James Talarico, the Democrat nominee hoping to succeed John Cornyn of Texas in the U.S. Senate, demonstrated at the CNN Jubliee Town Hall on Wednesday that he doesn’t require the presence of his Republican opponent to badly lose a debate.

Among the attendees afforded an opportunity during the town hall to raise and discuss sensitive matters with the Senate candidate was Jodi Hunt, an eighth-generation Texas woman and orthodox Catholic who has taught in the University of Dallas’ theology department since 2018 and serves as the executive director of the university’s Neuhoff Institute for Ministry and Evangelization.

‘That’s OK. We’re both Christians.’

Hunt noted at the outset that like many other Catholics, she is a “one-issue voter. Abortion is a large part of that, and dignity of the human person and natural law.”

Fully 67% of Texans identify as Christians, 22% as Catholic, according to 2024 data from the Pew Research Center.

“We believe that at the moment of conception, there is a human life to protect,” continued the Texas Christian. “So we struggle with the idea that it’s the woman’s right to choose.”

Hunt added that Democrats’ unwillingness to protect “the most innocent among us” not only makes it hard to vote for them but saps prospective voters’ trust in their ability to “provide policies to protect the rest of Texans and to promote dignity and human life.”

RELATED: Vance: Talarico wears Christianity as a ‘skin suit’ — and it reveals more than just contempt

Talarico — a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion and previously preached at a leftist church that regards abortion as a “blessing” — said that “we may come to different moral and ethical conclusions when it comes to the question of ‘should abortion be legal or not?’ It sounds like you and I do come to a different conclusion. That’s OK. We’re both Christians.”

Dusting off a claim he previously used without much pushback, Talarico asserted that “the Bible is silent on the issue of abortion.”

The Catholic theologian proved immune to Talarico’s gaslighting.

“The Bible is not silent on abortion,” said Hunt. “There is the Ten Commandments. ‘Thou shalt not kill.'”

Hunt’s statement prompted thunderous applause from the audience.

“If I believed that abortion was murder, that it violated the Ten Commandments, then I wouldn’t support it,” said Talarico, who has protested the public display of the Ten Commandments.

After stating that he does not regard killing unborn human beings as murder, in a state where killing a pregnant woman counts as a double homicide, Talarico condemned Texas’ Human Life Protection Act, claiming that “if we are authentically pro-life, I think we should be disturbed by the outcomes of this extreme abortion ban.”

Hunt was joined in refuting Talarico’s claim that “the Bible is silent on abortion” by others online, including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which wrote, “Nope,” and Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins, who wrote, “No, the Bible is not silent on killing children made in His image.”

Chris Gustafson, communications director for the Senate Leadership Fund, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News, “Talarico proved once again that he’s simply too liberal and too dangerous for Texas.”

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​James talarico, Ken paxton, Catholic, Abortion, Bible, Christianity, Faith, Texas, Politics 

Christian parents are posting photos of their teenage daughters in revealing homecoming dresses, then pushing back when Christian schools try to enforce modesty standards.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey doesn’t believe this is even close to the appropriate response that Christian families should have, pointing out that Christian mothers are posting “their teen daughters going to homecoming in dresses that barely cover their bodies.”

“This is obviously a big problem because Christian school policies for homecoming dresses are changing,” she explains. “Apparently this was an issue at a Christian school in Colorado, because back in 2022, they started requiring girls to send photos of their dresses, front and back, to be reviewed by female staff members.”

A petition was started that received 553 signatures to get rid of the rules, as they were “being objectified.”

“You’re not forced to go to the school,” Stuckey says. “This is a Christian school who I’m sure says up front, ‘Hey, we have Christian values. If you don’t believe in these Christian values, then there is a public school right around the corner.’”

In 2023, a Catholic school in Nevada also adopted new rules requiring homecoming dresses be ankle- or floor-length — and another petition attempting to fight it followed.

“I just find it strange that when you have people opting for schools that are Catholic, that are Christian, evangelical, whatever, and suddenly they try to enforce those values, that the parents balk, that the students freak out,” Stuckey comments.

“So what is going on?” she asks. “Is it just impossible to say no? Is it the worst thing in the world for your daughter to look different than her peers? In fact, if your Christian daughter dresses exactly the same as all of her non-Christian friends, is that probably just not great?”

And while she believes that “looking lovely and feminine and radiant can be glorifying to God,” that’s not the message Christian teens and women are sending when they dress scantily.

“If the point of an outfit is to draw eyes to anything other than the face or the overall beauty of a woman’s presence, then it’s not an outfit that a Christian woman should wear, whether she is a teenager or whether she’s an adult,” Stuckey says.

