Another bombshell report bolsters the Trump administration’s claims that Salvadorian migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia was simply an innocent and peaceful “Maryland man” before he was flagged for deportation.

The report from the Tennessee Star claims that Garcia was detained in a traffic stop in Dec. 2022 and was suspected of human trafficking but the Tennessee Highway Patrol followed a request by the FBI to release the man.

The report says the THP requested guidance from the FBI and they responded two hours later to request that Garcia be released along with the other seven passengers.

The deportation of Garcia from Maryland to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador by the Trump administration has become a flashpoint in the debate over the president’s mass deportation policies. While the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with a court ruling the administration must try to release Garcia, President Donald Trump says it is out of his power.

Garcia’s lawyers and some in the media have portrayed him as a peaceful migrant and claimed that he had no criminal past after he entered the U.S. in 2014. The Tennessee Star report casts further doubt on that claim after police said he was found to be in a vehicle transporting 7 other people.

The report says the THP requested guidance from the FBI and they responded two hours later to request that Garcia be released along with the other seven passengers. The THP complied with that request. Garcia was reportedly transporting them from Texas to Maryland, according to the Star.

A separate report on Wednesday said that Garcia’s wife had obtained a restraining order against him and accused him of domestic violence in 2021.

Critics of the president have accused the administration of violating the balance of powers after he refused to follow the order to “facilitate” the release of Garcia from the infamous foreign terrorist prison.

Sitting beside Trump at the White House, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele scoffed at reporters who suggested he could order the release of Garcia, and mocked them for asking him to smuggle a terrorist into the U.S.

“I don’t have the power to return him to the United States. How could I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course, I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous,” he said.

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​Kilmar abrego garcia, Traffic stop kilmar garcia, Tennessee star kilmar garcia, Deportation of kilmar garcia, Politics 

We either make illegal immigration illegal — or we stop pretending.

For years, we’ve claimed to oppose illegal immigration while offering taxpayer-funded benefits to those here unlawfully. If life in the United States became less accommodating, many would choose to leave on their own. A logical first step: Stop offering free public education to those who entered the country illegally. That policy has flooded our schools with linguistic chaos, cultural fragmentation, and administrative strain.

Denying free education to those in the country illegally is not a punishment — it’s a refusal to provide benefits to people who have no legal claim to them.

Tennessee is the first state in recent memory to move in the direction of sanity.

Last Thursday, the Tennessee Senate passed SB 836, sponsored by state Sen. Bo Watson (R). The original bill would have required school districts to verify legal residency before enrolling any student. The amended version gives school districts the option to deny enrollment to illegal immigrants or charge a base tuition of $7,000 per student.

The bill passed 19-13 but not before seven Republicans joined all six Democrats in voting to continue free tuition for illegal aliens.

A companion bill, HB 793, is making its way through the House. That version is tougher. It gives districts the authority to deny admission outright and requires them to report undocumented students to the state. Both bills allow families to stay enrolled while appealing a denial. But critically, both also include an opt-out provision — meaning districts with large illegal populations, like Memphis and Nashville, will likely choose not to enforce the law at all.

Target: Plyler v. Doe

This should be an easy one. It’s a disgrace that we continue offering free tuition to the children of illegal immigrants — all because of a flawed 43-year-old Supreme Court ruling. The public would have demanded action decades ago if not for the court’s intervention. Texas, in fact, did act — until Justice William Brennan invented a constitutional right to taxpayer-funded education for illegal aliens in the 1982 decision Plyler v. Doe.

That ruling flatly contradicts a long line of Supreme Court precedents dating back to the 1880s. For more than a century, the court consistently held that illegal aliens stand outside our legal boundaries until they are granted lawful status. In other words, they are not entitled to constitutional protections reserved for citizens or legal residents.

Even if we accept the dubious logic of judicial supremacy, states have every reason to mount a fresh challenge. The Supreme Court has shifted rightward since the days of Brennan’s activist bench. It’s time to put Plyler back on the chopping block.

