In his Monday appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the latest U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran and denied the dominant interpretation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent remarks about the genesis of the attacks.

Compelled to act?

The Trump administration attempted on Monday to address the mounting confusion about the justification and objectives for the Iran strikes.

‘We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.’

As part of this broader effort, Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill, “Why now? The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States.”

“The assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties,” said Rubio.

“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher [than] those killed,” continued the secretary. “And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of the Gang of Eight who was briefed ahead of the resumption of strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, echoed Rubio, suggesting to reporters that the strikes were a “defensive measure.”

“Israel was determined to act in their own defense here with or without American support,” said Johnson, suggesting further that Iran posed an “existential threat” to Israel, and its missile production was outstripping “our allies in the region.”

RELATED: Iranian state TV hijacked with Trump, Netanyahu message urging citizens to ‘seize control’

Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images

“Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander in chief and the administration and the officials I just named had a very difficult decision to make,” continued Johnson. “They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S. — to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region and beyond — and they determined because of the exquisite intelligence that we had that if Israel fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then they would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets.”

The suggestion that probable blowback from an ally’s planned preemptive attack on another country forced America’s involvement in a deadly conflict prompted outrage and debate — even on the right.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh, for instance, said in response to Rubio’s statement, “So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is basically the worst possible thing he could have said.”

RELATED: Poll: GOP voters’ lukewarm support for Iran strikes significantly lower than past conflicts

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

On the flip side, National Review editor Philip Klein suggested that critics had misconstrued Rubio’s meaning.

Klein noted that later in Rubio’s press conference, the secretary of state said that the U.S. was not forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action and that “this operation needed to happen because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.”

‘Nobody drags Donald Trump into anything.’

Democrats such as Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), and former Biden White House Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden made hay of Rubio’s and/or Johnson’s remarks as did Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who stated, “Mr. Rubio admitted what we all knew: U.S. has entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel. There was never any so-called Iranian ‘threat.’ Shedding of both American and Iranian blood is thus on Israel Firsters.”

The outrage over the suggestion that America’s hand was forced not by an enemy but by a friend appears to have prompted a response from President Donald Trump, who noted on Monday evening,

The Radical Left Democrats, a Party that has completely lost its way, are complaining bitterly about the very necessary and important attack, by the United States and Israel, on Iran. What most people understand is that they are only complaining BECAUSE I DID IT and, if I didn’t do it, they would be screaming — Why didn’t “TRUMP” attack Iran, he should do it, IMMEDIATELY?

Trump then urged his followers to watch Netanyahu’s interview on Fox News, where Hannity asked the Israeli prime minister about the forced-to-act claim.

“There are people that say, ‘Well, the prime minister of Israel dragged Donald Trump into it,'” said Hannity. “As somebody that’s been friends with him over 30 years, nobody drags Donald Trump into anything, number one, but I want to get your reaction to that.”

Netanyahu laughed, then said, “Well, you’re right. I mean that’s — that’s ridiculous. Donald Trump is the strongest leader in the world. He does what he thinks is right for America. He does also what he thinks is right for future generations, and frankly, we’re partners in that effort.”

The Israeli leader suggested that it was necessary to strike because Iran “started building new sites, new places, underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb programs immune within months. If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future.”

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​Iran, Iran strikes, Foreign entanglement, Intervention, War, Missiles, Tehran, Khamenei, Donald trump, Marco rubio, Johnson, Mike johnson, Congress, Gang of eight, Benjamin netanyahu, Netanyahu, Israel, Tel aviv, Politics 

A training manual for federal judges just ditched its biased chapter on climate change. Good. But the same manual still peddles quackery about how science works — and it risks teaching the judiciary to treat models and “consensus” as proof.

The “How Science Works” chapter in the “Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence” invites judges to overvalue computer models built on unproven assumptions and to accept “consensus” as evidence even when empirical testing cuts the other way. That is not science. It is a distortion of the scientific method, which demands observation, experimentation, and results that can be challenged and falsified in the real world.