And while Christians are called to “love thy neighbor,” Stuckey explains that “wearing something intentionally provocative is not loving your neighbor.”

“It’s distracting,” she says. “It’s tempting. It conveys a message of narcissism and invites objectification. Immodesty is not an excuse for lust. I am not saying that. It does not alleviate the responsibility of the person lusting. But lust also doesn’t alleviate the responsibility of someone dressing deliberately scantily.”

“Both the person displaying their body and the person lusting after the body are sinning,” she adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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

​Allie beth stuckey, Homecoming dresses, Modesty, Christianity, Blazetv show 

If you’re a deputy sheriff upset that your Republican boss isn’t doing enough to help with immigration enforcement and you decide to run for sheriff in Alabama, prepare to be fired and apparently spied on by your political opponents.

Just ask former deputy and current Republican nominee for Lee County sheriff Cam Hunt.

‘The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:10, I was walking out of there, calling my wife to tell her he’d fired me.’

After launching his bid for sheriff and making immigration enforcement a central part of his campaign, someone inside the Lee County Sheriff’s Office geofenced Hunt’s home during the primary, according to a state ethics complaint and screenshots of the department’s taxpayer-funded tracking system provided exclusively to Blaze News by Hunt.

That geofence, allegedly enabled by the department’s Verizon fleet GPS system, may have flagged deputies and county vehicles that visited Hunt during his campaign.

On July 1, about four weeks after Hunt filed his complaint, deputies were told to turn in their GPS units because the office had canceled its Verizon contract, according to Hunt.

The sensitive records the system is designed to collect are wiped on a recurring basis, and the state hasn’t indicated that it will preserve materials related to the complaint, according to Hunt.

Hunt, a Marine veteran, beat longtime Sheriff Jay Jones in the Republican sheriff primary on May 19, seven months after Jones fired him for informing him of his forthcoming campaign against him.

Hunt says a whistleblower found his address in the geofence list shortly before that vote in May. But Hunt now faces a write-in campaign to keep Jones in office, backed by progressive activists who want a sheriff who will keep federal immigration enforcement out of Lee County.

The local Republican Party has done little to stop it, according to Hunt.

Screenshots provided exclusively to Blaze News by Hunt show two saved locations in the system covering Hunt’s home and an adjoining lot he owns, he claimed.

One of the geofences has four vehicle groups attached, each labeled with the name of a sheriff’s office lieutenant. The screenshots do not show what those groups were used for.

RELATED: Maine got robbed under Democrat Matt Dunlap’s nose. Now he’s running for Congress.

Blaze Media

The screenshots do not show who built the geofences, when they were built, or whether any alerts went out. Hunt says a whistleblower spotted his address in the system before the primary.

“From what they could tell, User 1 created a new account. User 2 went into the new account and used it to create the geofences,” Hunt told Blaze News. “Once they were established, they went back to the User 1 account and deleted the new account. So, essentially, covering their tracks.”

Not long after the geofence was discovered, Jones’ office canceled the Verizon contract linked to the system, according to Hunt. There has been no replacement.

“It was to micromanage,” Hunt said of how the system had been run. “It wasn’t about officer safety or any of that.”

Hunt wrote an email to the Ethics Commission on Oct. 1 after commission staff told him the complaint was still “in line for review” by its legal team and that “no preservation request or other action has been taken.” He has asked the commission to preserve the records “relating to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office fleet GPS system” before they are lost.

RELATED: GOP operative fired for ‘OK’ sign rehired after Blaze News report

Blaze News

Jones has denied any misuse.

“The Sheriff’s Office has not and would not allow the use of this system for any purpose not involved in the interest of public safety,” Jones said in a September statement to WTVM-TV.

Jones and the sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment regarding the screenshots and the contract cancellation.

Hunt beat Jones 9,301 to 8,994 in the May 19 GOP primary, denying Jones another term after a nearly three-decade tenure that began in 1998.

Jones fired Hunt in October 2025, according to a letter and statement reported by WRBL-TV. The firing occurred immediately after Hunt informed Jones of his intention to challenge him in the Republican primary.

“The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:10, I was walking out of there, calling my wife to tell her he’d fired me,” Hunt said.

Hunt ran on joining 287(g), the federal program that deputizes local officers to help enforce immigration law. Jones consistently refused to sign on leading up to the primary election.

ICE’s list of participating agencies shows at least 26 of Alabama’s 67 sheriff’s offices in the program. Lee County is not one of them.

“If we did any less, we’d be a sanctuary county,” Hunt said of Jones’ approach.

Jones says the program carries administrative and liability costs and that “the absence of 287(g) paperwork has never and will never stop our department from deporting illegal immigrants.” His office reports 271 transfers to ICE custody in 2025 and 185 from January through September 2026.