If Republicans truly believe illegal immigration must end, they should act accordingly. That means removing the incentives to stay here unlawfully. Cutting off free benefits should be the first step, not the last.

Yet, too many Republicans still treat education as a separate, sacred category. Senate Speaker Pro Tem Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin, voted against the Tennessee bill and tried to justify his position by misapplying Ezekiel 18:19: “The child will not share the guilt of the parent nor the parent share the guilt of the child.” He said, “I believe that we are punishing children for the wrongdoing of their parents.”

Haile’s reasoning is flawed. Denying free education to those in the country illegally is not a punishment — it’s a refusal to provide benefits to people who have no legal claim to them. If the goal is deportation, why should we subsidize their continued presence? No one is proposing to imprison children for their parents’ actions. We’re proposing to send them home.

Republicans claim to support President Trump’s immigration agenda. But if we intend to remove illegal aliens from the country, it makes no sense to pack public schools with hundreds of thousands of noncitizens who require costly language and academic support. The only children being punished under this system are the children of American citizens — the ones to whom our elected officials owe their allegiance.

An uncertain fate

If Haile and other lukewarm Republicans in red states feel so strongly about educating illegal aliens, they are free to open schools overseas and fund them privately. But they have no right to do it at the expense of American families.

So far this year, only Texas, Indiana, Idaho, and Ohio have introduced similar legislation. None of those bills appear likely to pass. Other red states, like Florida, face constitutional hurdles that make it difficult to deny public school admission to anyone living in the state — regardless of legal status.

Even in its watered-down form, the Tennessee bill’s fate remains uncertain. Gov. Bill Lee (R) has yet to signal whether he’ll sign it. Like many Republican governors, Lee often talks tough but governs soft. He’s not known for favoring strong immigration enforcement.

If he vetoes the bill, conservatives likely won’t have the two-thirds majority needed to override him, thanks to multiple GOP defections. He has remained silent while the legislative session barrels toward its end next week. Time is running out for the House to pass its version and reconcile it with the Senate’s.

With federal mass deportation efforts stalled, red states need standing deterrents. The next time a Democrat takes the White House and unleashes a fresh wave of illegal immigration, we need policies in place to keep that flood away from inundating states that still value sovereignty.

That starts with ending incentives — especially taxpayer-funded benefits like public education. Letting illegal aliens tap into the same resources as citizens sends exactly the wrong message.

​Illegal immigration, Public schools, Tennessee, Illegal aliens, Rino republicans, Bill lee, Supreme court, Plyler v. doe, Punishment, Benefits, Ferrell haile, Ezekiel, Opinion & analysis 

Americans have been struggling through daylight saving time their entire lives, but President Donald Trump is now considering putting an end to it.

“The House and Senate should push hard for more Daylight at the end of a day. Very popular and, most importantly, no more changing of the clocks, a big inconvenience and, for our government, A VERY COSTLY EVENT!!! DJT,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.

In a report from 2016, it was estimated that daylight saving time cost the United States more than $430 million a year.

However, there are many others who disagree with the president on the basis of public health and safety.

In a previous report on PBS, experts — like Dr. Karin Johnson from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine — claim that darker mornings are horrible for sleep. The Academy recommends permanent standard time for sunnier mornings and darker evenings.

And in the same report from PBS, Dr. David Harkey of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety explains that a darker morning commute would result in more accidents.

“I mean, I don’t care one way or another if I’m being completely honest,” Eric July tells Sara Gonzales on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.” “I’m pretty sure it’s very important, them up there debating whether or not we should move the clock back a f**king hour.”

“It really pisses me off,” he continues. “Because every year this pops up, and I’m like, ‘We’re really going to do it or don’t.’”

