On Tuesday, my lawyers from the Goldwater Institute and I will appear before the Arizona Supreme Court to argue a proposition that, until recently, I would have thought too obvious to require lawyers: When the government violates a law enacted to protect you, you ought to be able to ask a court to make it stop.

Apparently this is controversial.

The question before the Arizona Supreme Court is larger than one professor, one university, or even DEI.

My case began with Arizona State University’s mandatory “Inclusive Communities” training. ASU required employees, as a condition of employment, to complete instruction on such fashionable academic doctrines as “whiteness,” “heteronormativity,” and “transformative justice.” An early version included a quiz requiring employees to select approved answers, including that land acknowledgments are important tools of accountability and that DEI should permeate every aspect of the university.

The course included material on “white privilege,” “white supremacy,” and the claim that American institutions normalize racial oppression. One segment even included a Starbucks employee describing an “existential crisis” when Americans could not pronounce her name.

There was, however, an inconvenience. Arizona has a law.

And the law says the state and its agencies “may not require an employee” to participate in training that presents “any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex.” It separately bars the use of public money for such training.

This is not an especially cryptic statute. One need not summon a seminar on poststructuralist hermeneutics to decipher the words “may not.”

I’ve alleged that ASU violated the statute. The merits of that claim have never been tried. Before ASU can be required to defend the training in court, the Arizona Board of Regents has argued that I cannot bring the case at all.

The trial court said I could. The Arizona Court of Appeals said I could not. The state Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case and framed the question in the language lawyers love: whether the court of appeals failed to apply Arizona precedent for determining when a statute contains an “implied private right of action.”

That phrase sounds calculated to make normal Americans suddenly remember they have lawns to mow. But the principle behind it is important.

The law does not expressly say, “An employee may sue his employer for violating this section.” The Board of Regents therefore argues that no private cause of action exists. The Court of Appeals accepted that reasoning.

My attorneys argue that Arizona law does not end the inquiry there. Under state precedent, statutory silence “begins, rather than ends” the inquiry. Courts may consider a law’s language, context, purpose, subject matter, and consequences to determine whether a private right is implied.

RELATED: Feds probe ASU for racial bias — will other universities be held accountable?

flags/iStock/Getty Images

And the law is expressly directed at protecting state employees from being forced into prohibited training.

So here is the elementary question: If the employee the legislature meant to protect cannot enforce the protection, what exactly has he been given?

The lawmakers who sponsored the statute filed an amicus brief supporting my case and arguing that employees like me are exactly whom the law was intended to protect. That does not decide the legal question. It does underscore the practical one: If the protected employee cannot sue, who can?

A legal protection that government may violate without anyone able to invoke it in court has been demoted from law to suggestion.

That is why this case is not merely about DEI and certainly not merely about me.

Imagine a future Arizona government dominated by people whose politics are the reverse of mine. Suppose it mandates ideological training that violates a statute protecting progressive state employees. Should those employees be told, “Yes, the legislature prohibited this, but you are not permitted to ask a court to stop it”?

Of course not.

Conservatives, liberals, Christians, atheists, Republicans, Democrats, and the politically exhausted all have the same interest here. A government constrained by law is safer than a government permitted to decide for itself whether the laws restraining it will actually be enforced.

The larger controversy over DEI only sharpens the point. For years, university administrators embraced an ideology that purported to fight racial discrimination while rehabilitating racial judgment under new terminology. The vocabulary changed. The moral error did not.

Now legislatures are acting, parents are objecting, faculty members are speaking, and DEI offices are being renamed or reorganized.

But changing the stationery is not accountability.

RELATED: Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging: A new name for the same game

johnwoodcock/iStock/Getty Images

Institutions regain public trust by telling the truth about what they did. Administrators who imposed unlawful training should answer for it if a court finds that the law was violated. Those who objected should be able to get through the courthouse door long enough to have that question decided.

When a government institution is accused of violating the law, its first instinct should not be to discover an ingenious reason the citizen cannot sue.

Let the case be heard.

If ASU’s training complied with Arizona law, let ASU prove it. If it did not, let the courts say so.

