocks.” Some couples watch sitcoms. We bond over football. When Liev Schreiber’s voice kicks in, summer is slipping away, and the beer fridge is filling up.

We’ve watched for years, but this season felt different. The cameras didn’t linger on helmets crashing or coaches barking. Instead, they caught quieter moments: a player brushing off sweat, another flipping open a devotional. The message wasn’t painted in the end zone. It was lived out on the field.

End-zone paint doesn’t move people. Faith lived out in the open does.

That stands in sharp contrast to the NFL’s other big announcement: the return of slogans painted in end zones — “End Racism,” “It Takes All of Us,” and other socially conscious slogans. The league insists they matter. The results? Unclear. A stenciled phrase doesn’t change lives. A lived-out faith does.

Consider New York Jets quarterback Justin Fields. He recently admitted, “I’m low-key addicted to getting in my Bible.” He credits that daily habit for keeping him grounded when the noise grows loud.

In Houston, Coach DeMeco Ryans has helped make Bible studies a regular feature for the Texans. Nearly 40 players, coaches, and staff now attend. Quarterback C.J. Stroud thanks “my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” during interviews. NBC cut that phrase from a broadcast last season, but it hasn’t stopped him from saying it again.

“Hard Knocks” has become the best proof yet. In the first episode, backup cornerback Christian Benford prayed over an injured rookie, his words audible as trainers worked: “Heavenly Father, please give him strength. … As we’re weak, bless everything we do. … In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.”

HBO aired the prayer uncut. No sound bite, no irony — just a moment of faith in full view of teammates and millions of fans.

Episode two showed Damar Hamlin praying, thanking God for “focus, fellowship, brotherhood.” His devotional book sat in his hands, battered and beloved. Its frayed edges testified louder than any press release.

It’s impossible not to recall Tim Tebow. A decade ago, he was mocked for praying on the field. “Tebowing” became a late-night punchline. But Tebow’s courage made public faith in football possible. Today, players pray without irony — and with far less ridicule.

RELATED: The culture war isn’t a distraction — it’s the main front

The league points to its Inspire Change program, which has directed more than $460 million to nonprofits. Good. But the slogans? They’re background noise. As the Babylon Bee joked, “NFL Hoping 3rd Year of ‘End Racism’ Painted in End Zone Will Do the Trick.” The gag works because it highlights the gulf between gestures and genuine transformation.

The real transformation is happening elsewhere: in chapels, prayer huddles, and well-worn Bibles. These acts don’t just polish the league’s image. They shape the men who play the game — building character, humility, and unity in a way a slogan never could.

Sitting on the couch with my wife, I felt the difference. End-zone paint doesn’t move people. Faith lived out in the open does.

Painted slogans fade. Prayer changes hearts. If the NFL wants to inspire change, it should keep showing the moments that can’t be scripted — players living out their faith with quiet acts of devotion, one prayer at a time, and far more enduring than any PR campaign.

​Opinion & analysis, Sports, Prayer, Christianity, Hard knocks, Liev schreiber, National football league, Nfl, Racism, Anti-racism, Black lives matter, Culture war, New york jets, Buffalo bills, Demeco ryans, Jesus christ, Christian benford, Faith, Tim tebow, End zones, Nbc, Religion 

An underreported safety and national security crisis within America’s trucking industry is now gaining national attention after an illegal alien semi-truck driver has been accused of killing several people in Florida earlier this month.

Harjinder Singh, a 28-year-old Indian national, was arrested after he jackknifed his truck while allegedly making an illegal U-turn on August 12, crushing a minivan and killing everyone in the vehicle.

Singh obtained his commercial driver’s license in California despite facing pending immigration proceedings after he crossed illegally into the U.S. in 2018. The first Trump administration had fast-tracked Singh for deportation, but he was later released when he told immigration officials he was afraid to be deported back to India.

The recent tragic incident received national attention and highlighted how former President Joe Biden’s open-border immigration policies contributed to significant and overlooked issues within America’s trucking industry, including road safety concerns, declining wages, and broader national security risks that could take years to address.

Shannon Everett with American Truckers United has raised concerns about the effects of lowered driver qualifications for foreign nationals, which were justified by claims of an industry staffing crisis.

‘I feel that this could be the biggest national security threat to the homeland that nobody is covering.’