No Democrat is running for sheriff, so Hunt is the only name on the Nov. 3 ballot. That’s not stopping liberal partisans, who have taken it upon themselves to organize a write-in campaign for Sheriff Jones.

The idea surfaced in Indivisible Auburn Alabama’s Facebook group the day after the primary. “Can we write in Jay Jones for Sheriff in November?” a member asked on May 20.

RELATED: Fraud, fraud, and more fraud: How Maine became a Somali scammer’s paradise

Blaze News

“We do not need a Sheriff who has made it abundantly clear that he wants to throw Lee County in with ICE and CBP,” another post reads. The poster called on Democrats to write in Jones and called federal immigration agents’ actions under the Trump administration “constitutional atrocities.”

On Aug. 11, the sheriff’s office called claims that it doesn’t cooperate with ICE “blatantly untrue” and said it “has, and will continue to, cooperate with ICE in the arrest, detention, and transfer” of people in the country illegally.

When a commenter in the group pushed back that Jones “wants ICE here,” a group administrator answered that Jones “has said he would not sign a 287g agreement.”

“While the letter isn’t what most of us would want to hear, 287g would be worse,” the administrator wrote. “I will be writing in Jay Jones.”

A former Lee County deputy took the effort public in September, and supporters made signs showing voters how to write Jones in. One supporter promoted an online store selling “write in Jay Jones” yard signs, stickers, and T-shirts; the link now returns an error. Absentee voting began Sept. 9.

Jones has not disavowed the liberal write-in campaign against his own party’s candidate. The Alabama GOP’s sore-loser rules prevent primary candidates from running as Republicans again if they appear on the other party’s ticket or endorse a write-in campaign after a primary loss.

“If people wish to organize for a write-in candidacy, I’m very humbled they would feel that way,” Jones told Now Georgia in September. “People have been kind to me over the years. They would like that to continue.”

Indivisible Auburn/Opelika did not respond to a request for comment.

RELATED: Retiree radicalism: Behind the scenes with Maine’s anti-ICE activists

Blaze News

Jones lost the sheriff’s race, but he won a seat on the Alabama Republican Party’s State Executive Committee on the same ballot.

Hunt says his own party isn’t standing up for him.

On the day he spoke with Blaze News, Hunt was headed to a Lee County Republican lunch where Probate Judge Jere Colley was scheduled to answer questions about write-in voting. Hunt claimed he wasn’t supposed to get the invitation.

“I got the impression they weren’t on board with it, but at the same time they weren’t really willing to put pressure on Sheriff Jones to disavow it,” Hunt said. “With the more recent things, I feel like it’s a little more than that, and they’re a little more complicit in it.”

Lee County GOP Chairman Cole Lawson told Blaze News that Jones assured him privately he “has not been involved” in the write-in campaign and “has not asked anybody to write his name in.”

RELATED: Exclusive: Republican operative fired after flashing ‘OK’ sign speaks out

Blaze Media

Actively campaigning against the nominee “would be grounds for removal” from the county executive committee, Lawson said, but declining to endorse is not.

“The way this would work is, if a member of the Republican Party here chose to file a formal challenge to remove Sheriff Jones from the executive committee, they would file that to the executive committee,” Lawson told Blaze News. “It would come to me to be the judge of whether that line had been crossed or not.”

The county party has not disavowed the write-in campaign. Lawson told Blaze News its message to voters is the same one it has pushed all cycle.

“The Lee County GOP urges citizens to get out and vote straight-ticket Republican up and down the ballot on Nov. 3, like their livelihood depends on it.”

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​Republican party, Sanctuary county, Politics, Alabama, Lee county sheriff’s office 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy — the Ukrainian leader whose five-year presidential term officially ended over two years ago — is presently on a media blitz, trying to shore up British and European support.

So far, his efforts have been successful even in Germany, where an ex-Ukrainian special forces officer is on trial for allegedly leading the undersea bombings of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022 — bombings that NATO initially appeared ready to treat as Article 5-triggering attacks.

‘We are losing [a] strong partner.’

Zelenskyy has, however, also used his trip abroad to complain about Elon Musk and the United States as well as about President Donald Trump, who suggested on Saturday that Ukraine “should get a new leader who can make a deal.”

In an interview that aired on Wednesday, the eponymous host of “Piers Morgan Uncensored” concern-mongered about Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel and his call for an energy ceasefire.

Morgan claimed that Trump had “thrown [Zelenskyy] under the bus,” then asked Zelenskyy whether he felt “betrayed.”

“Really, yes, really, between us,” replied Zelenskyy. “But I mean, it’s a little bit more complicated than just my emotions or my feelings.”