That is what courts are for.

The question before the Arizona Supreme Court is larger than one professor, one university, or even DEI. It is whether a law written to restrain government is something the people it protects may actually invoke against government.

Arizona has already told its agencies, “You may not.”

Now we find out whether an employee is allowed to answer, “Then prove it in court.”

​Goldwater institute, Opinion & analysis, Arizona supreme court, First amendment, Diversity equity inclusion, Arizona state university, Freedom of speech 

I received my Fitbit Air near launch day back in May, and I’ve had it on my wrist ever since. In our original hands-on coverage, I loved it for its lightweight design, long battery life, and 24/7 wearability, despite a lack of GPS tracking for runs, questions around data privacy, and an inconsistently reliable AI coach.

Three months later, I have more thoughts on how Fitbit Air has aged and whether or not I still recommend the device.

I find that it’s an inconsistent health partner.

Things I still love about the Fitbit Air? For starters, the size and weight have proven to be a huge selling point for the Fitbit Air. It’s so light and unobtrusive, I forget I have it on most of the time. Unlike larger fitness bands or even watches, its bracelet-like design makes it easy to wear in tandem with jewelry or accessories on the other wrist. Personally, I pair mine with an Apple Watch (I’m a data nerd; don’t judge), and I rarely dodge judgmental glances in public, so it must look normal to most folks.

Its covert aesthetic is further complemented by reliably impressive battery life that lasts slightly more than a week per charge, though this window may shorten a bit if you’re a real exercise fanatic. I rarely have to take it off or acknowledge it’s there, which is the best thing you could ask for in a dedicated fitness tracker. Considering that the Fitbit Air samples heart rate data every five seconds, this kind of battery life cannot be overstated. It’s truly impressive, as far as wearable gadgets go.

Zach Laidlaw

If there’s anything to gripe about, it’s that the pebble module inside the Fitbit Air is made of plastic. Sure, it’s lightweight and cheap to produce, but it’s also easy to damage. Shortly after the Fitbit Air launched, some users reported scratches on the heart rate sensor, and one unlucky user found out that bug sprays and plastics don’t mix. Keeping these in mind, I’ve been careful with my Fitbit Air, and it’s held up quite well so far, despite getting drenched for daily showers, occasional exercises, and rounds of dirty dishwater in the kitchen sink. Let’s see if that trend continues.

Things I dislike about the Fitbit Air

That’s not to say that Fitbit Air is perfect. When the device launched, Google heavily pushed its Gemini-powered AI health coach as a key feature. The company even rebuilt the Fitbit app around it as Google Health. Unfortunately, Coach still needs some work.

Through my day-to-day musings with Coach, I find that it’s an inconsistent health partner. Sometimes, it’s really good at making recommendations to improve personal fitness or serving as a soundboard for discussing random health questions. Other times?

RELATED: Google’s Fitbit overhaul is actually great. There’s just one catch.

Zach Laidlaw

It hallucinates over the data stored within the app. I’ve had it misread my readiness score, undercut my daily steps, and send me a morning notification to tell me I woke up too early while I was actively still sleeping.

One time, it even invented its own stress score, which is a feature Fitbit used to have, but it was removed when Google Health took over. When I asked Coach where it got the number, it said that I could find it myself in Google Health, but naturally, it wasn’t there. I’m still not sure where it found that hidden data, if it existed at all.

At this point, Coach is an interesting feature to play with, but it’s not actually reliable or useful yet. If it wasn’t already included in my Google AI Pro subscription, I wouldn’t dare spend the extra money on a Google Health Premium plan to try it out.

Would I recommend the Fitbit Air?

It’s only been a few months, but Fitbit Air remains to be one of the most interesting fitness trackers I’ve used in the last 15 years. Shortcomings aside, it does the basics well. Build, comfort, and battery are all highly rated in my book. It’s also tough to find a reliable tracker with class-leading heart rate, sleep, and fitness metrics for under $100. For the money, you get a lot of gadget here, and I would recommend it to anyone who is even the least bit curious about your health.