Everett told Blaze News that many new drivers are foreign-born, having obtained their CDLs after seeking asylum and receiving employment authorization documents.

According to the Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, nonresident foreign nationals can qualify for non-domiciled CDLs. Exceptions include Canadian and Mexican nationals, who must instead obtain a license from their home country, as the FMCSA has determined that the licensing standards in those countries meet its requirements.

Cole Stevens, the chief strategy officer for Stevens Trucking Co., similarly warned about the “massive increase in non-domiciled CDLs nationwide and CDL fraud,” stating that the current trucking industry ecosystem is “gutting the American trucking companies one by one.”

“We have definitely seen mass casualty events happening more frequently than ever before,” he told Blaze News. “Unvetted, untrained, and sometimes incapable of communicating/reading English road signs is a recipe for disaster.”

RELATED: Party’s over: Foreign truck drivers get reality check in Alabama, thanks to Trump

Photo by Matt Mills McKnight/Getty Images

The ultimate cost

The lack of proper vetting in favor of “rampant labor dumping” has reportedly led to an increase in fatal accidents.

American Truckers United shared a chart tracking the trend of large-truck-involved fatal crashes from 2008 to 2022.

The group noted that in 2016, the Obama administration’s FMCSA issued a memorandum removing the requirement to place drivers out of service for lack of English proficiency, which subsequently appeared to lead to an increase in accidents. From 2008 to 2015, the annual number of truck-involved fatal crashes peaked at 4,089. In contrast, from 2016 to 2023, the lowest annual number of truck-involved fatal crashes was 4,562, reaching a maximum of 5,873 in 2022.

‘We keep putting profit ahead of life, and I’m now a widow because of that.’

A heartbreaking incident exemplified this alarming trend in June 2024, when a semi-truck driver lost control of his vehicle on Colorado’s Highway 285, resulting in the death of Scott Miller, 64, a husband, father, and grandfather.

The driver’s semi-truck, which was transporting steel pipes, collided with the car in front of it, causing the truck to jackknife. The straps securing the truck’s cargo failed, and the pipes fell onto Miller’s vehicle, instantly crushing and killing him.

The driver of the truck was Ignacio Cruz Mendoza, a Mexican national who was illegally in the U.S. and did not hold a valid CDL at the time of the crash. Cruz Mendoza had been removed or voluntarily left the U.S. 16 times prior to the tragedy. After he spent just eight months of his year-long sentence in prison for the fatal accident, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed Crus Mendoza from the country.

RELATED: The deadly trucker crisis — and why mass migration is to blame

Photo by RJ Sangosti/Denver Post via Getty Images

The victim, Scott Miller, a commercial truck driver himself, and his wife, Deann Miller, previously operated their own trucking company hauling water.

Deann Miller rejected claims of a staffing shortage in the trucking industry, arguing that many qualified American drivers are willing to work, but some companies are cutting corners by hiring non-domiciled drivers to save costs.

“Truckers make good money, and they didn’t want to pay that,” she told Blaze News. “These companies are putting profit over lives.”

“We’re allowing [foreign nationals] to come in with whatever license they claim they had from their country,” Miller continued. “Our truck drivers are held to a much higher standard, and they go through special schooling.”

Miller explained that driving large trucks is “a skilled profession,” especially in mountainous areas where drivers must know how to downshift correctly, as brakes alone cannot stop an 80,000-pound truck traveling downhill.

‘This is not even an issue for the trucking industry. This is a national security issue.’

Miller told Blaze News that there is another underreported aspect to the story: slave labor.

“These companies and corporations are bringing people over from China, Africa, Russia, Mexico, all over the place, and they’re promising them good wages and a place to live. What’s actually happening is these drivers are literally living out of their trucks because the trucking companies are only paying them minimum wage,” she said.

Miller refuses to let her husband’s death be in vain. She is advocating for mountain endorsements for truck drivers and a return to manned roadside weigh stations and inspection stops.

“We should have stops at the bottom of every mountain road and make sure every truck is assessed before it’s alone on these mountain bypasses,” she added. “But that’s money — tax dollars. But what’s more important: money or life? We keep putting profit ahead of life, and I’m now a widow because of that.”

“My husband lost his life,” Miller said. “And I lost my life the day my husband died. … He was my best friend. We did everything together. I don’t have my best friend any more.”