This is the posture of pseudoscience: conclusions protected by authority and repetition rather than disciplined testing against reality.

The problem runs deeper than emphasis. In defining hypothesis, theory, and scientific law, the writers omit testing, observation, and experimentation. They also fail to acknowledge that all three can be disproven — even though demonstrating falseness has long been central to scientific progress. Science advances not by protecting favored conclusions but by trying — relentlessly — to break them.

The chapter even claims that science cannot “disprove hypotheses.” That is historically indefensible. Science has disproven hypotheses repeatedly, and entire revolutions have turned on that process.

Geocentrism gave way to Copernicus’ heliocentric model. Phrenology, eugenics, spontaneous generation, and miasma theory all enjoyed “consensus” before evidence refuted them. Alfred Wegener’s plate tectonics also met decades of rejection before the evidence won. Consensus delayed the truth. It did not deliver it.

The chapter also stumbles over prediction. It says prediction is a logical consequence of a hypothesis, “not necessarily what will happen in the future.” That drains prediction of its most important feature: testable claims about what should occur under specified conditions. A hypothesis can be tested against the past as well, but the logic stays the same — it must match reality.

Then the chapter offers reassurance that reveals the posture: “The fact that there is room for improvement in the process of science does not necessitate distrust of hypotheses that have gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community and about which consensus has been achieved.” In practice, that treats consensus as a shield against contrary evidence — a common ploy among climate alarmists.

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In places, the chapter contradicts itself, sometimes gesturing at rigor, elsewhere diminishing falsification and redefining key terms. The result is confusion. Its length and muddled definitions do not clarify how science works; they blur it. Worse, they introduce judges to wrongheaded practices — overuse of models and consensus — as if they can settle disputed scientific questions.

That is not the empirical tradition of Isaac Newton or Marie Curie. It is the posture of pseudoscience: conclusions protected by authority and repetition rather than disciplined testing against reality.

U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg removed the manual’s climate chapter after objections from state attorneys general and others. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine still hosts the manual — including “How Science Works” — on its website.

Rosenberg, as head of the Federal Judicial Center, should take the next step and remove this chapter as well. Federal judges and the public they serve deserve a guide to science that prizes evidence over consensus and observation over simulation.

​Courts, Science, Climate, Climate agenda, History, Scientific method, Opinion & analysis, Climate change, Junk science, Pseudoscience, Federal judicial center, Federal courts, Reference manual on scientific evidence, Alfred wegener, Plate tectonics, Robin rosenberg 

Three young teenage boys have been charged as adults for a heinous crime that has horrified the community in Miami, Florida.

A 12-year-old girl said she left a friend’s home on June 18, 2025, when she was allegedly accosted by three boys.

‘I don’t care if they get 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, 100 years. … I’m gonna always feel like it’s not enough.’

A 13-year-old boy dragged her to the Green Haven Project community garden in Overtown, according to police.

Two other boys, ages 12 and 14 years old, allegedly restrained the victim while the 13-year-old sexually battered her. A fourth person witnessed the incident, according to police.

One of the boys allegedly put rocks in her mouth to keep her from screaming. The children released her after hearing her father calling for his daughter, but the arrest report said the abuse lasted for about 30 minutes.

Police said they interviewed the witness, whose account corroborated the claims made by the victim. The witness said he did not intervene “because he was outnumbered and was afraid of getting beat up.”

The three boys were initially arrested after the incident, but on Thursday the two younger suspects were booked into the Metro West Detention Center on adult charges. The older boy, who has since turned 15, is also facing adult charges.

Fifteen-year-old Xavier Tyson has been charged with sexual battery, false imprisonment, and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child. Thirteen-year-old Nelson Nunez has been charged with sexual battery on a minor by a minor and kidnapping, while 12-year-old Jusiah Jones has been charged with aggravated battery and false imprisonment.

Attorneys for Jones and Nunez said they pleaded not guilty and argued that they should not be held in adult jail.

