Category: blaze media

A tourist attraction meant to captivate children ended up with one of them being beaten up.

China’s flagship robots have shown to malfunction so much that it is hard to take the showcase from February as seriously as before, and now they are endangering children.

‘The humanoid was described as a “Jerk clown robot.”‘

Months ago, Unitree, one of China’s leading robotics companies, was showing off moves that seemed both futuristic and flawless. Now, the cracks have begun show in the models, along with the distinct possibility that they are being used as spy machines.

The latest hijinks from the Unitree G1 model took place at Children’s Day in Xinjiang, China. The public seemingly lined up at the popular tourist spot called the Urumqi Botanical Garden, Newsflare reported, to see a kung-fu demonstration from one of the humanoid bots.

While performing a routine, a robot fitted with a blue wig took just seven seconds to kick a nearby child in the stomach.

RELATED: ‘Anti-clanker’: Why millions of people are cheering this android’s humiliation

The routine was seemingly stopped, with the robot slowly backing off as it was likely being controlled in some manner.

The bot was described as a “jerk clown robot” by Russian outlet RT, which reported that while the child “was not seriously hurt,” his mother complained that staff at the event were slow to react.

Days earlier, children were presented with similar robots in a “Waste-to-robot” event for kindergartners in Huaibei, Anhui Province, of China. Children crafted their robots out of waste for a presentation, before getting getting their hands on one of Unitree’s expensive ($13,500) G1 bots.

The event was a celebration in the lead-up to Children’s Day.

In late May, another G1 took a stumble seen around the world during an attempt at a Michael Jackson dance routine.

RELATED: China debuts ‘scary’ martial arts robots capable of backflips and weapons training

Feng Shufeng/VCG/Getty Images

While dancing to the classic song “Billie Jean,” a G1 face-planted on a flight of stairs and remained motionless until it was embarrassingly dragged offstage by a staff member.

A different dance routine went off the rails in February when a street-performer bot took a tumble. The robot flailed as the likely owner tried to grab it, resulting in a swift kick in the face that reportedly left the man’s nose bloody.

Axios reported on research last year that showed there was public-facing spyware installed in some of Unitree’s robots, meaning anyone with the proper information could view live camera feeds without login credentials through the bots, specifically Unitree’s G01 robot dogs.

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​Robots, China, Xinjiang, Unitree, Tech 

Will artificial intelligence disrupt and revolutionize the betting industry moving forward?

Some companies are looking to answer that question ahead of the 2026 World Cup, by compiling data and feeding it through AI agents.

‘Are soccer fans better off with AI rather than simply going with the odds?’

One such company fed Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.6 over 1,200 data points to predict every match in the World Cup and determine the outcome.

The analysis from Action Network delivered 57 pages and more than 19,000 words on who would win which match, mapping out an entire bracket for soccer fans.

AI predictions

Using “international form, World Cup history, squad market value” and “coach profiles,” the in-depth look from Claude had France as the winner over Argentina in the final.

World Soccer Talk took a similar approach with Google Gemini and included analysis of style of play, performance under certain climates, squad depth, and manager performance. The AI spit out Spain as the most likely winner of the tournament. However, asking Gemini for a simple prediction straight up would have garnered the same outcome, with Spain winning 2-1 over France.

RELATED: FIFA president reveals why World Cup tickets are so expensive — because they can be

FRANCK FIFE/AFP/Getty Images

Microsoft CoPilot figured the consistency, “elite depth,” and pipeline of talent were reasons enough to predict France as the likely winner, according to AS.

An “unusually strong blend of factors” such as prime-age talent and an “established possession-based system” were among the factors ChatGPT gave to place Spain as the likely winner for 2026, in a 2-1 win over France.

The only AI to go slightly off-the-board was Grok, which cited “unmatched” squad depth coupled with elite attackers as the reason why Brazil will likely win the tournament, 2-1 over France.

AI versus the house

By using either complex analyses or even simply posing the question to chatbots, are soccer fans better off with AI rather than simply going with the odds?

The short answer is no.

Gamblers will steal lean with their intuition and real-life knowledge of the teams, and while these reports could assist in completing a bracket, casual or for-fun bettors are just as well off to go with the favorites.

Most odds-setters have listed Spain and France as neck-and-neck favorites to win, typically around +450.

RELATED: Computers are now depreciating slower than cars — the reason is enraging

Luke Hales/Getty Images

Grok going with Brazil to win it all — which is listed as the fourth or fifth favorite behind England and sometimes Argentina — is the only outlier of the popular chatbots that did not go with a favorite.

What this likely means is that the information that is publicly available and provided to the chatbots is essentially the same; this is not the same as an NFL team using their own internal scouting data to find their next draft pick — this is chatbots farming the same data used by odds-makers and coming to similar conclusions.

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​Ai models, Artificial intelligence, Chatbots, Gambling, World cup, Tech 

President Donald Trump joined Kristen Welker of NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in a Wisconsin barn for an interview that aired on Sunday, covering a wide range of topics, including the war in Iran, Israel’s escalating attacks against Lebanon, the economy, and the prospect of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.

It became unmistakably clear nearly 40 minutes into the interview that the American president’s patience had been sapped by Welker’s incessant needling and contradictions.

‘You know that these elections are rigged.’

Late in the interview, Trump defended his proposed “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which would provide compensation to victims of government weaponization, making whole those who’ve “been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe.”

Welker — whose approach does not appear to have undergone any refinements following her humiliating interviews with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — responded both by concern-mongering about restitution going to certain Jan. 6 protesters and by pushing back against the president’s characterization of ex-FBI Director James Comey as a “dirty cop.”

The NBC News talking head proceeded to claim, repeatedly, that the president’s narrative regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, protests was baseless. Welker stated that there was “no evidence” that there were FBI agents ushering Jan. 6 protesters into the Capitol; “no evidence” that there were “dirty cops” on the scene; and “no evidence” that the Biden administration had sent innocent people to prison.

RELATED: Spencer Pratt’s 40,000-vote lead vanishes in Los Angeles mayor race as California continues counting ballots

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Welker then attempted to pivot to a different subject, but Trump refused to let her have the last word on the matter.

“There’s a lot of evidence,” said Trump. “Listen to me: There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.”

“Well, it’s not been presented in a court of law,” said Welker.

Trump, unfazed by Welker’s many interruptions, stated, “The election was rigged. It was a dirty election — and it’s happening again right now in California.”

Welker tested Trump’s patience again only to find that she had exhausted it.

After she said there was no evidence of improprieties in the California elections, Trump said, “They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked.”

“To be fair, I’m not crooked,” said Welker. “But let’s continue.”

“Really? Well, you play right into their hands then,” said Trump. “You’re either crooked, or you’re stupid.”

“You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged,” continued the president. “Your network knows that they’re rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide, and I got 94% bad press. You know why I got that? Because you have no credibility.”

The sputtering talking head’s attempts to salvage the interview proved to be in vain as Trump was properly incensed.

“Your elections in this country — we’re like a third-world country. Your elections are crooked, and you’re crooked, and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked,” said Trump. “And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. You’re one-sided, crooked networks. Let’s call it quits. I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

Welker complained about having to travel “all the way” to Wisconsin for the interview and pleaded with Trump to stay. After leaving her with some advice — “straighten out your press” — the president rose to his feet, stepped on his lapel microphone, and marched off.

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​California, Donald trump, Election, Fake news, James comey, Jan 6, Kristen welker, Meet the press, Nbc news, Stolen election, Politics 

Pride Month is underway, and no one is more excited for it than the Boston Public Library — as the library is kicking off the month with a schedule of 19 drag queen story hours for children.

“Children and families are invited to come and celebrate Pride Month with drag queen Ms. Patty for a fun-filled story hour of songs, stories, and more!” one advertisement reads.

Another advertisement boasts a “bilingual drag story time with Just JP” — which is for children just ages 3 and up with an adult.

“A bilingual story hour celebrating Pride Month that raises awareness of gender diversity, promotes self-acceptance, and builds empathy through an enjoyable literary experience,” the advertisement reads.

“Sin induces insanity too. If we look at the Boston Public Library, it’s hosting 19 drag queen story time events. I had to double check that. Nineteen drag queen story time events for children during Pride Month,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey says, shocked.

The age limits for the different drag story hours range from 18 months to 5 years old.

“Now, when you think about what a drag queen is, it is a man with prosthetic breasts, with fake nails, with huge hair, with lots of makeup, performing in this case for children,” Stuckey says, asking, “Now, what good reason do we have to present a cross-dressing man that uses a character version of femininity to perform to children?”

“There is something inherently sexual about drag. Don’t let anyone tell you different, that it’s just about inclusion, it’s just about something different, showing kids that it’s OK to be different. No, it’s sowing confusion, and it is sowing seeds of weird sexuality from a very early age. There’s no good reason for it.”

