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A 9-year-old prodigy delivered an important lesson to Democrats regarding school choice while recently testifying before Nevada lawmakers.

Juliette Leong took a stand for educational freedom during her powerful speech in front of Nevada lawmakers.

‘Wow, Juliette understands education policy better than most Democrats.’

Leong is a vocal proponent of Assembly Bill 584, a legislative proposal introduced on May 14 that is aimed at overhauling the state’s public education system and enhancing school choice for students in Nevada. The transformative school choice bill — also known as the Accountability in Education Act — has been championed by Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican.

AB 584 introduces RISE education accounts, which would empower students and parents to redirect public funds toward private education, charter schools, homeschooling, or tutoring services if their local public school is failing to meet performance standards.

“This bill expands school choice, holds schools accountable for performance, supports educators, and prioritizes literacy and career readiness,” Leong wrote on Instagram. “Nevada has given $11.5 billion to its school districts this biennium, but without accountability, no amount of money will ever be enough.”

Leong recently told the Assembly Committee on Ways and Means, “I’m here today to express my strong support for AB 584 to expand school choice.”

“Thanks to Governor Lombardo, Nevada is on its way to becoming a true school choice state, giving the children the tools to thrive,” the 9-year-old proclaimed.

“Our school system is too large and too slow to keep up with the world shaped by rapidly changing job markets,” Leong explained. “That’s why families need options like smaller private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling.”

Leong said, “I spell at a third-grade level and do high school-level math, and no school could accommodate my needs, so I’m homeschooled.”

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

Video Screenshot juliette.leong Instagram

Juliette noted that her homeschooling has enabled her to thrive in numerous ways, including being an “internationally acclaimed art prodigy, award-winning mathlete, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and influencer who is enrolled in college classes,” according to Leong’s personal website.

Leong began painting at 8 months old and started selling her paintings for nearly $20,000 when she was just 7 years old.

All of the proceeds from the sales of her paintings have been donated to charities and organizations such as Asian American Donor Program, Race to Erase MS, Ladies Who Rock 4 A Cause, Oakland Public Education Fund, Art in Action, Mensa Foundation, APA Heritage Foundation, and Asian Inc.

Leong has reportedly donated more than $250,000 to numerous nonprofit organizations.

Juliette — who is a TEDx speaker — has exhibited her artwork at the Reno Tahoe International Art Show, the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, and the Reno Generator.

Leong is also a talented violinist who, at age 5, was the youngest violin soloist to perform at Carnegie Hall. She is the youngest member of the Reno Philharmonic Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Juliette is also an impressive singer who has performed the national anthem for the Texas Rangers, Oakland Athletics, Reno Aces, and Sacramento River Cats.

RELATED: DeSantis ratifies ‘game changer’ school choice bill allowing all Florida students to get school vouchers

Furnished by the Leong family

Leong told the lawmakers, “It’s not just about academics. It’s about unlocking talents, building confidence, and creating opportunities. It’s about teaching kids to solve problems and make a difference.”

“Since every kid is different and every family has different circumstances, school choice is how we prepare Nevada students for real-world success, and that everyone who wants a job gets a job,” Juliette stressed. “The world is moving forward, and Nevada needs to move forward with the world. Thank you, Governor Lombardo, for fighting for school choice.”

Leong’s speech on school choice racked up thousands of views on social media and caught the eye of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“Wow, Juliette understands education policy better than most Democrats,” Cruz declared on the X social media platform.

Cruz added, “I’m leading the fight to ensure that my Universal School Choice Act is included in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill — let’s get school choice done.”

Lombardo said in April, “After delivering the largest investment in K-12 education in Nevada’s history, we owe it to our communities to match that investment with real results — and real accountability. I’m proud of what we’ve done so far. But let’s be clear — we can no longer accept lack of funding as an excuse for chronic underperformance.”

Gov. Lombardo declared, “That’s why I’m introducing the Accountability in Education Act, which is legislation built on one guiding principle: No child in Nevada should be trapped in a failing school because of their ZIP code or held back because of how much their parents or guardians earn.”

Assembly Bill 584 will face scrutiny from the state’s Democrat-controlled legislature.

“He has leverage, because if there are gonna be certain things that the Democrats want to pass, and the governor has a veto power, so they have to figure out how to work with him so, like, both sides can get what they want,” Valeria Gurr — a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children — told the Washington Examiner. “Maybe not everything will pass, but certain pieces certainly will pass.”

RELATED: How a federal case could decide the future of faith-based schools

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​School choice, Nevada, Education, Charter schools, Juliette leong, Joe lombardo, Ab 584, Assembly bill 584, News 

Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) accused President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security on Saturday of “sowing chaos” after footage emerged showing DHS officials handcuffing one of Nadler’s aides during an apparent rioter hunt.

The White House and the DHS subsequently set the record straight, the White House telling Blaze News that Nadler’s condemnation over law enforcement actions was “shameful.”

Background

The DHS rescinded Biden administration guidelines last month that previously barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests in courthouses.

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS’ assistant secretary for public affairs,
noted at the time that “the ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense,” adding that it “conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be.”

Making good use of its newfound liberty, ICE arrested Dylan Josue Lopez Contreras, a 20-year-old illegal alien from Venezuela after his hearing in an immigration court in lower Manhattan on May 21.

The DHS noted that Contreras was an illegal alien who stole into the U.S. over a year ago and was cut loose by the Biden administration.

While characterized by the liberal media as a “Bronx high school student,” Contreras — whom Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres (N.Y.) said was “making good on the promise of the American dream” — actually finished high school in his home country and was taking college prep classes at the time of his arrest. He now faces expedited removal proceedings.

RELATED: Courthouse footage spells trouble for Wisconsin judge accused of helping illegal alien evade ICE

Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

A week after Contreras’ arrest, protesters descended on another immigration courthouse in the city — housed within the same federal facility as Nadler’s Manhattan office — decrying the arrest of Contreras and other illegal aliens and clashing with police. According to the Gothamist, police arrested and charged five people and issued criminal summonses to 18 other radicals.

Incident in Nadler’s office

While radicals raged against police outside, DHS Federal Protective Service officers entered the facility to ensure the safety of the federal employees on the premises, including in Nadler’s office.

The DHS noted in a statement obtained by Blaze News that “upon arrival, officers were granted entry and encountered four individuals. Officers identified themselves and explained their intent to conduct a security check; however, one individual became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office. The officers then detained the individual in the hallway for the purpose of completing the security check.”

Footage obtained by Gothamist shows one officer handcuffing a congressional staffer, while another officer argues with someone off-camera about whether the detainee had shoved the arresting agent.

In conversation with another staffer blocking a doorway, an officer noted that he was checking to see whether Nadler’s team was “harboring rioters in the office.”

Nadler’s team reportedly had immigrant rights activists in the office earlier for a meeting.

‘I am alarmed by the aggressive and heavy-handed tactics DHS is employing in New York City.’

The DHS noted and Nadler confirmed that the staffers were released without further incident. The staffer who was handcuffed told the Gothamist that “everything resolved.”

Nadler
said in a statement that Trump and his agency “are sowing chaos in our communities, using intimidation tactics against both citizens and noncitizens in a reckless and dangerous manner.”

“In the most recent and deeply troubling incident, DHS agents forcefully entered my congressional office and handcuffed a member of my staff,” continued Nadler. “While no arrests were made and the situation was quickly de-escalated, I am alarmed by the aggressive and heavy-handed tactics DHS is employing in New York City and across the country.”

“The decision to enter a congressional office and detain a staff member demonstrates a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries,” continued Nadler. “If this can happen in a Member of Congress’s office, it can happen to anyone — and it is happening.”

Nadler
told the New York Times, “They’re behaving like fascists.”

RELATED: ‘Gestapo-like behavior’: Another Democrat compares ICE to Nazis who ‘terrorize people’ in the night

Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The White House backed the DHS’ account and slammed Nadler for his apparent spin.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Blaze News, “FPS officers were responding to information that protesters were present inside the congressman’s office and were initially granted entry, but unfortunately an individual became confrontational and tried to physically block access for the officers completing a security check.”

“It’s shameful that Russia hoaxer and Trump derangement sufferer Jerry Nadler would choose to attack law enforcement officers for doing their job because he disagrees with President Trump’s immigration policy,” added Jackson.

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​Political, Jerrold nadler, Nadler, Democrat, Manhattan, New york, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Homeland security, Detention, Donald trump, White house, Politics 

On June 1, 2025, in Boulder, Colorado, a man named Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, who Department of Homeland Security officials claim was in the country illegally, attacked a peaceful pro-Israel demonstration with a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, injuring eight people. According to reports, Soliman yelled, “Free Palestine!” during the attack, which the FBI is investigating as a targeted act of terrorism.

“Evil struck,” says Glenn Beck. “Not with a drone, not with a bomb, not with a cyber attack, or a coordinated cell, but with fire — ancient, primal, vicious.”

— (@)

Glenn describes Soliman as “an illegal immigrant whose Visa had expired not once but two times.”

The flames from Soliman’s Molotov cocktails “quickly licked up the curtains, the memories, the photographs, and the people,” he laments.

One of the people injured was an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor — “a woman who escaped Hitler’s oven only to be set ablaze here in the nation that was supposed to be the world’s safe harbor,” says Glenn. “She survived last century’s greatest evil only to be hunted in this century in this country.”

The attack makes him wonder “how many more like [Soliman] are here hiding in plain sight, walking amongst us.”

“Why, two decades after 9/11, have we learned nothing?” he asks, noting that “people overstaying their visas” was a major reason 9/11 happened.

The Patriot Act — a law that expanded government surveillance and law enforcement powers to combat terrorism following the 9/11 attacks — “has done an awful lot of things but apparently not what stopped what caused 9/11,” Glenn condemns. “Do you remember the commissions? Do you remember the hearings? Do you remember all of the promises? They meant nothing.”

As long as we continue “trading security for ideology, borders for feelings, sovereignty for slogans,” these attacks won’t stop, he warns.

“When will you say you’ve had enough?”

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.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Blazetv, Blaze media, Anti israel, Anti-semitism, Boulder colorado, Boulder terror attack, Mohamed soliman, Free palestine 

An immigrant, motivated by anti-Semitic beliefs, has been accused of brutally attacking a peaceful pro-Israel group advocating for hostages held captive by Hamas.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national in the United States despite reportedly overstaying his visa, is suspected of attacking a group of individuals participating in a walk in Boulder, Colorado.

‘This act of terror is being investigated as an act of ideologically motivated violence based on the early information, the evidence, and witness accounts.’

