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A California man was found dead in the back seat of a police cruiser, days after being released from custody. The circumstances around his death remain a mystery, as his family seeks answers from local authorities.

‘He was pronounced deceased here, you know, in front of the police station. Doesn’t make any sense to any of us.’

Eric Valencia, 37, was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of driving under the influence and child endangerment. He was released from custody due to a lack of evidence.

His family filed a missing persons report after they were unable to locate him.

On March 26, Valencia was found unresponsive in the back seat of an out-of-service police car parked in front of the Azusa Police Department station.

“It is not uncommon for vehicles to be out of service and parked for days and/or weeks at a time, as we have a large fleet of emergency vehicles,” Chief of Police Rocky Wenrick stated. “The vehicle had been left unlocked, and it should have been secured.”

Wenrick stated that the department was “not aware that the individual had entered the vehicle,” and that the individual was not in custody when he gained access to the vehicle.

RELATED: Woman missing for over a year found buried beneath garage after chilling tip from suspected killer’s friend: DA

Photo by Adam Berry/Getty Images

The police department retained an outside investigative firm to conduct an independent review of the incident. The department is also conducting a criminal investigation into the incident.

“We don’t know what took place here,” one of Valencia’s family members told KTTV. “He was pronounced deceased here, you know, in front of the police station. Doesn’t make any sense to any of us.”

The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner has not yet conducted an autopsy, and the cause of death remains unknown.

RELATED: Suspect in ‘horrific, gruesome’ murder of family in Alabama is Salvadoran gang member and had been deported, police say

Photo by Robert Alexander/Getty Images

It is unclear how long Valencia was in the police car before his body was discovered.

Camera footage reportedly shows Valencia entering the back seat of the unlocked vehicle.

The department is expected to hold a press conference late Monday afternoon.

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​News, California, Rocky wenrick, Azusa police department, Azusa, Azusa california, Politics 

Women are abandoning the political right, and BlazeTV host John Doyle is questioning whether the shift is rooted in conviction — or something more superficial.

A recent New York Magazine article titled “The Young Women Leaving the New Right” highlights these women — some who remain anonymous — who say they regret their involvement in right-wing politics.

“We love women, but instead, we have to talk really about this kind of phenomenon of women existing, e-celeb women existing, you know, ditching the right for dumb reasons,” Doyle begins.

The women featured in the article cite the growing resentment and misogyny that their right-wing following began to display as a reason they were pushed away, which Doyle notes is not a good enough reason to disavow an entire political ideology — especially if someone truly believed in that ideology in the first place.

“Not that you shouldn’t be able to, but you shouldn’t sort of ascend in a certain space, have a bad time perhaps because of personal reasons, and then come back and try to destroy that space, which again is more or less committed to the success of the country that you claim to care about,” Doyle explains.

“There are also other people, you know, other stories of this obviously in the last few years, people disavowing the entire right wing after having made their name. You know, they cultivate a sort of persona and then they don’t get exactly what they want in terms of money, attention,” he continues.

“Their personal lives kind of implode, and now all of a sudden, it’s a big problem with the entire right-wing space. They go give interviews to leftists, and they call MAGA a cult. They say that right-wing women are jumping the ship because of people being mean on the internet. And then they also claim that it’s going to make the Republicans lose the midterms in 2028,” he says.

Doyle points out that the right isn’t “more misogynistic now than it was in 2024 when Trump won the popular vote and every swing state.”

“I don’t think that’s the case. I think what’s really happening here is a bunch of right-wing female influencers maybe made a couple bad choices, maybe let a couple people get under their skin,” Doyle says.

“Now they have become maybe a little scorned and decided to try to make the party of open borders and child transgenderism win. Maybe that’s like kind of all there is to it,” he adds.

Want more from John Doyle?

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​The john doyle show, John doyle, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Right wing, Why women are leaving the new righ, Women leaving the right, Feminism, Conservative, President trump, Trump administration 

Thousands participated in the No Kings rally in downtown Los Angeles, which escalated into a violent riot, resulting in dozens of arrests.

The Department of Homeland Security stated that a group of roughly 1,000 people surrounded a federal government office on Saturday evening.

‘To those who were smashing concrete blocks and throwing them at our officers, we have you on video.’

“Rioters are throwing rocks, bottles, and cement blocks at officers. Two officers hit with the cement blocks are receiving medical care,” the DHS said.

The Los Angeles Police Department reported that it arrested 75 people in connection with Saturday’s protest. The arrests occurred after a dispersal order was issued at 5:30 p.m.

“Several splinter groups remain in the Civic Center Area hours after the demonstration has concluded. Multiple dispersal orders have been given with multiple arrests being made,” the LAPD wrote Saturday evening.

The LAPD stated that 66 adults and eight juveniles were arrested for failure to disperse. Another individual was arrested for possession of a dirk or dagger.

RELATED: Inside the No Kings rallies — violent protests EXPOSED

Jon Putman/Anadolu/Getty Images

Fox News shared a video of an agitator spray-painting the side of a federal building in Los Angeles. The individual wrote in red paint, “Kill your local ICE agent.”

DHS called the agitator’s actions “disgraceful.”

“Our ICE law enforcement officers are facing an 8,000% increase in death threats as they arrest murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists from American communities,” DHS said.

“Federal agents have started arresting those who assaulted our personnel at the Los Angeles courthouse. To those who were smashing concrete blocks and throwing them at our officers, we have you on video. We will find you and arrest you too. You’ve been warned,” First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli stated.

Another video shared by Fox News showed a crowd of agitators kicking a fence outside a DHS building.

RELATED: ‘Misplaced mothering’: No Kings anti-Kirk protesters reveal a culture in crisis

Jay L Clendenin/Getty Images

No Kings rallies were held in cities across the nation over the weekend. The event’s organizers claimed that at least 8 million people attended over 3,300 rallies in the U.S., calling it the “largest single-day nonviolent protest in modern American history.”

In New York City, some protesters participating in the No Kings rally waved Communist flags, chanting, “There is only one solution: Communist Revolution.” The New York Police Department reported that tens of thousands of demonstrators “peacefully” demonstrated and that no protest-related arrests were made.

Meanwhile, footage surfaced from outside a Portland, Oregon, immigration detention center that showed a group of protesters breaking the gate.

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​News, No kings, No kings protests, Los angeles, La, California, Department of homeland security, Dhs, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice, Los angeles police department, Lapd, Bill essayli, Politics 

An illegal alien from Colombia who pled guilty to rape last week has reached a shocking plea agreement with the office of Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

According to the terms of the agreement, Nicol Suarez, a 31-year-old biological male who identifies as transgender, would be sentenced to six months, a sentence he has already served while awaiting trial, in exchange for pleading guilty to second-degree rape. In New York, second-degree rape typically results in two to seven years behind bars.

‘Six months in jail for raping a child is a gross miscarriage of justice.’

The accusations against Suarez are heinous. On February 11, 2025, Suarez was walking his dog in East Harlem when he followed a 14-year-old boy into a restroom inside a Bodega and raped him. The boy immediately reported the attack to bystanders in the area, and Suarez was arrested within hours for first-degree rape.

Following the arrest, ICE almost immediately lodged an immigration detainer against Suarez, who entered the U.S. illegally in 2023 under the Biden administration.

RELATED: Transgender illegal alien accused of raping boy, 14, in restroom; was freed last June after violent crime charges: Reports

Jason Alpert-Wisnia/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images

What’s more, Suarez has been accused of violent crimes — armed robbery, prostitution, and assault with a dangerous weapon — in Massachusetts, and the New York Post also alluded to possible outstanding charges in New Jersey.

The Trump Department of Homeland Security has slammed the lenient plea deal, calling the offered six-month sentence “insane.”