Zach Laidlaw

The story doesn’t end there, though. Fitbit Air is about to get better. Google announced at its hardware event in mid-August that the wearable is getting a powerful software upgrade. As part of Google’s new Health Guardian system for Pixel Watches, Fitbit Air will receive several quality-of-life features: insulin resistance metrics and blood pressure trends.

Together, these could theoretically help users detect early signs of diabetes and hypertension. That said, the features are expected to roll out in September, so I haven’t had a chance to test them yet. When they’re available, though, I’m sure I’ll have some thoughts. You’ll just have to wait until the six-month long-term review to read them.

​Tech, Fitbit 

Meta is set to pay a staggering $17 billion settlement after allegations that its social media platforms contributed to addiction and other harms among young users.

The agreement marks one of the largest corporate payouts tied to the growing backlash against Big Tech — and BlazeTV hosts Christopher Rufo and Jonathan “Lomez” Keeperman aren’t exactly sure how to feel about it.

“So we had a ruling this week,” Rufo says, “a settlement this week that Meta, which is the kind of dumb rebrand, like, middle-aged man identity crisis rebranding of Facebook, has settled to pay $17 billion.”

“Meta has been found guilty, or admitted to, harming children with its Facebook technology,” he explains.

“Essentially, they’re saying social media is addictive and harmful to kids in the same way that kids might be, you know, lighting up cigarettes,” he adds, before asking Lomez whether it’s good or bad.

“I’m of like two, three, four minds about this, honestly. On the one hand, it does strike me a little bit as a moral panic, I should say, which is like, OK, we’re going down this path of increased social media use. People are addicted to their phones,” Lomez says.

“There’s no ambiguity around that. That’s obvious and demonstrably the case. The question is, what harms are these doing? … And I think there are real harms,” he adds.

One of these “harms” is the “pervasive mass psychosis” that Lomez explains is “dominating our public life in almost every respect.”

“People getting herded into these sort of algorithmic valleys, you might call them, where they don’t see outside of it. Their information environment is completely one-sided, and this is deranging to people,” he says.

However, is the responsibility on those who have created social media, or those who use it?

“I think it’s a little bit of both,” he says. “And certainly when it comes to kids, I think kids are particularly susceptible to this stuff. And there ought to be a certain kind of responsibility that’s placed on the people creating these tools to be mindful of the ways in which kids in particular are susceptible, are able to be manipulated, where their sort of weaknesses are.”

“So this is all to say, when it comes to Meta here, is it reasonable for them to pay out $17 billion to these states? My answer is actually, yeah, it is,” he adds.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​17 billion, Addiction, Big tech, Christopher rufo, Jonathan lomez keeperman, Meta, Social media, Blazetv show 

Abdul El-Sayed did Americans a favor when he sat down with Jesse Watters on Fox News this week. The Michigan U.S. Senate candidate gave us a remarkably clear lesson in the philosophy behind America’s growing democratic socialist movement. The real question is simple: Who owns your property — you or the government?

The most revealing moment was not about Sharia law, transgender medicine, or even socialized health care. It came when Watters pressed El-Sayed about his proposal to tax the wealth of Americans with more than $100 million.

Before giving government more power, ask what happens when the people wielding it decide that you, too, have more than you need.

El-Sayed has made the argument before. Billionaires, he says, can surrender a substantial portion of their wealth and still remain billionaires. Their children and grandchildren will still be rich.

Notice the premise. This is not merely an argument that government needs revenue for legitimate functions, nor a dispute over whether the top marginal income-tax rate should be 35% or 39%. The argument is that you possess more than you need — and government gets to decide how much that is.

That is the part Americans need to understand.

Suppose you build a company. You work for decades. You save, invest, and take risks. The company becomes enormously valuable. Under the traditional American understanding, the presumption is that the property is yours. Government may tax under constitutional authority, but it does not acquire an unlimited moral claim on your property because politicians decide you have too much of it.

El-Sayed reverses that presumption. What are you going to do with all that money? Whatever your answer, the socialist argument says it is too much because you have more than you need.

The proper question is not what you intend to do with your property. The proper question is: By what right does the government take it?