The attack targeted the “Run for Their Lives” group, a grassroots organization that gathered on Pearl Street on Sunday evening to support the release of the hostages captured by the terrorist group in October 2023. According to the FBI, the group chapter gathers weekly.

Video footage of the attack allegedly showed a shirtless Soliman yelling at the group while holding two apparent Molotov cocktails, with a small patch of grass burning at his feet.

During the attack, Soliman allegedly yelled, “Free Palestine!”

RELATED: Father of leftist accused of gunning down Israeli embassy staffers was Democrat’s guest

Photo by ELI IMADALI/AFP via Getty Images

A second video showed a lone police officer handcuffing Soliman. Moments later, another officer arrived to assist with the arrest.

As the arrest was taking place, bystanders filled containers with water from a nearby fountain to soothe victims’ burn wounds, according to a video shared on social media.

The individual who uploaded the videos to social media stated that in addition to Molotov cocktails, the suspect used a gardening tool to “light[] people on fire with gasoline,” burning “about 6 people.”

Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of FBI Denver, described the device as “a makeshift flamethrower.”

CNN reported that eight people, from 52 to 88 years old, were injured in the attack, including a Holocaust survivor. Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn described one of the victims as “very seriously injured.”

Authorities have not reported any fatalities.

Image Source: Boulder Police Department

The FBI stated that it is investigating the attack as “a targeted act of terrorism.”

FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in a post on X, “We are aware of and fully investigating a targeted terror attack in Boulder, Colorado. Our agents and local law enforcement are on the scene already, and we will share updates as more information becomes available.”

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino stated, “This act of terror is being investigated as an act of ideologically motivated violence based on the early information, the evidence, and witness accounts.”

RELATED: Chicago Marxist yells ‘Free, free Palestine’ after ‘brutal terrorist attack’ on Israeli staffers in DC

Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Soliman was detained on Sunday evening and remains in custody at the Boulder County Jail on a $10 million bond, according to Fox News. Soliman reportedly faces numerous charges, including first-degree murder, crimes against at-risk adults/elderly, assault, and use of explosives or incendiary devices during a felony.

As of Monday morning, jail records stated Soliman was charged with “murder in the 1st degree” despite no reported fatalities.

The police department confirmed in a Monday post on social media that “no victims have died.”

When contacted for clarification, the department stated he was charged with “attempted murder.”

Dionne Waugh, the department’s public information officer, who included pronouns in her email signature linked to a resource on “personal pronouns,” told Blaze News, “Please read the code section. It’s attempted murder.”

Soliman’s first court appearance is scheduled for Monday afternoon.

The Department of Homeland Security reported that Soliman was illegally in the U.S.

Assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin stated that he lawfully entered the country in August 2022 on a B-2 visa but illegally remained in the U.S. after the visa expired in February 2023. She noted that he filed for asylum in September 2022.

The DHS confirmed to Blaze News that Soliman “is illegally in our country.”

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​News, Boulder colorado, Boulder, Colorado, Anti-semitic, Anti-semitism, Illegal immigration crisis, Illegal immigration, Immigration crisis, Immigration, Dan bongino, Kash patel, Fbi, Federal bureau of investigation, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Mohamed sabry soliman, Terror attack, Terrorist attoack, Hamas, Israel, Pro-israel, Palestine, Pro-palestine, Israel palestine, Politics 

Two female track and field athletes turned their backs on the podium over the weekend rather than share it with a male athlete.

After finishing third and fourth in high jump — and ahead of the transgender athlete — Reese Eckard of Sherwood High School and Alexa Anderson of Tigard High School stepped off the winner’s podium Saturday and turned their backs to the medal presentation, signaling they did not wish to take part.

‘We didn’t refuse to stand on the podium out of hate.’

Video from the Oregon state championships at Hayward Field in Eugene showed an official direct the two girls out of the view of photographers as the other competitors received their medals. The young women then stood off to the side. At the same time, male athlete Lia Rose took the fifth-place position, sharing the spot with a female.

Anderson told Fox News she and Eckard simply wanted to make a statement about fairness: “We didn’t refuse to stand on the podium out of hate. We did it because someone has to say this isn’t right. In order to protect the integrity and fairness of girls sports we must stand up for what is right.”

RELATED: 4 Oregon HS girls refuse to compete against male athlete who is dominating girls’ track and field

“We are finally seeing some women fed up with this insanity,” T.J. Moe, producer of BlazeTV’s “Fearless with Jason Whitlock,” told Blaze News. “This trend will continue. Soon these confused boys will be standing alone on the podiums. Soon after that they will be competing alone because these women have finally decided to do something about it.”

Former NCAA champion and women’s sports activist Riley Gaines shared the video and commented, “Two female athletes in Oregon refused to stand on the podium because a boy was awarded a place. Girls have had enough.”

Comedian Tim Young added, “Not all heroes wear capes. Good for them! Shame on the adult who pushed them off to the sidelines.”

It was the second time in two months that female high school athletes in Oregon have protested competing against Rose.

In April, Blaze News reported about four girls who refused to participate against the male at the Therapeutic Associates Chehalem Classic; the girls even took a knee in protest.

Sophia Carpenter said she and three other females forfeited after learning they would be forced to compete against a biological male. Rose ended up beating 18 girls to win the competition.

RELATED: ‘Death of women’s sports’: Male track runner shocks viewers with massive size advantage over female competitors

Transgender athlete AB Hernandez has caused controversy in girls’ high jump in California. Photo by Kirby Lee/Getty Images

Carpenter admitted her grim reality at the time, stating, “I know I can drop out, but in the future, I won’t be able to because we want to compete in college, and recruiters are looking at us in our marks.”

Earlier that same month, Rose won the high jump at the Portland Interscholastic League Varsity Relays. He had competed in the same competition against boys in 2023 but finished in last place.

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​Fearless, High jump, Oregon, Girls sports, Women’s sports, Transgenderism, Woke, Sports 

Democratic Senator Cory Booker (N.J.) gave a fiery speech on Saturday at the California Democratic Party’s 2025 state convention in Anaheim. Following his remarks, the senator pressed his hand to his heart, then extended it in a salute to the crowd.

Whereas Democrats and elements of the liberal media previously expressed horror at the sight of Elon Musk making the exact same gesture during a speech in January — some characterizing it as a Nazi salute — they did not appear similarly troubled when Booker did the same thing.

Musk joined Republicans and other critics in highlighting the selective outrage over the weekend, noting, “Fate loves irony, but hates hypocrisy.”

A tale of two salutes

Musk gave an excited speech in January at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., following President Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

— (@)

“This was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization,” said Musk, who previously admitted to having Asperger’s, a syndrome on the autism spectrum. “This one really mattered. Thank you for making it happen!”

The billionaire then slammed his chest, then saluted both the crowd and the American flag, adding, “My heart goes out to you.”

Some of the media outfits and Democrats who previously painted Trump and his allies as fascists in the lead-up to the election seized on the gesture as confirmation of their fears.

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) stated that “regardless of any justification, his salute last night at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally can only be interpreted as a Seig [sic] Heil salute that is synonymous with Nazi support for Hitler.”

“Jews around the world are scared because of the contemptible rise in antisemitism, and Musk’s conduct only increases the problem,” continued Goldman. “Musk must issue an immediate apology, and President Trump must disavow and denounce his actions.”

‘All sides should give one another a bit of grace.’

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) claimed on MSNBC, “Elon Musk did [the] heil Hitler salute. He did. And of course he did.”

Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York claimed that it was a “Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity.”

RELATED: Southern Poverty Law Center attacks Turning Point USA with ‘cheap smear’ in latest hysterical ‘extremism’ report

Photo (left): DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images; Photo (right): ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

The media similarly feigned horror and characterized the gesture as a Nazi salute. For instance:

PBS News captioned the footage on YouTube, “Elon Musk appears to give fascist salute during Trump inauguration celebration.”
Politico Europe ran an article with the headline “Elon Musk’s ‘Nazi’ salute sparks fury from Europe’s left wing.”
Deadline claimed that Musk “offered Donald Trump supporters what looked a lot like a Nazi salute.”
Then-CNN host Jim Acosta said on air that Musk “used a hand gesture that looked like a Nazi salute.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow seized upon the gesture as further evidence for the Nazi smear that her network and Democrats pushed in the lead-up to the election.

Musk noted at the time, “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.”

Despite the apparent eagerness on the left to frame Musk as a Nazi, some proved willing to admit that the narrative was bogus.

The Anti-Defamation League, for instance, stated that Musk “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”

“In this moment, all sides should give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt, and take a breath,” added the ADL.

Hypocrisy

Booker spoke Saturday at a convention attended by California Democrats including Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Robert Garcia. Garcia was among those who condemned Musk for his gesture earlier this year.

“Real change does not come from Washington. It comes from communities. It comes from the streets,” said Booker. “It comes from the people who’s standing up and have shown over and over again — against the powerful, against the elected, against the rich — that the power of the people is greater than the people in power.”

Booker made the Musk-styled heartfelt gesture after whipping up the crowd, then walked off stage.

Footage of Booker’s gesture made the rounds online, prompting comparisons between his gesture and the one previously made by Musk. Critics, observing that the gesticulations were virtually identical, suggested that the absence of pearl-clutching and condemnations from the media or Democrats this time around was further evidence of their hypocrisy and double standards.

Libs of TikTok, for instance, noted that when Musk made the gesture, Newsweek ran an article titled “80 Years After Auschwitz, Elon Musk Keeps the Fascist Salute Alive,” but painted Booker as a man wrongfully accused in an article titled “MAGA Accuses Democratic Senator Cory Booker of Doing ‘Nazi Salute.'”

‘The mainstream media is totally corrupt.’

Newsweek performed some mental gymnastics in its coverage of the reaction to Booker’s gesture, writing that “the gesture is similar to the ones made by Musk and Bannon but not made as forcefully, the video shows.”

“Pure trash propaganda,” wrote Libs of TikTok.

Musk responded, “Legacy media like Newsweek lie relentlessly.”

“Here’s a list of all the news networks who have not covered Cory Booker’s salute: – NYTimes – CNN – Washington Post – MSNBC – NPR – USA Today – Reuters – Axios – ABC News,” wrote former nuclear scientist for the Department of Energy Matt Van Swol. “Every single one of them wrote stories on Elon Musk’s ‘salute’ … … do you get it yet?”

“Legacy media is one big psy op,” responded Musk.

RELATED: Trump commends Elon Musk as he departs from DOGE: ‘Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude’

Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) tweeted, “The mainstream media is totally corrupt.”

“In January, Democrats and the Left were hyperventilating about this false smear of Elon and the stenographers in the media went to work,” wrote Stefanik.