“This plea deal is a disgrace. Six months in jail for raping a child is a gross miscarriage of justice. This pervert was let into our country by the Biden administration and then again released from jail following his arrests for armed robbery, assault with a dangerous weapon, and prostitution,” said acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis.

According to the DHS, the New York Department of Corrections has agreed to honor the ICE detainer and “not release this child rapist into American communities.” Suarez is scheduled to be sentenced officially on April 27.

Bragg’s office and the New York Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News, though the Daily Mail published this statement from Bragg’s office: “We expect the defendant to remain detained and be deported following sentencing, due to the felony conviction.”

According to the Daily Mail, the DA’s office claimed that the plea agreement was made after consulting with the victim’s family and to spare the victim from having to testify.

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There was a time when Louis Theroux was the best documentary-maker alive. Not the most famous, not the flashiest — the best. He had a gift for making dangerous people feel comfortable enough to hang themselves with their own words.

His technique was deceptively simple: show up, look confused, ask the obvious question nobody else dared ask, and let the awkward silences do the heavy lifting.

Theroux spends much of the film asking genuinely dangerous, profit-driven men why they do not try being nicer.

The results were extraordinary. He immersed himself in the Westboro Baptist Church and revealed something more than fire-and-brimstone rhetoric — that hatred has a morning routine, eats cereal, and goes to bed at a reasonable hour.

He walked into San Quentin and found the prison’s strict social architecture more fascinating than horrifying. He sat with alcoholics dying in a hospital liver ward and captured something devastating without once reaching for a violin. He starred in a porn film fully clothed, somehow maintaining both his dignity and his curiosity.

His early work was morally serious without being moralistic — an almost impossible balance that he struck repeatedly.

That Theroux is gone.

Concern troll

In his place stands something considerably less interesting: a concerned therapist in training with a camera crew, packaging society’s oddballs for an audience that already knows what it thinks of them.

His latest Netflix outing, “Inside the Manosphere,” is the clearest evidence yet. Theroux plunges into the world of online alpha-male influencers — Harrison Sullivan, Justin Waller, Myron Gaines, Sneako — tracking their revenue streams, their rhetoric, and their relentless contempt for women.

Miami apartments. Spanish nightclubs. Podcast sets where female guests are humiliated for content.

Sullivan funnels Telegram followers to OnlyFans accounts for kickbacks while publicly mocking the creators. Waller hawks Andrew Tate’s $49-a-month “university.” Gaines, a man of genuine venom, performs dominance for the camera like someone who has mistaken cruelty for confidence.

The material is genuinely ripe. These men are running sophisticated grift operations dressed up as philosophy, monetizing male loneliness and directing the resulting rage at all women. They deserve scrutiny.

The problem is that Theroux no longer scrutinizes. He pathologizes.

Practiced horror

Every interaction becomes a therapeutic probe. Every exchange is framed as evidence of something “disturbing.” The wide-eyed incredulity — once a genuine performance of curiosity — now reads as practiced horror for a largely left-leaning platform.

When Sullivan admits bluntly that he would never have found an audience doing wholesome content — “If I’d just done good things, I would never have blown up” — it is the most honest moment in the film.

Theroux treats it as a tragedy. It is simply capitalism.

Sullivan knows exactly what he is doing.

The real story is not that these men are broken. It is that they have correctly identified a lucrative market of young men who feel abandoned by mainstream culture — and are bleeding them dry. That is the documentary.

Theroux keeps making a different one — a morality play in which he is cast as the bewildered voice of reason.

RELATED: Muscular Christianity: Debunking the manosphere’s lies

Ian Maule/Getty Images

Prepackaged pandering

The irony is that his presence amplifies the very thing he deplores. Sullivan’s mother, in a sharp moment the film almost buries, asks the obvious question: If you find this so reprehensible, why are you publicizing it?

Theroux spends much of the film asking genuinely dangerous, profit-driven men why they do not try being nicer — roughly as effective as asking Putin to send Zelenskyy a fruit basket.

He is outmatched by people who have spent years controlling their image, and he does not seem to notice. These are seasoned sharks who have fielded far worse and treat the beanpole Brit like a speed bump on the way to their next revenue stream.

What made the early work so extraordinary was Theroux’s apparent absence of agenda. He let meth addicts, dementia patients, Scientologists, and porn stars speak for themselves and trusted audiences to draw their own conclusions. He did not editorialize.

The manosphere documentary editorializes constantly — each segment arriving labeled, prejudged, prepackaged for viewers who tuned in already convinced.

This is what woke documentary-making looks like at its most comfortable: confirming what the audience believes in a way that seems like investigation.

It is virtuous voyeurism — and painfully dull television.

The manosphere — equal parts genuine grievance and cynical exploitation — is a real and fascinating phenomenon. The young men being farmed for subscription fees and manufactured resentment deserve actual examination, not a wagging finger and a worried look.

Theroux was once the person who could have done that.

Watch “Drinking to Oblivion.” Watch “The Most Hated Family in America.” Watch a man doing the hardest thing in journalism — entering without a verdict and finding something real on the other side.

Sadly, that man traded his instincts for a Netflix brief and never looked back.

He got paid. The audience got a lecture.

​Culture, Manosphere, Inside the manosphere, Netflix, Tv, Entertainment, Louis theroux, Review 

President Donald Trump is publicly weighing his options to pressure Iran’s new regime into making a deal to end hostilities.

As the conflict enters the fourth week, Trump reassured the America people that the United States is in the midst of “serious discussions” with Iran’s new, “more reasonable” regime to end the war. Although Trump said great progress has been made, he also threatened to obliterate key Iranian infrastructure if the conflict is not resolved in the near future.

‘This will be in retribution for our many soldiers.’

“The United States of America is in serious discussions with A NEW, AND MORE REASONABLE, REGIME to end our Military Operations in Iran,” Trump said in a Truth Social post Monday.

“Great progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched.'”

RELATED: ‘TOTAL RESOLUTION’: Trump orders temporary suspension amid Iran peace talks

Nathan Howard/Getty Images

As Trump noted, the United States has refrained from striking these facilities after the president first announced the negotiations last week. Trump originally gave the Iranians a five-day window to strike a deal but later extended it by an additional 10 days.

If the strikes were to take place, Trump said they would be in “retribution” for the hundreds of Americans who have died at the hands of the Iranian regime.

“This will be in retribution for our many soldiers, and others, that Iran has butchered and killed over the old Regime’s 47 year ‘Reign of Terror,'” Trump said.

RELATED: Trump offers unique insight into Iran’s ‘strange’ negotiations: ‘It won’t be pretty!’

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Secretary of State Marco Rubio came short of naming these new negotiators, saying it would probably “get them in trouble.”

“I’m not going to disclose to you who those people are because it would probably get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside Iran,” Rubio told ABC News. “Look, there’s some fractures going on there internally. And at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that’s happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great.”

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​Donald trump, Marco rubio, Iran war, Iranian regime, Ayatollah, Ground troops, Strait of hormuz, Operation epic fury, Oil fields, Kharg island, Peace talks, Negotiations, Politics 

Anti-abortion activist Lila Rose is sounding the alarm after a vote in the House of Lords moved to decriminalize abortion up to birth in the United Kingdom — a shift she says does not reflect public opinion.

According to Rose, the provision was inserted into a broader criminal justice bill, allowing it to pass with less scrutiny while dramatically expanding abortion access.

“So how did this happen?” Rose says to BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

“There was a big bill that had to do with the police and had to do with criminalization and crimes, and the pro-abort activists in Parliament stuck in a decriminalization statute that would legalize abortion through all nine months in the U.K.,” she tells Stuckey.

Rose explains that the provision “means you can end the life of your baby up until the moment of birth and there’s no criminal penalties for you.”