“This is all funded by the taxpayers in Boston. I just want to remind you of that. As of this month, the city faces a budget deficit of nearly $50 million,” she adds.

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, Allie beth stuckey, Boston, Drag queen story hour, Lgbtq, Pride month, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

Former reality TV star Spencer Pratt was on track to advance to the November general election for mayor of Los Angeles against incumbent Karen Bass. However, over the weekend, third-place challenger L.A. City Councilwoman Nithya Raman began to make substantial gains amid California’s week-long vote-counting process.

Pratt appeared to have a strong lead over Raman on Wednesday, one day after the election, with over 40,000 more votes. That lead slowly shrank over the next several days, dropping to a 33,000-vote lead on Friday.

‘43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before…?’

Raman jumped from roughly 111,000 votes on Wednesday to 197,000 as of Monday morning, allowing her to squeak past Pratt by just over 3,000 votes, according to the Associated Press.

“On election night, Pratt led Raman by about 40,000 votes — roughly a 10-point advantage,” KTTV reporter Matthew Seedorff stated. “As of tonight, Raman now leads Pratt by about 3,100 votes, a net swing of more than 43,000 votes since Tuesday.”

“43,000, huh? Where have I seen that number before…?” Pratt replied in a post on social media, sharing a screenshot of a March article about the 43,699 homeless people living in Los Angeles. “Probably nothing.”

Nearly one week after Election Day, California has counted only 83% of the votes.

The AP has not yet reported who will go head-to-head with Bass in the runoff race.

RELATED: Spencer Pratt and Nithya Raman shrink Karen Bass’ lead in tight race for LA mayor: Poll

Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

The final polls leading up to the election showed the three candidates separated by a few points.

A survey conducted May 19-24 by the University of California Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times gave Bass just a one-point lead over Raman and a four-point lead over Pratt, which the Times referred to as “statistically insignificant” for the incumbent mayor.

When asked which issues matter most to them, nearly all of the surveyed Pratt supporters expressed concern about waste and political corruption, as well as crime and public safety. Meanwhile, Bass and Raman supporters, who provided similar responses, stated that they prioritize protecting immigrants, moving the homeless indoors, and building more affordable housing.

RELATED: Democrats unleash ‘secret weapon’ to go after Spencer Pratt in a last-ditch effort to end his campaign

HIGHFIVE/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

While the mayoral race is nonpartisan, Pratt, a registered Republican, has run an impressive campaign in the Democratic stronghold city where only 15% of the population is registered as Republican.

Voters will begin receiving mail-in ballots for the general election in early October.

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​News, Spencer pratt, Karen bass, California, Los angeles, Nithya raman, Politics 

Several U.S. servicemen say they were screened for mental illness after refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

They are given a voice in the documentary “Duty to Disobey,” which showcases stories from current and former military members who were seemingly treated with malice under the Joe Biden administration.

‘An 11x rise in neurological deficits after the vaccine.’

The production comes from Children’s Health Defense, an organization founded in 2007 that was chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from 2015 to 2023.

Cattle call

In the documentary, military members described the mass amount of vaccines they were given during their service time, with one describing soldiers as being “lined up like cattle” to receive shots they never agreed to.

Much of the documentary’s first half touches on the history and duty of those in the military to lawfully disobey orders, the primary thesis of the film. Some examples like the Abu Ghraib prison as well as the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War were provided as instances in which soldiers were criticized for not refusing unlawful orders.

“In court, it is never a defense to say, ‘Well, I was ordered to do it,’ if you knew it was unlawful,” said Nick Kupper, retired U.S. Air Force master sergeant.

RELATED: D-Day drama ‘Pressure’ celebrates forgotten values

Shocking numbers

The film also discussed Gulf War syndrome and linked it to the anthrax vaccine as an example of when disobeying an immunization would have proved beneficiary to service members. Veterans Affairs says, “Further research has found no evidence that links the anthrax vaccine with illness among Gulf War Veterans.”

The film follows discussions with armed forces members like Dr. Theresa M. Long, a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army who said she experienced a medical practitioner’s lifetime of epidemiology in terms of vaccine side effects.

This included heart attacks, strokes, and even multiple sclerosis in young soldiers as a result of the vaccine, she claimed.

Pete “Doc” Chambers, a retired lieutenant colonel and Green Beret for the U.S. Army, said that Long alerted him to internal statistics about the vaccine side effects and was just as shocked to see the numbers.

“1,100% — an 11x rise in neurological deficits” after the vaccine, Chambers claimed, which refers to abnormal neurologic function in a specific part of the body, caused by injury or dysfunction in the brain.

Doc also said that after he and Long exposed the true nature of the injuries, the internal network went offline, and figures were presented differently once the service went back online.

RELATED: ‘Glowing orbs’ disclosed in military UFO docs — 10 feet in front of an intelligence official

LEX EDELMAN/AFP/Getty Images

‘Insider threat’

Several people featured in the documentary said they were tested for mental health issues when they dared to link the mRNA vaccine to medical problems they were having. A former major and chaplain said he was taken for a mental evaluation after being told he must have something wrong with him if he thought his heart problems stemmed from the vaccine.

A staff segreant was described as an “insider threat” in internal documents that said he may have been “potentially radicalized by an anti-US government group in the wake of his refusal to take the COVID vaccine.”

“Duty to Disobey” is an eye-opening production that provides relatively shocking information even to those who may go into their viewing having already agreed with its premise.

At just over an hour, the documentary goes into potential remedies for the former members that suggest job and schooling offers and updates to the U.S. military’s religious accommodation process.

However, the bulk of the piece centers around the extraordinary stories and hardships suffered by servicemen during the COVID-19 years.

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​Lifestyle, Vaccines, Military, Covid-19 

Patriots are just weeks away from celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, marking America’s semiquincentennial.

Many citizens are clearly proud of the globally transformative superpower bequeathed to them and keen to honor the contributions and sacrifices made by generations past. There are, however, a great many who alternatively look back on American history with ingratitude and down at the country as currently constituted.

‘Let’s pay for one-way tickets.’

According to a new national Elon University poll conducted by YouGov between April 30 and May 4, 55% of Democratic respondents said that there is another country on Earth that they would rather live in than the United States today. Only 10% of Republicans said the same.

Overall, only 35% of respondents said in the run-up to America’s 250th birthday that they would prefer to live elsewhere.

When asked which term best describes how they feel about America turning 250 years old, 68% of Republicans said they felt proud; 19% said they felt grateful; 3% said they felt conflicted; 1% said they felt frustrated; 1% said they felt disappointed; and 9% said they had no strong feelings.

When similarly asked to describe their feelings, only 18% of Democrats said they felt proud; 17% said they felt grateful; 21% said they felt conflicted; 6% said they felt frustrated; 15% said they felt disappointed; and 24% said they had no strong feelings.

Asked specifically about their pride in the country — about the veracity of the statement “I am proud to be an American” to them personally — Democrats again came across as contemptuous. Only 26% of Democratic respondents said that the statement was “very true”; 22% said it was “somewhat true”; 21% said it was neither true nor untrue; 18% said it was somewhat untrue; and 12% said it was very untrue.

RELATED: The Bill of Rights is the antidote to soft despotism

Kevin Carter/Getty Images

The Republican respondents signaled significantly greater pride in their homeland: 83% said the statement was very true; 12% said it was somewhat true; 4% said that it was neither true nor untrue; 1% said it was somewhat untrue; and zero respondents said that it was very untrue.

Whereas 85% of Republicans rated the health of American democracy as either excellent, good, or fair, Democratic respondents overwhelmingly — 64% — rated the overall health of U.S. democracy today as poor.

Democrats evidenced their low regard for the country in other answers, including to the question: “How successfully or unsuccessfully do you believe the United States is currently living up to its founding ideals?”

Fifty-four percent of Republicans said that the U.S. has very successfully or somewhat successfully lived up to its founding ideals; 20% said America has neither been successful nor unsuccessful in this regard; and 26% said it has been somewhat or very unsuccessful.

Democrats disagreed with their friends across the aisle in the extreme: 74% of Democratic respondents said the U.S. has been somewhat or very unsuccessful in living up to its founding ideals; 11% said it has been neither successful nor unsuccessful; and 14% said the country has been either very or somewhat successful in living up to its founding ideals.

“As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Americans have complex and diverse feelings about America 250,” said Jason Husser, director of the Elon University Poll. “Many Americans expressed significant concern about the health of American democracy today, and the country is split on its outlook over the next 50 years.”

When conservatives caught wind of this poll, many advocated for helping the Democratic majority realize their dream of living in another country.

Mike Davis, the founder of the Article III Project, wrote, “Let’s pay for one-way tickets, anywhere in the world, for all of them. And 6 months of living expenses. But they must renounce their American citizenship. And never come back.”