“Neither Elon Musk or @CoryBooker are giving the Nazi salute. Americans see thru this obvious and destructive double standard by the totally broken media and Democrat Party.”

“If Elon Musk is a Nazi for doing this gesture … Cory Booker is one too,” wrote Angela Belcamino, host of “Last Week on X.” “Sorry, I don’t make the rules.”

A spokeswoman for Booker suggested in a statement to Forbes that Booker’s gesture was somehow different from Musk’s, writing, “Cory Booker was obviously just waving to the crowd. Anyone who claims his wave is the same as Elon Musk’s gesture is operating in bad faith. The differences between the two are obvious to anyone without an agenda.”

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​Elon musk, Musk, Cory booker, Nazi salute, Fascist, Nazi, Salute, Roman salute, Wave, Speech, Hypocrisy, Media bias, Bias, Politics 

If you checked out Foreign Policy magazine on Thursday, you might have caught a piece by Thomas Carothers, who directs the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It’s a lofty title, and he’s got a lofty thesis that’s sure to tick off a good number of FP’s similarly pedigreed readers: “
Actually, Trump Has a Coherent Vision.”

The subhead reads, “What seems like chaos is in fact a unified plan to reshape the United States.” Carothers lays out the basics of Donald Trump’s policy in four parts.

By the end of World War II, American progressivism, from Walt Whitman to John Dewey to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was so established as to be the sole respectable and American intellectual tradition.

First, a more conservative society with law and order, a greater role for religion, and “so-called traditional social values.”

Second, “a remade economy,” featuring normal conservative deregulatory and low-tax policies coupled with rebuilding American industry.

Third, “a new political system,” characterized by reasserting executive control over the executive branch and jealously battling the legislative and judicial branches for authority.

Fourth, “a changed role in the world,” wherein he predictably gripes about a foreign policy that serves the just interests of the United States over “broader international values” and the system those values and their proponents promoted.

It’s not a bad piece or wrong, really, even if its author is reliably disturbed by some excellent and intelligent White House policies. What really stands out is the overarching feeling throughout the essay that its author has cracked some sort of code, unlocking secret knowledge for his readers.

The more thoughtful American Democrats and global liberals have a tendency to observe conservatives as Jane Goodall carefully watched chimpanzees in Tanzania, recording our daily habits and social structures and writing theories about what we’re doing and thinking.

It’s deeply bizarre, but also fairly human. If you didn’t know any actual conservatives in college, at work, and in your social circles, it’s easy to “other” us. And knowing Paul Ryan or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal doesn’t change that isolation.

The tendency reminds me of an incredible tale in American history: The oral history of the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

While the basic look and timeline of “Custer’s Last Stand” is well known to Americans today, for 60 years after the last bullet echoed over that lonely Montana river, we really didn’t know how any of it happened. After all, there were no survivors!

Of course, well over 1,000 men survived, but it wasn’t until the 1930s when someone thought to ask the elderly American Indian warriors what they’d seen that day. And it took a teenage artist, David Humphreys Miller, to haul out to the reservation and do the work.

It’s fun to chuckle at the absurdity of this story now, but it’s not too unlike how so many Democrats and liberals think of their president, his personnel, and their vision for the world. You don’t need to divine their intentions by distant observation of how our family units are organized or what those pointy white buildings we go to Sunday morning are. You can ask! You can enter! Moreover, it’s all written down.

If you struggle to understand a conservative foreign policy that doesn’t rest on the notion that Islam craves democracy and American GIs can deliver it, you might try reading a little history, for example. Trump and his advisers’ basic doctrine can be found all over, and if you want a quick and easy summary of it, try reading the Sharon Statement – a succinct
65-year-old document that declared the basic beliefs of the wildly successful Young Americans for Freedom activist group.

This stuff is all out there if you’re willing to look for it, and you don’t even need the ancient Rosetta stone to translate it.

Or you could be like Hal Brands. Ol’ Hal is
the Henry Kissinger distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Bloomberg columnist. (If you said that without clearing your throat first, you did it wrong.)

Our man put all those titles to work and
figured it out: “Trump’s True Foreign Policy: Chaos.”

So long and thanks for all the degrees!

James Bosworth, a global fellow for the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Latin America Program, agrees. “Trump’s foreign policy is chaotic,” he
writes in the World Politics Review. “This may be by accident or else the result of stupidity.”

That take reflects the laziest instinct of the Democratic establishment: dismiss what they don’t understand as dumb. “They’re just stupid!” “They’re just stupid!” is the rallying cry of people who can’t fathom why 77 million Americans rejected their vision. Even their smarter compatriots like Carothers step over the key to figuring it all out when they don’t read the primary texts or refuse to take them seriously.

By the end of World War II, American progressivism, from Walt Whitman to John Dewey to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was so established as to be the sole respectable and American intellectual tradition. Conservatism was a foreign thing, more European and very Hitler-y. Here in the United States, they believed, it manifested less as a philosophy and more as an irritable reaction against the certainty of progress and, you guessed it, global order.

It took men like Russell Kirk tracing the conservative intellectual tradition back to the Founding Fathers to slowly change that perception, but from the comfort of a post-NAFTA, post-WTO, Davos-studded, WHO-sprinkled world, it can be easy for our self-styled elites to forget. What a shock it must be to see it in action.

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Blaze News: Another Democrat compares ICE to Nazis who ‘terrorize people’ in the night

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​Opinion & analysis, Politics 

Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel recently launched an unexpectedly harsh attack on Vice President JD Vance in her piece, “Vance Courts Trouble for Trump.” Strassel took issue with Vance’s criticism of the Supreme Court — specifically Chief Justice John Roberts — for refusing to rein in lower courts that continue to block the president’s immigration enforcement efforts. Vance had condemned what he called the “profoundly wrong sentiment” that the judiciary exists to “check the excesses of the executive.” Strassel responded by warning Vance to stop bad-mouthing “Trump’s greatest legacy and biggest asset — the Supreme Court.”

But why should Trump muzzle his vice president? Why should he sit quietly while the very judges he fought tooth and nail to confirm — despite often violent opposition from the Democrats — now obstruct his efforts to secure the border and deport criminal aliens?

Yes, the Wall Street Journal prefers to cast itself as a centrist paper taking aim at both sides. But that posture doesn’t match the moment we’re in.

If Vance’s criticisms count as “political malpractice,” then so did the actions of several American presidents. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, pushed through the Judiciary Acts of 1801 and 1802, which cut the number of Supreme Court justices and stripped them of their circuit-riding duties. Jefferson acted to dismantle the Federalist “Midnight Appointments” rushed through by outgoing President John Adams.

In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court claimed the power of judicial review — something not granted by Article III of the Constitution, by the way. Even then, Chief Justice John Marshall, a staunch Federalist, stopped short of challenging Jefferson directly. He didn’t try to compel the president to seat William Marbury, the would-be justice of the peace Adams had appointed in his final hours. Marshall asserted the court’s authority but avoided provoking a constitutional crisis.

Today’s activist judges show no such restraint. Unlike Marshall, they challenge the executive branch at every turn — and always in one direction. Vance’s criticism doesn’t reflect political malpractice. It’s an overdue reality check.

We’re now dealing with a runaway judiciary. Democrat-appointed federal district judges continue to block lawful presidential functions for openly partisan reasons. It’s unclear what authority these judges claim when they prohibit Trump from deporting even violent criminal aliens — many of whom Democrats welcomed in to inflate future voter rolls.

Vance’s expectation — that the Supreme Court, especially the justices Trump fought to confirm, would step in to curb the excesses of lower courts — makes perfect sense. Contrary to Strassel’s framing, Vance isn’t succumbing to some reckless “temptation” by criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts and his Republican colleagues. He’s stating the obvious: The court’s failure to rein in rogue judges undermines the president’s constitutional authority.

Strassel’s shrug-it-off mentality — “win some, lose some” — won’t cut it here. This fight matters. Trump cannot afford to lose.

Consider the hypocrisy. Presidents Clinton and Obama removed removed multitudes of illegal aliens when doing so served their political interests. Back then, Democrats still courted blue-collar workers and didn’t want unskilled illegal labor undercutting their base. They didn’t insist on due process or invite obstruction from the courts. They acted decisively.

RELATED: Trump must defy rogue judges or risk a failed presidency

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Now, Strassel insists that Trump must accept lengthy hearings before removing even the most dangerous illegal aliens. That’s a formula for paralysis, not justice. Meanwhile, Democrat judges didn’t blink when the Biden administration opened the floodgates and allowed 10 to 20 million illegals to pour into the country. Trump has every right to expect that the Supreme Court — not least the justices he carried over the finish line — would finally restore order and let him carry out the mission he was elected to complete.

And enough with the double standard. The populist right gets lectured about decorum while the left ignores every rule with impunity. Democrats tried to pack the courts with ideologues, launched smear campaigns against nominees, and encouraged mobs to hound justices who ruled against them. Their media allies cheered them on and still call for removing conservative justices like Clarence Thomas any time the court hands down an opinion they dislike.

This isn’t a fair fight. The right is battling from behind, and Strassel’s call for restraint sounds almost unserious in this context. Yes, the Wall Street Journal prefers to cast itself as a centrist paper taking aim at both sides. But that posture doesn’t match the moment we’re in. Vance’s criticism didn’t go too far — it didn’t go far enough. His comments were mild, measured, and overdue. And if they rattled Strassel’s sensibilities, that says more about her perspective than his.

​Opinion & analysis, Supreme court, Jd vance, Federal court, Nationwide injunction, Rogue judges, Judicial supremacy, Illegal aliens, Mass deportations, Bill clinton, Barack obama, Marbury v. madison, John marshall, John roberts, Democrats, Clarence thomas, Samuel alito, Wall street journal, Kimberly strassel 

The legacy media wants you to believe a lie.

For months, the corporate media has claimed the Trump administration is blurring the lines between government and the Christian faith. Framing the actions as eroding the “separation of church and state” — a phrase, of course, that appears nowhere in the Constitution — the media wants you to believe that President Donald Trump is violating the First Amendment.

‘It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.’

The latest example of media fearmongering is just two weeks old.

On May 21, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a (voluntary, brief) Christian prayer service at the Pentagon. Like clockwork, media outlets like the New York Times and CNN rushed to suggest the event was unconstitutional and, in the case of MSNBC, “so problematic.”

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The First Amendment contains two legal precedents related to religion and government: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The Founding Fathers dictated that the federal government shall neither establish a national religion nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

It’s really that simple. And clearly, Hegseth violated neither.