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Since the Enlightenment, liberalism has aimed to remove politics from the political. Given that human history is largely defined by clashing worldviews and violent conflict, the impulse to tame this dynamic is understandable. Liberalism, grounded in secular neutrality and rule of law, sought to suppress the passions that drive men to war. Its answer was to distribute power widely enough so that no single leader’s rage or charisma could lead a nation into chaos.

This project has reached its apex in today’s managerial neoliberal regime, where secular humanism serves as the ruling creed and experts, housed in supposedly impartial institutions, are tasked with determining truth. But the cracks in this foundation began forming long ago.

In the liberal order, the collapse of institutional credibility marks a crisis of truth. And so far, the only answer from the ruling class has been to scream, ‘Shut up!’

Our ruling class members have willingly torched the credibility of the very institutions they rely on for legitimacy — all in pursuit of temporary political advantage. That destruction has accelerated a collapse that now feels inevitable. Liberalism faced an epistemological crisis and failed to meet the challenge. Like every tradition that cannot defend its intellectual ground, it is watching its authority erode into dust.

Neutral governance comes with clear benefits. It claims to free society from bitter conflicts over religion and identity. It promises a greater scale of cooperation by stripping away regional particularities — traditions, customs, prejudices — that make governing diverse populations difficult.

Even technical differences tied to nationhood, like currency, units of measurement, or contract law, obstruct trade. But by creating institutions that claim neutrality in matters of faith, culture, and commerce, liberalism increased the scale of possible coordination. It built what amounts to a “minimum viable morality,” a lowest common denominator that allowed incompatible systems to function together.

The problem? That same minimum morality now appears insufficient to hold anything together.

Instead of serving specific peoples with particular needs, modern institutions — staffed by credentialed experts — aim to impose rational, universal standards on everyone. The promise is simple: equal treatment under a neutral system. The administrators of this system are chosen not for their biases, but for their supposed objectivity.

These institutions soon become more than arbiters — they become the final authority on truth. In the liberal order, they are the only legitimate source of knowledge. If it isn’t institutional, it isn’t real.

The economic benefits of this arrangement are obvious. Large-scale cooperation yields immense material gains. Yes, traditions and religious customs may erode in the process, but who can argue with abundance? Prosperity silences most dissent.

As long as the ruling class preserves the credibility of the institutions, the system works. Managerial liberalism turned experts into a new priestly caste — with one crucial difference: This priesthood could actually make it rain. As long as the economy grew and the promises were kept, no one questioned the myth of neutral expertise. All the boats were rising. Why complain?

Unfortunately for the liberal order, human beings are predictably flawed. The institutions were never truly neutral, and the experts were never infallible. Over time, the ruling class got greedy. They stretched their credibility to justify wars and push social engineering — even when it clearly wasn’t in the public interest.

As their grip on power tightened, they grew bolder. Those who ran the system began treating institutional trust as a political currency to be spent. They traded legitimacy for short-term advantage, eroding the very foundation that kept their authority intact.

This trend hit its apex during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Across the board — from the World Health Organization to local physicians — experts promoted obvious falsehoods to maintain power. The betrayal was staggering.

After watching that coordinated institutional collapse, the public started asking uncomfortable questions. If medical professionals — the most trusted experts in life-and-death matters — could lie, what else has the system lied about? Elections? Wars? Economics? History? Suddenly, everything is up for re-examination.

This moment terrifies the ruling class. Its members’ entire strategy relied on institutional consensus to shape truth and steer public opinion. This is why disillusioned liberal voices like Sam Harris or Douglas Murray, once celebrated for challenging orthodoxy, now beg the public to get back in the box and stop asking questions.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with how we know what we know. Under managerial neoliberalism, experts — and the institutions they populate — became the foundation of knowledge itself. Truth was whatever the expert consensus declared it to be.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre (no relation) argued that the survival of any tradition depends on its ability to confront and resolve an epistemological crisis. In the liberal order, the collapse of institutional credibility marks just such a crisis. And so far, the only answer from the ruling class has been to scream, “Shut up!”