“Our country has to survive, and we count on our real partners, strategic partners — United States,” continued the Ukrainian leader. “And President Trump, they wanted us not to attack [Russian oil refineries]. My opinion was, it is not fair.”

RELATED: Democrats slam Iran war gas prices but keep their climate surcharges

On Saturday, Trump said that Ukraine “better damn well stop” attacking Russian oil refineries and stated, “Zelenskyy could have settled this war many times. Many, many times. And he chooses not to.”

The following day, he announced an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.

On Monday, Kyiv claimed that Moscow had violated the ceasefire. Kyiv has since resumed its strikes on Russian oil refineries.

Zelenskyy told Morgan that Russia wants Trump to be “weak” and said with regard to the Russo-American diesel deal, “It’s a pity that we are losing, we are losing [a] strong partner.”

When asked whether he was “losing America,” Zelenskyy answered in the affirmative.

“It’s painful when President Trump chooses one side — not our side,” said Zelenskyy. “We are okay that he’s in the middle, but if you’re in the middle, you have to stay in the middle, not on the wrong side. I think his advisers are wrong.”

While the Ukrainian president insinuated that the U.S. is a fence-sitter, America has poured a fortune into Ukraine’s defense and provided military and intelligence support to the beleaguered nation.

Ukraine Oversight, Special Inspector General for Operation Atlantic Resolve

Zelenskyy further suggested that Trump was being pushed away from the “right side of history.”

When asked about Zelenskyy’s remarks, a White House official told Blaze News that President Trump “wants this war settled so the senseless killing ends. The president and his team remain committed to continuing to play a constructive role in ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he remains optimistic that we’ll ultimately get a peace deal done.”

“The United States continues to play a constructive role in speaking to both sides in working towards bringing the war to an end,” continued the official. “We are the only country in the world that can play that role.”

Neither the Department of War nor the State Department responded to Blaze News’ request for comment.

On the theme of betrayal, Zelenskyy also alleged to Morgan that Kyiv had missed warnings from allies about imminent missile attacks because Starlink connectivity was deliberately restricted, “blocked of course by the SpaceX and of course by the United States.”

“This decision will bring a lot of human losses,” said Zelenskyy.

“Of course, people will die.”

SpaceX did not respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.

Musk emphasized on Thursday that “Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”

Musk noted further that “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.”

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s former minister of defense, noted on Wednesday that “Starlink connectivity at speeds of up to 160 km/h is being restored. Removing Starshield’s speed limit entirely is now critical for Ukraine’s defense. Thank you, @elonmusk . We hope for your continued support.”

When asked whether he plans to step down, Zelenskyy — who has dissolved rival parties and consolidated Ukraine’s media outlets — said, “Not, of course. This is my responsibility.”

The Ukrainian president emphasized that his ouster would be a “decision, of course, of our people, not Trump, not Musk, not anyone.”

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said that Zelenskyy has proven incapable of making the “very difficult decisions to stop this war,” adding that “either Zelenskyy takes on that responsibility and demonstrates that political will, or he does not,” reported the Kyiv Post.

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​Donald trump, Volodymyr zelenskyy, Nord stream, Russia, Ukraine, Starlink, Elon musk, Spacex, Politics 

Democrats are poised for a good night on November 3. The only question is how far into Republican territory their gains will reach. Yet unlike the Democratic waves of 2006, 2008, and 2018, this election has no unmistakable leftward pull. Watch the ads. Democrats are attacking Republicans on issues that conservatives should own.

Trump won Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio, and Texas by double digits in 2024. Now Republicans must defend Senate seats in every one of them, along with North Carolina, which Trump also carried. Georgia, another Trump state, has a Democratic incumbent senator that Republicans appear unlikely to unseat. Some of the fiercest contests are unfolding where the GOP should be cruising.

Trump’s endorsements helped protect milquetoast incumbents from serious primary challenges. Now Republicans must spend millions defending them. It’s political malpractice.

Does this mean voters have embraced the left? The Democratic Party’s commercials suggest the opposite. They seldom lead with abortion, transgender ideology, or illegal immigration, though those issues will surely figure in their governing agenda. Instead, Democrats attack inflation, health care costs, insider trading, data centers, Big Tech surveillance, and the Epstein scandal. Some of these spots would fit comfortably in a conservative primary.

We’re losing an election for things we don’t even believe in. Republicans embraced the cost of living as the “golden economy” while Democrats run on affordability, corruption, and opposition to corporate favors. Voters hear one party attacking powerful interests and another defending them. Guess which one holds the White House?