“You can order an abortion pill via the mail. You can take it at home. You can kill your 32-week-old baby. … And there is zero liability. There is zero criminal penalty for that. So it’s a very dark day in the U.K., and of course the pro-life movement is galvanized now, saying we have to put a stop to this,” she says.

“Is it even possible for pro-lifers in the U.K. to put a stop to this? Or is it just the deal is done?” Stuckey asks.

“If they get enough members of Parliament, they can reverse this. So it’s a matter of rallying the political power and support,” Rose explains, pointing out that everyone who plans to fight for the pro-life cause in the U.K. is already facing an uphill battle — but they’re not alone.

“I do think there’s a growing unrest in the U.K. about how the government is, quite frankly, handling governance. This has to do in part with the protection of women and girls in the countries from rape and from attacks. It has to do with the lack of freedom of speech in the U.K., where people are praying outside abortion clinics or hospitals where abortions are happening and they’re thrown into jail for that,” she tells Stuckey.

“I think people of good faith and goodwill — pro-life people, pro-family people — need to build a fighting force like we have here in the United States and believe that it’s possible, and with the right political will, make the change happen that needs to happen,” she adds.

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The man who may have been the most prolific mass murderer in American history died in prison last week at age 85. Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania abortionist, was convicted in 2013 of murdering three babies.

Now, if your first thought is, “Yes, that’s what abortionists do. They kill babies. Others have probably killed more than he did,” I understand your point. But Gosnell’s case carried an added horror: infanticide. He killed babies who had already been born. That means everyone in the abortion debate should agree that these were human beings with rights.

Gosnell’s crimes reveal something ugly about American culture — something many would rather not face. They also reveal the providence of God.

Even the most ardent abortion-rights advocate usually stops short of openly defending infanticide. Most draw the line at first breath. When Peter Singer made the case for infanticide, the argument was so grotesque that many assumed he was merely pushing abortion logic to the edge to expose its absurdity.

A grand jury concluded that Gosnell likely killed hundreds of babies this way, though their bodies were destroyed and will never be recovered. The details remain horrific. Witnesses reported that if babies were breathing or showing signs of life, Gosnell would cut their spinal cords with scissors. The grand jury described his clinic, the Women’s Medical Society, as a “house of horrors.” Investigators found fetal remains stored in plastic bags, milk jugs, cat-food containers, and specimen cups. They found blood on the floor and furniture, cat feces, dust, and bags of biohazard waste piling up in the basement and freezer.

As a philosopher, I find myself asking two questions: How can a human being do such things to babies? And what does that say about our world?

In “The Brothers Karamazov,” Ivan Karamazov wonders whether God can exist if children suffer. He is less troubled by the suffering of adults, who may deserve some of what they endure. But when children suffer, his doubts explode. Gosnell’s crimes would have pushed Ivan past outrage and into open metaphysical revolt. Where was God when this happened?

But I would reframe the question. Where were we?

RELATED: ‘House of horrors’: America’s most infamous abortionist who murdered babies born alive faces his creator at 85

Mark Makela/Corbis/Getty Images

Gosnell’s story broke through — barely — only because of the infanticide. Had he confined himself to killing babies in the womb, countless people would have walked past his clinic every day and thought nothing of it. That is part of the indictment. The same culture that teaches young Ivan Karamazovs to doubt God often teaches them to defend abortion. Many of the professors who train students to sneer at divine justice also promote the practice that made Gosnell possible.

Could anything be more demonic?

It is almost as if they are saying, “If God existed, then I could not exist, because God would not permit evil like me.”

Some Democrats have defended late-term abortion and even flirted with arguments that edge toward Singer’s position. Such people cannot turn around and blame God for Gosnell. They are implicated in the same moral disorder. But the question presses beyond them. What sort of world should we expect when large numbers of people accept the killing of babies in the womb as normal?

Gosnell’s crimes reveal something ugly about American culture — something many would rather not face. They also reveal the providence of God, both in judging sin and in calling a nation to repent. That pattern runs throughout the Old Testament prophets.

America failed to learn the lesson of human dignity from the evil of slavery. Now many of the same arguments once used to justify slavery reappear in defense of abortion: They are not persons with legal rights; they are inferior; their lives depend on the will of another. The language changes. The moral logic does not.

And the logic has grown uglier over time.

Roe v. Wade was framed as a matter of medical privacy. The public, we were told, had no right to know what passed between a woman and her doctor. Supporters appealed to pity. An unwanted child, they argued, would face a hard life anyway. But the debate has since shifted. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous essay “A Defense of Abortion” compared pregnancy to having an unwanted violinist attached to your body. That argument now gets invoked to justify abortion at any stage on the grounds that “it is the mother’s body.”

Ivan would answer: Yes, but you are dismembering the baby’s body.

What happens to a culture that treats pregnancy and babies this way? Population decline follows. So does a dehumanization that spills into the rest of life. But providential consequences follow, too. Gosnell is one of them. America has tolerated the horror of baby-killing for decades, and Gosnell forced the country to look directly at what that horror becomes when pursued to its logical end: deny the unborn legal rights, then deny personhood to infants, then empower abortionists to decide that a baby becomes human only when the mother says so.

RELATED: Paul Ehrlich died. His contempt for human life didn’t.

Gene Arias/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images

We cannot keep one foot inside this evil and one foot outside it. Either human beings possess rights no matter where they are, from the womb to hospice care, or they do not.

It is time to repent.

I am also a pastor, and one of the most sobering truths in this entire story is that Gosnell did not cease to exist when he died. He stood before the throne of God to answer for those innocent lives. The babies he killed did not cease to exist either. They stand as witnesses to his crimes. Their blood cries out.

And those who have participated in abortion will one day face those they helped destroy.

That truth should drive every one of us to the cross of Christ, confessing our sin and looking to Him for mercy and redemption.

​Opinion & analysis 

In a shocking development that has left many Christians asking questions about the Holy Land, one of Christianity’s holiest sites received an almost unprecedented disruption at the beginning of Holy Week.

In a press release on Sunday, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced that Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, head of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, and the Most Reverend Fr. Francesco Ielpo, the official guardian of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, were prevented by Israeli authorities from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate Palm Sunday Mass.

‘For the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.’

The press release explained that the two, who were traveling privately to the church “without any characteristics of a procession or ceremonial act,” were stopped by Israeli police and were “compelled to turn back.”

“As a result, and for the first time in centuries, the Heads of the Church were prevented from celebrating the Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.”

RELATED: Iran war’s latest casualty: Christian celebrations of Holy Week in the Holy Land

ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images

The press release criticized the action, calling it “a manifestly unreasonable and grossly disproportionate measure.” The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem added: “This hasty and fundamentally flawed decision, tainted by improper considerations, represents an extreme departure from basic principles of reasonableness, freedom of worship, and respect for the Status Quo.”

Such strict measures have rarely, if ever, been taken against the faithful at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. While the church was closed to visitors in March 2020 under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu due to the COVID pandemic, it does not appear that the celebration of the Mass was ever prevented.

Barring two other brief closures in 1998 and 2018, also under Netanyahu, the last time the Mass was prevented from being celebrated in its entirety was due to the Black Death in 1349.

“The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Custody of the Holy Land express their profound sorrow to the Christian faithful in the Holy Land and throughout the world that prayer on one of the most sacred days of the Christian calendar has thus been prevented,” the patriarchate concluded.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued a statement confirming the news and criticizing the decision as an “unfortunate overreach.”

“While all Holy sites in the Old City are closed due to safety concerns for mass gatherings including the Western Wall, Church of the Holy Sepulcher and Al Aqsa Mosque, the action today by the Israel Nat’l Police to deny Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and 3 other priests from entering the Church to offer a blessing on Palm Sunday is an unfortunate overreach already having major repercussions around the world,” Huckabee said.