MacIntyre also insisted that resolving a crisis requires more than adopting a new framework. It demands understanding why the old one failed. But the current elite show no capacity for that kind of reflection. Instead of humility, we get hysteria — mockery, censorship, and cancellation from experts who should be asking how they got it so wrong.

The global neoliberal order has hit an epistemological wall, and its expert class members lack the wisdom or self-awareness to break through it. They will continue screeching and lashing out in defense of a collapsing worldview. But the truth is unavoidable: The era of rule by experts is ending.

This crisis brings danger, yes — but also opportunity. A new paradigm is emerging. And whatever comes next, it will not be governed by the priests of consensus.

​Opinion & analysis, Deep state, Administrative state, Managerial state, Elites, Experts, Crisis, Credentials, Covid-19, World health organization, Epistemology, War, Institutions, Trust 

The Department of Justice asked the Internal Revenue Service to escalate President Donald Trump’s war against Harvard University by revoking the institution’s tax-exempt status.

CNN reported that two sources familiar with the matter said the IRS was looking into the possibility after the Trump administration froze billions in federal funding to Harvard on Tuesday. Fox News then confirmed that the DOJ had asked the IRS to follow through.

‘Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges.’

Harvard has been resisting orders from the president to take action against anti-Semitism and other discriminatory practices on campus. University officials said the orders are unconstitutional, and they refused to accept the command from the president.

“The university will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” said legal counsel on Monday. “Harvard will not accept the government’s terms as an agreement in principle.”

The president has been lobbing insults at Harvard from his social media account.

“Harvard has been hiring almost all woke, Radical Left, idiots and ‘birdbrains’ who are only capable of teaching FAILURE to students and so-called ‘future leaders.’ Look just to the recent past at their plagiarizing President, who so greatly embarrassed Harvard before the United States States [sic] Congress,” read a post from the president.

“Many others, like these Leftist dopes, are teaching at Harvard, and because of that, Harvard can no longer be considered even a decent place of learning, and should not be considered on any list of the World’s Great Universities or Colleges. Harvard is a JOKE, teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.”

Some Trump critics pounced on the report to further harangue the administration.

“To my knowledge, this is the first time an administration has tried something like this,” said R. William Snyder, a professor at the business college of George Mason University. “The whole purpose of higher education is to educate the masses. Just because they educate in a way that you don’t like, is that grounds to terminate their tax-exempt status? I’d say no.”

“This would not only be blatantly unconstitutional, it would once again represent the Trump right behaving in a way that it said the hard left would behave if it gained power,” responded New York Times columnist David French.

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Washington state police said that a child molester handyman is a person of interest in the death of an elderly woman whose remains were found in concrete beneath a shed.

82-year-old Marcia Norman had been reported missing since April 1, and the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office said that her remains were found partially encased in concrete in the newly built shed in Olympia.

The man had once been a pastor at Calvary Chapel of North Thurston before he was charged in 2021 with nine counts related to child molestation.

Detectives quickly identified 47-year-old Jeffrey Zizz as their primary suspect because he was the last person who reportedly saw her. Zizz, a convicted child molester, had dinner with Norman before she went missing, according to police.

The handyman had been interviewed by police and had some personal items seized as part of their investigation, including his car.

Police said that he tried to flee from the state in a friend’s car but was later arrested in Missoula, Montana. Leaving the state was a violation of a previous sentence related to a child molestation case. He is being extradited to Washington state.

Investigators said they found the remains after discovering that Zizz had built a shed in Olympia after her disappearance. When they excavated the concrete, they found her body.

The man had once been a pastor at Calvary Chapel of North Thurston before he was charged in 2021 with nine counts related to child molestation. He pleaded guilty to two counts. He has not yet been charged in the death of Norman.

Images from the case can be viewed on the news report from KOMO-TV on YouTube.