“Trump should launch a national program to help that 55% achieve their dreams — help them out with flights, the job search, and maybe even a few months of rent in their new home,” tweeted Nathan Roberts, the co-founder of Save Heritage Indiana. “Long term, this will save our country LOTS of money.”

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​Poll, Polling, America 250, Anniversary, Semiquincentennial, Democrats, Republicans, Pride, Nationalism, Patriotism, Politics 

There is a peculiar kind of intellectual cowardice that disguises itself as “skepticism.”

Instead of asking questions, engaging with evidence, or — God forbid — actually picking up the phone, it fires off a dismissive post and lets the crowd do the rest.

To Jones, it is highly possible that this anomaly indicates ‘the corridors of a ship.’

Lately, the target of this cowardice is a man named Andrew Jones. His offense? Daring to propose that a boat-shaped formation in the mountains of Eastern Turkey may just be the remains of Noah’s ark.

Jones, whom I recently interviewed over video chat, will be the first to tell you he is not an archaeologist.

What he is, however, is the project coordinator for one of the most methodical investigations of a potential archaeological site in recent memory — one being conducted by geologists, geophysicists, soil scientists, and archaeologists with decades of experience between them.

Jones has lived in Turkey since 2020, building relationships with Turkish universities, navigating government permitting processes, and assembling a team capable of doing this work the right way.

And for all that, he is being rewarded with mockery on the internet.

Wyatt’s folly

For many critics, Noah’s ark research begins and ends with one man: the late Ron Wyatt.

Wyatt, a Tennessee nurse anesthetist turned amateur biblical archaeologist, has become the universal escape hatch for anyone who doesn’t want to engage with legitimate, peer-reviewed Noah’s ark research.

Never mind that Wyatt also claimed to have found the Ten Commandments and the Ark of the Covenant. For critics, he has become a kind of all-purpose scarecrow: Invoke Ron Wyatt, roll your eyes, and the conversation is over.

One of the strangest things about the criticism is the assumption that Ron Wyatt somehow created the Durupinar story from whole cloth.

In reality, the site’s Noah’s ark connection predates Wyatt’s fame by decades.

It was discovered in 1959 by Turkish Army Captain Ilhan Durupinar during an aerial NATO mapping mission. A Turkish-American ground expedition followed in 1960, covered in a spread in Life magazine. This was documented, publicized, and treated as a legitimate subject of inquiry before Wyatt was anywhere near it.

Signs of life

The site itself is a boat-shaped impression in the earth about 18 miles south of Mount Ararat. It passes the eyeball test. It doesn’t look natural.

But more importantly, it sits in a valley loaded with Armenian and Urartu historical artifacts, such as abandoned churches and old graveyards.

Just recently, according to Jones, a Turkish archaeologist visiting the site found pottery fragments.

“Maybe 50 feet away from the site, he [found] pottery just laying on the ground where the locals are plowing,” he recalls.

The archaeologist dated the fragments to the Early Bronze Age and Late Chalcolithic. “This is the age you’re looking for for Noah’s Ark,” says Jones. “If you’re doing biblical chronology, they would place it during that time period.”

Jones is careful not to overstate the significance of these finds, noting only that they demonstrate human activity during the same time period as Noah’s ark.

These aren’t irrelevant, peripheral details. They’re central to the flood story. Because if the biblical account places Noah’s landing in the region of Ararat, which it does, then the valley floor below Durupinar is precisely where you would expect civilization’s earliest post-flood fingerprints to be.

Which brings us to the first target of the critics: the site’s location.

The Ararat question

Wes Huff, a Christian apologist with a significant online following, recently posted a lengthy critique of the Durupinar project.

He claims that “the modern site of Mount Ararat has only been called that since the 13th century” and that “the broader issue is that the precise location of Ararat remains unknown.”

This is the kind of claim that sounds clever and smart if you don’t actually know anything about the subject.

When the Bible says Noah’s ark came to rest in the “mountains of Ararat,” it is describing a region: the Armenian Highlands. And the Durupinar site is squarely inside the highlands. This is not a fringe interpretation. It’s basic historical geography.

The word “Ararat” in the biblical text is not a reference to a single volcanic mountaintop. It is a transliteration of Urartu, the ancient kingdom that spanned what is now Eastern Turkey, Armenia, and Northern Iran.

“If you look [at] the Bible, it says Urartu, which is Ararat,” says Jones.

The Urartu people were the predecessors of the Armenians. Their capital sat at what is today the city of Van in Eastern Turkey, on the shore of Lake Van. Their ruins, castles, and settlements are scattered throughout the entire region, including in the valley directly below the Durupinar site.

The implication of treating Ararat as fundamentally unknowable is that any candidate site can be dismissed before it is seriously investigated.

Going to ground

Huff’s second major line of attack targets the methodology, specifically ground penetrating radar. His claim is that “you simply don’t know what you’re looking at with GPR alone.”

This is technically true, which is exactly why nobody on Jones’ team has ever argued otherwise.

But Jones does challenge what he sees as a widespread assumption that GPR is used to bolster “sensational claims.”

As Jones explains, “A lot of scientists [and] archaeologists [and] geologists use GPR. … It’s not the final word, but it helps you understand what’s going on below the surface.”

GPR is not the conclusion. It is a step. It is a standard, widely used, non-destructive geophysical survey tool deployed by archaeologists across Europe and the Middle East as a matter of course before any excavation begins. Dismissing it as inconclusive is like criticizing a doctor for ordering an MRI before performing surgery. The whole point is that you look before you cut.

New angles

What the critics also won’t tell you is what the scans have actually found. Because at this point, “we don’t know what we’re looking at” is getting harder to sustain.

The 2019-2020 GPR surveys didn’t just confirm the boat outline visible from the surface. They mapped angular, right-angled internal structures, which may indicate rooms and chambers running the length of the formation.

They used modern digital equipment capable of generating three-dimensional models and sharing raw data with independent reviewers. According to Jones, unaffiliated geophysicists examined the scans and identified several features they considered noteworthy.

Among them was a linear anomaly running through the center of the formation.

Jones is again careful about the distinction between observation and interpretation: “There’s a straight line of voids,” he says. “Now I interpret that as someone who’s thinking this is possibly Noah’s ark.” To Jones, it is highly possible that this anomaly indicates “the corridors of a ship.”

Natural geological synclines don’t produce right angles. Rock doesn’t spontaneously organize itself into rectilinear geometry at depth. That’s the kind of finding that, in any other archaeological context, would generate serious professional interest rather than a dismissive podcast appearance.

What lies beneath

Or consider the 2014 electrical resistivity tomography data, collected by an independent New Zealand researcher. The ERT scans identified three distinct horizontal layers running through the formation. The Genesis account describes Noah’s ark as having three decks. Jones’ team members aren’t the ones drawing that connection loudly. They don’t need to. The data draws it.

In 2025, new analyses of the raw GPR data found what resembled a central corridor or tunnel running through the formation, flanked by side tunnels tracing the interior perimeter of the ship shape, and beyond that, a large central void extending at least 13 meters below the surface.

And then there is the soil. In 2024, Jones’ team collaborated with Australian soil scientist William Crabtree and Turkish geologist Dr. Mehmet Salih Bayraktutan to conduct a formal survey of 88 samples across 22 locations inside and outside the formation. The samples were then analyzed at Atatürk University laboratories.

They found that organic matter inside the formation runs three times higher than in the surrounding soil, with significantly elevated potassium levels consistent with the presence of decayed biological material (specifically wood) rather than the inorganic rock and mountain soil you would expect from a natural formation.

Yet critics routinely reduce years of work by multiple specialists to a single talking point: “It’s just GPR.”

RELATED: 5 reasons this ‘Noah’s ark’ discovery is harder to dismiss than skeptics admit

Heritage Images/Getty Images

Amateur hour

Dr. Jeremiah Johnston, appearing on Michael Knowles’ podcast, went farther than simply questioning the methodology. He implied that Jones and his team were amateurs chasing hype, while claiming he could conduct a proper excavation of the site himself for $500,000.

Let’s think about the claim that the current work being done at Durupinar is all for publicity for a moment.

Jones has spent years in Turkey, building working relationships with the Turkish government, navigating the permit process required for each phase of the investigation, signing formal agreements with a Turkish university whose archaeologist has over 20 years of field experience and has been covered in American newspapers for his other discoveries.

He has assembled geologists, geophysicists, soil scientists, and archaeologists across multiple countries. He has submitted proposals to government bodies and waited on approvals. He has done the slow, unglamorous infrastructure work that actual, serious science requires.

Meanwhile, Johnston went on a show talking about what he would do with half a million dollars.

Geology first

Huff’s accusation that there are no archaeologists on the team is equally misleading.

The work done to date — the GPR, soil sampling, geophysical surveys — all falls under geology, not archaeology. You don’t call an archaeologist to run a magnetometer. You call a geophysicist.