RELATED: Highway to hell: Mass influx of foreign-born truckers cause carnage on American roads

Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images

National security risks

The increase in loosely vetted foreign nationals entering the trucking workforce after crossing the border has also sparked concerns about national security.

Raman Dhillon, CEO of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, has called the alleged driver shortage a myth that has been used to justify relaxed driver requirements.

Dhillon stated that he warned the Biden administration that there would be “a crisis coming” due to the surge in foreign nationals crossing the border and entering the trucking industry with little industry experience.

“This is not even an issue for the trucking industry. This is a national security issue,” he declared.

The Transportation Security Administration issued a report in 2017, warning about the increased number of global “ramming attacks” by terrorists.

‘Non-domiciled CDL issuance represents a growing trend for which no one has yet fully accounted.’

“Commercial vehicles — distinguished by their large size, weight, and carrying capacity — present an especially attractive mechanism for vehicle ramming attacks because of the ease with which they can penetrate security barriers and the large-scale damage they can inflict on people and infrastructure,” the report read.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated in April that the National Counterterrorism Center identified 600 people with terrorism ties who entered the U.S. illegally, claimed asylum, and were paroled by the Biden administration.

American Truckers United argued, “The American people DESERVE to know: Were some of these 600 individuals issued Non-Domicile CDLs, giving them access to operate massive commercial trucks on our roads? This is a NATIONAL SECURITY CRISIS! Demand transparency NOW!”

Stevens called this possibility the “ultimate Trojan horse that nobody is talking about.”

“I feel that this could be the biggest national security threat to the homeland that nobody is covering,” Stevens told Blaze News. “Every non-domiciled license I have seen has been under the age of 42, most in their 20s.”

Stevens noted that the average age of American truck drivers is roughly 51 years old.

“I haven’t seen a single one over that age for the foreign drivers/licenses that have been issued since COVID. Something is off, right?” he questioned.

Last year, two illegal aliens, Jordanian nationals, were arrested after they allegedly attempted to breach Marine Corps Base Quantico. The men reportedly posed as Amazon delivery drivers and, failing to provide proper credentials, tried to drive their box truck onto the base anyway before they were stopped by guards who deployed vehicle denial barriers.

The incident sparked concerns about a potential terrorist plot, though those claims were never substantiated.

How we got here

Although Canada and Mexico are the only two countries with CDL reciprocity agreements with the U.S., the FMCSA can issue temporary waivers, valid up to 90 days, or exemptions, valid up to two years, that allow foreign drivers from other countries to operate within the U.S.

A July report from Overdrive attempted to answer whether there has been a recent increase in non-domiciled CDL issuance across the United States. The outlet noted that determining the number of issued licenses was difficult because there is no universal tracking system, and several states that issue these CDLs do not track their own data either.

“Overdrive found just seven states that don’t issue CDLs to noncitizens with work authorization; 11 states do issue non-domiciled CDLs but can’t readily produce data about them; and 32 states ultimately did provide numbers. Among the states that didn’t provide data, six said they would have to pay a contractor to produce the data, and two offered no response at all,” the report read.

Despite missing data, Overdrive estimated that there are more than 60,000 active non-domiciled CDLs currently in the country. The report stated that “non-domiciled CDL issuance has increased quickly among the majority of states that provided data,” noting that Louisiana issued only 20 in 2021 and jumped to 172 in 2024.

“Non-domiciled CDL issuance represents a growing trend for which no one has yet fully accounted,” Overdrive concluded.

Everett told Blaze News that non-domiciled CDLs are primarily issued in California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Montana, Texas, and Florida.

“They are not vetting these drivers,” he warned, adding that in some instances, CDLs have been issued to individuals who have provided inaccurate birthdate information or failed to submit their full names.

RELATED: A trucker’s open letter to DOGE’s Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk

Photographer: Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Biden-Harris Administration Trucking Action Plan further exacerbated issues within the industry by “reduc[ing] barriers to drivers getting CDLs” and providing states with funds and guidance to “expedite licensing.”

As part of the administration’s attempt to address the alleged staffing shortage in the trucking industry, it threw millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants at training schools.

However, an increase in pop-up CDL mills appeared to follow the federal government’s financial support.

In May, reports emerged that a trucking academy with branches in Washington and Oregon had been accused of bribing an independent state tester with cash-filled envelopes to pass its students. The school advertised teaching driving classes in Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish.