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​Elderly woman killed, Marcia norman murder, Jeffrey zizz murder suspect, Child molester pastor handyman, Crime 

There’s a movement on the right that’s been growing in momentum: that men and women are becoming proud of building the traditional nuclear family — despite decades of propaganda urging both men and women to put their careers first.

However, while the movement is strong, the increase of women who self-identify as liberal and men who self-identify as conservative appears to be stronger. This has made it harder for those who want a traditional family unit to find those ideologically aligned partners who want to build that family unit.

“A growing political divide between men and women has compounded the challenges of finding love. Around 39% of women ages 18 to 29 identified as liberal in 2024, according to Gallup, compared with 25% of their male peers. This gap has more than tripled in a decade: 32% of women and 28% of men called themselves liberal in 2014,” claims a recent report from the Wall Street Journal.

“So it was a gap of four points; now it’s a gap of 14 points,” Stu Burguiere of “Stu Does America” comments. “And you think about when we were going through the election time. All the stories of women who would not date a man who had a MAGA hat on or had some conservative indicators in their profile.”

“We saw it the other way around, too; women who would be like, ‘I’m proud of being a Trump supporter,’ would get boycotted essentially by all the men that they would be matched with because they didn’t want anything to do with it,” he continues.

While politics is making it harder for single men and women to find eligible partners, Stu doesn’t believe it’s all bad.

“Having massive disagreements about core issues of humanity is not the worst reason to not get with someone,” Stu says, “That being said, when more and more people are of one persuasion or the other, and especially with white women in particular, they’re becoming more and more liberal by the day for whatever reason, that makes matchmaking a little bit more difficult.”

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If you want to make a movie about Jesus, the Bible is a great place to start — and end.

So it was an odd choice for Mofac Studios, a South Korean production company, to use Charles Dickens’ work “The Life of Our Lord” as the basis for its new animated children’s movie, “The King of Kings.”

Emotional moment aborted, unless you count the emotion of annoyance, which I experienced in abundance.

Dickens appears to have had a great deal of respect for Jesus because “The Life of Our Lord” is a work he wrote for his children to understand Jesus’ life. He never intended for the book to be shared outside his own family.

Nevertheless, this is the route the filmmakers decided to take with this retelling of scenes from Jesus’ life — through the eyes of Charles Dickens. Or rather, through the eyes of one of his young sons, Walter. And this route ends up being a confusing journey, especially for the audience of children the film targets.

An ode to gentle parenting

I first must address the movie’s opening scene, which is jarringly not Dickensian, but seems to have been conceived by a gentle-parenting influencer.

Here is how it unfolds: Charles Dickens is giving a dramatic reading of his work “A Christmas Carol” at a packed theater. Backstage, his wife and three young children (he actually had 10 kids, but who’s counting?) are noisily wreaking havoc as son Walter and his pet cat playact scenes from “King Arthur,” who is Walter’s hero.

The mayhem interrupts father’s performance so much that he has to ask the audience to wait while he goes behind the curtain. Walter is portrayed as a cherubic-looking but straight-up disrespectful and petulant brat. Somehow, Dad not appreciating his child wrecking his performance makes him the bad guy, as mom pleads for his understanding (um, why wasn’t she keeping them quiet, for heaven’s sake?). Even the cat is shown to be ticked at dad.

This whole interaction takes too long, considering that hundreds of people who paid to attend are just waiting on the other side of the curtain. I thought maybe the filmmakers forgot they left them out there. Eventually Walter pouts and says he’s going home. His parents are dismayed at this. Go figure.

I’m always a little uncomfortable with depictions for children that normalize or even elevate selfish, bratty behavior. So in a movie theater full of children, I was uncomfortable with this opening — and it was not the only discomfort I was about to experience.

The odd filmmaking choices just keep coming

That scene sets the stage for the rest of the film, in which (back at home that night) Charles Dickens narrates his entire manuscript for “The Life of Our Lord” to Walter by way of proving to him that there is a king even more impressive than “King Arthur.”