Archaeology becomes necessary when you excavate. The project simply isn’t at that phase yet. The archaeologists on staff have been consulting, reviewing, and preparing. In fact, the Turkish university archaeologist who recovered the pottery fragments from the valley floor was performing the kind of formal pedestrian survey that is the standard opening phase of any archaeological dig.

The critics want to hold Jones to archaeology’s standards while he’s still doing geology. Presumably they’ll hold him to geology’s standards when he starts doing archaeology.

Worth getting right

I am ethnically Armenian. I grew up hearing stories about Noah’s ark resting in Ararat. Until recently, Mount Ararat itself appeared on the Armenian passport. It remains one of the most important national symbols of the Armenian people because of what it represents: the place where civilization began again after the Flood.

I’m not asking anyone to accept that on faith. Neither is Andrew Jones. What Jones is asking is simply this: Let the investigation finish.

The sonic core drilling that will finally produce intact subsurface samples is pending Turkish government approval, potentially arriving this fall. That drilling will either find what Jones believes is there or it won’t. The AMT surveys will either show bedrock in the wrong place to support a natural formation theory or they won’t. The geophysical data will either hold up or it won’t.

What the critics have offered is not a counter-investigation. They have offered no alternative data, no competing site survey, no engagement with the soil samples or the GPR profiles or the pottery finds. They haven’t even picked up the phone to request the data directly from Jones.

If Durupinar is nothing, if it is a geological oddity and nothing more, the data will show that, and Jones has said as much. He follows where the data leads.

The question worth asking is why so many people with such loud opinions about this site are so determined to make sure that data is never fully collected or taken seriously.

​Ararat region, Life magazine, Noahs ark, Durupinar site, Lifestyle, Bible, Biblical archeology, Turkey, Armenia, Old testament, Faith 

The other day, I was making a right turn at a busy intersection, and I almost ran over an elderly woman who stepped into the street unexpectedly.

She had lost her balance because she was crammed together with seven or eight other old people on the street corner.

If these elder protesters are being paid, whoever is hiring them must not care much about their safety.

This odd-looking group was waving to motorists and holding political signs with slogans like: “NO MORE DICTATORS,” “STOP RACISM,” and “NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL.”

I hit the brakes and waited while they helped the lady back onto the curb. Everyone smiled and waved to me. I waved back. They seemed friendly and nice, if not a bit delusional.

Old is new

I’ve seen similar groups in other places. It’s apparently a new trend. Old people randomly gathered on a corner, or on an overpass, or outside a supermarket, holding left-wing signs and waving at cars as they pass by.

The car drivers honk and wave back, and everyone feels good about themselves.

Some people claim these retirement-age protesters are getting paid for their efforts. I don’t know if that’s true. But I have to agree that they look strange and out of place. And not totally authentic.

Welcome to the neighborhood

Usually, these protests take place in affluent, left-leaning areas.

Since there’s so much honking and waving, I assume most people who drive by agree with their message: Trump is bad. Racism is bad. Criticizing open borders is bad.

But if everyone they engage with agrees with them, what exactly is the point of standing out there?

RELATED: ‘Nice to meet you. My kid is gay’: When dads turn ‘support’ into an identity

SOPA Images/Getty Images

The illusion of a dominant left

One reason might be to convince people that the left is firmly in the majority, in your neighborhood and everywhere else.

This is an important project for the left. This is why every late-night talk show audience boos loudly every time the host mentions Trump or anyone in his administration.

You never hear anyone cheer when these people are mentioned. And surely there must be a few conservatives in those audiences.

But no, you only hear boos. I don’t know how the shows do that. Maybe there’s a big “BOO” sign flashing at the audience. Or maybe they are told ahead of time that it’s required. Or maybe the “booing” sound is just edited in.

However they do it, the effect is the same. The right-leaning viewer, watching at home, gets the impression that he or she is in a very small minority. And that the vast majority of Americans hate Trump and his people.

This is not true of course. But the illusion can be effective nonetheless.

This is probably why you see your elderly neighbors standing on street corners: to make you think all your neighbors are leftist and adjust yourself accordingly.

The medium is the message

And what exactly is the message of these elder activists? Their signs are weirdly generic. It doesn’t appear much thought went into them.

Like “No More Dictators.” What’s that supposed to mean? That Trump is a dictator? That all our presidents have been dictators? Last time I checked, American presidents are fairly restricted in their powers.

Trump can’t get his ballroom built. Obama barely got his health care passed. Biden wanted to forgive student loans. And couldn’t.

Do these old people not know what a “dictator” is?

Politics can be fun!

I’ve volunteered for different political actions in my area. I’ve waved signs from the sidewalk. But those were for specific candidates. Or particular ballot measures. We weren’t just spouting random slogans.

I‘ve always enjoyed political activism. It’s a great way to meet other conservatives and learn about the political process.

And interacting with actual voters is always great fun. Going door to door. Talking to people about the issues of the day. Listening to their concerns. Saying hi to their dog.

Old people are especially interesting to visit with. They are often the more independent thinkers, having experienced a wider range of historical events.

Simple. Obvious. Dumb.

But these old people I’m seeing now, they don’t seem to have anything of substance to say. They are more like bad political TV ads come to life. Simple. Obvious. Dumb.

And what about the physical dangers they face? Standing dangerously close to heavily trafficked roadways, exposed to the elements and whatever zombie street people might come along.

That woman who stumbled into the street in front of me? She could have broken her hip!

Call your ombudsman!

If these elder protesters are being paid, whoever is hiring them must not care much about their safety. These old people are apparently expendable.

But that’s classic leftist strategy. Once the minions have served their purpose, they’re tossed aside.

In the meantime, I continue to see these groups of old people lined up along the street, waving their signs, and expressing their tired outrage.

Noam Chomsky called this “manufacturing consent.” I would call it elder abuse.

​Antifa, Aarp, Retirement, Donald trump, No kings, Politics, Lifestyle, Protesters 

Protesters are claiming that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees have been subject to poor conditions at the Delaney Hall ICE facility in New Jersey and have planted themselves outside the facility for the past week — with many protesters clashing with ICE agents.

“There were these rumors about a hunger strike going on in the ICE facility, and we are now up to day 13 of this alleged hunger strike. Now, that’s like dangerous territory. People aren’t eating for 13 days. That’s life-threatening. I would say that’s a problem,” Gonzales says.

“Their conditions are so terrible that they’re protesting,” she continues, noting that Democrats are claiming there’s “medical neglect,” “lack of sanitation,” and “spoiled food.”

“You’re going to be shocked to hear none of that is actually true. There is no hunger strike,” Gonzales says.

A post from Jennie Taer on X reads: “New data obtained by The Daily Wire shows that commissary sales at Delaney Hall surged 161% during the so-called ‘hunger strike’ rising from $11,498 on May 26 to $30,013 on June 1. While snack sales jumped, the detainee population fell from 724 to 621 during that same time period.”

The Department of Homeland Security quote tweeted Taer’s post, writing: “The hunger strike HOAX was actually just Delaney Hall detainees trading nutritious meals for Honey Buns and Hot Cheetos. It’s time for sanctuary politicians to drop the political theater and work with us to get criminal illegal aliens OUT of our communities.”

However, Democrats like Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and LaMonica McIver (N.J.) do not care about the stats.

“Here in America, immigration enforcement should be fair, just, and humane. That’s not what’s going on here at Delaney Hall. We spoke to several individuals, none of whom has a criminal record, many of whom have been detained here at Delaney Hall for months. Delaney Hall should be shut down,” Jeffries said in a video uploaded to social media, where he’s standing outside the facility alongside McIver.

“And every single individual, particularly those at a high level connected to this facility, they’re engaging in a depraved indifference to human life. And every single member of this Trump administration is going to be held accountable,” he added.

“Hakeem, the problem for you is every single one of them actually are criminals because they’re here illegally. It’s the ‘I’ and the ‘L’ that go in front of the word legally that actually indicates to you that they are in fact criminals. All of them,” Gonzales comments.

“Also, I love that LaMonica, she already looks like she’s in prison. She’s already dressed for prison, I guess,” she adds.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

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​Sara gonzales, Ice, Illegal immigration, Hunger strike, Delaney hall ice facility, Hakeem jeffries, Lamonica mciver, Sara gonzales unfiltered, New jersey 

As the nation approaches what looks like a weak and divided commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, another milestone has arrived with little acclaim. Today marks the 239th anniversary of the introduction of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It should be a day of celebration every year. The Bill of Rights is one of the most important documents in human history. James Madison, one of the nation’s central founders and a future two-term president, introduced it in Congress on June 8, 1787.

We have less than half a decade to avert a fiscal collapse of the federal government and the social and economic destruction that would follow.

The central lesson of the Bill of Rights lies in Madison’s purpose: to bind every level of government to one overriding mission — protecting individual rights against majority tyranny.