“For the Patriarch to be barred from entry to the Church on Palm Sunday for a private ceremony is difficult to understand or justify. Israel has indicated it will work with the Patriarch to accommodate a safe means of carrying out Holy Week activities,” the ambassador to Israel continued.

The Israeli prime minister’s office delivered a statement on social media regarding the decision to prevent the Mass, insisting that there was “no malicious intent whatsoever” and that it was done “out of special concern for [Pizzaballa’s] safety.”

The statement explained: “Over the past several days, Iran has repeatedly targeted the holy sites of all three monotheistic religions in Jerusalem with ballistic missiles. In one strike, missile fragments crashed meters from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.”

The prime minister’s office also indicated that it understood the special circumstances of Holy Week that made this closure especially disappointing: “However, given the holiness of the week leading up to Easter for the world’s Christians, Israel’s security arms are putting together a plan to enable church leaders to worship at the holy site in the coming days.”

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A segment from “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Fox News is going viral after a reporter attempted to get a read on Fort Lauderdale Beach spring breakers’ level of political literacy — and the answers did not disappoint.

While some view the responses as concerning, BlazeTV host John Doyle believes their pre-woke-era answers mean “that normal patriots are doing kind of well.”

“What issue facing America is the most important to you?” the reporter asked some scantily clad young women.

One young woman responded, “What bikini I’m going to wear next.” Another responded, “Obesity is terrible,” and another claimed her Starbucks order was the only issue needing her attention.

A young man answered, “ICE,” before joking, “Not personally. I’m legal.”

“What have you heard that Donald Trump has been doing recently?” the reporter then asked.

“Gulf of America. That’s the last thing I kept up with,” one young woman responded.

“We’re going to war with Iraq. That’s been crazy,” another said.

“So, this is obviously, I think, a very positive development for the people, for the culture. I know that a lot of that language is going to be alarming to the viewers. I understand that,” Doyle comments.

“They were obviously not taking it seriously, and they thought it was basically funny. And so, that’s good because when young people, I think, feel as though they have to kind of cave to this sort of woke stuff like they did five, six, seven years ago, … that is a sign of a culture in steep decline,” he continues.

While some of the spring breakers also made it clear that they have “degenerate” intentions for their beach vacation, Doyle points out that this has been a tradition going back generations.

“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but to degenerate literally means to be in a degenerated state. Have a conversation with your father. Ask him about your grandfather. Sort of what the men in your family were getting up to when they were young,” he says.

“They were probably acting like idiots and drinking with their friends, as has been the case historically since there have been men in camaraderie and alcohol. This is sort of what guys do normally. Again, natural behavior, normal behavior is not something to aspire to. The point of our civilization is to transcend that to cultivate virtuous behavior,” he explains.

And while stats that cite less drinkers and partiers among the youth might sound inspiring, Doyle notes that it’s “not because of some personal commitment to a higher calling, but rather because they’re inside doomscrolling and isolated and antisocial.”

“They’re asked, ‘Hey, what do you think about the Ayatollah?’” he continues. “‘I don’t know, I only care about my Starbucks order.’ That is the ideal answer for a young woman.”

“Attractive young women should not know what the Ayatollah is,” he says. “They should be chiefly concerned with their Starbucks order, with being tan, with not being fat. Like, this is good. This is actually what nature looks like when it is healing.”

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The independence of the Federal Reserve System has become a major source of public controversy. As political leaders signal dissatisfaction with monetary policy, officials and commentators rush to defend the central bank’s insulation from democratic pressure. We are told, as if it were self-evident, that central bank independence is a pillar of sound economic governance.

But this confidence is misplaced. The economic case for central bank independence is far weaker than its defenders suggest. And the constitutional case is weaker still.

Officials entrusted with such consequential authority must ultimately answer to elected leadership.

Start with economics. The standard argument is that independent central banks deliver low and stable inflation because they are insulated from short-term political incentives. Elected officials, facing electoral pressures, might be tempted to juice the economy with artificially loose monetary policy. By contrast, independent technocrats can take the long view.

Early empirical studies did show that countries with independent central banks experienced lower inflation. Yet more recent research has cast doubt on this relationship. The correlation is sensitive to different samples and methods. In many cases, the supposed benefits of independence disappear entirely.

A more plausible explanation has emerged. Countries that enjoy low and stable inflation share deeper institutional characteristics: respect for the rule of law, stable political systems, and credible commitments to property rights. These are the real foundations of sound money. Central bank independence accompanies these basic governance norms, but its stand-alone effect is debatable.

This matters for a free-enterprise economy. Monetary policy is not a neutral technocratic exercise. Interest rates are prices: the price of time, risk, and capital. When insulated officials tinker with those prices at their discretion, the result is distorted market signals. Cheap credit can mislead investors, encourage unsustainable projects, and redistribute wealth in opaque ways. Independence does not eliminate politics. It simply hides politics behind a veil of expertise.

If the economic case for independence is overstated, the constitutional case is entirely bunk. The Constitution is clear: Congress holds the power “to coin Money” and “regulate the Value thereof.” Monetary authority, like all legislative power, originates with the people’s representatives. Congress may delegate certain functions to administrative bodies, including by creating a central bank. But delegation is not abdication.

Those who exercise delegated authority remain accountable to the laws Congress passes and, ultimately, to the chief executive charged with enforcing them.

Yet the modern Fed operates as if our constitutional framework were irrelevant. Its leaders enjoy significant protection from removal. Its decisions (targeting interest rates, allocating credit, regulating banks, etc.) have sweeping consequences for the entire economy. If this does not constitute the exercise of executive power, it is hard to say what does.

The Supreme Court has recently emphasized that administrative agencies cannot be insulated from presidential oversight simply because they possess technical expertise. The separation of powers does not yield to convenience, nor to the promise of better policy outcomes. Yet when it comes to the Federal Reserve, the court has signaled a willingness to tolerate precisely such insulation — a “special case” for the most powerful economic institution in the country.

This exception is indefensible. Appeals to history or prudence, however well grounded, are not constitutional arguments. An agency that wields executive power must answer to the chief executive. Concerns about how that works in practice does not justify ignoring the Constitution.

The truth is that central bank independence persists not because it is firmly grounded in law or economics, but because the alternative unsettles us. We worry, not without reason, that elected officials might misuse monetary policy for short-term gain.

But the Constitution does not permit us to resolve that fear by concentrating vast economic power in the hands of unaccountable experts. A free and self-governing people must confront the difficult task of designing institutions that combine competence with accountability.

RELATED: If Congress can’t oversee the FBI, who can?

Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

That begins with Congress. There are several legislative reforms that can restore the rule of law to monetary policy. First, lawmakers should narrow the Federal Reserve’s mandate to a single, clear objective — price stability — rather than the vague and conflicting goals it currently pursues. A simpler mandate would make it easier to evaluate performance and hold policymakers responsible when they fail.

Second, Congress should revisit the legal protections that shield senior Fed officials from removal. Freedom of judgment is one thing; freedom from oversight is another. Officials entrusted with such consequential authority must ultimately answer to elected leadership. Legislators ought to make it easier to fire central bankers.

Finally, the president should take a more active role in ensuring that the Fed operates within its statutory and constitutional bounds. This does not mean dictating day-to-day interest rate decisions. Instead, it means recognizing that monetary policy, like all exercises of government power, must remain subject to democratic control.

President Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chairman is a good start. The two must work together to restore the Fed’s ordinary day-to-day operations, something missing since the 2007-08 financial crisis.

Economic stability is obviously desirable. But we cannot purchase it at the cost of self-government. Republican principles require officials to be answerable to the people. If we are serious about preserving the constitutional order and free enterprise, we must abandon the comforting myths of central bank independence and restore accountability to the Federal Reserve.