Many familiar Bible scenes come to life as the tale unfolds, and I expected a kind of “Princess Bride” experience, where the action would return to the narrator telling the story to a child. Instead, the child and the narrator (Walter, his dad, and the cat) are transported into Bible scenes.

Sitting in the movie theater full of children, I couldn’t help but think how confusing these Bible stories would seem when the Dickens family is suddenly a part of each one — not only witnessing action but also interacting with it.

One of the most egregious examples is when Walter and his cat are following Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Walter loses his cat, which his dad finds (also in the scene), but then Jesus is holding the cat while looking lovingly at Walter. Weirdly, Jesus then turns into Walter’s dad again. Good grief.

The kid also follows Jesus to the cross, attempting to take him a container of water, but he trips and the container rolls toward Jesus, who looks at it while he’s collapsed under the cross, exhausted. This mixture of sacred and silly is hard to stomach.

My personal opposite-of-favorite, however, was the scene where Peter hears the cock crow at dawn and sinks to his knees, realizing the weight of what he has done. The animation in that scene is beautiful, and I felt tears coming — that scripture always gets me — but then the kid and his cat walk into the scene to comfort Peter.

Emotional moment aborted — unless you count the emotion of annoyance, which I experienced in abundance.

But how did they do with the Bible stories?

Other than a couple of figures (with a cat) from the 1800s repeatedly showing up in first-century Israel, the Bible stories are mostly accurate. Mostly.

For example, though it is commonly believed, the film perpetuates the myth of “no room at the inn.”

Jesus’ words are subtly changed a few times, and not for the better. When at age 12 his parents find him in the temple, the Bible says he told them, “Did you not know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But in the movie, he tells them he feels like he needs to be there.

That’s not the only time Jesus seems to be using present-day language. When he tells the people who want to stone the adulterous woman that they can do so if they’ve never sinned and they start backing away, he seems to taunt them with a “that’s what I thought” comment.

There is also language that doesn’t seem to acknowledge that Jesus was always God, including a remark about how he was able to do something because “his faith was so strong,” as if he was just a man with extraordinary faith — instead of God himself.

How the film looks

Some of the big panoramic scene shots are beautiful, cinematic, and richly detailed. However, the animation is hit-and-miss because many of the Bible characters look cartoonishly grotesque — and not just the bad guys. Peter and John are pretty ugly; Jesus, though, is much better looking.

I appreciated that in deference to its target audience, the filmmakers managed to depict the cruelty to Jesus with considerable discretion.

For instance, his flogging is shown, but he is not shown receiving it. The crucifixion is hard to watch, although not gory. But the crucifixion should be hard to watch.

How it all ends

Strangely, the resurrection gets short shrift here. The empty tomb is shown and the fact that Jesus is alive is made very clear, but it’s almost glossed over.

Back at home, Walter is so excited about his new favorite king that he wakes up his brother and sister in the middle of the night to tell them the story. Then the credits roll with an awful song by Kristin Chenoweth that includes lyrics about how if you just believe, anything can happen.

Not the “just believe” message again! This wasn’t a “Grinch” movie, for heaven’s sake. Ugh.

After the credits, there’s a “special message” in which a group of kids who’ve seen the movie talk about how great it is and how you can pay for more kids to see it by using a QR code.

Should I have used that QR code?

No. I wouldn’t recommend this as a good use of money or time for your kids.

However, if your kids are at least later-elementary age and already conversant with the Bible’s depiction of Jesus, and you are willing to take them out after the movie to talk about it with the goal of building up their discernment skills, then “The King of Kings” is a great parenting opportunity.

Editor’s note: “The King of Kings” and distributor Angel Studios are sponsors of BlazeTV. The independent views of the author do not necessarily represent the views of Blaze Media.

​The king of kings, Angel studios, Charles dickens, God, Jesus, Easter, Resurrection, Christianity, Faith