The Bill of Rights Institute summarizes Madison’s concern well. Before the Constitutional Convention, Madison wrote “Vices of the Political System,” an essay detailing the flaws of the Articles of Confederation. One of the chief defects, in his view, was that tyrannical majorities in the states passed unjust laws violating the rights of minorities. He had seen the oppression of religious dissenters in Virginia and became the leading advocate for the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

At the Constitutional Convention, Madison argued for separation of powers, checks and balances, bicameralism, and federalism as safeguards for liberty. But he lost one key feature of his plan: a national veto over state laws meant to prevent majority tyranny in the states.

Today, we are light-years away from Madison’s vision and from the founders’ plan to protect it. Neither Madison nor anyone else could force the American people and their governments to live within the letter and spirit of the Constitution and the common law. The founders could only encode their vision into the Constitution, laws, and judicial precedents, then hope later generations would preserve it.

They often have not.

In 1840, only a half-century into the American experiment, Alexis de Tocqueville anticipated the rise of “soft despotism” in the United States. He saw that the passion for equality could erode devotion to natural law, natural rights, and self-government.

Tocqueville warned of a sovereign power that takes each individual “into its powerful hands” and covers society with “a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules.” Such power, he wrote, “does not tyrannize” but “hinders, represses, enervates, extinguishes,” and finally reduces the nation to “a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

He also warned that this mild, regulated servitude could exist “in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.”

That is the danger America now faces.

Tocqueville foresaw that citizens might voluntarily give up sovereignty in exchange for temporary economic stability and government largesse extracted from their neighbors. In doing so, they would surrender the things that made the nation great: self-rule, protection against majority coercion, voluntary association, free enterprise, and ultimately each person’s dignity as a unique human being.

RELATED: The timeless truths behind the Declaration of Independence

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Restoring respect for the Bill of Rights and the founders’ vision is essential if we hope to rescue the United States from the soft despotism into which the American experiment has devolved — and from the harder totalitarianism toward which it now hurtles.

Documents and laws alone will not achieve that. In our present decline, the only way to reverse the slide is to remove the temptation that feeds it: the ability of majorities at all levels of government to vote themselves ownership over other people’s property, liberties, and lives.

In an ironic turn, the United States may now be approaching a resolution of sorts: the collapse of the national government’s ability to pay for everything Congress, presidents, and courts have promised Americans over the past century and a half.

Entitlements such as Social Security, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, federal housing subsidies, and other national bribes have become insupportable. They now threaten a debt spiral as high interest rates and inflation weaken the economy and erode the government’s tax base.

The federal debt has already risen above 100% of gross domestic product — the nation’s entire annual economic output. More ominously, the debt is accelerating. The total now sits just short of $40 trillion. It is projected to rise to $55 trillion by 2031, an increase of more than one-third in five years. By 2036, it is projected to reach $77 trillion, nearly doubling in a decade.

Meanwhile, federal and state governments have steadily eroded individual rights, freedom of association, free enterprise, election integrity, and countless other safeguards of liberty.

This is the outcome of majority tyranny. We have less than half a decade to avert a fiscal collapse of the federal government and the social and economic destruction that would follow. What would arise from such a catastrophe is impossible to know.

History offers little comfort. The chances are strong that whatever replaced our flawed yet hardy constitutional system would not resemble the order our forefathers established in the 1700s. A nation founded on individual rights and self-government could vanish from the earth.

That is what Americans must confront as we approach another election season and another referendum on our founding values.

​Bill of rights, Soft despotism, James madison, America 250, Constitutional convention, Articles of confederation, American government, Founding fathers, Opinion & analysis 

The next time one hears of virtue, honor, and “the profession of arms” in the U.S. military, one should ask whether those words still mean anything.

Consider a military in which the highest flag ranks sell influence for future employment, commanders conspire to steal optics before deployment, soldiers loot their own supply rooms, chiefs sell night-vision devices online, officers defraud grieving families, and bureaucrats steal money meant for military children.

Petty theft below, influence peddling above, and a thick frosting of platitudes about honor everywhere.

It sounds like Russia — a kleptocratic band of mercenaries where the uniform is just another way to get paid. The officer corps that emerges from this culture is not simply politically adrift, but morally unformed.

Institutions designed to form officers became institutions designed to credential them.

As Alasdair MacIntyre argued in “After Virtue” — the most important book the military profession has not read — although we still use the words “honor,” “duty,” and “integrity,” we have lost the traditions that gave those words their content.

We are, MacIntyre argues, like the survivors of a catastrophe who have salvaged pieces of a scientific textbook without retaining the theories that made them coherent. This describes the average Army values poster.

The loss of the military’s honor culture is exemplified in its typical response to an ethics scandal, which follows a predictable liturgy. A stand-down is called for. A policy is updated. A general delivers remarks about what the uniform represents. Yet nothing changes because the problem is not a deficit of information. It is a deficit of formation.

MacIntyre’s insight is that virtue and honor — the public recognition of virtue — cannot be transmitted through instruction alone. They require practices: socially established, cooperative activities with internal standards of excellence conducted within institutions that have a coherent sense of purpose.

Honorable officers are made by placing them inside a community where virtue is demanded, rewarded, and — critically — where its absence is punished publicly and without mercy.

The Army values and their equivalents are the ghosts of morality: a past civilization’s catechism recited by an institution that can no longer summon the world that made them intelligible.

The linguistic evidence is all around. No one says “that’s dishonorable” anymore — not in barracks, not in the Pentagon, not in the pages of professional military journals. The word survives only as a legal term, a bureaucratic category. As something one man could say to another’s face and have it land, honor has been mocked entirely out of the language.

You can call a fellow officer unethical, unprofessional, or toxic. But call him dishonorable, and you sound like you wandered in from a Patrick O’Brian novel. MacIntyre’s point drives this home: An institution cannot enforce a norm whose name has become a joke.

RELATED: The Pentagon is blowing a fortune fighting bargain-bin drones

Jordon R. Beesley/U.S. Navy/Getty Images

Honor factories

It was not always this way. For most of American military history until very recently, West Point and Annapolis stamped honor into young men through consequences so immediate and so public that the culture became self-enforcing. A cadet who lied, cheated, or stole did not receive counseling or remedial training. He was gone, and the entire corps knew what had happened and why.

Honor functioned because shame functioned, and shame requires witnesses.

The results were not incidental. The officer corps that fought from Cold Harbor to Normandy was decisively shaped by such institutions. These were not perfect men. But they were men whose relationship to honor had been formed by years of practice.

At the service academies, honor adjudication has become increasingly legalistic, with due-process protections, administrative review, and all sorts of punishment short of separation now built into the system.

The total institution — Erving Goffman’s term for an organization with sufficient control over its members’ lives to form their character — is systematically liberalized into an expensive state college with uniforms. Honor talk remains in the brochure, but the machinery around it treats dishonor as an adjudicative problem rather than a communal rupture.

No civilizational catastrophe forced a reckoning with what courage and loyalty meant. In conditions of relative peace and institutional stability, the honor culture of the services was eaten away within a single generation.

The post-Vietnam civilianization of military culture brought enormous external pressure to make the academies more like the universities they competed with for talent. Overreaching judicial decisions through the 1970s and 1980s extended due process protections to cadets that made swift, public expulsion essentially impossible.

The rise of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the 1990s introduced the concern that strict honor enforcement produced disparate outcomes that disadvantaged certain populations.

Each of these pressures was arguable in isolation. Taken together, they achieved something none of them individually intended: institutions designed to form officers became institutions designed to credential them. Formation requires the authority to demand, correct, and, if necessary, expel. Credentialing requires only that the student complete the program.

The good news is that these are policy choices, and while they can theoretically be reversed, they will be difficult to undo. Unlike military revolutions of the past, which left wreckage that demanded reconstruction, this one is comfortable — and lucrative.

Rebuilding the culture

The service academies are the only total institutions remaining in the American military enterprise. If honor cannot be rebuilt there, it cannot be rebuilt anywhere — because nowhere else in the military does an institution have sufficient formative authority to do the necessary work.

What restoration looks like is not complicated. Public consequences for honor violations being swiftly administered and witnessed by the community. Superintendents having the moral courage to empower an honor system run by cadets with genuine authority to separate their peers, not a board whose findings are subject to administrative review and legal appeal.

A culture in which the response to a classmate’s dishonor is not sympathy but shame — for him and, if they tolerated it, for those around him.

The non-toleration clause of the honor code — a cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do — was once the Sword of Damocles. It made the entire corps complicit in enforcement rather than being diluted by heavy-handed oversight.

RELATED: How ‘wet noodle Christians’ surrendered America to Marxists

Paul Marotta/Getty Images

When a cadet violated the honor code at the Virginia Military Institute, the cadet commander would formally assemble the corps and announce: “Cadet X has been found guilty of an honor violation. His name will never again be spoken within the walls of this institution.” And then the drumming out — the cadet was brought to the center of the quad, marched to the gate, and thrown out.