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

​Federal reserve, Constitution, U.s. economy, Separation of powers, The fed, Supreme court, Congress, Opinion & analysis, Interest rates, Kevin warsh 

A former Ohio high school teacher who was caught sexually abusing a 15-year-old student in a car has pleaded guilty to child sex crimes. The teacher avoided a harsher sentencing with a plea deal.

Jamelah Daboubi — a former English teacher at Horizon Science Academy in Columbus — pleaded guilty to amended charges of gross sexual imposition and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor in Franklin County Common Pleas Court in February, according to WBNS-TV.

‘As of now, the individual is no longer employed at Horizon Science Academy.’

The affidavit noted that the victim attends Horizon Science Academy and that he was a student in Daboubi’s class.

On April 2, 2025, officers with the Columbus Police Department responded to a report of a woman who claimed to have “caught her 15-year-old nephew and one of his 10th-grade teachers engaged in sexual contact in the teacher’s car,” the Franklin County Prosecuting Office said in a statement released in June 2025.

According to court records obtained by the Columbus Dispatch, the aunt of the teen approached the vehicle and saw her nephew in the passenger seat and Daboubi “jump off of” his lap.

Court documents revealed, “He stated while they were in the car, they kissed, Mrs. Daboubi grinded on him, and he had touched her breasts and buttocks over her clothing.”

The prosecutor’s office said, “The nephew, whom the woman has guardianship over, admitted to police that he and his teacher had been having a relationship that involved kissing and touching.”

The victim informed investigators that he and his 28-year-old teacher “had been texting for a couple of months and engaging in sexual activity for a period of time,” according to the statement.

Prosecutors said police discovered “hundreds of phone calls and thousands of texts between the two, including texts where the two professed their love for each other.”

The Columbus Dispatch reported that the Horizon Science Academy sent a letter to parents in May 2025 regarding the accusations against the teacher after her arrest on May 18, 2025.

“As of now, the individual is no longer employed at Horizon Science Academy,” the letter stated. “At this time, we have no indication of any other concerns involving this individual and any other students, either on or off campus.”

Thanks to her plea deal, Daboubi avoided a lengthy prison sentence. Daboubi was indicted on two counts of sexual battery in June, but the charges were amended.

The below news video ran when Daboubi was charged last year.

RELATED: Teacher who left claw marks on underage student’s back after sex romp gets sweetheart plea deal

WBNS reported that the amended charges of gross sexual imposition and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor carry a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison.

The court’s sentencing recommendation is five years of community control, ongoing counseling, and community service, in addition to the surrender of her professional teaching credentials.

Daboubi must also register as a Tier II sex offender as part of her guilty plea.

Daboubi is awaiting a sentencing hearing.

The Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to Blaze News‘ request for comment.

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You’ve probably heard, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” It’s catchy, but not new. Long before this became a mantra, Scripture was teaching this same truth, but with more spiritual weight.

Jesus modeled healthy, intentional friendships. He was deliberate about who he let into his inner circle. It wasn’t luck or happenstance. He chose with intention.

How often do we talk ourselves into friendships we shouldn’t have — with people we don’t even like?

Close friends can make or break you, and even more importantly, they can shape the trajectory of your life. Proverbs 13:20 goes beyond advice; it offers a clear strategy: Choose friends wisely, or risk being shaped by fools.

Science backs this up. Friendships influence career choices, health decisions, and spiritual well-being. Yet in modern society, close friendships are declining. Scholars now call it a “friendship recession.” Only 17% of Americans under 30 say they feel deeply connected to a community, according to a 2025 Harvard Kennedy School poll. In 1990, about 3% of Americans said they had no close friends; today, that number has reached double digits. Over the past three decades, meaningful, close friendships have sharply diminished.

If you want good friends who are truly in your corner, consider these key principles.

Pick friends like Jesus did: Quality over quantity

Jesus loved and ministered to countless people, but He invested deeply in only a few during his short but impactful life. He intentionally structured His relationships. The Gospels show Him teaching and healing crowds, sending out the 72 in ministry, and handpicking 12 disciples. Within that circle, He maintained an inner trio of Peter, James, and John, who witnessed pivotal historical events like the Transfiguration and the Garden of Gethsemane.

It would have been easier for Him to rub shoulders with the “frat boys” of his time — the good ol’ Pharisees. After all, they weren’t poor, lowly fishermen. The Pharisees were admired, influential, and outwardly “holy.” People wanted their approval; they regarded them as “prestigious.” I’m sure they wore fancy clothes and had the best things money could buy. But Jesus had nothing to do with them. He avoided their rotten influence, interacting only when necessary to answer their relentless, pesky questions.

Jesus didn’t chase popularity or status. He didn’t measure influence by who was “in” or who had the loudest voice in the room. Instead, he focused on people who were teachable, loyal, and aligned with His mission. His friendships were rooted in character and purpose instead of appearance or social standing. As 1 Corinthians 15:33 warns: “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’”

He surrounded Himself with people who, while imperfect, were willing to be challenged, changed, and called higher. He didn’t just preach to the multitudes, He walked closely with 12, poured deeply into three, and entrusted the future of the church to them. Think of all the long walks Jesus took with His disciples. Walking on foot from places like Galilee to Jerusalem was roughly a three- to five-day commute. On these journeys, Jesus used them to teach and disciple and build meaningful relationships. Nothing went to waste.

His choice of who to do life with wasn’t random; it was strategic and spiritually essential. Jesus modeled a clear principle in both friendship and kingdom-building: quality over quantity. Following Jesus’ example, we can intentionally choose friends while also becoming the kind of friend others need.

RELATED: Love one another: What the first Christians can teach us about fellowship

Francis G. Mayer/Getty Images

Want great friends? Start by being one

Before we can choose good friends, we must first be one. Jesus modeled the qualities of a high-caliber friend: loyalty, integrity, truthfulness, and love.

Scripture also offers examples —both good and bad. David and Jonathan embody loyalty and sacrifice. Mary and Elizabeth show a friendship rooted in faith and mutual support. Daniel and his friends strengthen one another and stand firm in conviction, even in captivity.

By contrast, Job’s friends accuse rather than comfort. Judas betrays. King Rehoboam rejects wise counsel in favor of foolish peers, dividing a kingdom.

Jonathan, though heir to the throne, chose covenant over envy in his friendship with David. Elizabeth welcomed Mary with joy rather than jealousy, despite the circumstances. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego remained faithful under pressure, putting God above comfort, safety, and status.

These friendships share a common thread: character. They refused envy, ego, and compromise — even when justified by the world’s standards. Quality people attract quality friends.

We must cultivate these kinds of relationships, doing the inner work to become the kind of friend we hope to have.

Exercise the muscle of rejection

I’m a people person. Making friends has always come easily — but like most of us, I had to learn that not every friendship is worth keeping.

As a teenager, I desperately wanted to fit in with the “cool kids.” When I was invited to sit at their lunch table, I thought, “I’ve made it.” But after one regretful meal — filled with gossip, cruelty, and shallow conversation — I felt immediate buyer’s remorse. I didn’t go back.

Instead, I sat with my brothers and their friends — or alone. I realized that solitude is far better than compromising your character to belong. It may be lonelier, even uncomfortable, but it protects your integrity and spiritual health.

That’s what I mean by exercising the “muscle of rejection.”

How often do we talk ourselves into friendships we shouldn’t have — with people we don’t even like? Maybe they’re popular, well connected, professionally useful, or simply convenient.

But relationships built on convenience, obligation, or fear of confrontation dilute your inner circle. Over time, they shape your habits, attitudes, and decisions — often in ways you won’t notice until years later.