Take Texas. James Talarico, the radical leftist running against Ken Paxton, recently attacked Paxton for tax breaks and campaign donations tied to data centers that are “selling off Texas — our land, our water, our communities.” Talarico also promoted an ad calling out Biden for “failing us on the border” and promising to put Texas first. I could have written those attacks against a corporatist Republican myself!

In Ohio, former Senator Sherrod Brown (D) casts Republican attacks on transgender issues as distractions from gas prices, groceries, and health care. He goes after Senator Jon Husted (R) for promoting data centers across Ohio. Rather than defending their cultural agenda, Democrats make Republicans look like the ones obsessing over it while families struggle.

Independent Dan Osborn is doing something similar against Sen. Pete Ricketts (R) in Nebraska. His ads tie Ricketts to Epstein, challenge the importation of foreign beef over Nebraska cattle, and promote right-to-repair laws — a cause I have championed while few Republicans joined me. Osborn also condemns Ricketts’ vote to pardon a convicted rapist who had already served his prison sentence. That is a political opening no tough-on-crime conservative should offer.

RELATED: Democrats have a political violence problem

Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

I have no faith in Osborn to govern as a conservative. But why hand him those openings? He is hammering Ricketts over sprawling data centers and casting himself as the champion of farmers and ranchers. The Senate Leadership Fund is pouring another $8 million into Nebraska, a state Trump won by 20 points.

Trump’s endorsements helped protect milquetoast incumbents from serious primary challenges. Now Republicans must spend millions defending them. It’s political malpractice.

In Kansas, Democrats are running an ad condemning Sen. Roger Marshall (R) for voting against releasing Epstein files and quoting his remark that the matter was “not of much interest to me.” Trump won Kansas by 16 points. The state hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. Yet a toxic mix of corporate baggage, scandal, and a rudderless Republican agenda has put even this seat in play.

Campaigns have aired more than 160 different Epstein-related ads this cycle, backed by more than $35 million in airtime, according to CNN’s analysis of AdImpact data. Democrats have found an issue that lets them sound like the outsiders demanding accountability while Republicans defend the status quo.

The same pattern holds in Georgia. Incumbent Democrat Jon Ossoff is attacking Flock cameras and Big Tech surveillance, issues most Blaze readers would recognize as legitimate threats to liberty. I don’t trust Ossoff to get them right. But my kind of Republican would never give him such an easy target. Why did the GOP?

RELATED: On ‘Meet the Press,’ El-Sayed denied his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Hours later, the receipts landed.

Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images

Michigan offers another example. Abdul El-Sayed, perhaps the Democrats’ most radical Senate nominee, isn’t running ads about making the Muslim Brotherhood great again. He’s attacking Republican Mike Rogers for promoting government surveillance and saying officials would love to get “one-tenth of what Google has on you.” Once again, Democrats have seized ground conservatives should occupy.

Then comes Iran. The war has battered energy prices and supply chains. Trump opened with two weeks of bombing and failed to plan for Iran’s predictable disruption of the Strait of Hormuz. Even from a hawkish perspective, what meaningful objectives did he accomplish? That is another glass jaw Republicans did not need to inherit.

After Nov. 3, conservatives will face a long conversation about what went wrong. No single issue explains it. For two years, the movement has been pimping Big Tech, protecting Epstein, defending corporate welfare, and selling an economic message that bears little resemblance to what voters experience. None of that is inherent in conservative principles.

Democrats may be on the cusp of a blue wave, but they’ve written it with a red script. If conservatives refuse to learn, Democrats will repeat the performance in 2028 while Trump remains president. We need to break out of the paralysis of the Trump era and write our own script — so we can finally win or lose on what we believe.

​Big tech, Blue wave, Conservative principles, Corruption, Cost of living, Data centers, Democrats, Election, Health care, Inflation, Republicans, Senate, Trump, Opinion & analysis 

America is synonymous with a peculiar list of cultural exports: Coca-Cola, Bruce Springsteen, peanut butter on everything, monster trucks, prescription drug commercials with terrifying side effects, and, of course, tipping.

I remember the first time I visited the United States, some 16 years ago, shortly after finishing high school. Coming from a country where leaving a few spare coins on the table was considered high praise, the whole business felt like navigating a Vietnamese minefield.

The actual employers are nowhere in sight while customers and workers fight over spare change like gladiators in an arena made of iPad swivel stands.

I was genuinely shocked to discover that tipping wasn’t an optional nod to genuinely exceptional service. No, like breathing and blinking, it was mandatory.

Tapped out

For my first few weeks in your great nation, I harbored a genuine fear that the FBI would burst through my door and drag me away to a federal penitentiary unless I gave a generous 20% to every human who handed me a donut.