In 2021, amid legal concerns and political pressure during a state-ordered racism investigation, VMI stopped naming expelled cadets during the drum-out.

Shame requires an audience. When you remove the audience, you remove the shame. When you do that, you remove the social technique that humanity used for thousands of years to enforce honor from the inside out rather than ineffectively from the top down.

Consequences must communicate to every observer that dishonor is not a career setback but social death. The burden of proof is entirely on those who would defend the present arrangement, which produces flag officers who leave public service under a cloud, pass through a mild embarrassment ritual, and reappear almost immediately as best-selling authors, board members, fellows, or global-security sages.

The academies cannot do this alone, and no honest argument claims they can, but they are the only place left where the military has the authority to begin.

When institutions fail to enforce virtue through honor, the only remaining answer is the man who enforces it from within — who understands that he cannot be responsible for the Army, but is unconditionally responsible for himself and refuses to be complicit in his own degradation.

The ultimate purpose of the service academies is to produce military officers who win without losing their souls in the process. We are not made to be machine men with machine hearts. We were made for something greater.

What is required is deep and far-reaching — a national renaissance, a rebirth on the 250th anniversary of America, out of the conviction that there are things worth being, not merely things worth having.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the views or positions of the U.S. Army, the Department of War, or any part of the U.S. government.

​Us military, Military academies, Honor culture, Honor code, West point, Dei, Alasdair macintyre, Army values, Annapolis, Service academies, Opinion & analysis 

A 98-year-old was brutally beaten inside his Brooklyn apartment building amid an argument earlier this week — and police said they’re searching for the female culprit.

Investigators said the female responsible for the attack punched, kicked, and struck the elderly victim with a broomstick and metal chair inside his apartment building in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, News 12 Brooklyn reported.

The beating is yet another in a stretch of attacks involving older Brooklyn residents.

The attack took place around 4 p.m. Thursday, the station said.

Investigators released video showing the woman appearing to drop off flyers at a building, News 12 Brooklyn reported, adding that investigators said the woman on the video is the person they’re trying to identify.

Investigators told the station that the 98-year-old man had just entered the apartment building when he got into an argument with the female.

Then the verbal spat reportedly became violent, the station added.

RELATED: Video: Female bully towers over and beats up elderly woman on Florida bus. Victim is left ‘battered and bruised’: Sheriff

Investigators told News 12 Brooklyn that the woman repeatedly punched and kicked the elderly man — and then she began hitting him with a broomstick and a metal chair.

She then ran from the building and headed east on Maple Street, the station said.

Despite the brutal beatdown, the victim suffered only minor injuries and was treated at the scene, News 12 Brooklyn reported.

New York City police are looking for the suspect, CBS News added.

The beating is yet another in a stretch of attacks involving older Brooklyn residents, News 12 Brooklyn said, adding that a 72-year-old man was punched multiple times in the face in Brownsville last week — and just days later, an 83-year-old woman was slashed in the head while walking to church.

No arrests have been announced in this latest case, News 12 Brooklyn said, adding that those who recognize the woman seen in the video are asked to contact Crime Stoppers.

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​Physical attack, 98-year-old victim, Nypd, Brooklyn, New york city, Female suspect, Brutal beating, Crime 

As the Texas Senate race heats up between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton, BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey feels compelled to remind Texas voters of Talarico’s moral failings — which are anything but small.

These moral failures are reflected even in the church he attends, St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Austin, which was recently exposed by the Daily Wire for having “explicit LGBTQ books in its bookstore aimed at children.”

Stuckey calls the books “basically pornographic,” as they contained “illustrations of sexual acts.”

The church is also an “ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood.”

“He also has his own kind of personal scandal that we very unfortunately had to read about last November in the New York Post. They found that he was following on his official account at least 10 OnlyFans models,” Stuckey explains.

The Democrat had liked multiple sultry photos posted by at least one of the accounts and exchanged private messages with another.

“If we’re already liking accounts and messaging OnlyFans models as a professing Christian, like we obviously have a sexual immorality issue going on there,” Stuckey says.

But that’s not even close to all of what Talarico’s done.

“He has repeatedly blasphemed God, saying God is nonbinary … he’s advocated for the gender mutilation surgeries of kids. He has pushed for the killing of unborn babies through abortion,” Stuckey explains.

“And these aren’t just policies … this is Talarico’s rejection of God’s order, rejection of God’s justice, his order of male and female, his desire to strip innocent babies of the right to life. It’s a spiritual position. It’s a theological position. And his politics are just downstream from the immorality and the corruption that’s in his heart,” she continues.

While Stuckey admits that Ken Paxton also has moral failings, these failings don’t bleed into policy the same way Talarico’s do.

“Talarico is very pro-abortion … he votes on the side of lax abortion laws and against any measure to protect the life of unborn children,” she says, pointing out that he has said he is pro-abortion “because” of his “faith.”

In an interview on “The Jamie Kern Lima Show,” Talarico explained that he trusts Texas women “to make decisions about their own bodies, to shape their own destinies in consultation with their family members, their doctors, their faith leaders.”

“I don’t believe that’s a place for government. That’s a belief I hold not despite my faith, but because of my faith. Jesus never talks about abortion. The Bible is silent on abortion. And when that happens with a social issue as important as abortion, we Christians have to take Scripture as a wholem and we’ve got to try to make some kind of ethical determination,” he added.

“I just want to remind you,” Stuckey comments, disturbed, “that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

“So don’t allow his humble-seeming, gentle-sounding disposition and tone of voice fool you into thinking that this is reasonable or biblical,” she adds.

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, James talarico, Ken paxton, Texas, Senate, Democrat, Republican, Allie beth stuckey, The bible, Christianity, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

More Americans are turning to chatbots with their hardest questions, often before they turn to anyone else. Grief, guilt, whether to leave a marriage, whether God is real — the questions people once carried to church now go into the text box.

So it matters a great deal what the text box says back. New work from researchers at Brigham Young University, gathered under a group called the Consortium for Evaluation of Faith and Ethics in AI, suggests the answer should trouble anyone who takes faith seriously.

Lies of omission

They built a test called the AllFaith Benchmark, which included hundreds of real moral questions drawn from religious communities, and ran it through the major models: ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The pattern held across all of them. Asked about death, forgiveness, or the meaning of a life, the machines reached for secular, generic answers and left faith out of the equation. The omission was systematic. It showed up steadily, measurably, and every time the test ran.

A third of American adults already rate spiritual advice from AI as trustworthy as a pastor’s.

Why does an absence matter this much? Because these tools do more than recite facts. They frame what counts as a reasonable answer. When a model treats the believer’s answer as clutter to clear away, it teaches a lesson, never stated outright, about which replies belong in serious conversation and which can be skipped.

Iterate that process at scale, and entire generations get a reshaped sense of what a thoughtful person, or even a soulful person, sounds like.

That deep-seated formation was once the province of the Christian wisdom that built the West. The conviction that every person carries equal worth, and that even kings answer to a law above their own, entered Western civilization through the Church and outlasted the doctrinal quarrels that produced it. Among the great civilizational faiths, none shaped this part of the world the way Christianity did.

Spiritual appropriation

A second finding goes deeper, and it’s considerably stranger. A researcher named Tim Hwang recently took a model and did something close to an MRI on it, watching its inner workings while it ran. He gave it a simple prompt, “As a Christian,” and watched what changed. What changed was a single switch. Begin a prompt with those words, and one specific, dormant part of the model wakes up and fires the same way, no matter what follows.

Ask it whether lying is wrong, ask it to describe a sofa, and the response shifts in the same direction both times. The switch does two things. It pushes religious words to the front, such as God, Jesus, and prayer. It also pushes absolute words like always, never, and not to the front. That’s the entire performance. When this model acts Christian, it grabs holy vocabulary and a hard, certain tone, whether you ask about salvation or seating. The model believes nothing. It speaks with fluent reverence and flawless conviction, but possesses neither.

RELATED: It’s not easy being pope — Leo’s big new tech encyclical proves it

ANDREAS SOLARO/Getty Images

The machine has decided that Christian identity comes down to holy phrases delivered with real conviction. Absent from that picture is everything a believer would claim as the substance of it: grace, mercy, humility, patience — and the slow, unglamorous labor of moral reasoning.

This would be a harmless oddity if these systems stayed in a lab. But they don’t. They pulse in the pocket of nearly every teenager in America, fielding questions about sex and suffering and forgiveness long before a parent or pastor hears a word of it. And they’re not asking ironically. A recent survey found that a third of American adults already rate spiritual advice from AI as trustworthy as a pastor’s, a number that climbs to two in five among Gen Z and Millennials. When someone types “what does Christianity say about this,” the machine answers.