And this is not an isolated instance; there are several recent cases involving similar alleged CDL fraud schemes.

Authorities in Florida arrested eight individuals, including two Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles employees, for their alleged participation in a scheme that involved selling thousands of fraudulent licenses, including CDLs, to illegal aliens.

The Department of Justice announced the arrest of a former Massachusetts State Police trooper in August, who was sentenced to prison for three months for his role in a CDL fraud plot. The trooper and three MSP employees allegedly “conspired to give preferential treatment to at least 17 CDL applicants by agreeing to give passing scores on their CDL tests regardless of whether or not they actually passed.”

A July report from Freight Waves stated that despite a $926 million grant in 2024 to FMCSA to increase carrier safety, only 6% of interstate carriers actually underwent a compliance review.

“What does that actually mean? It means you can start a trucking company, put equipment on the road, hire drivers with questionable training — and the government might never even glance in your direction,” the news outlet wrote. “It also means brokers, shippers, and even insurance companies are making decisions based on an illusion of compliance. A lot of these carriers aren’t flying under the radar — they were never even on it to begin with.”

Call to action

Everett predicted that highway safety will continue to deteriorate unless “sizeable action” is taken to correct the course.

American Truckers United has requested that President Donald Trump’s DOT immediately revoke and ban non-domiciled CDLs for noncitizens. The group also called for restrictions on foreign CDLs, requiring that those drivers operate only within designated commercial trade zones by banning domestic hauling beyond those areas.

‘Allowing unvetted individuals into the trucking workforce poses unacceptable risks to national security, public safety, and the flow of commerce.’

Everett told Blaze News, “All of the countries identified as having dumped drivers into the American labor market are well known for third-world conditions and living standards for their workers. This has had the intended effect.”

He explained that labor dumping has driven down wages and living standards for American workers.

“It’s important to note that no enforcement mechanisms exist to ensure these new drivers are being paid prevailing wages or income taxes. Likewise because of staffing problems at FMCSA, little to no enforcement exists for these operators when it comes to safety regulations,” Everett added.

Stevens believes some issues could be resolved by implementing new license standards and federal-level auditing, particularly for interstate commerce.

“I’m a big proponent of states’ rights over any federalization, but movement of goods [and] people between states seems like a federal issue to me,” Stevens said. “And right now that licensing structure amongst states is in shambles. And I believe it has been exploited way beyond comprehension.”

“I would love to see President Trump call for a full audit of all CDLs issued over the last five years, because I have a feeling that this problem trickles into all forms of licenses,” he stated.

RELATED: Were Biden’s strict fuel economy standards illegal? Sean Duffy says yes.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy. Photographer: Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images

DOT Secretary Sean Duffy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and President Trump have moved to address the issues impacting the trucking industry.

In June, Duffy announced that the DOT would launch a nationwide audit on non-domiciled CDLs to specifically review for potentially “unqualified individuals obtaining licenses and posing a hazard on our roads.”

The review aims to identify and prevent any potential patterns of abuse within state issuance procedures.

Duffy stated, “The open-borders policies of the last administration allowed millions to flood our country — leading to serious allegations that the trucking licensing system is being exploited.”

A DOT spokesperson told Blaze News, “Under Secretary Duffy’s leadership, the U.S. Department of Transportation is restoring strict security standards to protect the traveling public and safeguard our supply chains. Allowing unvetted individuals into the trucking workforce poses unacceptable risks to national security, public safety, and the flow of commerce. That is why we are working to close any loopholes, enhance background checks, and ensure only qualified, lawful drivers are entrusted with operating America’s commercial vehicles.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration also moved to reverse Obama’s 2016 memo, re-enforcing penalties for lack of English proficiency. The White House called it “a non-negotiable safety requirement for professional drivers.”

Rubio announced on Thursday that the State Department would immediately pause all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers. The announcement appeared to be a reaction to the recent fatal crash in Florida involving an illegal alien.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official told Blaze News, “The Biden administration abused its parole authority to create an industrial-scale catch-and-release scheme, letting in unvetted illegal aliens including known suspected terrorists, gang members, and criminals, and the Trump administration is correcting that. DHS terminated parole for nearly 500,000 illegal aliens. Many states are using the SAVE database to help identify illegal aliens before granting them benefits like a driver’s license. We conduct thorough screening and vetting for any individual encountered at our borders to identify threats to public safety and national security.”