“The media is not outraged because they are neutral observers who genuinely believe we rode roughshod over the Constitution — we did not. I assure you, Congress did not establish a national religion during those 26 minutes of a voluntary prayer service,” Brooks Potteiger, a Tennessee pastor who spoke at the Pentagon service, told Blaze Media.

Perhaps, then, the media isn’t actually worried about constitutional law. On the contrary: It uses fearmongering about “church and state” as a smokescreen to hide its true offense, Potteiger said.

“Their outrage stems from something deeper: The offense of the gospel itself,” he told Blaze Media. “And they expect their indignation to stick because they assume the average American is ignorant of her own history.”

It’s true.

The corporate media must believe the average American is ignorant about the origins of our great country because it clearly thinks its fearmongering will resonate. But the truth is that many of the Founding Fathers were deeply religious, and their concerns about government and religion are not what the media and progressives claim today.

Read some of the Founding Fathers in their own words:

George Washington: “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.”Samuel Adams: “May every citizen in the army and in the country have a proper sense of the Deity upon his mind, and an impression of that declaration recorded in the Bible, ‘Him that honoreth me I will honor.'”John Witherspoon: “God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may, in the issue, tend to the support and establishment of both.”

“Make no mistake, this was not some vague or generic deity in the minds of the founders. It was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what’s true of our history,” Potteiger said.

Regarding the “separation of church and state,” Potteiger told Blaze News why the media’s trite accusation “betrays a misunderstanding of the historical context.”

“The phrase was not drawn from the Constitution but from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association,” he explained. “It referred to a prohibition against the federal government establishing a national church, in response to the Church of England, not a ban on public officials exercising or expressing religious faith.”

That’s why, Potteiger explained, he will make no apologies for attending or speaking at Hegseth’s Pentagon service.

“I stand firmly behind the service,” he told Blaze Media. “I’m proud of the secretary of defense for initiating it, and I’m comforted knowing that the service members were encouraged in the gospel and that heaven heard our prayers — for we came in the name of Jesus Christ.”

For his part, Hegseth refuses to cave to the media outrage.

“Appealing to heaven, to God, is a long-standing tradition in our military,” he said last week. “We appeal to God. I appeal to Jesus Christ for [His] protection. We’re going to speak that, and we’re going to be open and willing to talk about that at the Pentagon. If they want to criticize that, they’re on the wrong side of a very important issue.”

Amen.

​Liberal media, Legacy media, Media bias, Mainstream media, New york times, Cnn, Gospel, Jesus christ, God, Christianity, Founding fathers, Pete hegseth, Faith 

Look up which shows are most popular among children these days, and you’re sure to find Netflix’s “CoComelon” at the top of the list. The animated series prides itself on teaching preschoolers basic concepts like letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and social skills through catchy nursery rhymes, original songs, and colorful 3D animation. Emphasizing positive themes such as kindness, sharing, and problem-solving, “CoComelon” seems benign, perhaps even beneficial, to parents who need a moment’s peace or a few minutes to prepare a meal.

However, a deeper dive into the making of the series reveals a sinister truth: The creators are purposely frying children’s brains.

To dive into this controversy, Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” invites Clare Morell, author and fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, to the show to share her knowledge.

Morell, citing a New York Times article, says that researchers at Moonbug Entertainment, the British children’s content company behind “CoComelon,” test child subjects in front of two screens. One airs an episode of “CoComelon”; the other, dubbed the “Distractatron,” runs through mundane footage — “ a mom cooking dinner, a dad vacuuming.” A team of note-taking researchers observes from a glass room.

“Any time the child looked away from “CoComelon” and found the real-life scene more interesting, the episode makers would note that down, where that time stamp was within the show, and then they’d go back and they’d add more music, brighter lights, flashing colors to that point in the show because they want it to be immersive and addictive to a child,” says Morell.

So what kind of digital content is safe for young children, then?

According to Morell, none.

“The brain is in really critical periods of development, especially in those early years, and the problem is that screens are way overstimulating for a child’s developing nervous system, and studies show that handing devices to these young children robs them of their ability to develop emotional regulation,” she explains. “Instead of developing patience and self-control and frustration tolerance, they’re just learning to be calmed by a screen.”

Screen time limitations, she says, unfortunately, are ineffective.

“A daily screen time limit — even if it’s a short amount of time — is incredibly habit-forming,” she tells Allie. Like “CoComelon,” “devices are made to be addictive to a child’s brain.”

“The problem is that the screen time limits don’t map on to a child’s mental or emotional time that is then spent craving more and more of that device because of the dopamine in the brain,” Morrell explains. “They’re going to constantly crave more, and it really disregulates their developing nervous system, and so it’s really important to protect those young years.”

To hear more of the conversation and learn how to protect not just your young children but also your teenagers from the harms posed by screens, watch the episode above.

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.

​Relatable, Relatable with allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey, Blazetv, Blaze media, Cocomelon, Childrens shows, Screen time, Clare morell 

It is against Twitch’s streaming rules to say the word “ho,” but it is not against the platform’s rules to promote yourself as one.

Ask Jason Ruchelski, aka JasonR.

‘The Twitch front page is a bunch of girls twerking and dudes throwing money at them. You used to have to be funny!’

Search the name of this massive video game streamer with nearly 900,000 followers, and it is likely that along with his Twitch page, his past controversies are among the first results to appear.

What did the streamer do, exactly?

Ho no

Ruchelski was accused, tried, and convicted of simply not wanting to play a video game.

It is not a trick statement or something that could be deemed as misleading by an online fact-checker. The claims against Ruchelski that are unironically pinned to him by his biggest detractors are as straightforward as it gets.

“I said hoes,” Ruchelski told Blaze News with a smile.

The father of two explained that in reference to women who showcase their bodies as the focal point of their video game streams, he said, “Be careful, these girl streamers, they’re hoes, man.”

Forbidden speech

Ruchelski was hit with a ban from the Twitch platform for specifically using the derogatory term, as it was considered forbidden speech.

“They literally titled the email ‘hoes.’ They said, ‘You’re not allowed to call people hoes, it is deemed hate speech,’ and I was banned for 15 days.”

The top Reddit thread for this event — yes, such a thing exists — does not dispute these simple facts, but rather it claims this nearly 7-year-old comment is indicative of a pattern of JasonR’s “sexist behavior.”

RELATED: Can ditching DEI save the failing video game industry?

Peter Nicholls/Getty Images

Therefore, it was entirely predictable by the oracle-like Redditors that Ruchelski would lash out in a second instance of “misogynistic” behavior when he engaged in the hateful act of not wanting to play a video game.

‘Toxic coping mechanism’

Yes, Ruchelski’s name has been battered around online for years over the horrendous crime of either “dodging (or exiting) a game” when he recognized a provocative female streamer or simply muting the female player.

Ruchelski’s apparent apostasy from the streaming community even garnered attention from Imane Anys, a streamer with over 9,000,000 followers of her own under “Pokimane.”

Anys called Ruchelski’s actions a “toxic coping mechanism” that signaled that his wife did not trust him.

Needless to say, the attention to Ruchelski’s supposed ecrimes resulted in a bevy of attacks and even “a ridiculous amount” of death threats along with attacks directed at his wife.

To this day, the streamer explained, he still has random drop-ins to his streams calling him “sexist” or “misogynist.”

The gaming industry is changing, though, rapidly.

Flop shops

Massive flops from massive gaming studios are becoming the norm, even for some of the most popular intellectual properties. A “Suicide Squad” game lost Warner Brothers $200 million; Unknown9: Awakening lost its studio more than $100 million after its lead actress boasted about the game’s diversity. Sony even closed a studio and ate hundreds of millions in losses after a diversity-laden game shut down after just two weeks — all of this within the last year.

Also in 2024, a community of more than 475,000 popped up on the gaming platform Steam, all centered on the rejection of diversity and inclusion in video games.

Moreover, where Ruchelski may formerly have been on the defensive, his sentiments have changed to where attacks on his character are more revealing of his critics than they are of him.

“What happened is happening all the time now, and it’s not that people believe someone is actually sexist or someone is actually racist,” Ruchelski explained. “They’re manipulating audiences because that’s what people want to see.”

Ruchelski is convinced that some of his harshest critics would be polite and passive in real life and would not care about any of the claims made about him online. But “sexist this, racist that” is what drives a lot of people’s paychecks, he believes.

Pendulum swings

The pendulum is swinging, and fast, according to investigative journalist and avid Counter-Strike player Mocha Bezirgan.

RELATED: GamerGate at 10: What did it mean, and why do we still care?

seamartini/Drew Angerer/John Lamparski/Getty Images

The reporter said that the court of public opinion on provocative female streamers has changed also, and these characters have quickly lost respect from audiences when they seem unwilling or unable to have conversations on tough subjects rather than point to vague notions of sexism.

“In my past as a popular short film producer, I’ve crossed paths with female streamers in different capacities,” he told Blaze News. Bezirgan’s shorts were actually seen by millions in Turkey, launching him into star status in the country.

“They were not necessarily good at video games, but were good businesswomen profiting from the sexual hunger of men,” he continued. “It’s not an industry that I respect, but the audience is changing.”

Ruchelski’s past supposed crimes are indicative of a time when online discourse, specifically in the gaming community, was stuck in a rut, but now it is digging itself out.

“What the hell happened to the content?” Ruchelski asked rhetorically.

“The Twitch front page is a bunch of girls twerking and dudes throwing money at them. You used to have to be funny!” he raged sarcastically.

Thinking for themselves

But there has been a shift, he emphasized. Curiosity for Ruchelski’s story has grown recently, as have the collective raised eyebrows of his followers, who are typically apolitical.

What used to be an inundation of questions about his alleged controversies are increasingly being replaced with inquiries like, “What is this cancel culture?” and “Why are they saying this about you?”

“I think it was kind of a combination of Elon Musk and Trump. [These events] are kind of making people finally think for themselves a little bit more than before.”

The streamer is open to these conversations, seemingly more than ever before, and so are other gamers.

​Culture, Tech, Technology, Video games 

Donald Trump’s endorsement of Karrin Taylor Robson in December marked one of the most baffling moves of his political career. Still riding the momentum of his victory, Trump pre-emptively backed a known RINO for Arizona governor — nearly 19 months ahead of the 2026 primary. The endorsement fit a troubling pattern: early-cycle support for anti-Trump Republicans who hadn’t lifted a finger for the movement, while stronger MAGA candidates waited in the wings.

If Trump wants to deliver on his campaign promises, he needs to reassert deterrence against weak-kneed incumbents and withhold endorsements in open races until candidates prove themselves.

At some point, conservatives must face the hard truth: The swamp isn’t being drained. It’s getting refilled — with Trump’s help.