Simulating salvation

They get the surface and miss the center, and they never notice the gap, because the answer is convincing. A pastor who got the faith this wrong would be corrected, possibly even banished, by Sunday. The chatbot answers 10,000 times an hour, and no one corrects it at all. That’s the trouble with a good fake. It doesn’t look fake. And people want to believe.

Christians have argued for centuries upon centuries that faith lives in the heart, that a man can say every right word and mean none of them. The machine has now built, by accident or by design (I’ll let you decide), a virtual likeness of exactly that man, who can preach but cannot believe. So the worry is simple. People are learning Christianity from a system that has mastered the motions and missed the whole point.

Smashing the machine is a fantasy, so put the fantasy away. The work that remains is teaching the people forming their faith how to tell the difference between a voice that lives the faith and one that has only read about it.

​Faith, Lifestyle, Culture 

For many Christians, the world seems impossibly dark right now. The scale of abortion is truly massive, with over 1.1 million per year in the U.S. alone. There has been an explosive rise in occult and pagan practices, human trafficking continues as a multibillion-dollar industry, and Christian persecution — especially in parts of Africa — has led to the deaths of thousands. Wars rage in multiple regions, while record levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation disproportionately impact today’s youth.

Many feel crushed by the weight of the world’s depravity and wonder if things will only get worse.

But Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of the spiritual warfare podcast “Strange Encounters,” offers hope against the oppressive darkness: Revival is also happening.

Rick points to a powerful example at Joby Martin’s Church of Eleven22 in Jacksonville, Florida. Last month, at the church’s annual Beach Baptism held at Hanna Park, 2,552 people were baptized in the Atlantic Ocean — the largest single-day baptism in the church’s 14-year history and a significant jump from nearly 2,000 the year before. Over 14,000 people gathered for the event.

“[Martin] said that these were numbers that they had not seen before, and most of these people were young people,” he says.

Rick explains what’s happening right now on the spiritual plane.

“[Satan] always overplays his hand, and what he’s doing right now with this revival of evil — it’s actually working detrimentally against his plan,” he says.

“Now we have a generation of young people … they’ve looked at this overplaying of evil’s hand and saying, ‘If this is the best that a fallen world can offer me, I don’t want it. I’m going to Jesus,”’ he continues.

Rick believes Eleven22’s record-breaking numbers are part of a larger movement, especially among younger men, who are rejecting the emptiness of modern culture and turning toward authentic faith instead.

In the midst of widespread moral confusion and spiritual darkness, moments like the Eleven22 baptisms serve as a powerful reminder that God is still at work — and that light often shines brightest when the darkness seems overwhelming.

To hear more, watch the full episode above.

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​Strange encounters, Rick burgess 

As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, Americans will be doing a lot of celebrating. They will honor not only the fact of our independence and nationhood, but also the political thought that shaped America’s founding struggle for freedom. Special attention will be paid, of course, to our Declaration of Independence.

But some may be rather cool to celebrating the Declaration’s doctrine of universal truths, such as the equality of all human beings in their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration has become a source of controversy among some younger conservatives who came of age during the Trump era.

The New Right’s dissatisfaction with the Declaration’s universalism is an understandable — but mistaken — reaction to various political misuses of America’s founding creed in recent decades.

There is no conflict between the Declaration’s universal principles and the New Right’s America First nationalism.

The older generation of conservatives who grew up admiring Ronald Reagan love to boast about America’s defense of universal truths. The New Right has argued that this rhetorical approach has not served the conservative political movement or the country well.

The Reaganite message, so powerful in the late 20th century, proved unable to keep winning national elections in the 21st. As a result, conservatives ceded political power to a Democratic Party and a left wing increasingly committed to an alarming agenda of social and cultural transformation.

The old-guard conservatives could not beat the Obama coalition. Moreover, their excessive preoccupation with America’s commitment to universal moral principles harmed the nation’s interests — and the interests of many Americans, especially those of the working class — in areas such as immigration, trade, and foreign policy.

In response, the New Right developed its now well-known message of American nationalism in the wake of Trump’s victory in 2016. They have embraced an “America First” agenda that places the social and economic well-being of its citizens at the center of national policy.

This stands in sharp contrast to the older conservatism, which tended to approach immigration, trade, and foreign policy in light of the country’s universal moral commitments as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

The New Right’s recalibration proved politically successful: witness President Trump’s electoral victories in 2016 and 2024. But such success breeds criticism, and many on the left and among the older conservative establishment have condemned the new nationalism as a betrayal of the Declaration’s universal principles. Such criticism has, no doubt, deepened the New Right’s skepticism of the Declaration.

What are we to make of all this?

The New Right is correct to reject superficial and politically unhelpful misappropriations of the Declaration. Its members are justified in repudiating suggestions that America is just a political “idea” with no particular and concrete interests. And they are correct to dismiss claims that the Declaration’s universal principles require us to embrace immigration, trade, and foreign policies at odds with the well-being of our own citizens.

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It would be a terrible mistake, however, for the New Right to go farther and reject the Declaration itself.

Such rejection is, in the first place, unnecessary. Contrary to the self-serving hectoring from the left and the old-guard conservatives, there is no conflict between the Declaration’s universal principles and the New Right’s America First nationalism. Those principles do not require the open-borders moralism preached by globalists of all stripes.

The Declaration asserts the great and universal truth that all human beings are equal in their natural rights. However, it nowhere asserts that everyone has a natural right to enter a political community of which he is not already a member, much less a natural right to become a citizen of that community.

The founders and subsequent generations of Americans regulated immigration according to the nation’s needs and interests rather than a fanciful moral obligation to accept all who want to come here.

Nor does the Declaration rule out an America First trade policy. Its philosophical framework was influenced by John Locke, in particular his claim that all human beings have a natural right to “life, liberty, and property.” None of these rights, however, entails a right to engage in trade across national borders.

Indeed, Locke’s Second Treatise makes clear that government, once established by the consent of the governed, would regulate foreign trade in the nation’s interests. The founders reflected this understanding in the Constitution by vesting Congress with the power to regulate foreign commerce.

Finally, nothing in the Declaration requires the U.S. government to promote democracy abroad or undermine tyrannies in foreign lands.

The Declaration famously teaches that a people can appeal to the right of revolution when their government is determined to destroy their individual rights and subject them to despotism. That right, however, must be exercised with “prudence” by the people living under a tyrannical government — not by the people of another nation.

Nothing in the Declaration indicates that America or any nation has a right — much less a duty — to liberate other nations from their tyrannical regimes and to impose on such peoples all the costs of a revolution that cannot be certain of success.

RELATED: The timeless truths behind the Declaration of Independence

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The Declaration teaches that America’s foreign policy needs to be guided by our reasonable and just interests, the star by which founding-era statesmen such as Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison steered the ship of state.

Indeed, the Declaration itself affirms a kind of nationalism. Before turning to the political theory in its famous second paragraph, it teaches that peoples or nations are not mere artificial contrivances but instead exist in contemplation of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”

They have a right to a “separate and equal station” among the other “powers of the earth.” In other words, every people has a right to control its own political fate. Read as a whole, the Declaration is as much an affirmation of the sovereignty of nations as of the rights of individuals.

There is, then, no reason for the proponents of America First nationalism to reject the universal principles of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, to do so would be a grave mistake. However abused or misunderstood, those principles are a foundational and vital element of America’s political identity.

It is no part of the duty or interest of any movement of the political right — or of any movement governed by sobriety and caution, not to mention gratitude for what one has inherited — to reconstruct the identity of one’s own nation.

An America indifferent to the universal principles of the Declaration would no longer be the America we have all been blessed to inherit — and that we all have an obligation to preserve.

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

​Declaration of independence, Nationalism, Trump, America first, Ronald reagan, John locke, Democrats, New right, American founding, Founding fathers, Foreign policy, Opinion & analysis 

Every government form I sign contains some variation of the same warning: “I certify that the information provided is true and correct.” “False statements may result in civil penalties.” “Federal charges may apply.”

I have been signing forms like that since Ronald Reagan was president.

Americans do not need another report telling them what everyone already knows. They need accountability.

For 40 years, I have managed a medical catastrophe. My wife has endured nearly 100 surgeries, multiple amputations, years of hospitalization, and enough insurance claims and medical bills to wallpaper a house. Over those four decades, I learned something millions of family caregivers understand all too well: You don’t respect what you don’t inspect.

Long before smartphones, electronic records, and artificial intelligence, I sat at kitchen tables with a pencil, a calculator, and a telephone, combing through Explanation of Benefits forms, hospital bills, physician statements, pharmacy charges, and insurance claims. I have argued with surgeons, hospital administrators, insurance executives, case managers, billing departments, and just about everyone in between. I have won all but two of those arguments because if I did not, my wife paid the price. The consequences of their mistakes landed in my living room.

When your loved one’s health and financial survival hang in the balance, you learn to confront, challenge, and stay in the room long after everyone else wishes you would leave. That is what advocates do. That is what skin in the game looks like.