That distinction takes us back to 1776. The founders understood that government is necessary to protect life, liberty, property, contracts, and the peaceful exercise of rights.

But precisely because government possesses coercive power, it must be limited. The founders built a constitutional order around the insight that human beings abuse power, so power must be divided, checked, and restrained.

Read the Declaration of Independence. The complaint against George III is repeatedly that political power has exceeded its proper bounds. The king interferes with colonial legislatures, imposes taxes without consent, and seeks to subject Americans to “absolute Despotism.”

The central political problem was not how government could solve every problem. It was how citizens could prevent government from becoming one.

RELATED: The data center mob wants your property rights too

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Compare that instinct with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s declaration that there is “no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” That is nearly the photographic negative of the American constitutional tradition.

The founders asked: What powers have we actually given government, and how do we limit them? The new socialists ask: What problem is left for government to solve?

El-Sayed’s wealth-tax argument reveals why. Once we abandon the presumption that your property is genuinely yours, the limiting principle becomes hard to locate. If $100 million is too much, why not $50 million? Why not $10 million? If politicians may determine how much wealth you need, why stop with billionaires?

The issue is not whether anyone should feel sorry for billionaires. The issue is who owns the property.

Redistribution is politically easiest when it begins with somebody almost nobody identifies with. He has plenty. You do not. Why shouldn’t government take some?

Because a government powerful enough to decide how much property another person needs has been given a power that does not become harmless merely because its first target is richer than you.

Then there is the comic assumption beneath the argument: Government will spend the money more wisely.

El-Sayed’s home state offers a useful caution. The state auditor found Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency ineffective during the COVID pandemic. Fraud controls were weakened, billions in improper or fraudulent payments went out, and later audits found serious failures in recovering them.

These are the institutions that will reliably improve on the decisions of people who built billion-dollar companies?

Government has legitimate but limited purposes, and legitimate taxation follows from those purposes. But legitimate taxation does not establish a standing claim to whatever share of your wealth politicians decide you do not need.

This debate is especially important because socialism has found a receptive audience among younger Americans. Harvard’s 2025 Youth Poll found support for capitalism among young Americans at only 39%, while nearly half of young Democrats expressed support for socialism.

That is, in part, a failure of education.

We have spent enormous energy teaching young Americans to critique power and too little teaching them why constitutional government was designed to limit it. Much of contemporary oppression theory condemns authorities who presume to know how others should live, then demands political power to impose its own answers.

The next generation needs a different lesson.

RELATED: The DSA’s history lesson has one big omission

Sarah Rice/Getty Images

Your life is your responsibility. Your neighbor’s property belongs to your neighbor. Wealth does not become public property when it crosses an arbitrary number selected by a politician. Government exists to protect rights, not to decide how much prosperity citizens are permitted to enjoy.

Freedom includes choices politicians consider foolish or wasteful. Save your money, give it away, invest it, build a business, leave it to your children, support your church, fund a charity, or buy something ridiculous. Within the law, those decisions belong to you.

That is what limited government protects.

The socialist temptation is perennial because it begins with an attractive promise: Give us more power, and we will use it to make life fairer.

The American answer is older and wiser: Before giving government more power, ask what happens when the people wielding it decide that you, too, have more than you need.

​Abdul el-sayed, Americans, Billionaires, Capitalism, Declaration of independence, Democratic socialism, Dsa, Government spending, Property rights, Redistribution, Zohran mamdani, Opinion & analysis 

Virtual Private Networks are meant to shield your browsing history from all manner of prying eyes, including your internet service provider, your workplace or school, and even potential hackers. If you use a VPN with your Windows PC, though, I have some bad news: Microsoft has a full record of your browsing habits, and it can even report your activity to the FBI.

According to court documents released on July 1, a 19-year-old young man working with the cyber criminal group known as Scattered Spider was caught hacking into a computer system belonging to a luxury jewelry store. While inside, the hacker stole company data and demanded $8 million in cryptocurrency for ransom. Ultimately, the jewelry store kicked the hacker out of its system without paying the ransom, and the perpetrator was later arrested and charged.

Every user is susceptible to unwarranted surveillance and government overreach.