“While DHS does not directly coordinate with state transportation agencies in vetting CDL applicants, we will use every tool and resource available to protect the homeland, prevent terrorism, and keep our roads safe. The safety of Americans comes first,” the official said.

The TSA did not respond to a request for comment.

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Police in Ontario, Canada, said they charged a homeowner after he fought with an alleged intruder earlier this week.

Kawartha Lakes Police Service said officers responded around 3:20 a.m. Monday to an apartment on Kent Street in Lindsay for a report of an altercation between two males. Lindsay is about 2.5 hours northeast of Toronto.

‘I know if someone breaks into my house or someone else’s, you’re gonna fight for your life,’ Ford added. ‘This guy has a weapon. You’re gonna use any force you possibly can to protect your family. I’m telling you, I know everyone would.’

Arriving officers learned that the resident woke up to find an intruder inside his apartment, police said, adding that the intruder received “serious life-threatening injuries” as a result of the altercation.

The intruder was taken to Ross Memorial Hospital and later airlifted to a Toronto hospital, police said, adding that there is no risk to public safety.

However, police said they charged the 44-year-old homeowner with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon and then released him with a future court date. While police did not describe the weapon, CTV News reported that court documents indicate the homeowner used a knife.

Police said they already wanted the 41-year-old intruder — also a Lindsay resident — for unrelated offenses at the time of the incident. Police said they charged the intruder with possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose; break, enter, and theft; mischief under $5,000; and “fail to comply probation.”

Police said the intruder will be held in custody pending a bail hearing when he’s released from the hospital. CTV News, citing court documents, said Michael Kyle Breen’s criminal record includes prior break-and-enter charges.

The incident got the attention of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who said the charges against the homeowner indicate “something is broken” in the system.

“I know if someone breaks into my house or someone else’s, you’re gonna fight for your life,” Ford added. “This guy has a weapon. You’re gonna use any force you possibly can to protect your family. I’m telling you, I know everyone would.”

RELATED: Leave your car keys at your front door so car thieves don’t hurt you, Toronto Police tell residents. Backlash is brutal.

Indeed, observers have been delivering a steady barrage of barbs against police on social media for charging the homeowner. Here’s a sampling of comments underneath a completely unrelated post on the Kawartha Lakes Police page on X:

“Any idea why it’s illegal to defend yourself/home from an intruder with a known criminal history?” one commenter wrote. “The whole world is waiting to hear some dumb-ass woke excuse for Canadas suicidal empathy.””Which one of you dufus cops charged the guy for defending his home from a felon?” another user wondered. “The world can’t wait til trial to see who it was and if it was your town’s dingbat policy or his own personal nincompoopery. Every line of your trial will be scrutinized online. Congrats. Yer famous.””Shame on you Kawartha cops,” another commenter declared. “If you did your job in the first place you wouldn’t have a wanted criminal running free breaking into people’s houses. Way to alienate the public, especially those like me [who] back the blue.””So if a wanted criminal broke into one of your officer’s houses, you’d advise them to just bend over and take it? Would you help the thief pack up your belongings?” another user asked. “Biggest chicken s**t act I’ve read in the news in a long time … and in this day and age, that’s saying something.”

The invectives apparently hit cops so hard that the Kawartha Lakes chief of police found it necessary to fire off a scolding message to the public on Facebook, calling the criticism “unjust and inaccurate.”

Chief Kirk Robertson added that while it’s lawful in Canada for individuals to use reasonable force to protect themselves and their property if they believe they are facing a threat, the “law requires that any defensive action be proportionate to the threat faced. This means that while homeowners do have the right to protect themselves and their property, the use of force must be reasonable given the circumstances.”

RELATED: Blaze News original: 5 infuriating times authorities punished victims of physical attacks — as well as a Good Samaritan

A pair of Blaze News writers who live in the Great White North offered their thoughts on the matter as well.

“If an intruder breaks into a person’s home, the homeowner should not have to consider the intruder’s feelings when protecting their property or family,” Andrew Chapados said. “Ontario, and Canada as a whole, needs to introduce the castle doctrine as soon as possible.”