As my father-in-law likes to say (quoting Kenny Rogers): “Know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.” Wisdom — and the discernment of the Holy Spirit — must guide these decisions. Not every connection is meant to last, and not every relationship deserves a front-row seat in your life.

For parents, this is even more critical. The friends we choose don’t just influence us — they shape our children’s worldview. Choosing wisely isn’t optional; it’s part of guiding the next generation.

Intentionality matters

Friends don’t show up on your doorstep; you have to put in the work. Gather people, host events, and create the opportunities you wish existed. Be the friend you wish you had. Seek relationships that are teachable, loyal, and mission-aligned. Choosing friends with discernment is not harshness; it’s stewardship. It’s about protecting your spiritual well-being, your family, and your calling. Jesus’ life shows us that strategic, purposeful friendships are not optional; they are foundational to living well and carrying out faithfulness.

Your inner circle will shape your mindset, your mission, and your life trajectory. Cultivate friendships with intention. Be ruthless. Reject the shallow and the convenient. Surround yourself with people who strengthen your faith, challenge your growth, and share your values. Exercise the muscle of rejection, and watch your life, and the lives of those around you, grow deeper and richer.

​Abide, Friendship, Jesus, Christian living, Fellowship, Lifestyle, Faith 

Most Christians see the New Age movement’s deep ties to occultism and witchcraft and recognize it as a demonic worldview. But there’s an adjacent movement that, despite its inextricable connection to New Age, is packaged as a Christian belief system.

That movement is called New Thought. It’s a spiritual movement that influenced New Ageism that centers on how the power of the mind shapes reality — emphasizing positive thinking, the law of attraction, mental healing, the divine nature of humanity, and the idea that Infinite Intelligence or God is within all things and accessible through right thinking.

This is the movement author and Christian apologist Melissa Dougherty found herself in before she became a true Christian.

On this episode of “Unashamed,” Melissa unpacks the good-sounding but ultimately evil mechanics of the New Thought movement that has millions of people duped into thinking they’re Christians.

“If I were to define New Thought in two words, it would be metaphysical Christianity. All that means is that everything that you see physically has a spiritual counterpart, including words,” Melissa says.

Instead of reading Scripture in its proper historical context to decipher what’s being communicated, New Thought, she explains, positions the reader as “the arbiter.”

“You’re the one that interprets it on how it feels to you and what it means to you. Because metaphysically speaking, truth is found from within, not outside of yourself, because God is in you,” she says. “So it’s a subjective interpretation. … There’s a higher, deeper, esoteric, hidden meaning within that text that’s meant for you.”

Melissa boils down the movement into one simple concept: “It’s the positive thinking movement in America with Jesus as its mascot.”

People in this movement believe that they “create [their] reality” through cognition. “Sickness, poverty, things like that are all a state of mind. How you feel creates your reality,” Melissa says.

This results in a lot of “distortion of truth,” she laments. For example, “there’s a saying in New Thought that when you look in the mirror, there’s a god staring back at you, and that’s the secret … of what Jesus was really trying to say.”

While this “sounds really good,” Melissa says, it’s a lie. That’s why she titled her book “Happy Lies” — because it shines a true biblical light on the positive-sounding but heretical New Thought movement.

“It duped me,” she confesses.

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

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Legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather, 49, is set to come out of retirement and re-enter the professional ring after a bout against Mike Tyson this spring. According to his official statement, he “still [has] what it takes to set more records,” but in the sports media world, rumors are swirling that “Money” Mayweather is actually just broke.

“All across social media, there are rumors and stories coming out about Floyd Mayweather — him auctioning off property, him being in bankruptcy, him being out of money, and that’s why he’s going to fight Mike Tyson,” BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock says.

He displays a tweet from Richard Allison that captures the wildest claims about Mayweather’s lavish spending habits:

“He’s blown it all. And now at 49 years old, he’s got to go back into the boxing ring and continue to fight because he’s in a lot of debt,” Whitlock says.

There’s a way to enjoy the fruit of one’s labor without allowing it to consume you, he argues, pointing to basketball GOAT Michael Jordan as the best example.

“Michael Jordan didn’t want to be relatable; [he] wanted to be helpful and have a good time. You can do both. Michael Jordan has played golf everywhere; he’s gambled everywhere, but he’s also taken time to be helpful,” Whitlock says, pointing to the four family medical clinics Jordan has opened in North Carolina specifically for uninsured or underinsured patients.

Mayweather, on the other hand, has only been “living for the culture,” he says.

“The culture doesn’t reward anybody. It steals and destroys. … Don’t be Floyd Mayweather.”

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Democrats are currently on track to take the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. If this happens, they will empower resistance bureaucrats to slow down all Trump administration initiatives. Of course, they’ll not only impeach Trump, but will also pursue impeachment proceedings against many Trump officials. This will substantially drain momentum from the administration and increase it for Democrats heading into the crucial 2028 presidential election.

The Democrats are already putting together plans, formulating a narrative, and accumulating evidence, which they will use against Republicans should they retake power. We’ve seen this movie before.

Since the billionaires do not know how to wield their potential power, they have become targets.

The Marxist machine has had time to learn from its mistakes during 2020-2024. The Democrats will likely pursue criminal prosecution against key targets in the MAGA orbit, including big donors like Elon Musk, the DOGE bros, and even junior Trump staffers. We’ve already seen in Arctic Frost an effort to spy on sitting Republican United States senators — they’ll be on the target list, too.

This is power. Force is power. Politics is the management of force. For his tech-oriented publication Pirate Wires, Mike Solana recently published “Theory of Power,” which outlines how the left will replicate California’s wealth tax to target billionaires nationwide. He believes that the left is targeting billionaires because wealth is power. He’s half right.

Wealth itself is not power — it is the means to power. The left seeks to redistribute the wealth of the billionaire class to the people living in America in exchange for power. Leftists are not targeting the billionaires because their wealth poses a threat to the left’s power — they want to seize the power of that wealth for themselves. Since the billionaires do not know how to wield their potential power, they have become targets. If they did, the California wealth tax wouldn’t even be an issue.

Wealth cannot protect its holder from force. If politics is the management of force, then political influence is power. There are plenty of people with political influence and no wealth who have more power than billionaires. There are 20-something political staffers who have more political power than billionaires. There is a legion of bureaucrats with more political power than billionaires. Who has more power, a billionaire or the IRS lawyer investigating him? Of course, it’s the IRS lawyer, because the IRS lawyer is backed by regime power.

The billionaire class has largely abdicated regime power — the question of who is in charge — with a few notable exceptions, such as Elon Musk’s 2024 election engagement and purchase of Twitter. The wealthy are quite good at influencing politics for their discreet business interests, with one analysis finding that they receive a 220-times return on investment through their lobbying efforts (other analyses attribute the rise in corporate profits to lobbying).

However, regime politics is not fundamentally about lobbying for an appropriation or a carve-out in the tax code, which puts generating wealth above gaining political power. Machiavelli warned against this in “The Prince”:

And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms, they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art.

Wielding political influence for higher corporate profits to buy another jet or a fifth vacation home is thinking of ease more than of arms.

If politics is the management of force, then political influence is the “arms.” The billionaires are on track to lose their “state,” because they’ve neglected the art of influencing regime politics.

RELATED: The case against ‘principled conservatism’

wenjin chen/Getty Images

For all its faults, the left understands regime politics. Billionaire wealth extraction is just one part of its plan to sustain and deepen its regime-level power. If its only opposition, the MAGA political class, is destroyed by regime politics, the left’s wealth extraction scheme is not only inevitable, but it will also be the least of the billionaires’ worries.

All of this means that right-aligned billionaires should move immediately to gain regime-level political influence. To be clear, wealth can be a strong amplifier of political influence. Still, political influence has a simple recipe: It requires access, credibility, leverage, and the ability to change behavior. In other words, donating to campaigns is not enough. Elected officials must be lobbied to act in the interest of those who support them, or someone else will lobby them for their own interests.