RELATED: Former reality TV star accused of horrific sex crimes pleads not guilty — by reason of insanity

The victim’s mother, who wants to remain anonymous, is demanding justice for her child.

“I don’t care if they get 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, 100 years. … I’m gonna always feel like it’s not enough,” she said in an interview with WPLG-TV.

She also thanked the witness for coming forward.

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​Teens rape 13-year-old girl, Miami teen rape, Nunez jones tyson rape, Children rape child, Crime 

The appeal to pity is the modern left’s favorite fallacy.

In logic, it is called argumentum ad misericordiam. Instead of showing that a policy is just or true, the speaker points to suffering and insists compassion requires agreement. It works because it weaponizes one of the strongest moral instincts in the American people: mercy.

Deep empathy does not sneer at suffering. It refuses to treat feeling as the foundation of ethics.

The person making the appeal to pity is not merely expressing concern. He is using your compassion to secure special treatment, expanded power, or ideological conformity. And because America remains culturally shaped by Christianity — a faith that commands love of neighbor — the tactic often succeeds.

Allie Beth Stuckey and Joe Rigney have warned about what they call the weaponization of empathy. Empathy, properly understood, is the act of feeling the pain of another. It differs from sympathy, which acknowledges suffering without necessarily taking it on. Empathy attempts to enter another person’s emotional state.

But empathy rests on feeling, and feelings fluctuate. They can be misinformed. They can be manipulated. They can even be built on fiction.

Yet in the modern West, empathy has increasingly become a substitute for ethics. Moral reasoning gets reduced to a simple script: Identify the oppressed, feel their pain, then reorder society accordingly. The equation becomes: Empathy plus an oppression narrative equals moral righteousness.

This framework now gets handed to American students as a moral catechism. Under Marxist-inflected professors, they learn to “problematize” and “deconstruct” Western institutions, to “decolonize” structures of power — all in the name of empathy. The moral energy driving the project does not come from reasoned argument about justice or human nature. It comes from cultivated emotional identification with those cast as victims of “systemic oppression.”

Question this framework, and you run into another trick: the motte-and-bailey.

The motte-and-bailey fallacy works like this: Someone advances a controversial claim (the bailey). When challenged, he retreats to a safer, more defensible position (the motte). When the pressure eases, he returns to the controversial claim.

You see it constantly. A progressive activist claims America’s land ownership is illegitimate because it rests on historic injustice. Challenge that sweeping conclusion — raise questions about legal continuity, generational distance, competing claims of sovereignty — and the response shifts: “Why do you not care about the suffering of indigenous peoples?”

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Andrei Apoev / Getty Images

That maneuver does not answer the question. It changes the subject. It turns a dispute about political legitimacy into a moral indictment: You lack empathy.

Under this logic, questioning policy becomes questioning compassion. Questioning compassion becomes moral failure.

Elon Musk recently offered a useful distinction: superficial empathy versus deep empathy. Whatever one thinks of Musk, the distinction clarifies the problem.

Superficial empathy reacts to appearances. Someone suffers, so someone else must be guilty. Someone lacks wealth, so the wealthy must have acquired it unjustly. Someone feels distress, so society must immediately reorganize itself to relieve that distress.

Superficial empathy has no patience for causes. It wants to relieve visible pain fast, typically by redistributing power. It externalizes blame and treats suffering as primarily the product of oppressive structures. Push back and you become the villain — a heartless person unmoved by human pain.

Deep empathy asks a harder question: What is truly good for a human being?

It recognizes that not all suffering comes from injustice. It acknowledges suffering can arise from folly, moral disorder, and the limits of living in a fallen world. It understands immediate relief is not always ultimate good. Tears do not decide what is right.

Deep empathy does not sneer at suffering. It refuses to treat feeling as the foundation of ethics.