Many visitors find this arrangement odd, even tyrannical. Back home, if someone hands you a cup of coffee, they hand you the coffee, you pay the price listed on the board, and everyone moves on with their lives. Nobody looks at you like you just insulted their lineage because you didn’t pay an extra three dollars for the act of turning a paper cup around.

Americans themselves appear to be getting fed up. A 2026 LendingTree survey found that a quarter of consumers are tipping less as they cut restaurant spending amid higher food costs. Other polling points directly at the mechanism driving everyone insane: Two-thirds of Americans say they feel pressured to tip when a digital payment screen displaying suggested amounts is visible to the employee.

Screen-grab

That payment screen is the real villain of this decade. You used to tip a waiter at a booth or a valet who drove your car. In 2026, you face a digital tablet turned toward you at a self-service bakery, a dry cleaner, and a drive-thru window. The cashier presses a button, spins the screen around with a practiced flip of the wrist, and stares directly into both your eyes and your soul.

The screen offers four giant preset buttons: 18%, 20%, 25%, or “Custom.” Finding the “No Tip” option requires a master’s degree in user interface design and the shamelessness of a Scientologist. You stand there panicking, aware that three people in line behind you are also casting judgment. You hit 20% not because it’s necessarily the right thing to do but because it’s the quickest way to escape with some level of dignity.

America has built an economy where basic human transactions increasingly require a tax on awkwardness. The logic of the system vanished long ago. You step up to a counter, a worker reaches two inches to the left, grabs a bag of chips, hands it to you, and suddenly you are expected to subsidize the worker’s salary. The actual employers are nowhere in sight while customers and workers fight over spare change like gladiators in an arena made of iPad swivel stands.

Customer servitude

The history behind this custom is darker than you might expect. Tipping migrated to the United States from Europe in the 19th century, adopted in part by wealthy Americans eager to imitate European aristocratic manners. It was not warmly received. Newspapers and labor activists denounced the practice as un-American, servile, and little better than bribery. By 1915, several states had banned it.

Employers, however, discovered an obvious advantage: Tips allowed customers to shoulder part of the payroll. The notorious Pullman Company paid its mostly black porters miserable wages while expecting passengers to make up the difference. Restaurants likewise came to rely heavily on gratuities. The anti-tipping laws didn’t last; by the 1920s, they had been repealed or struck down.

A version of that arrangement survives in federal law today. In states that allow the full federal tip credit, an employer can pay a tipped worker as little as $2.13 an hour in direct wages, provided wages and tips together reach at least the federal minimum wage.

And now we have somehow expanded tipping beyond the occupations on which this peculiar system was built. The prompt appears whether anyone carried your bags, waited on your table, parked your car, or did much of anything beyond operating a cash register.

RELATED: America’s young are being recruited into socialism — one dance party at a time

Bettman/Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

Turning Japanese

Better alternatives exist worldwide, and they manage without subjecting every purchase to a moral referendum. Japan has essentially no everyday tipping culture; the country’s own tourism authority warns that attempting to tip can cause confusion or discomfort. Across much of Europe, gratuities tend to be smaller, less automatic, and less central to how service workers are paid.

You see a price. You pay it. Everyone survives.

Now, I know I‘m not American, so telling you how to run your country can sound offensive. That is not my intention. You have built a remarkable nation that gave us jazz, the moon landing, road trips, sitcoms, backyard barbecues, Clint Eastwood, Britney Spears with hair and without, and avocado toast.

I am simply a genuine fan and frequent visitor who would prefer to buy an espresso without being asked to subsidize the payroll or shell out a small ransom for an already overpriced blueberry muffin.

​America, Bribery, Bruce springsteen, Digital tablet, Federal law, Pullman company, Socialism, Tax, Tip credit, United states, Digital payment screen, Tipping, Retail, Lifestyle 

A 47-year-old man was arrested after his elderly grandmother and his aunt were found gruesomely killed at their home in Mobile, Alabama.

Court transcripts reveal that a frantic call for help was made to police on Monday about Thomas Steele’s erratic statements and behavior.

‘He’s doing some bizarre things, and I don’t know if that’s, uh … good or. … He says he’s just going to live for God.’

Christy Deloach, 65, called 911 about 11 a.m., according to records obtained by WALA-TV.

Deloach said in the call that her nephew was “off his medication for lithium, and I’m not sure who to call or contact.”

“He gave away his phone … and giving his car away. Um, he’s doing some bizarre things, and I don’t know if that’s, uh … good or,” she added. “He says he’s just going to live for God and not going to have any kind of electronics.”

The dispatcher asked Deloach if she needed medical help.

“It’s in his mind. He’s following God,” she responded.

“I just needed to figure out what to do. … He’s calm! He’s not violent or anything. So, I guess I’ll just let it play itself out,” she added.