Arizona illustrates why MAGA must push back hard on Trump’s errant picks. Robson, a classic McCain Republican, publicly criticized Trump as recently as 2022. She ran directly against MAGA favorite Kari Lake in the 2022 gubernatorial primary. Maybe she could merit a reluctant nod in a general election, but nearly two years before the primary? With far better options available?

And indeed, better options emerged. Months later, Rep. Andy Biggs — one of the most conservative voices in Congress and a staunch Trump ally — entered the race. The Arizona drama had a partially satisfying resolution when Trump issued a dual endorsement. But dig deeper, and the story turns sour.

Top Trump political aides reportedly worked for Robson’s campaign, raising serious questions for the MAGA base. Their loyalty seemed to shift only after Robson refused to tout Trump’s endorsement in her campaign ads.

Which brings us to the million-dollar question: Why would Trump endorse candidates so subversive that they feel embarrassed to even mention his support?

The Robson episode is an outlier in one way: Most establishment Republicans eagerly shout Trump’s endorsement from the rooftops. Yet the deeper issue remains. Without MAGA intervention, Trump keeps handing out endorsements to RINOs or to early candidates tied to his political network — often at the expense of better, more loyal alternatives.

A pattern of bad picks

Some defenders claim Trump backs incumbents to push his agenda. That theory falls apart when so many of those same RINOs openly sabotage it.

Take Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.). Both received Trump’s endorsement while actively working against his legislative priorities — pushing green energy subsidies and obsessing over tax breaks for their donor class. These aren’t minor policy differences. These are full-spectrum RINO betrayals.

Trump wouldn’t dare endorse Chip Roy (R-Texas) for dissenting from the right, so why give cover to Republicans who consistently undermine his mandate from the left?

And don’t chalk this up to political necessity in purple districts. Trump routinely gives away the farm in safe red states, too.

Here’s a list of Trump’s Senate endorsements this cycle, straight from Ballotpedia — and it’s not comforting.

You’d struggle to find a single conservative in this bunch. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, and Jim Risch of Idaho all represent the globalist mindset that Trump’s base has spent years fighting. So why did Trump hand them early endorsements — before they even faced a challenge? What exactly is he getting in return?

Well, we know what his loyalty bought last cycle.

After Trump endorsed Mississippi’s other swamp creature, Roger Wicker, against a MAGA primary challenger in 2024, Wicker walked into the chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee — and now he’s stalling cuts to USAID. That roadblock has helped keep the DOGE rescissions package from reaching the president’s desk.

Wicker isn’t the only one. Several of Trump’s endorsees have publicly criticized his tariff agenda. Whether or not you agree with those tariffs, the pattern is telling. Trump only seems to call out Republicans who dissent from the right. Meanwhile, the ones who oppose him from the left collect endorsements that wipe out any hope of a MAGA primary.

Ten years into the MAGA movement, grassroots candidates still can’t gain traction — and Trump’s endorsements are a big part of the problem.

Instead of amplifying insurgent conservatives, Trump often plays air support for entrenched incumbents. He clears the field early, blasting apart any challenge before it forms. That’s how we ended up stuck with senators like Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (La.) — both from red states — who routinely block Trump’s nominees and undermine his priorities.

Trump endorsed both Tillis and Cassidy during the 2020 cycle, even as grassroots conservatives geared up to take them on. In fact, almost every red-state RINO in the Senate has received a Trump primary endorsement — some of them twice in just 10 years. That list includes Moore Capito, Graham, Hyde-Smith, and Wicker.

Saving red-state RINOs

What’s worse than endorsing RINOs for Congress in red states? Endorsing RINOs for governor and state legislature.

Yes, Washington is broken. Even in the best years, Republicans struggle to muster anything more than a narrow RINO majority. But the real opportunity lies elsewhere. More than 20 states already lean Republican enough to build permanent conservative power — if we nominate actual conservatives who know how to use it.

The 2026 election cycle will feature governorships in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming, to name just a few. These races offer a chance to reset the Republican Party — state by state — with DeSantis-caliber fighters.

Instead, we’re slipping backward.

RELATED: Reconciliation or capitulation: Trump’s final go-for-broke play

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

Trump has already endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds for Florida governor — nearly two years before the election. In most red states, Donalds would look like an upgrade. But Florida isn’t most red states. Florida is the citadel of conservatism. It deserves a contested primary, not a coronation. Donalds hasn’t led the way DeSantis has — either nationally or in-state — so why clear the field this early? Why not at least wait and see whether DeSantis backs a candidate?

And don’t forget about the state legislatures.

Freedom Caucuses have made real gains in turning GOP supermajorities into something that matters. But in Texas, House Speaker Dustin Burrows cut a deal with Democrats to grab power — then torched the entire session. Conservative voters are eager to remove Burrows and the cronies who enabled him.

We’ll never drain the swamp this way

This is where Trump should be getting involved — endorsing against the establishment, not propping it up.

Instead, he’s doing the opposite.

Trump recently pledged to back Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows and his entire entourage of RINO loyalists — just because they passed a watered-down school choice bill that also funneled another $10 billion into the state’s broken public-school bureaucracy.

The same pattern holds in Florida.

The House speaker there, Daniel Perez, has consistently blocked Governor Ron DeSantis’ agenda, including efforts to strengthen immigration enforcement — policies that are now a national model. Despite this, Perez cozied up to Byron Donalds. Donalds returned the favor, but refused to take sides in the Perez versus DeSantis clashes. He also ducked the fights against Amendments 3 and 4. So what exactly qualifies Donalds to become Trump’s handpicked candidate in the most important red state in America?

This new paradigm — where candidates secure Trump endorsements just by parroting his name — has allowed RINO governors and legislators to push corporatist policies while staying firmly in Trump’s good graces. They wrap themselves in the MAGA brand without lifting a finger to advance its agenda.

That’s not the movement we were promised.

At some point, conservatives must face the hard truth: The swamp isn’t being drained. It’s getting refilled — with Trump’s help. We can’t keep celebrating Trump’s total control of the GOP while hand-waving away the RINOs, as if they’re some separate, unaccountable force. Trump has the power to shape the party. He could use it to clean house.

Instead, he keeps using it to protect the establishment from grassroots primaries.

At the very least, he should withhold endorsements until candidates prove they can deliver on the campaign’s promises. Don’t hand out golden Trump cards before they’ve earned them.

Mr. President, please don’t be such a cheap date.

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Endorsements, 2026 midterms, Republicans, Rinos, Red states, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South carolina, Tennessee, West virginia, Wyoming, Senate, Maga, Karrin taylor robson, Arizona, Governor, Andy biggs, John mccain, Mike lawler, Jen kiggans, Chip roy, Shelley moore capito, Lindsey graham, Cindy hyde-smith, Pete ricketts, Jim risch, Roger wicker, Thom tillis, Bill cassidy, Byron donalds, Florida, Globalism, Dustin burrows, Freedom caucus 

I was swimming at my athletic club the other day when I saw a woman on the second floor running on a treadmill and watching CNN. I always think that’s a weird thing to do. Like, would that make you less stressed or more stressed?

I mean, what fun is running on a treadmill? All that pounding on your knee joints. And for what? And then you’re watching TV? That can’t be good for your mental health.

Plus, it’s good mental health to be on a team. Doing something that involves skill, coordination, and strategy … doing it with your team, against another team.

But you always see that in gyms. Thirty-something women running on the treadmill. Guys too. Guys who don’t like sports but know they’re supposed to “stay active.”

So they run on the treadmill. Their wife does it. Their co-workers do it. People on TV do it. So they do it.

I’ve been in that upstairs area. There’s a weight room too. That also seems weird to me. Lifting weights. Dudes sitting in front of a mirror, admiring themselves doing arm curls.

Not that swimming laps is much better. But I’m in my 60s. I’ve reached that age where I have to go easy. And at least it’s quiet and peaceful in the pool. It’s meditative. And no CNN.

The shape I’m in

Growing up in Oregon, I never saw a real gym. Not like you see in movies, with the grime and the sweat and the old guy with the broken nose.

In the suburbs of Portland, we had weight rooms in our high school gyms. I guess that counts. I remember bench-pressing 150 lbs once, during football season. That was considered good at the time, for someone of my small size and weight.

At college, in Connecticut, I played in alternative rock bands. Music and sports didn’t really mix in the 1980s. So if you were in a band, you wanted to avoid any overt “jock” behavior.

Still, at one point, I joined the local YMCA so I could “stay in shape.” I don’t remember why I did that. I was 20 years old. How “out of shape” could I get?

That was my first urban gym experience. I went there and swam and shot baskets, by myself mostly. Then I ventured into the mysterious steam room.

During the day, most of the patrons of the local Y were older black men. So it would be me and a bunch of white-haired black guys, sitting there in the dense steam fog, sweating into our towels.

Coffee and cigarettes

After that, I enrolled at NYU, where I began my career as a writer. This began a long period when I didn’t think about my health or my physical fitness at all.

I became a coffee and cigarettes person, which kept me slim and trim. I worked in nightclubs for a couple of years. I got pasty. I got pale. But that was good. I was the right age for that look.

It wasn’t until I’d sold my first novel at 32 and moved to Los Angeles that I once again signed up for some physical exercise. I joined the Hollywood YMCA.

Playing with ‘the big kids’

There, I planned on swimming laps, maybe shooting some baskets, but within a week, I was playing in pickup basketball with out-of-work actors and recently fired movie producers. There were also some very talented ex-high school and college players in these games. So the competition was sometimes intense.

But that’s what I needed. Competition. I didn’t have the discipline to swim laps in my 30s. I needed something to get my blood flowing.

Those pickup games became the highlight of my week. Since I wasn’t a great basketball player, every time I was on the court, I had to hustle to make myself useful. It was like being a little kid again. Playing with the big kids.

Some of those guys could really play. In many cases, if I could do anything positive in a game, it was an accomplishment. And then I’d walk home along Hollywood Boulevard, glowing with excitement and satisfaction.

Swimming in it

Eventually, at age 37, I ended up back in New York, living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Whenever physical fitness came up, people would talk about the Williamsburg pool.

So I signed up and started going there. It was a public pool and not the cleanest. At times, it would get super crowded. The good news was that Williamsburg was the coolest neighborhood in the world at that time (late 1990s).

So even at the public pool, there were interesting people around. Hipsters, weirdos, indie-rock stars, trust fund bohemians — a true cast of characters!

A young man’s game

And then I learned to surf in my 40s, and that changed everything. I would never have to join another YMCA or a gym or a pool again. Or so I thought. Surfing took care of all your physical fitness needs. If you surfed regularly, you were in the best shape of your life, all the time.