Joe MacKinnon concluded the following: “Canadians voted in the same government that unlawfully declared martial law against peaceful protesters, shrugged off church burnings, stigmatizes lawful gun owners, pushed blood libels, strained the country with unprecedented amounts of unassimilable foreign nationals, and routinely euthanizes its most vulnerable citizens. I highly doubt that there will be sustained backlash now over the prosecution of a man who woke up to find a wanted thug in his apartment and acted defensively. Canada’s criminal justice system not only gives certain races preferential treatment in terms of sentencing but — as evidenced by this case — holds the lawful to a higher standard than criminal elements. It’s an increasingly unworkable system where the good are punished and the bad are rewarded.”

Indeed, this wasn’t the first time something like this has happened in Canada.

Back in January 2024, police in Peterborough, Ontario — which is about 45 minutes east of Lindsay — charged the victim of a bat attack with aggravated assault after the victim allegedly took the bat from the attacker and hit him with it several times.

RELATED: Pregnant Tesla passenger ‘injured by flying rock,’ police in Canada say — and observers have field day with cops’ word choice

In that case, the public also got angry at cops for charging the victim — and Police Chief Stu Betts, like his counterpart on the Kawartha Lakes, took a defensive posture and called the criticism “unfair.”

The Toronto Sun reported in April 2024 that the crook who hit the clerk with the baseball bat was sentenced to 18 months in jail, while the clerk who hit him back with the bat — international student Tejeshwar Kalia — faces up to 14 years in jail.

RELATED: Trudeau has resigned, but his persecution of Canadians continues

The Sun said the video shows Kalia didn’t gain control of the bat until he and the assailant were outside, and at that point Kalia lunged at the assailant, who was reaching for his pocket and said he would “stab me,” Kalia added.

The paper added in a follow-up story that while GoFundMe canceled Kalia’s crowdfunding campaign after it had raised $16,000 to help him pay for legal help as well as rent, food, and school expenses, GiveSendGo and its co-founder reached out to Kalia to try to help him. The Sun added that Kalia is out on bail but under house arrest, which means he can’t work and has no money.

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A Milwaukee woman is getting a mental assessment after she was arrested over a gruesome and disturbing find in her apartment, Wisconsin police said.

Investigators initially responded to a call reporting a foul smell from the apartment near North 27th and State streets. Shyanna Brothers, 28, told police that the smell was coming from old food before they found a cardboard box in a locked room.

‘I saw her out here. She asked me for some change, and then she stated that it was so stinky in her house, and she couldn’t go in.’

Police said the large box was surrounded by hundred of flies, and they found the remains of a decomposing baby inside. The rest of the room was empty.

“Bodily fluids from [the child’s] body were soaking the bottom of the cardboard box,” the criminal complaint reads.

The child was identified as the 10-month-old baby of the woman, and an autopsy found that the child had suffered a skull fracture, likely from blunt-force trauma.

Brothers told police that her former boyfriend killed the baby and forced her to hide the body, but police said they found no evidence that any male had been present at the home or had been living there.

“There was no furniture inside the apartment,” the complaint reads. “Inside a bedroom located to the east of the kitchen there was an air mattress and a television.”

Police said the child was beyond recognition because of the advanced state of decomposition.

Detectives said that Brothers made very strange statements when interviewed that seemed to worsen after time.

“He’s going to prison for this; he thinks he is a genius,” she reportedly said. “It may look like it’s me, but I’m going to get exonerated.”

She said, “Oh God, we f**ked up today,” and then barked afterward.

RELATED: Police reveal gruesome details in brutal murder of 5-year-old boy found in dumpster after 2 neighbors are arrested

A neighbor who didn’t want to be identified said she never saw Brothers with a baby.

“I saw her out here. She asked me for some change, and then she stated that it was so stinky in her house, and she couldn’t go in. She couldn’t use the restroom, and I was just wondering why,” the neighbor said to WISN-TV.

She had also noticed that Brothers spent a lot of time outside of the apartment in recent weeks.

“I have kids of my own,” she added. “It’s a lot of help out here in Milwaukee. So if you ladies need help, get your resources. These babies need to be safe.”

WISN also tracked down Brothers’ adoptive mother in Florida, who said she didn’t know about the baby and had not heard from Brothers for about eight years.

Brothers is being held on a $50,000 bond, and the results of her mental assessment are expected to be completed in a month’s time.

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Zohran Mamdani is now the Democrats’ nominee for mayor of New York City. He is also an openly anti-Semitic socialist.