The dispatcher gave Deloach the number for the police department, and the call ended.

About two hours later, police were called to the home on Carolina Court and reported finding the bodies of Deloach and 85-year-old Dora Boone, the grandmother of Steele.

They were decapitated with a chainsaw.

Police said Steele was standing outside the home. He was arrested and booked into the Mobile County Metro Jail on two charges of murder.

RELATED: Wife and son helped father dismember man’s body with a chainsaw after a lethal poker game, police say

He was denied bond on Tuesday, according to a WKRG-TV report, and the judge ordered a competency examination for the suspect.

Steele was told a public defender would be appointed for him, and he gave a bizarre response.

“No, kill him,” he said.

Deloach’s boss at the hair salon where she worked for 15 years said she had mentioned that her nephew was bipolar.

“She was one of the first employees we had when we took over. And just a real sweet girl. Beautiful person. I considered her a friend,” Lenny Zanghi said.

“I’m just going to miss her and think about her every day,” Zanghi continued.

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​Alabama, Decapitation, Murder, Crime 

Americans are being told that restricting legal immigration would rig the competition for jobs and college seats. Apparently, allowing citizens to compete with the entire planet is “meritocracy,” while giving them preference in their own country is “discrimination.”

The argument has gained force as scrutiny moves from illegal crossings to work visas and foreign student admissions. Employers use H-1B visas to recruit skilled workers, and public universities often collect higher tuition from students who live outside their states. Critics of tighter visa rules portray any preference for Americans as a kind of affirmative action for the native-born.

A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The claim assumes something remarkable: America exists chiefly to administer a worldwide talent contest. Its citizens have no special claim on the institutions, industries, and opportunities their country built.

Even on its own terms, the global meritocracy argument collapses under scrutiny. It’s a myth.

Merit requires standards, judges, and rules. A perfect score wins in bowling; a low score wins in golf. Hit the pins with a golf ball on a bowling lane and nobody objects. Roll that same ball across a putting green with your hand and you have cheated. What counts as skill depends on the rules of the game. Standards require a recognized authority too.

University admissions present a far harder problem. Americans argue endlessly about standardized tests, grades, extracurricular activities, and what a degree should prove. Colleges that abandoned entrance exams are now restoring them, while others still refuse to consider scores. Even within one country, administrators cannot agree on what qualifies an applicant.

Now expand that disagreement worldwide.

Some countries place extraordinary pressure on students to excel in examinations that determine their educational futures. Others rely more heavily on interviews, recommendations, or years of coursework. Each system rewards different habits. More importantly, credentials are only as reliable as the institutions that issue them and the people who verify their authenticity.

Academic fraud also complicates the picture. Cheating and plagiarism plague American schools, and universities abroad confront their own scandals. Cheating and plagiarism are endemic in China and India. India’s University Grants Commission maintains a public list of institutions that lack authority to award degrees, but diploma mills where credentials are manufactured at scale remain rampant.

An American diploma hardly guarantees competence, either. Universities have diluted requirements, expanded administrative bureaucracies, and sold credentials whose value employers increasingly question. Yet the remedy for weak standards is honest verification, not faith that a global marketplace will somehow discover merit on its own.

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Culture adds another complication. Americans generally expect a posted store price to apply to every customer. In markets where bargaining is customary, skill can mean negotiating the lowest price through patience, personal relationships, and persistence. The same conduct can be admired in one setting and treated as manipulation in another.

Importing large numbers of people also imports habits, expectations, and assumptions about fairness. A country that refuses to acknowledge this invites conflict over the rules by which everyone is expected to live.

We have our own contradictions. Universities and employers spent years elevating diversity goals alongside measures of achievement. Courts and lawmakers have pushed back against some of those practices. On paper, federal law prohibits hiring discrimination based on race, sex, and national origin. Still, anyone who watched institutions defend racial preferences should be skeptical when those same institutions suddenly invoke neutral merit as an unquestionable principle.

The H-1B debate raises a separate problem. Federal rules require employers to pay visa workers at least the applicable prevailing wage or the wage paid to comparable employees, whichever is higher. The program was not written as permission to hire foreign workers at half price. But wage safeguards are only as good as enforcement, and employers can still gain leverage when a worker’s legal status depends heavily on keeping a particular job.

That dependency can hurt both the foreign employee and the American applicant. An employer may prefer the worker who has fewer options. Calling the resulting arrangement a free and fair contest does not make it one.

Even a perfect ranking of talent would not answer who America’s schools and employers ought to serve. An American need not prove superior intelligence or virtue to claim a privileged place in his own country.

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The case against the feasibility of a global meritocracy is sound, but the most important argument against the practice is one of ownership. A nation is its people, not an economic zone meant for optimization. Even if a global meritocracy were possible, it would be immoral to subject your nation to it.