Unfortunately, surfing is a young man’s game. It can become genuinely life-threatening in the big, brutal surf of the Oregon coast where I live now. I’ve had to cut way back and limit myself to only the mildest surf days.

Team player

So now I’m playing in a senior softball league, which has been great fun. Competitive sports, to me, are always preferable to just working out.

Basketball, softball, volleyball, whatever. Competition creates adrenaline. Adrenaline cleans out your body and clears your head. And generates testosterone, if you’re worried about that.

Plus, it’s good mental health to be on a team. Doing something that involves skill, coordination, and strategy … doing it with your team, against another team … what could be more fun than that? And better for you. Much healthier than staring at your biceps in a mirror.

Of course, being older, I can’t go super hard. That’s why senior softball is a good fit. But even senior softball involves speed, skill, split-second decisions, and physical dexterity under pressure.

That might be the most important thing of all: a chance to be cool under pressure. There’s nothing that elevates your confidence and self-esteem like calmly making a key play in a crucial situation. And you can’t do that at a spin cycle class.

In my opinion, exercise with no goal, no sense of victory or defeat, no risk, no danger, no moment of truth where you either make the play or you don’t … to me that’s just moving your body around. It doesn’t enrich your life.

Old joy

But yeah, I’m in my 60s now. So I’m back in the pool, back in the hot tub, trying to soothe my joints and ease my stiff muscles between softball games. I sweat in the steam room. Now, I’m the old white-haired guy.

But I have to say, I never feel frustrated with my aging body or the physical limitations that seem to come faster and quicker as you age.

The main thing I think about is how lucky I have been. And all the joy I’ve experienced from sports and exercise and the thrill of competition.

​Sports, Exercise, Aging, Health, Softball, Gyms, Treadmill, Lifestyle 

On Monday, May 5, President Trump signed an executive order banning “dangerous gain-of-function biological research in the United States and around the world.” This directive added muscle to his previous decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization. However, the United States remains vulnerable to international control.

Let’s review the history.

Until President Trump severs all remaining ties between the United States and the WHO, the public health of all Americans remains under threat of global government control.

On January 30, 2020, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, announced a “public health emergency of international concern.” With these magic words, Tedros put into force the WHO’s International Health Regulations that supercharged the WHO into a one-world government health agency with the legal authority to declare pandemic sovereignty over all member nations, including the United States.

Tedros (as he is known) was born in Ethiopia and is not a medical doctor. Still, he is a Marxist and member of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, a group the Ethiopian government has classified as a terrorist organization. So Tedros, by extension, is not only a Marxist, but he’s also a terrorist. Tedros handled the COVID-19 response by running cover for the Chinese Communist Party, denying resolutely that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and setting the stage for medical martial law and planet depopulation.

On January 20, 2025, President Trump finally withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization. Under terms of the WHO constitution, however, America’s involvement will not end officially until January 23, 2026.

Enter the Pentagon’s Defense Health Agency. The DHA monitors vaccine creation and “communicable” diseases and determines disease origination. The DHA uses the CDC for guidance, and its Influenza Division “provides … leadership for the detection … and control of influenza in the United States and around the world.” More importantly, the DHA still maintains “a vital partnership” with the WHO in a collaboration that includes “expanding military biodefense vaccine manufacturing.”

This could become especially alarming if the world faces “Disease X.”

“Disease X” is the generic term the WHO uses to refer to an anticipated but unspecified future pandemic. That future may be now. Our research suggests that “Disease X” has already been weaponized and released in the form of a gain-of-function-enhanced version of COVID-19 that is more contagious and possibly more lethal than its predecessor.

A new “vaccine” to combat the next pandemic includes a “replicon” that continues to reproduce the active ingredient of the virus spike protein throughout a patient’s body, even after the patient is dead. Replicon is a self-amplifying mRNA technology that copies itself and crosses between species. There is no known antidote that can stop the replicon from propagating the pathogenic COVID-19 spike protein.

RELATED: WHO director is upset ‘conspiracy theories’ may derail his global pandemic treaty

Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

A more contagious and fast-acting version of COVID-19 propelled through the body by a replicon vaccine could well become a highly lethal nightmare pandemic concoction. In 2024, scientists in Japan developed the world’s first replicon vaccine, brand-named “Kostaive.”

Knowing that the United States remains tied to the WHO until next January and that the DHA maintains a “partnership” with the organization, what assurance do we have that our military would not bow to the WHO if the WHO defied the U.S. commander in chief by declaring a “Disease X global health emergency” that required forced replicon vaccination?

Until President Trump issues an executive order severing all remaining ties between the NIH, the CDC, and the DHA and the World Health Organization, the public health of all Americans remains under threat of global government control.

Ghebreyesus is, in our view, the most powerful and potentially dangerous person on the planet. With his connections and self-professed infallibility, what possibly could go wrong?

Editor’s note: This article has been adapted from “Disease X and Medical Martial Law: Defeating the Globalist Plan to Depopulate the World and Enslave the Remnant” (Post Hill Press).

​Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Executive order, World health organization, Tedros adhanom ghebreyesus, Martial law, Covid-19, Disease x, Replicon, Virus, Pandemic, Scamdemic, Quarantine, Influenza, Cdc, Defense health agency, National institutes of health, Infectious diseases, Vaccine, Vaccine mandates, Mrna 

New York has just joined more than a dozen states in prohibiting the use of cell phones or personal electronic devices during the school day — a move that should prompt us to honestly evaluate how technology, in all its forms, is reshaping education.

The arguments in favor of cellphone bans are persuasive.

We’ve allowed tech companies to dictate classroom norms — and our students are paying the price.

A
2023 meta-analysis across 14 countries found that student phone use significantly harms educational outcomes, including test scores, GPA, and self-assessed academic performance. Both educators and students in that study recognized the issue: Phones were seen not just as distractions, but as threats to student safety — enabling cyberbullying, inappropriate photo-sharing, and constant social media interference.

This reckoning with smartphones is overdue and welcomed — but it needs to go farther.

It’s time to reconsider the role of technology in the classroom more broadly. Because let’s be honest: Technology hasn’t delivered on its educational promises.

The Big Tech lie

The widespread deployment of laptops and digital tools as pedagogical instruments wasn’t driven by educators, parents, or students. It was pushed by Silicon Valley.

Big Tech companies like Google and Apple aggressively marketed their products as educational tools, positioning themselves as essential partners in a tech-forward future. By 2020, Google was raking in an estimated $200 million annually from school-issued Chromebooks.

We were sold a lie.

We were told that giving every student a laptop would facilitate personalized learning, student engagement through interactive platforms, improved digital literacy, and preparation for a 21st-century workforce.

What we got instead was distraction, degradation of core skills, and exposure to risks no school administrator can fully control.

The data speaks loudly

There is no proof by any available metric that educational outcomes have improved as a result of making laptops part of the learning environment.

On the contrary, a report from the National Education Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group at the University of Colorado at Boulder, found the rapid adoption of the mostly proprietary technology in education to be rife with “questionable educational assumptions, self-interested advocacy by the technology industry, serious threats to student privacy, and a lack of research support.”

Students routinely bypass filters to access gaming, entertainment, and social media during class — something any parent who has had to keep her student on task while the student is supposed to be doing homework could have told you would happen.

Kids are exceptionally talented at finding — and sharing with their peers — work-arounds to circumvent content filters and monitoring software. Schools have profoundly failed to protect children from explicit material.

A
survey from Common Sense Media found that at least one in four teens had seen pornography while at school; more than two in five (44%) respondents who had seen pornography during the school day said they had seen it on a school-issued device; and reported exposure on school-issued devices was highest among 13- to 14-year-old teens.

So-called “educational” sites like coolmathgames.com — often promoted by schools — can include links that lead students into inappropriate digital territory.

But the deeper concern is what this tech dependence is doing to how — and whether — students actually learn.

The Big Tech crutch

Note-taking by hand, once a cornerstone of learning, is being replaced by typed notes — or worse, voice-to-text digital transcription. But typing notes verbatim doesn’t force students to process or internalize the information. That mental work — summarizing, interpreting, organizing — is where learning actually happens. Without it, comprehension suffers.

Critical thinking and writing skills are declining. Why bother learning how to spell, rules of grammar, or how to construct a cogent, thoughtful sentence when you can have autofill, predictive text, spellcheck, Grammarly, and ChatGPT do all the work for you?

The rise of gamified learning is rewiring the rewards systems of a child’s brain. Tech advocates claim that video tutorials and interactive games increase engagement. That may be true. But engagement is not the same as learning.

Students are conditioned, like Pavlov’s dogs, to seek the cheap rewards of flashing lights and electronic fireworks, bells, and whistles for getting an answer right — rather than the deeper reward of meeting a challenge and mastering it.

But just as kids awarded “participation trophies” know that the award doesn’t really mean anything, they also find the digital “You won!” displays, ultimately, unfulfilling. Concepts that are easily learned are also easily forgotten. And instead of encouraging deep thinking, “gamified” education is training kids to expect mastery without effort.

They come to expect learning to be entertaining, and when it’s not, they disengage.

The real goal of education

Generations of educators understood that slow reading allows students to deeply engage with texts and absorb their meaning. Lingering over books allows students to reflect on ideas rather than rushing through content. It fosters comprehension, retention, and the ability to make meaningful connections with the material.

This, rather than merely passing a test, should be the objective of education.

Technology has a role in education. But its current dominance has outpaced evidence of its benefits. We’ve allowed tech companies to dictate classroom norms — and our students are paying the price.

If banning phones is a necessary first step, then let it be the start — not the end — of a much larger reckoning, one that reclaims the classroom as a place of focus, rigor, and real learning.

​Smartphones, Students, Children, Technology, Classroom technology, Ipad, Big tech 

Get in hosers, we’re going back to 1986 — when you could “just do things,” as the kids say.

If you’re middle-aged, you remember when you could just do things without filming them for TikTok. Without rearranging your bedroom to have the right look for “the ‘gram.” You could do things without waiting for an audience of thousands or millions staring at their phones.

Swishy 12-year-old boys in grandma drag talking about ‘bulbous bits’ were thin on the ground in rustbelt New York State, and I gave the people what they didn’t know they needed.

But more than that, you could just do things in the real world without a phone, a tablet, a smart watch, or any other digital tether.

Weird kid, normal childhood

Generation X was the last cohort to have a normal childhood of riding bikes until it was dusk (suppertime), playing with old cars in the junkyard, and making lean-tos in the woods. No adults expected their kids to be under their gaze all day, and we only had to fish out a quarter for a call home on a pay phone if something happened and we needed a ride.