Ethics cannot rest on the shifting landscape of emotion. It must rest on something objective and enduring. For Christians, that foundation is the law of God — the revealed moral order that defines justice, righteousness, and human flourishing. Love of neighbor is not a free-floating sentiment. God’s commands give it shape.

RELATED: Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘philosophy’ wasn’t deep — it was dirty

Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images

The Marxist professor tells students that love of neighbor means feeling empathy for economic deprivation. Biblical love makes heavier demands. It cares for the body, yes, but also for the soul. It refuses to affirm what destroys a person morally or spiritually, even if such affirmation might reduce discomfort in the short term.

Superficial empathy says: Remove suffering at all costs. Deep empathy says: Pursue the true good of the person, even when that path requires discomfort, responsibility, or repentance.

The irony is that the left’s empathy-driven politics often produce policies that entrench dependency, dissolve personal responsibility, and weaken the institutions — family, church, community — that sustain long-term human flourishing. It feels compassionate in the moment. It proves destructive in the end.

America does not need less compassion. It needs a deeper understanding of it.

The question is not whether we feel. The question is whether our feelings answer to truth.

Empathy can be a virtue. But it can become a dangerous master.

When compassion detaches from objective moral order, it becomes an easy tool for anyone seeking power. When appeals to pity replace rational debate about justice, a free people grows vulnerable to emotional coercion.

If we want to preserve liberty and genuine love of neighbor, we must recover a moral framework deeper than sentiment — one rooted in enduring truth.

​Empathy, Toxic empathy, Christians, Love of neighbor, Moral order, Opinion & analysis, Leftism, Leftists, Mercy, Compassion, Weakness, Pain, Emotions, Allie beth stuckey, Joe rigney, Motte-and-bailey, Caring 

Following the Department of Justice’s third and largest Epstein file dump, Bill Gates admitted to having two affairs — one with a Russian bridge player and another with a Russian nuclear physicist.

These confessions might land the tech billionaire in hotter water than the kind that results from typical cheating scandals, Glenn Beck says.

“This is not about infidelity,” he says, but rather about a potential “honeypot operation.”

Gates’ unfaithfulness is neither a “private” nor a “personal” matter, Glenn says, because the bridge player, Mila Antonova, whom Gates admitted to having an affair with, “was financially assisted by Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes.”

“According to the DOJ released emails, Epstein attempted to use that relationship to pressure Bill Gates. That’s not gossip. That’s leverage,” he explains.

But there’s another layer that paints an even more compelling picture: “Antonova, the Russian bridge player, she was photographed with Anna Chapman,” who was “part of a Russian spy ring that was rolled up by the FBI in 2010,” Glenn says, adding that Chapman is “the daughter of a former KGB officer [and] deported intelligence asset.”

The suggestion that these two women are “hanging out” sounds both “dangerous and strategic,” he argues.

“Because Bill Gates is not just one of the wealthiest men in the world. His foundation influences global health policy. … His technology platforms, even worse, are embedded in our government systems. He has real relationships tied to military and federal contracts,” Glenn declares. “He’s not a private citizen. He is a national security interest and risk.”

He then paints a hypothetical but chilling picture: “A wealthy American titan in a compromising relationship with a foreign national, facilitated or financially entangled by a convicted blackmailer with global connections.”

He asks pointedly: “If you were running an intelligence service in Russia, what would you call that? I would call that a honeypot operation.”

“If you were looking for leverage over someone with global vaccine influence, agricultural control, networks, data, infrastructure access, advisory roles across all kinds of administrations (his systems are tied into our Pentagon and everything else), you don’t need proof of wrongdoing. You’d only need the threat of exposure,” he adds.

“This is the convergence of Russian nationals, Epstein leverage attempts, … known intelligence-linked figures, government and military influence, and financial entanglement. That’s a very wicked brew.”

While none of this suggests that Gates is guilty of “espionage” or was “knowingly part a foreign plot,” it does suggest something else, Glenn says: “He was in the position where someone could apply pressure.”