It’s a simple case of conspiracy, digital intrusion, and fraud … but there’s a catch.

The hacker’s identity should have been hidden from the feds.

Reports indicate that the hacker used a Windows PC to access the jewelry store’s system. Before breaking in, he installed a VPN onto his device that was meant to conceal his IP address, location, and identity. The VPN worked as intended, but it still wasn’t enough to keep his activity from leaking to the FBI. Even with protections in place, Windows itself was the thing that outed him in the end, thanks to a little-known device identifier called Global Device Identifier, or GDID.

What is GDID?

Every installation of Windows is assigned a GDID. Up until recently, there wasn’t a lot of information on exactly what this identifier could do, and even now, details are scant. However, thanks to this case, we can make a few deductions.

GDID can track and keep a record of the web browsing history on the device that it’s assigned, even if a VPN is installed. This information is saved over time, and it can’t be erased or cleared, even if with a system wipe or reinstall of Windows.

GDID can’t see what a user did on the pages they visited. It doesn’t know what that person saw or read on the screen. However, simply visiting a certain URL may be enough to draw conclusions and bring legal charges, as was the case with the Scattered Spider hacker.

What does this mean for regular users?

For the criminally inclined, GDID is just another way for the FBI to serve justice in a world increasingly plagued by cyber criminals, AI-powered security threats, and system breaches. As more of our digital infrastructure comes under attack at the hands of quantum computing and other innovations we haven’t yet imagined, the feds will need all the help they can get to stop criminals in their tracks.

And for the rest of us?

RELATED: New malware is crippling Android phones, but not yours if you do this

Jutharat Pinpan/Getty Images

The revelation that Microsoft created Windows with browser-tracking spyware baked directly into the OS is neither shocking nor acceptable. A feature that can monitor a hacker’s browsing activity is a fatal flaw that makes every user susceptible to unwarranted surveillance and government overreach. This is especially egregious when you take into account what this could mean for something like the age-verification bills that are currently at Capitol Hill.

Imagine what would happen if states begin to pass age-restriction laws. Instead of turning over their IDs, citizens would use a VPN to access the internet by routing their connection to a nonrestrictive state — a clear violation of the new law. A Windows PC would detect this behavior, and it could inform the government of such an infraction, resulting in legal repercussions.

At that point, there’s no going back.

How to disable GDID

This is usually the part of the story where I try to deliver some good news — a solution to keep you, your devices, and your rights safe from Big Tech and/or the government. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done here.

GDID is built directly into Windows. It is assigned to your device whether you use your Microsoft account to log in or you use a local account. It is also persistent, meaning that once assigned, it doesn’t change. That identifier is attached to your computer and you for the rest of its life, and when you get another Windows PC, the next identifier will follow you too.

The only way to avoid it is to choose a different PC platform altogether.

​Tech, Microsoft, Privacy, Vpn, Gdid 

On August 10, a powerful magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck western Colombia near the town of San José del Palmar in Chocó Department, killing at least 287 people, injuring thousands, and knocking down buildings in cities like Pereira and Cali.

While Colombia is the most recent example, it’s certainly not the only country to experience devastating earthquakes in recent months. Since May, Venezuela, Indonesia, Mexico, and Japan, among several others, have all experienced the ground-splitting force of major quakes.

On a recent episode of “Live Free,” host and Lakepointe Church pastor Josh Howerton, along with co-host and fellow pastor Carlos Erazo, dove into the biblical significance behind the uptick in earthquakes and other kinds of chaos.

“When you look at Scripture, there’s only one time that Jesus actually specifically explicitly addresses earthquakes,” says Erazo, “and the one time He does it, it happens in the context of the end-times and the return of Jesus.”

He then reads Matthew 24:7-8, which documents Jesus’ answer to His disciples’ questions regarding the signs that will mark the end of the age: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.”

The earthquakes that are happening all over the world right now, Erazo says, are “literally what Jesus said 2,000 years ago would happen.”

He acknowledges that skeptics will argue that earthquakes have always happened, but they’re missing a critical distinction.