His nomination puts the Democratic Party in a position not unlike the one Republicans faced in 1991, when David Duke — a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan — became the GOP nominee in Louisiana’s gubernatorial runoff.

Now it’s the Democrats’ turn. They must reject Zohran Mamdani and the hateful, dangerous movement he represents, just as the Republicans did with David Duke.

This is the Democrats’ David Duke moment. And they’re failing the test.

Principle over party

In Louisiana’s 1991 “jungle primary,” the two top vote-getters were:

Edwin Edwards, a former Democratic governor who had been charged with bribery and later convicted of extortion and money laundering; andDavid Duke, the former grand wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who ran as a Republican.

Duke received only 32% of the vote, but that was enough to advance to the runoff. Although he had run for office several times in the 1980s as a Democrat, Duke ran as a Republican in 1991 — and won the Republican candidacy.

Faced with an impossible choice of backing an unrepentant white supremacist on their party’s ticket, Republicans rallied around Edwards, launching a campaign under the nose-holding slogan: “Vote for the crook — it’s important.”

And it worked. The crook Edwards defeated Duke, 61% to 39%.

That crossover vote was no small feat. This was the early 1990s — a time when Southern Democrats were in full collapse. Just three years earlier, George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis by 10 points in Louisiana. Even the governor at the time, Buddy Roemer, had switched parties and run as a Republican because the Democratic brand was so out of favor.

In fact, bipartisan revulsion at Roemer’s political opportunism contributed to Duke finishing second in the primary. But in the end, Republicans knew what needed to be done. They didn’t like voting for Edwards, but a white supremacist was a nonstarter.

Failing the test

Thirty-four years later, a Jew-hating red is the Democrats’ candidate for mayor of New York City, one of the most prominent political offices in America. This is the Democrats’ David Duke moment.

But instead of rejecting Mamdani — who, like Duke, should have been a washout from the start — prominent Democrats are embracing him.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for example, told Fox News that Mamdani is the “future” of the Democratic Party.

Mamdani isn’t some garden-variety progressive. He occupies a darker corner of the political spectrum — somewhere between Vladimir Lenin and Hamas. His candidacy should be as repugnant as a KKK grand wizard.

In 2021, he summed up his anti-Israel worldview in one sentence: “There are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s [boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel] or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production.”

Mamdani doesn’t just support the BDS movement against Israel. He’s defended calls to “globalize the intifada” — a phrase that means exporting terrorism against Jews to every corner of the world, including the United States.

Mamdani has refused to condemn the global terror campaign against Jews, explaining that globalizing the intifada simply reflects a “desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.”

Then, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and slaughtered nearly 1,200 innocents on October 7, 2023, Mamdani condemned Israel, not Hamas.

Imagine a candidate who refused to condemn lynchings. He’d be ostracized on the spot — and rightfully so. But Mamdani cannot bring himself to denounce the murder of Jewish women and children — and Democrat leaders can’t bring themselves to denounce him either.

A terror-sympathizing socialist

Domestically, Mamdani is also extraordinarily sympathetic toward Islamic terrorists, having publicly criticized the U.S. government for putting al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki under surveillance.

RELATED: Socialist Mamdani promises to ‘Trump-proof’ New York City, expel ICE

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Although Mamdani won the Democratic primary, he is actually an official member of the Democratic Socialists of America. That group’s radical platform includes:

Defunding the police;Releasing prisoners;Abolishing prisons;Nationalizing industry and abolishing capitalism;Eliminating carbon-based fuels;Providing public housing for all; andClosing all U.S. military bases.

As reported by the Free Press, Mamdani’s social media history is full of disqualifying statements for any serious candidate. A few examples:

“Taxation isn’t theft. Capitalism is.”“Queer liberation means defund the police.”“We don’t just need more accountability. We need fewer police.”

Bigger than politics

For conservatives, it’s tempting to sit back and enjoy the spectacle of Democrats self-destructing. But this is bigger than party politics.

Both major parties have a responsibility to reject mainstreaming communism and Islamism in the United States.

In 1991, Republicans chose principle over party. They helped defeat a candidate who represented the worst of their history.

Now it’s the Democrats’ turn. They must reject Zohran Mamdani and the hateful, dangerous movement he represents, just as the Republicans did with David Duke.

Because, as the bumper sticker said in 1991, “It’s important.”

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