I was a weird kid with weird friends. You develop unusual interests when you grow up with no father and a mother who is a cross between Nurse Ratched, Mommie Dearest, and Piper Laurie’s religious fanatic mother in the movie “Carrie.” While normal boys were playing T-ball, I was playing “funeral home” and “cemetery.”

As a kid in Southern California, my friend Julie and I used to ride our banana seat bikes down to the school parking lot and outdoor paved cafeteria on weekends. The metal clasp hanging on a rope on the flag pole used to clank against the pole in the wind, making a “bong!” sound like a church bell.

RELATED: Had an abusive mother? Then you understand the left’s anti-Trump insanity

AllNikArt/Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

Julie and I knew this was because Topaz Elementary School had been built on an “ancient graveyard.” The bells were ringing to let the dead know that it was OK to come out of their graves under the pavement because those pesky living kids were all gone for two days.

Mummy dearest

Fast forward five years, and back in upstate New York, I found a kid named Tom who was just as odd.

Tom had a kind of modern-day, white-trash Pippi Longstocking lifestyle. Unlike Pippi’s dad, Tom’s father wasn’t a captain at sea, but he might as well have been. Mr. E spent spent every day completely schnockered. He mowed the lawn in a frayed jockstrap and nothing else. We had the run of the three-story house because Mr. E ignored everything but Schlitz and that brown corduroy recliner.

Tom built a stone kiln in his backyard to fire clay pots. This is where we made miniature sarcophagi for the dead birds and shrews that we mummified. Yes, we did place them in salt (we called it “natron”), then wrapped them in cotton bandages before respectfully encasing them in pottery coffins. I still have one (the sarcophagus, not the mummy).

Audience by ambush

Like many of today’s kids, I was a performer who wanted an audience. But in the pre-internet, pre-smartphone days, your audience was limited to the people you could persuade to stand in front of you in the actual three-dimensional world.

Or you could get an audience by stealth ambush, my preferred method.

Vinyl LPs were still the dominant way people heard music in my youth, and my mother had a collection of comedy show records; they were in vogue in the 1970s.

Pranks for the memories

I wore out Lily Tomlin’s “This Is a Recording,” her stand-up show featuring Ernestine, the telephone operator. I practiced saying things like, “One ringy-dingy. Two ringy-dingies,” for hours in front of the mirror until I got the voice just right.

Then, I opened up the phone book and picked “old people” names at random and dialed (remember, this was before caller ID).

Me: One ringy-dingy. Two ring-ooh! Snort! Good afternoon; have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?

Her: Yes, this is Mrs. Fletcher.

Me: Mrs. Fletcher, I have an annoying problem that only you, as a New York Telephone customer, can solve. According to our files, you owe a balance of 15 dollars and 78 cents for the use of your instrument, which, I remind you, is wired into your wall courtesy of our burly repairmen [fiddle with décolletage] at the telephone company. When may we expect payment?

I shudder to think how many unnecessary checks the elderly ladies of Cortland made out to New York Telephone.

Junior shock jock

But that was just one person. What about an audience of thousands?

I started calling into WOKO 100.1, OK-100!, “Central New York’s Home for Top 40 Hits.” It was always having contests where caller number seven got a free pizza from Pudgies or a copy of Madonna’s new album. I figured out a timing system, accounting for the travel time the phone’s dial took to complete each number, and managed to be “caller seven” suspiciously often.

When the DJ answered the phone, I was in go-mode as the “Church Lady,” the prudish fundamentalist grandma character played by Dana Carvey on “Saturday Night Live.”

OK100: Caller seven, you’ve got it! Tell us who you are.

Me: Most people just call me the Church Lady, which you should well know, as Satan has obviously been whispering sweet-and-sour nothings into your ear or you wouldn’t be playing music from harlots like that bleached-blonde tart named after our holy mother.

You cannot imagine the joy of being 12 years old and making a fully grown man, an on-air DJ, crack up laughing so hard he could barely put the next record on. They started asking me to call in on purpose to do impressions.

But it wasn’t enough.

Hooked

The year before, I played Captain Hook in the Cortland Junior High production of “Peter Pan.”

As I was speaking one of my lines, the painted wooden cutout of a pirate ship collapsed on the stage. So I ad-libbed: “Don’t just stand there, pick it up, you lazy swabbies — we’ve got a play to finish!”

It brought down the house.

I wanted another taste of entertaining a live crowd, so I decided to perform on the roof of the wraparound porch on the old, beat-up Victorian we rented from Mr. and Mrs. Maniacci two doors down.

Isn’t that special?

My gorgon mother had gone to California for a week’s vacation and hired Lori the babysitter to stay with us kids. Oh, boy!

Stuffing my paper route money into my satchel, I walked to the Salvation Army store and came home with a curly grandma wig, a seafoam-green polyester shift, opaque “nude” pantyhose, and sensible orthopedic shoes.

My sister helped me crawl out the window of her bedroom onto the roof of the porch and handed me a broom so I had something with which to menace passersby. It wasn’t long before a young couple came walking up the street.

“It’s always nice to see a young couple,” I called out.

Having secured their attention, I continued, “… except the kind that doesn’t wear a wedding ring and thinks co-habitation is just fine and dandy. How long have you been living in sin, pressing your engorged naughty parts against the devil’s finger? Does it tingle?”

The first reaction was shocked silence. The second was uproarious laughter. Swishy 12-year-old boys in grandma drag talking about “bulbous bits” were thin on the ground in rustbelt New York State, and I gave the people what they didn’t know they needed.

For the rest of the afternoon I preached fire and brimstone, insulting everyone who walked by as a rake and a floozy. A few people came back with friends so they, too, could experience the cleansing power of righteous testimony.

Canceled!

At the end of the week, my mother returned. While I was taking a bath, I heard a rap on the front door. “Bonnie! Bonnie! I need to talk to you.” Oh, shoot — it was Mrs. Maniacci, the landlady!

Scurrying out of the tub to press my ear to the door, I mostly heard my mother’s side of the conversation. “Uh-huh. Really? He did what? I see. Thank you Mrs. Maniacci, I’ll take care of it.”

“JOSHUA LAWRENCE SLOCUM GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW!”

The punishment was worth it. I’d do it again and again and then again.

Do your kids know how to just do fun things?

​Saturday night live, Childhood, 1980s, Lily tomlin, That’s entertainment, Lifestyle, Culture, Josh slocum, Intervention 

In the middle of a halftime interview, WNBA star Brittney Griner interrupted the conversations to yell at the referees for “blowing a call” and revealed her true colors to fans all over the country.

“No one wants to see that,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock tells BlazeTV contributor Steve Kim on “Fearless.” “And look, I’m going to be hypocritical, or double standard, if that were a man in a men’s league, I think people would be more tolerant of it.”

“But to see women behaving that way, behaving as men, being as profane, trying to be as intimidating,” Whitlock continues, “This is why they don’t want fans like me paying attention. That kind of stuff could go on in the old days, and it would be a tree falling in the woods. No one would complain because no one saw it.”

“So you’re not a fan of her being authentically Brittney,” Kim responds.

In another clip of Griner during a game against the Indiana Fever, it appears that she’s saying something negative about “white girls” through lip reading and clear anger through her body language.

Kim doesn’t believe it matters what Griner said as it’s during a heated game, and Whitlock agrees — but notes the fallout would be different for someone like Caitlin Clark.

“Steve, I’m right there with you. It doesn’t matter to me what Brittney Griner said there in the heat of the moment. You’re absolutely right,” Whitlock says. “If Caitlin Clark’s on camera mouthing the words ‘black girl,’ it doesn’t matter in what context. She’d get strung up.”

“This is why they don’t want Caitlin Clark fans paying attention, because we’ll question things that previously would never be questioned,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

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

​Sharing, Video phone, Camera phone, Upload, Video, Free, Youtube.com, Fearless with jason whitlock, Fearless, Jason whitlock, The blaze, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Brittney griner, Caitlin clark, Wnba, Racism, Basketball, Professional basketball, Conservative podcast, Steve kim, Womens basketball 

Dear class of 2025: You’ve already won. You’re the largest high school graduating class in America’s history. It’s all downhill from here — for America’s population. The number of graduates will decline every year going forward.

But now that you’re emancipated, you’re not going to move downhill. You’re going to move uphill into a life of purpose and significance.

Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to discover the core truths that made it possible and nurture them.

Young adults often ask me, “If you could go back in time, what would you tell your 18-year-old self?” If I could, I would tell myself four words: service, calling, wisdom, and truth.

1. I need to serve

When asked this question — “What is more important for you: achieving at a high level, happiness, or caring for others?” — 80% of young adults said that achievement and happiness are most important.

But what they don’t know (or forget) is that achievement and happiness come through service. The people most likely to succeed in life are those who serve others best. Similarly, the happiest people are those who serve others rather than demand to be served.

This is good news for an anxious generation. The eminent psychiatrist Karl Menninger said that if you’re overcome by anxiety and depression, the best thing you can do is leave your house and go serve others.

We become fully human by loving and serving others, giving of ourselves for the genuine benefit of others.

2. I need a calling

If I could do it over again, I would focus more on finding my unique calling — my vocation — and not just getting a good job. There are a lot of talented job seekers, and talent is distressingly common. What is rare is people who discover what they “cannot not” do and work hard at it.

Now is a good time to take an inventory, not of your trophies, but of the things you’ve done that return energy to you and make you feel more alive. Think back on the things you did that fascinated you and made a difference for others. Those are the seeds of your calling.

3. I need old people

What my 18-year-old self needed to know is this: “Stop thinking you can figure out everything for yourself. Find people who know what you don’t know and keep buying them coffee until all their good advice spills out of them.”

Wisdom isn’t the same as knowledge. AI offers information. But what you’re looking for is formation from people who have the kind of knowledge that only years of experience can give. I want to invest my life in the company of curious people who can’t help but learn and grow, no matter their age.

4. I need to seek the truth

I know, I know. We are “supposed” to believe that we are each the center of our “own reality.” But your generation knows better than mine that if you are the center of reality, then everything wrong in the world is essentially your fault.

No one can bear that burden.

My generation was told, “The world is going to end during your lifetime because of nuclear war.” Your generation is told, “The world is going to end during your lifetime because of climate change.” That kind of thinking locks you in a prison of fear, and fearful people don’t innovate. They don’t follow their inspiration. They just try to manage their fall.

Fear lies to us, and the only way to conquer it is to seek the truth.

Societies typically move toward success by climbing a wall of worry. You’re coming into a world that boasts unprecedented levels of economic, political, and religious freedom. Your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to discover the core truths that made it possible and nurture them.

But don’t do it alone. The best truth-seekers aren’t solitary. They process things aloud with others.