“There’s always been earthquakes … and that’s true, but we haven’t always had these amount of earthquakes in the context of literally everything else that we’re seeing right now happening and unfolding in our world,” he says.

He points to another of Jesus’ end-time signs in Matthew 24 — “wars and rumors of wars.”

“Studies show today that in the last four to five years, there’s been an increasing number in quote ‘active armed conflicts involving governments.’ 2025 set an all-time record high since World War II,” says Erazo.

“In 2026, the amount of countries that were involved as well in conflicts outside of their own borders nearly doubled in the last 20 years, and according to this same report, it says quote, ‘Global peace is at its lowest level since 2007,”’ he adds, citing the 2026 Global Peace Index from the Institute for Economics & Peace.

These natural disasters and global conflicts aren’t mere occurrences, Erazo argues, but signs that Jesus’ prophesies are coming to pass.

“When you see stuff like that — earthquakes, wars, persecution, the insanity happening out there, chaos — Jesus said this would happen,” he says.

For Christians, these signs herald the good news that Jesus’ final return draws nearer — but not so for the unbeliever, says Erazo.

“If you’re not a Christian … this should scare you,” he warns.

“Jesus spoke about birth pains, and this is just the beginning of something that’s going to get worse.”

To hear more, watch the episode above. “Live Free with Josh Howerton” is on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH40 to get $40 off your subscription.

​Josh howerton, Earthquake, Colombia, Blazetv show, End-time, Prophecy 

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently made headlines when she claimed during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” with Jonathan Karl that “Woke 1 was crazy.” She was specifically referring to the extreme progressive rhetoric and positions of the 2020 COVID lockdown era, particularly calls to defund or abolish the police.

Some have interpreted the DSA member’s words as evidence that the left is entering a more sane, commonsense phase — but BlazeTV’s Christopher Rufo believes the opposite is actually true.

On this episode of “Rufo & Lomez,” Rufo and co-host Jonathan Keeperman sit down with foreign policy expert Zineb Riboua to dive into what Rufo predicts is the left’s next phase — a movement that will make the pinnacle of wokeism look tame.

“It’s long been my thesis that what’s next on the left is the ideology of Third-Worldism,” says Rufo.

Riboua breaks down what that term entails. “Third-Worldism is really about seeing everything through a very specific lens, where you show who is the colonizer, who is the colonized, who is the oppressor, the oppressed.”

This “very binary” way of thinking, she explains, pits “the global north” against “the global south,” with the explicit goal of seeing the latter “triumph.”

But this isn’t the massive shift some interpret it to be, she says. Third-Worldism, Riboua explains, is just “a different form” of the left’s longtime goal to take money and power from the West and give it to other groups via redistribution, reparations, and shifting power.

“My kind of pet theory is that there’s also just a change in racial focus,” Rufo adds, highlighting 2020’s BLM era, which was hyper-focused around “black America’s historical grievances [and] historical oppressions” — an era whose “leadership class” ultimately “collapsed.”

Rufo wonders if Third-Worldism is simply the shifting of the left’s racial focus off of black America and on to the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

“Is it just a racial shift in the subject — seeking the same policies, yes, but seeking a kind of stronger leadership class?” he asks Riboua.

“While it’s true that there is a change in … which race we’re going to give priorities for, I think that what is, I think, more fundamental about Third-Worldism is that it positions things in a way that anyone who feels oppressed can join,” says Riboua.

“In a way, Third-Worldism is much more, I would say, inclusive of all these grievances against anything that is Western and de facto imperial, patriarchal even though things are obviously very much complicated in history,” she adds.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the episode above.

Want more from Rufo & Lomez?

To enjoy more of the news through the anthropological lens of Christopher Rufo and Lomez, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Jonathan keeperman, Third worldism, Alexandria ocasio-cortez, Blazetv show, Christopher rufo 

BlazeTV’s Allie Beth Stuckey recently debated progressive commentator and former evangelical Monte Mader on Jubilee’s “Face Off” series. Their hour-long discussion focused primarily on four claims — two from each participant.

Allie’s were “Christians must oppose abortion” and “Christians cannot affirm same-sex marriage,” while Mader’s were “America is not and will never be a Christian nation” and “Patriarchy, not feminism, is at odds with Christ’s ministry and teaching.”