Given Gates’ connections to government, military, the Pentagon, and AI development, the mere possibility that he was susceptible to foreign manipulation could be cause for prosecution, Glenn suggests.

Since similar scandals have already rocked powerful people in Europe and elsewhere, he wonders if accountability is finally “coming home to America,” where thus far, no elites have faced criminal charges or prosecution for ties to Epstein.

Will Gates be the first?

To hear more of Glenn’s analysis, watch the video above.

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To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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The daily news cycle around President Trump moves at a pace that buries accomplishments most presidents would tout for weeks. Several developments in late February fit that pattern. The headlines fixated on Iran, but other wins piled up in the background.

On February 22, CNBC reported that the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell to 5.99%, its lowest level since 2022. A year earlier, the rate sat at 6.89%. That drop matters because mortgage rates drive affordability. When rates fall, more families can buy a home, refinance, or move without swallowing a punishing monthly payment. Home ownership still anchors the American dream for millions of households, and lower rates expand access.

In Trump Time, one week can carry the weight of a season.

The news barely lingered there.

Last week, Trump delivered his State of the Union address and used it to draw a bright line between two governing priorities. He framed the choice in plain language: “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Republicans applauded. Democrats looked unsure how to respond, caught between the demands of their activist base and the public’s expectation that government first serve citizens.

A CNN poll afterward reported that 54% of respondents supported the president’s priorities and 64% reacted positively to the address. Trump notched another measurable win in a week already packed with news.

On Thursday, another development landed. Netflix dropped its bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. That retreat looked like a setback for a streaming giant that critics often associate with a “woke” programming agenda. It also reopened the field for Paramount and Skydance to pursue a deal involving Warner Bros. Discovery.

If corporate maneuvering eventually places CNN under new ownership more sympathetic to Trump, the political and media implications could prove significant. Even the possibility signals a shift in leverage and influence.

RELATED: CNN’s biggest nightmare is one step closer to finally coming true

Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Democrats, meanwhile, appeared to watch one of their own tactics rebound.

For years, many on the left and in legacy media downplayed Jeffrey Epstein’s world, treated the story as politically inconvenient, or framed it as tabloid excess. When Democrats and their allies tried to turn Epstein-related scrutiny into a weapon against Trump, the blowback reached prominent Democrats as well.

Reports circulated about possible testimony and renewed scrutiny for figures long treated as untouchable. Bill Clinton again faced questions about his proximity to Epstein and Epstein’s network. And, once again, the former president insisted: “I know what I did and, more importantly, what I didn’t do. I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong.”

Then Iran swallowed the rest of the news.

As reports surfaced about a rare gathering of Iran’s senior leadership, Trump authorized a combined strike with Israel that killed more than 40 prominent Iranian figures. Iran has served as a major sponsor of terrorism for decades and has threatened the United States and Israel openly, with chants of “Death to America” and repeated vows to destroy Israel. The regime’s proxies and partners have fueled violence across the region and beyond.

RELATED: Iran, China, and Trump’s ‘art of the squeal’

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Trump framed the strikes as a turning point and spoke directly to the Iranian people afterward. He argued that past presidents refused to do what he did and urged Iranians to seize the moment. His message carried a theme he returns to often: American strength, applied decisively, can change the calculus abroad and open space for change at home in hostile regimes.

Democrats struggled to land on a coherent response. Many want to condemn the Iranian regime. Many also want to attack Trump for acting against it. That tension keeps surfacing in real time, especially when Trump moves quickly and forces the opposition to choose between moral clarity and partisan reflex.

Trump’s week ended with a dramatic shift in the U.S. posture toward Iran and the broader Middle East. At the same time, the mortgage story, the polling bump, and the corporate shake-ups showed how much else moved beneath the Iran headlines.

In Trump Time, one week can carry the weight of a season.

​State of the union, Warner bros, Iran, Democrats, Epstein, Mortgage rates, Affordability, Netflix, Israel, Terrorism, Opinion & analysis, War, Regime change, Donald trump, Media bias, Cnn