Before a politician is elected, the benefactor has the leverage. But once the politician has regime-level power, the benefactor is subject to the beneficiary’s power. If right-wing billionaires want to survive what’s coming, they must have a well-run machine to influence politicians after they are elected. Solana makes this point — with which I fully agree: They must “respond as if [their lives depend] on it, because my reading of what these people are saying, casually, cheerfully, and increasingly out loud, is…it does.”

But power is fickle. Any billionaires who wield political influence strictly for their own benefit rather than on behalf of the people will find themselves burdened with all the paranoia and stress of a tyrant. To that end, Xenophon’s “On Tyranny” provides relevant advice: “Consider the fatherland to be your estate, the citizens your comrades, friends your own children, your sons the same as your life, and try to surpass all these in benefactions. For if you prove superior to your friends in beneficence, your enemies will be utterly unable to resist you.”

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

​Democrats, 2026 midterms, Doge, Billionaires, Donors, Regime-level power, Irs, Political funding, Theory of power, Billionaire class, Opinion & analysis, Dumb money on the right, Elon musk, Pirate wires 

A female cop in Massachusetts and her husband are facing serious allegations that they raped a boy for years, beginning when he was 14.

Around 6 a.m. on Thursday, Samantha Pelrine, a 31-year-old officer with the Plymouth Police Department, and husband Daniel Forand, 37, were arrested without incident in connection with the allegations.

‘We hold our officers to the highest standards and expect them to uphold their sworn duty both on and off.’

Earlier this month, a 21-year-old male who previously lived with the couple claimed to Massachusetts State Police that they had repeatedly sexually assaulted him up until 2025. The man also submitted an affidavit with similar allegations, claiming that “both sexually assaulted me until 2025” and that Forand had physically assaulted him.

“They are looking for me and I am scared for my safety,” the man wrote, seeking a restraining order. He said he moved out of the couple’s home last month.

According to CBS News, Plymouth Assistant District Attorney Jim Duffy told the court, “The allegations are that the sexual abuse started when he was 14 years old and continued up until last year. Another term for that is ‘grooming.'”

During the hearing, defense attorneys cast doubt on the credibility of the accuser. “He had accused someone falsely of sexually inappropriate behavior when he was in high school,” claimed Joseph Krowski Jr.

Tamari Kovach added that “his stories are inconsistent.”

RELATED: Retired police sergeant lived double life as a prolific rapist in Detroit, police say

Reports say Pelrine has been charged with at least three counts of aggravated rape of a child, while Forand has been charged with assault and battery and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon as well as multiple counts of indecent assault and battery and aggravated child rape. The charges related to alleged incidents that took place in 2019, CBS News reported, citing court records.

Pelrine and Forand both pled not guilty on Thursday afternoon and were released on bail. They are scheduled to return to court for a probable cause hearing on June 8.

Pelrine has since been placed on paid administrative leave, CBS News reported. On Thursday, the Plymouth Police Department issued a statement, claiming her “duty status is currently under review.”

“We are appalled and deeply disturbed by the allegations. We hold our officers to the highest standards and expect them to uphold their sworn duty both on and off,” the statement said in part.

“The conduct alleged is in violation of our values and of our basic principles as police officers, to serve and protect.”

Three years earlier almost to the day, the department issued a statement about Pelrine of an entirely different sort, highlighting her service as part of National Women’s Month 2023.

“We are so proud of our female Officers and the incredible job that they do under sometimes extraordinary circumstances,” the department said.

In the post, Pelrine said she always dreamed of becoming a police officer and joined the force in April 2022.

“I believe I picked the right career for my personality and what I wanted from a job because while the range of emotions from this job can vary drastically, I know that in some instances I’m truly able to make a difference in someone’s life,” she said.

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In this day and age, technology is no longer just about efficiency. It’s about pushing the limits, regardless of the consequences.

Earlier this month, a scientific breakthrough occurred when neurotechnology company Eon Systems took a complete digital map of a fruit fly’s brain and ran it inside a virtual fly body in a simulated world. The digital fly started walking, grooming itself, and behaving just like a real one — all from its brain wiring alone.

But Eon Systems isn’t stopping there. The company plans to do the same for a mouse brain next — and eventually for a human one. If successful, it could ultimately allow the human consciousness to live on in perpetuity in a digital format.

The spiritual implications of this are massive, says BlazeTV host Rick Burgess. On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” he explores the growing theory that our quest for technological dominance is inextricably linked to the end times.

This kind of “digital consciousness” that fuses the real and virtual worlds is very “dangerous,” Rick warns.

“[Eon Systems is] trying to reflect a version of God creating things,” he says.

When the original blueprints for God’s good creations are tampered with, biblical history paints a terrifying picture of what follows: divine wrath.

Rick points to Genesis 6, which documents the mysterious Nephilim, which many believe were a race of human-demon half-breeds that resulted from fallen angels reproducing with human women.

“One of the most plausible theories about the Nephilim is [that] when God became so angry when demons — fallen angels — were able to reproduce with human women … he killed everybody except for Noah and his family,” says Rick.

Satan’s specific crime in this particular scenario, he argues, was attempting to “mimic God” creating the perfect “God-man” in Jesus by creating his own counterfeit god-man in the Nephilim.

While Satan’s evil plot was foiled by the great flood, his desire to spawn his own dark creations will live on until his final defeat. Rick wonders if some of our modern technological advancements — especially those that seek to rewire what is natural — are linked to Satan’s ultimate plot to unleash unmitigated darkness across the earth in the final days before Christ’s second coming and the final climactic pouring out of God’s wrath on the earth.

“Can Satan find himself in this technology, working with these people — unbeknownst to them, I’m sure — to take modern technology and the whole AI world and begin to use it for the things he’s still going to do in the future?” he asks.

While Rick thinks it’s plausible that dystopian technology will play a role in the end times, he doesn’t subscribe to the theory that the Antichrist prophesied throughout Scripture will be some kind of half-human, half-robot cyborg.

“I think it’s pretty obvious in Scripture that Antichrist will be a human being,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean the Antichrist won’t be dependent on modern technology. In fact, Rick suspects that he will be.

He refers to Revelation 13, in which it is prophesied that the Antichrist — or “the beast” — will appear to be resurrected after a “mortal head wound,” leading many blind followers marveling at his supposed divine power.

Rick envisions a scenario in which this prophecy comes to fruition through modern technology.

“You think you couldn’t take AI technology and fake a mortal head wound and a resurrection? You could do that easily,” he says.

As for the scientists striving to fuse human life with technology, Rick still believes they very well could play a role in Satan’s sinister plot — even if nothing more than creating another race of “hybrids” that are abominations to God.

“I do think this is going to be an attempt for mankind … under demonic direction to start trying to play God and create animals and create human beings, which is extremely dangerous territory,” he warns.

While Eon Systems is still a ways off from experimenting on human brains, others are already doing it. In the next part of this episode, Rick dives into another dystopian tech story involving a biotech startup that built a computer using living human brain cells and is now teaching it to play the video game Doom. To get the full story, watch the episode above.

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​Strange encounters, Strange encounters with rick burgess, Rick burgess, Modern technology, Spiritual warfare, End times, Blazetv, Blaze media 

Everyone has a solution until he is the one who must pay for it.

After every crisis come cameras, microphones, and outrage. Commentators fill TV panels, politicians rush to social media, and fundraising emails arrive within hours. What rarely arrives is something harder: ownership.

Christianity does not pretend evil vanishes through better language or finer intentions. It proclaims that the cost is real and has been paid.