Allie defended biblical Christian positions on all four claims, and Mader critiqued them from her deconstructed progressive worldview.

On a recent episode of “Relatable,” Allie reflected on the debate and shared with her audience advice and tips for handling high-pressure exchanges as a Christian.

Tip #1: Back to brass tacks

Given the format of this particular “Jubilee” debate — time allotments for speaking, a shared clock, and a strict no interruptions rule — Allie acknowledges the difficulty of formulating responses to her opponent’s “monologue.”

“They make too many claims in a matter of say five minutes that they’re talking. You’ve got to pick and choose what claims you are going to respond to,” she explains.

Her strategy in this scenario was to always get back to the “brass tacks” of the central claim.

While typical back-and-forth conversations aren’t limited by a ticking clock and allow for interjections and clarifying questions, honing in on an opponent’s core points instead of getting sidetracked on tangents remains an excellent debate strategy.

“That’s what I encourage you to do as well because it’s really easy when someone is spouting a lot of information that might seem factual because they’re very confident to kind of follow them down that trail, but that’s called a red herring,” says Allie. “That is making an argument that is actually totally unrelated and irrelevant to the logic and the substance of the main claim. It’s your job to get back to the main claim.”

Tip #2: Watch out for the ‘Gish gallop’

A Gish gallop, Allie explains, is a tactic where someone tries to “overwhelm” their opponent with a high volume of “rapid fire” claims.

The goal is to create a situation where the opponent is literally unable to respond to every claim presented.

“If you tried to go through each claim one by one, you would end up going down the trail of a red herring of something that actually doesn’t have to do with the main point at all,” says Allie, “or you end up having this tangential conversation, and then you go off the reservation and you lose the spirit of what the debate is supposed to be about.”

But once spotted, a Gish gallop is simple to dodge.

“Your job is not to meet them by responding to every argument or talking just as quickly. Your response has to be ‘slow down,’” says Allie.

“You could even say that out loud — ‘Slow down. Hang on a second. I want to go back to the claim. I want to go back to what you originally said, and let me get down to what this actually means,”’ she advises.

3. Kindness and compassion ≠ compromise

The reason Allie says she agrees to do “Jubilee” or other kinds of debates is not to change the minds of her opponents or even their audiences.

“My debate is for you,” she says.

Allie shares that since the debate with Mader, some people from the “exvangelical’s” audience have sent her vile messages wishing for her and her unborn child’s deaths. But their callousness doesn’t discourage her because the debate was never for them in the first place.

“Me going into these situations to go back and forth with these ideas is to hopefully, by the grace of God, exemplify how you can respond with kindness, with respect, with peace, without compromising at all in what is good, right, and true,” she says.

“A lot of people, especially Christians, think that in order to love someone, you have to nuance your positions; you have to compromise a little bit; you have to give in in just a few areas in order to relate to someone. You don’t have to do that,” she declares.

To hear more of Allie’s debate breakdown, check out the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Abortion, Allie beth stuckey, Feminism, Jubilee, Blazetv show 

California tried to pass a law squelching dissident speech. Again. People are finally noticing.

Governor Gavin Newsom last week signed Assembly Bill 2624, aptly dubbed the “Stop Nick Shirley Act.” The law establishes special privacy protections for qualifying “immigration-service workers” who claim threats or harassment. It also creates a formal process letting those workers demand restrictions on publication of their “personal information” and images — including names, employment, photographs, and video.

The First Amendment was written for precisely this sort of piggish government.

Shirley says this creates an obvious problem for investigative journalism. He’s right.

Suppose he investigates a taxpayer-funded hospice or nonprofit, films the people running it, and asks uncomfortable questions about where the money went. Under his reading of the law, one of those people could hand him a written demand not to publish his name or image. If Shirley publishes anyway and the subject claims fear or receives threats, Shirley says he could face legal consequences simply for reporting what he found.

That would be an outrageous law.

But the final law isn’t as broad as Shirley says it is. Not that it doesn’t deserve to be nuked. We need to be clear.