People who think they alone know the truth become arrogant. People who don’t care about the truth, on the other hand, become apathetic. But people who seek truth in a relational way are the most powerful people who exist.

If I could go back in time, I would tell myself those four words: service, calling, wisdom, and truth.

So I say this to every young American now: Your life will be better if you emblazon those words on your heart and mind — for your own sake and the world’s.

​Young americans, Class of 2025, Teenagers, Life advice, Wisdom 

In recent decades, a subtle and sinister revolution has occurred in our scientific and educational institutions. It’s not the kind of revolution that makes headlines or sets off protests in the streets.

No, it was a quiet shift: an erosion, not an eruption. One classroom, one textbook, one policy at a time, faith was quietly displaced by a dogmatic secularism masquerading as neutrality.

It’s time we return to a posture of humility — a recognition that science, at its best, is the study of God’s handiwork.

Science and faith once walked hand in hand in this great nation, but they have since parted ways — to our detriment.

Our founding fathers, many of whom were devout Christians, believed that the natural world was a testament to a supernatural Creator. In declaring the 13 colonies’ independence from England, the founders sought to build a nation that honored “the laws of nature and nature’s God.” They signed one of the most iconic and carefully thought-out documents stating that “our Creator” gave us the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not our government.

Traditionally heralded as the most elite of educational institutions, Harvard and Yale were once proud of the fact that they taught Christian and biblical morals along with the sciences.

Today, representatives of prominent scientific institutions speak as if they are the sole gatekeepers of truth. But science is a process of discovery, not a guaranteed path to certainty. And truth, by its very nature, is not limited to what can be placed under a microscope or replicated in a laboratory.

For centuries, some of the most brilliant minds — Newton, Kepler, Faraday, Pasteur — understood that the wonder of creation points us back to the Creator. Yet in much of modern academia, the mention of God is not only unfashionable, it’s taboo. A “scientism” has replaced true scientific pursuit, where ideas are acceptable only if they are in vogue and aligned with an atheistic agenda of naturalism.

This calculated extraction of faith from science is not merely an academic shift; it’s a symptom of America’s spiritual crisis.

When a culture teaches its children that they are nothing more than biological accidents in a purposeless cosmos, should we really be surprised when those children grow up uncertain about their identity, worth, and purpose?

Like our scientific and university institutions, our public schools used to operate on a foundation of faith. Public school classes once opened with prayer. Scripture served as a moral compass. But everything changed in 1962 when the Supreme Court banned prayer in schools with the Engel v. Vitale decision.

Traditional government-funded education traded the pursuit of eternal truths for moral confusion, and it’s not just our culture that pays the price — so do our children.

The statistics speak for themselves. Depression, suicide, and social isolation rates among adolescents are rising at unprecedented levels. At the same time, belief in God, church attendance, and biblical literacy are plummeting. The two trajectories are connected. We are reaping the fruit of a generation taught to look to the stars without ever learning to look beyond them, to the One who placed them there.

Let me be clear: I love science. I’ve spent my life exploring the wonders of the earth, sea, and sky. But science, when divorced from faith, becomes sterile. It loses its soul.

Science can tell us how something works, but it can never tell us why. It can explain how to split atoms and sequence DNA, but it cannot explain beauty, justice, or love. It cannot answer the questions that ache in our hearts: Who am I? Why am I here? What happens when I die?

Only God can answer those fundamental questions.

That’s why it’s so important that we revitalize a faith-based perspective of science, one that acknowledges not only natural laws but the lawgiver. We — along with our scientific and educational institutions — need to affirm the laws of nature and nature’s God.

Let’s celebrate the harmony between Genesis and genetics, between Scripture and cell structure, between faith and fact. Such harmony will not plunge us back into the Dark Ages nor suppress discovery. It will deepen our scientific curiosity.

It’s time we return to a posture of humility — a recognition that science, at its best, is the study of God’s handiwork.

That harmonious vision is alive and well at the Wonders Center & Science Museum in Dickson, Tennessee. It unapologetically views science through the lens of biblical faith. Like the museum, we shouldn’t shy away from scientific exploration. Instead, we ought to embrace it as a form of worship.

We need not choose between being people of faith and people of reason. God calls us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. That includes a mind that inquires, a heart that wonders, and a soul that seeks meaning.

We’ve spent too long teaching our children to marvel at creation while denying the Creator. It’s time for pastors to speak boldly about the harmony of science and Scripture and for parents to ask what kind of worldview their children are being taught in school. It’s time for believers to stop ceding the realm of science to those who say faith has no place in the lab.

Let’s let God back into the lab and watch scientific discovery catapult to new heights.

The more we learn about the universe, the clearer it becomes: We were made on purpose, for a purpose, by a Creator who calls the stars by name — and He knows yours, too.

​God, Christianity, Christians, Science, Scientism, Bible, Faith 

Charlie Kirk has done something few public figures attempt: For the past decade, he has toured American university campuses and taken unscripted questions from students. In the process, he has exposed the intellectual rot at the heart of the modern academy. Most students come prepared not with arguments but with slogans — recycled from gender studies lectures and Ibram X. Kendi reading groups. What’s missing is actual critical thinking, the very trait these institutions pretend to cultivate.

Kirk recently brought his project to the United Kingdom, with similarly revealing results. At the storied Cambridge Union on May 19, he debated students and fielded questions from the audience. The encounter didn’t showcase the vitality of one of Christendom’s oldest universities. It exposed its decline. What stood out wasn’t the strength of Cambridge’s intellectual tradition but its weakness — the spectacle of a self-assured student, brimming with elite self-regard, being outmatched by an American who never earned a degree.

Kirk delivered the mortal blow: A child has more wisdom than a Cambridge student.

Once upon a time, the Cambridge student who wanted to “challenge the system” or “speak truth to power” might have supported William Tyndale in translating the Bible into English — an act that cost him his life. Or perhaps he would have taken pride in the legacy of John Eliot, a fellow Cambridge alumnus who crossed the Atlantic, entered the wilderness, and ministered to the Algonquin. Eliot invented a written form of their language, translated the Bible into it, and sent a copy back to Cambridge — confident the university would take pride in such a feat. His was the first Bible printed in the American colonies.

Those days are gone.

No God, no goodness

In the recent debate, former Cambridge Union President Sammy McDonald didn’t use his platform to pursue truth. He used it to mock the Christian faith. While Kirk’s Christianity is no secret, McDonald’s contempt was likely aimed at specific claims Kirk made during the event — that life begins at conception and that monogamous, heterosexual marriage benefits society. In today’s academic climate, such positions qualify as heresy. The punishment is no longer martyrdom (not yet) but smug derision.

In that context, Kirk performed a public service for Cambridge and the world. McDonald stands as a warning of what students too often become when shaped by today’s academic regime: clever but foolish, hostile to God, Christ, and Christianity, and armed with a brittle moral confidence unsupported by any coherent view of good and evil.

One of the most painful moments of the debate came when McDonald revealed he didn’t know what “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing” meant. His tactic was simple and dishonest: accuse Charlie Kirk of endorsing atrocities without a shred of evidence, then use the rest of his time to condemn those atrocities as evil. It’s a lazy maneuver — a rhetorical sleight of hand — and emblematic of the intellectual decay at the Cambridge Union.

Worse, McDonald offered no coherent explanation for why anything is evil. His only moral compass seemed to be a vague intuition that suffering is bad. But where did that intuition come from? He professed concern for innocent children killed in Gaza, yet never acknowledged the mass slaughter of unborn children in his own country. That’s not moral reasoning. That’s hypocrisy. And one wonders why a Cambridge education failed to help him see it.

The problem of abundance

Kirk, by contrast, praised Great Britain for its civilizational legacy and urged students to reclaim it. When asked why wealthy societies tend to abandon monogamous marriage, Kirk’s answer cut to the heart of the issue: Once a society stops needing to delay gratification — once comfort becomes the norm and abundance replaces sacrifice — moral decay follows. Without a transcendent order grounded in the creator, collapse becomes not just possible but likely. Even before collapse, citizens lose their footing. Anxiety and misery take hold.

It was an odd question, really, since the dominant theme among leftist students is that wealth corrupts and the rich are inherently evil. And yet they seem eager to imitate the decadence of affluent societies rather than return to the moral clarity of more modest times.

McDonald’s moral confidence boils down to a single assertion: Suffering is bad. He has hollowed out anything transcendent. When Kirk affirmed that there are good guys and there are bad guys, McDonald scoffed, accusing him of holding childish morality.

Then, Kirk delivered the mortal blow: A child has more wisdom than a Cambridge student. And that’s what Kirk puts on display time and again: University students do not know what is clear.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When Kirk spoke of truth, beauty, and goodness, the students stared blankly, as if they had heard ancient words but had forgotten what they meant. To borrow from Johnny Cash, “They say they want the kingdom, but they don’t want God in it.” Like Richard Dawkins, such students want the benefits of Christian culture but without Christ.

That tells us nearly everything. Students like McDonald study among the crumbling stones of a university built on Christian foundations — a place that once trained minds in piety, theology and the Great Commission. The Physics Department at Cambridge still bears the words of Psalm 111:2 above its door: “The works of the Lord are great; sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.” But reverence has given way to signaling, posturing, and progressive clichés. Today’s mission is not to spread the gospel but to promote the sexual politics of Alfred Kinsey — and to call that “progress.”

In his final moments, McDonald grasped for a rhetorical flourish and accused Kirk of having betrayed America — a country McDonald, bizarrely, claimed to admire. After the applause, Kirk delivered the final blow: “The difference is, when we get our way, we’ll still have a country. You’ll be living in a third-world hellhole.”

It was a moment of historical symmetry: the smug redcoat realizing, too late, that the ragtag colonials had just won.

A call to return

If “loving America” means gutting its Christian foundation and moral clarity, young Mr. McDonald can keep his affection to himself. No means no.

Cambridge should reclaim its former glory. As Kirk rightly observed, the United Kingdom has become a husk of what it once was. This was once the land of Bible translators, of scholars who believed every reader deserved Scripture in their own language — and the education to understand it and live by it. On that foundation, England abolished slavery and carried Christian morality across the globe in pursuit of the Great Commission.

Short of revival, Kirk has performed a necessary service. Just as he has done for American families, he has now done for English ones: exposed the ignorance of the modern university. He’s held up a mirror so that every parent might ask, honestly and urgently, whether a diploma is worth the price of their child’s soul.

​Opinion & analysis, Charlie kirk, Tpusa, Cambridge, Debate, God, Christianity, Atheism, Jesus christ, Richard dawkins, Suffering, Ethnic cleansing, Genocide, Gaza, War, Religion