Criticism is easy. It assigns responsibility, demands action, and carries moral urgency. But it rarely answers the most important question: Who pays for this? Or, more plainly, where are the receipts?

That question clarifies things. It separates serious people from performers by exposing the difference between assigning a cost and carrying one.

We see it everywhere.

Recently, actor Mark Ruffalo argued that the federal government should tax the rich more, assuring us “they can handle it.” Perhaps. But his argument would carry more weight if he showed receipts.

Nothing stops him from demonstrating that principle himself. The federal government already accepts voluntary contributions to reduce the public debt. Those convinced we are undertaxed remain free to lead by example.

Few do, because saying it costs nothing. Telling someone else to pay is always easier than writing the check yourself. It is theater, and it is a luxury reserved for people who do not have to live with the consequences.

That same pattern appears far beyond Hollywood.

For decades, Iran has made its position clear, not only in words but in deeds. “Death to America” has echoed for years. I remember watching the embassy takeover in high school. For my entire adult life, I have heard those words and seen the regime’s receipts. I am 62.

Much of the West, meanwhile, treated the threat as rhetoric to manage rather than something to confront. Entire careers were built on discussing the problem with panels, policies, negotiations, and warnings. A great deal was invested in talking about the problem. Very little was invested in ending it.

That is the difference between posturing and payment.

Right now, we are no longer discussing the cost. We are paying it in blood and treasure. The risks are real. So are the instability and the possibility of escalation. But given what this regime has said, done, and promised for decades, the price we pay now may prove a bargain compared with the price of waiting.

Ignoring a threat does not eliminate it. It allows it to metastasize and hands the bill to someone else later, with interest.

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Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

We see the same pattern at home. For years, Americans were told the southern border was too complex to secure without sweeping reform. That phrase became a substitute for action. Yet when enforcement priorities changed, crossings dropped.

Clearly, the problem was not “complexity.” It was resolve.

Borders can be secured when a government decides to secure them. Which brings us back to the question too often left unanswered: Where are the receipts?

If confronting Iran is reckless, what replaces it? If border enforcement is wrong, what protects the system? If taxes must rise, who is willing to lead by example?

These are serious questions that deserve serious answers. But our culture rewards performance more than responsibility.

There is always a cost. The only question is whether we face it or pretend it is not there until it grows. Some assign that cost to others. Some ignore it and hope it disappears. Others delay it until it becomes unavoidable.

But every now and then, someone steps forward and pays it.

That is what decisive action looks like. Not posturing. Not signaling. Not commentary. Payment. The receipts that follow are rarely tidy. They do not arrive as statements or sound bites. They come as scars.

That truth is not political. It is inescapable. And at Easter, it is impossible to ignore.

Christianity does not offer a cost-free answer to the human condition or the wages of sin. It does not pretend evil vanishes through better language or finer intentions. It proclaims that the cost is real and has been paid.

Not assigned. Not deferred. Paid.

And the receipts were not theoretical. They were visible and costly: nail-scarred hands.

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Brendan SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images

That is why Christianity leaves us without excuses. Once you see that, you can no longer pretend solutions come without sacrifice or that responsibility can always be shifted to someone else.

Isaac Watts captured it plainly: “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”

We recognize truth when we see it because deep down, we know it is true: Someone always pays.

The only question is whether you trust the One who paid it or insist on bearing it yourself.

​National debt, Tax the rich, Mark ruffalo, Hypocrisy, Christianity, Iran, Accountability, Opinion & analysis, Taxes, Spending, Action, Caregivers 

A generation came of age on Chuck Norris “facts.” When the boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks under his bed for Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris counted to infinity — twice. He doesn’t do push-ups; he pushes the Earth down. Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.

These lines have been repeated so often that they have become their own mythology. And they point — sideways, lovingly — at something true. The man was singular. Which is why his death on March 20, age 86, deserves more than a eulogy dressed in silly jokes. It deserves honesty about what he actually represented.

A life that could have been reduced to folklore and fists and an endless loop of roundhouse kicks is best remembered as a love story.

A Hollywood star who kept his soul, a conservative who kept his convictions, and a son whose life was saved not by fists, but by faith.

That is the real story. Not the kicks. Not the films. The knees.

His mother’s knees, specifically. On the floor, in prayer, while her son was becoming an American icon.

A man’s man

Chuck Norris was a man’s man, a legitimate martial artist, not a choreographed facsimile. The fight community knew it then. They know it still. Chael Sonnen — former UFC title contender, sharp-tongued analyst, not a man given to sentimentality — recently paid homage to Norris’ genuine ability. Fighters don’t flatter easily.

Norris wasn’t a stuntman in a gi. He held black belts in Tang Soo Do, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and judo. Bruce Lee, who distributed respect like the IRS distributes refunds, cast him as the sole opponent worthy of a final fight in “The Way of the Dragon,” a scene that remains one of the most watchable moments in martial arts cinema.

Norris was a genuine Hollywood star, too. “Walker, Texas Ranger” ran for eight seasons and made Saturday nights like a civic duty. “Missing in Action” made $26 million on a $2 million budget. “Code of Silence.” “The Delta Force.” “Lone Wolf McQuade.” He owned a particular frequency — the man of few words who doesn’t start trouble but finishes it decisively, who stands for something every red-blooded American recognized instinctively. Movie theaters filled up. The lines entered the cultural lexicon. The legend was self-sustaining.

And yet.

Prayer warrior

Hollywood has a metabolism all its own. It rewards those who adapt , who update their beliefs like software, who stay elegantly vague on anything that costs them. Norris didn’t. His conservatism required no management, no spokesperson, no careful framing for a hostile room. It was constitutional, not cosmetic.

Success, he would later acknowledge, had done what success tends to do. It offered enough to make a man comfortable and comfortable enough to make him careless. The faith grew distant. Hollywood filled the space that God had occupied. His mother, however, didn’t move an inch. She prayed through his success. Through the excess that follows success. Through the gradual erosion of whatever lay beneath the action hero. Back home, while the credits rolled and Roger Ebert wrote rave reviews, she was petitioning a higher power.

She never stopped. Not when he was an infant fighting for his life, not when he was yielding, by degrees, to what fame asks of those it favors, not when the distance widening between the man she raised and the man Hollywood was making seemed irreversible. She simply kept praying — stubbornly, faithfully, across decades.

Norris never forgot it. “My mother has prayed for me all my life, through thick and thin,” he wrote. The scope of that sentence deserves a moment. All his life. Not a season of intercession. Not a crisis response. A lifetime of it.

Nonnegotiable faith

When Norris returned to God, he did so completely, without a hint of reservation. Faith was not compartmentalized, managed, or diluted for public consumption. He said what he believed, to whoever was listening, without apology. On abortion, he rejected the path of least resistance that Hollywood had so generously paved. It was not, in his view, a policy question or a political calculation. Not a matter of preference, nuance, or personal freedom conveniently defined. A moral line, absolute and non-negotiable.

In an industry that treats the unborn as an inconvenience and their defenders as embarrassments, Norris stood apart. He understood that confusion about life is downstream of confusion about God. Lose your sense of the divine, and you lose your sense of limits. Lose limits, and life becomes conditional — weighed, assessed, and discarded when the calculus demands it, by people who have never once doubted their own right to exist. Norris saw that trajectory clearly, because he had briefly walked it himself.

A life that could have been reduced to folklore and fists and an endless loop of roundhouse kicks is best remembered as a love story — between a son who wandered and a mother who wouldn’t let him stay lost. Chuck Norris is gone. But the America he embodied — patriotic, God-fearing, and entirely unembarrassed about both — is still here. Still worth defending.

​Faith, Lifestyle, Christianity, Converts, Chuck norris, Bruce lee, Martial arts, Movies, Delta force, Enter the dragon, Walker texas ranger