Somebody cannot simply hand him a piece of paper and prevent him from publishing a video. The enacted version requires “specific intent” to incite imminent great bodily harm or to threaten someone in a manner creating “objectively reasonable fear” for personal safety.

That distinction will matter when the courts take up the inevitable First Amendment challenge.

You know what else matters? What California Democrats originally tried to pass.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, the designated “victim” in Shirley’s investigations, was not merely a supporter of A.B. 2624. California’s own legislative analysis identifies the taxpayer-funded immigration organization as one of the bill’s co-sponsors.

So an organization receiving millions of dollars in taxpayer money helped sponsor a law creating a special legal regime under which the organization may demand restrictions on the publication of their names, workplace, photographs, and video.

That should raise an eyebrow.

When the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression looked at A.B. 2624 in April, the bill was substantially worse. The original version allowed a “protected person” to send someone a written demand and bar that person for four years from publishing “personal information” or an image — without the specific-intent requirement now written into law.

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FIRE warned that the bill could suppress criticism, newsworthy reporting, photographs, and ordinary social media posts. The original even contained a special exemption for journalists covered by California’s shield law.

Why would lawmakers need a press exemption if the bill merely prohibited “threats” and “doxxing”?

Then people complained. FIRE complained. UCLA First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh complained. Republicans like Assemblyman Carl DeMaio of San Diego complained loudly.

And Democrats retreated — a little.

The legislature added the specific-intent language, narrowed the publication restriction, and removed the journalist carve-out. FIRE now says the amendments prevent the law from being unconstitutional on its face, although the group still warns that the written-demand system could chill lawful speech.

Could?

At a raucous Capitol rally Wednesday, Shirley insisted that it absolutely will. Newsom’s office responded that critics were either “lying to create up fake conspiracy theories” or did not “know how to read.”

That is awfully cocky coming from an administration defending a law that had to be substantially rewritten to have a prayer of surviving First Amendment scrutiny.

And A.B. 2624 is hardly an aberration.

In 2024, Christopher Kohls, who posts online as “MrReagan USA,” created an obviously satirical AI-generated Kamala Harris campaign ad. Elon Musk shared it. Newsom saw it and declared that manipulating a voice in an ad “should be illegal.”

When Newsom signed A.B. 2839, he reposted Kohls’ parody and bragged: “I just signed a bill to make this illegal in the state of California.”

A federal judge almost immediately blocked the law on First Amendment grounds and later permanently enjoined its enforcement against Kohls and the other plaintiffs.

Newsom’s appalling candor was refreshing in a way. He saw political speech he disliked, announced it should be outlawed, then used the power of the state to try to make it so.

He would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling First Amendment.

RELATED: No, the founders did not ‘tell you so’

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Then there is Mirabelli v. Bonta, involving a preposterous law that allowed public schools to hide students’ “gender transitions” from their parents. California defended the law to the hilt. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the parent plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their constitutional claims.

Different subject. Same censorious reflex.

Who gets to say what? Democrats think they decide.

So never confuse retreat with innocence.

California Democrats did not begin with a carefully limited A.B. 2624 and painstakingly protect innocent victims while respecting the First Amendment. They reached much farther into protected speech and backed off only after people caught them.

If the problem was doxxing and threats, why did the original bill reach names, employment information, photographs, and video? Why did lawmakers think they needed a special exception for journalists? And why does the final law retain a formal four-year “do not publish me” demand if the only publication California may punish is a threat or incitement?

Patrick Henry had the proper American disposition toward government power: “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel.”

Especially in California.

Kohls was no accident. Neither was Mirabelli. Nor did A.B. 2624 accidentally offend the First Amendment. Scratch a “liberal,” find a censor.

Again and again, California Democrats reach for state power to control what people may say, publish, parody, disclose, or hear — then retreat only when courts, civil libertarians, or public outrage force them to.

The First Amendment was written for precisely this sort of piggish government.

​California, Courts, Gavin newsom, Governor, Elon musk, First amendment, Democrats, Free speech, Doxxing, Nick shirley, Censorship, Opinion & analysis