Imagine if our elected advocates approached their responsibilities with even a fraction of that urgency.

As America approaches its 250th birthday, we are preparing celebrations, restoring monuments, and planning fireworks displays. That’s fine. I enjoy fireworks as much as anyone. But the colonists did not risk everything over fireworks. The Stamp Act was never merely about stamps. It was about accountability. It was about whether government could impose burdens on citizens while remaining insulated from the consequences of those burdens.

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Two hundred and 50 years later, that question remains painfully relevant.

More than 65 million Americans serve as family caregivers. Together, they provide an estimated $1.2 trillion in unpaid care each year. They keep loved ones out of institutions, reduce burdens on taxpayers, and shoulder responsibilities that would overwhelm many public systems. We do not have lobbyists. We do not have communications directors. We have kitchen tables covered with bills. We have loved ones whose lives depend on us showing up again tomorrow.

Then, we turn on the news. We see stories of fraud. We see agencies unable to account for money. We see programs consuming billions with little to show for it but waste. We see officials preside over failure and retire comfortably while ordinary Americans are left holding the bill.

In “The Dark Knight,” the Joker tells Batman, “It’s all part of the plan.” After enough years of watching obvious failures produce little accountability, cynicism begins to sound less like paranoia and more like experience.

Finding fraud matters. But merely finding it is not enough.

If I discovered an error in a medical bill and nobody corrected it, the problem remained. If I identified the source of a problem and nobody addressed it, all I had really done was document my frustration. At some point, discovery without consequence becomes theater.

Americans have watched report after report, audit after audit, investigation after investigation. Fraud was found. Good. Now what?

Finding fraud is important. Arresting fraudsters is important. But accountability also requires asking who ignored it, who enabled it, who benefited from it, and who failed to stop it.

And if those people occupied positions of authority, what consequences do they face? Loss of office? Loss of contracts? Public accountability? Criminal prosecution where warranted? Or do they simply move on while the public absorbs the cost?

Otherwise, we’re not fixing a system. We’re simply rotating villains.

The average American lives under penalty of perjury. Every form I sign reminds me of it. If I knowingly misrepresent information, consequences follow. Why should the people entrusted with billions of taxpayer dollars operate under a lower standard than the citizens paying the bills?

If fraud occurred, prosecute the people responsible and name names. If someone knowingly violated the public trust, identify him and hold him accountable. Not for revenge. For stewardship.

I write this while undergoing cancer treatment. At the same time, I am still caring for a woman who has spent four decades battling catastrophic disability. If I sound impatient with waste, fraud, and excuses, it is because I have spent too much of my life paying for other people’s mistakes.

RELATED: Minnesota fraudsters fined millions of dollars — but report finds many don’t pay and get released anyway

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Millions of caregivers know exactly what I mean. We are tired in a way that is difficult to explain to people who have never lived this life. Staying outraged takes more energy than most caregivers can afford. But we are paying attention.

Scripture says, “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan” (Proverbs 29:2).

There is a lot of groaning in this country. I hear it in hospital waiting rooms. I hear it in caregiver support groups. I hear it from people staring at medical bills long after midnight.

Americans do not need another report telling them what everyone already knows. They need accountability. They need leaders willing to impose upon government the same standards government imposes upon them.

For too long, the consequences of government failure have been borne by the wrong people. It is time for accountability to land somewhere else.

​Opinion & analysis, Medicare, Medicaid, Fraud, Caregiving, Disability, Waste fraud and abuse, Crime, Accountability 

Taryn Thomas was a dedicated Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestine activist in high school and later at Stanford University. But after years of faithful activism, the narrative she once fully embraced began to unravel. Ideological inconsistencies and a visit to an exhibit honoring the Nova Music Festival victims eventually led her to renounce the BLM-Palestine allegiance and begin a new journey as an outspoken critic.

Taryn joined Glenn Beck on a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program” to share her journey, the October 7 attacks’ impact, and how the pro-Palestine movement at Stanford evolved into something that could only be described as “anti-Israel and anti-American.”

Taryn explains that at 16-years-old, she was conditioned by BLM leadership to believe that “for [black people] to be free, Palestine has to be free.”

By the time she reached college, she was prepared to lead the coalition. Taryn helped organize and mobilize student protests and the early encampments that sprang up on Stanford’s campus right after the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

“By October 20, Stanford already put up its encampment, ‘Sit-In to Stop the Genocide.’ This is before the families had even finished identifying its dead. This is a week before a single [Israeli] soldier had even crossed into Gaza,” she tells Glenn.

The group’s rapid labeling of the conflict as a “genocide” and the immediate ostracism of anyone who mourned the Israeli lives lost made Taryn wary.

“I felt like I wanted a two-state solution, but … I never wanted to talk about it with anyone because everyone was anti-Zionist, and it felt that … the safest position was the most radical one,” she says.

In June 2024, one of the Stanford protests got so out of hand, Taryn started to seriously question her membership.

“They broke into the Stanford University’s president’s office and caused $700,000 in damages, 12 students received felonies, and they spray-painted disgusting things, such as ‘death to Israel,’ ‘death to America,’ ‘kill cops,’ ‘pigs taste best when dead,’” she recounts.

“At some point, our pro-Palestine movement became more of an anti-Israel, anti-American one. And I no longer could recognize what we were doing anymore.”

Shortly after distancing herself from the organization, Taryn was invited to see the Nova Music Festival exhibit.

“I thought I would find Zionist propaganda and Zionist lies, and I wanted to reaffirm my pro-Palestine position more than anything,” she admits.

What she found, however, was the exact opposite.

“I found instead, you know, half-written ‘I love yous’ and last messages sent to parents and loved ones,” she reflects.

“These are kids my age going to a music festival that I would have went to, and it was just not political. Nova Music Festival was not a political thing, and yet we had compressed them and flattened them into this political narrative, and in doing so we killed them a second time,” she confesses.

At the exhibit, Taryn also got to experience the sick celebrations of Hamas soldiers.

“One of the audio recordings that we had heard was a terrorist calling his dad saying that he had killed 10 Jews with his own bare hands and celebrating. And I thought I was going to hear horror, and instead the dad congratulated his son,” she tells Glenn.

“This was who we were calling our martyrs. … I always called myself an anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, and that completely deconstructed that,” she adds.

Taryn notes that seeing the “ordinary” faces and hearing the life stories of the Nova Music Festival victims made her realize she was rooting not against evil oppressors but against everyday people like herself.

“That could have been your kids; that could have been my friends,” she laments.

Her heart changed, Taryn returned to Stanford “genuinely scared” to share what she had learned. For a while she kept her new beliefs to herself, but once she traveled to Israel and saw what life was like for the people, she knew her silence had to end.

“It made me realize I need to start speaking up about this,” she says.

To hear more of Taryn’s story, watch the video above.

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​Glenn beck, Nova music festival, Stanford university, The glenn beck program, October 7 attacks, Black lives matter 

A proposal called the Scarecrow system says evading automated license plate recognition from unwarranted photography and capture can be done without breaking any laws.

The research predominantly rejects the collection of license plate data by ALPR operators like Flock, a company that controls cameras in thousands of jurisdictions in the United States.

‘They capture and index every plate that passes.’

Flock currently has over 100,000 monitored surveillance cameras across the country, and as the researcher Max Harari states, these cameras exist in “our neighborhoods, parking lots, and police networks.”

“They capture and index every plate that passes, feeding a searchable surveillance database with no warrant, no notification, and in most cases no public oversight,” Harari writes.

Harari’s project uses what he calls adversarial frame pattern optimization that generates a grayscale pattern to be placed on a frame around the license plate. The aim is to “suppress detection” while remaining legible to the naked eye and unobscured to humans in real life.

RELATED: Big Brother on the road: Backlash grows against license plate surveillance

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Using the Scarecrow method, ALPR detection confidence allegedly drops from 0.84 to 0.00, which is described as “full evasion.”

The methods of distortion used include rotation and perspective warp, brightness and contrast shifts, motion blur, “additive noise,” and distance distortion.

All of these tactics allegedly disrupt Flock and “most” ALPR cameras that are mounted between eight and 12 feet.

The custom license plate requires a photo of the owner’s plate and promises to deliver an individualized pattern that completely evades AI camera detection.

The requirement of having a 3D printer means it is likely that the cover has varying depths and tangible patterns.

RELATED: License plate readers or surveillance? The number of AI cameras in the US is shocking

Rich Sugg/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

“A system that can track anyone, anywhere, with no transparency or accountability is fundamentally immoral. This project is my way of exploring what can be done about it, ethically and legally,” the researcher argued.

Harari also said in a post that he has not tested the system on an actual Flock camera, but his research indicates it should work across different hardware and license plate detection models.

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​Alpr, Surveillance, Flock, Ai, Tech