The opportunities inside a country do not emerge from the ether. Americans inherit institutions built through generations of work, investment, and sacrifice. They finance schools, build infrastructure, defend borders, and bear the cost of political failure. The inheritance carries a moral claim, just as children have a claim to their parents’ estate.

Americans may welcome foreign talent when it serves their interests. They can debate which visas advance national purposes and how many to grant. They are not obligated to treat every qualified applicant on earth as equally entitled to the opportunities their country provides. Citizenship must carry a claim that a temporary visa cannot erase.

Calling visa restrictions “DEI for Americans” turns national obligation into an accusation of unfairness. Advocates of limitless competition insist that any preference for Americans violates meritocracy, even while relying on institutions that cannot agree on merit’s meaning or enforce its rules. Their supposedly neutral standard disguises a political demand.

A nation that treats its people as interchangeable bidders in a global labor auction has surrendered its purpose. America was not built to supply corporations with cheap labor or universities with tuition-paying students. Americans have every right to prefer their own people, especially in employment and college admissions. Their future should not be sacrificed on the altar of economic ideology.

​Americans, China, Citizenship, Competition, Credentials, Dei, Discrimination, H1b visas, India, Inheritance, Jobs, Legal immigration, Meritocracy, Plagiarism, Public universities, Work visas, Ownership, Higher education, Courts, Replacement migration, Opinion & analysis 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says Republicans have “done nothing to make life more affordable for the American people” and instead have “made life more expensive.” That’s a remarkable accusation from a party that presided over a historic jump in consumer prices and continues to defend policies that add to the bills families pay.

With the November midterms approaching, Democrats want voters to blame Donald Trump for the cost of groceries, rent, power, and gasoline. They should first account for the prices Americans inherited when Trump returned to office — and for the costs imposed by Democrat-led states.

Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.

Start with inflation. The Federal Reserve aims for 2% annual inflation over time. Even when inflation slows, prices generally keep rising. A smaller annual increase does not reverse the larger increases that came before it.

According to the consumer price index, overall prices climbed about 21% during Joe Biden’s presidency. They rose roughly another 5% between January 2025 and August 2026, the latest available monthly data. Inflation has not stopped: The August report put the 12-month rate at 3.4%. But the distinction between the rate of inflation and the price level explains why families still feel the squeeze from the Biden years.

Household essentials tell the story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded increases of more than 20% in grocery prices and residential rents during Biden’s term. Electricity costs rose by roughly 30%. Slower subsequent increases leave those earlier jumps in place.

At the pump, the weekly national average hit $5.01 a gallon in June 2022, during Biden’s term. It peaked at $4.50 so far in Trump’s second term, amid disruptions to oil supplies due to the Iran war. Nominal term averages have run $3.46 under Biden and $3.43 so far under Trump, according to federal energy data.

Still, the household costs Democrats now denounce were already elevated when Biden left office. The party cannot credibly campaign as though American families began paying those bills in January 2025.

State policy makes the contradiction sharper. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter immigration enforcement, estimated in 2023 that illegal immigration imposed a net fiscal cost of $150.7 billion a year on federal, state and local taxpayers. The report raises a question Democrat officials cannot dismiss: Who pays for education, health care, and other public services as migration increases?

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Housing supplies another pressure point. A September 2026 Brookings study estimated that the post-pandemic immigration surge raised rents in receiving metropolitan areas by 1.4% to 1.6%. Policymakers who expand immigration without making room for more housing should expect renters to notice.

Electricity offers an even clearer test of state choices. An analysis publicized by the American Energy Alliance found that rates rose 32.4% from 2014 to 2024 in states that backed the Democrat presidential nominee in 2020 and 2024, compared with 18.5% in Republican-voting states. States with mandatory renewable portfolio standards also saw larger increases than those without them. Voters should ask what those mandates cost.

When House lawmakers passed legislation requiring state utility regulators to consider shielding ratepayers from new data-center infrastructure costs, Senate Democrats blocked its advance. Families watching their power bills climb deserved a better result.

Taxes provide another point of comparison. Visual Capitalist’s analysis estimated that a New Jersey resident would pay about $1.36 million in federal, state, and local taxes over a lifetime, equal to 48.2% of estimated earnings. Eight of the 10 highest-tax states in that ranking had Democrat governing trifectas in 2026. The concentration is striking.

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New Jersey, my home state, levies the nation’s highest top corporate income tax rate, 11.5%. Burlington has announced plans to shift its headquarters to Philadelphia, and Samsung has announced a headquarters move to Texas. ExxonMobil moved its legal domicile to Texas. Lawmakers should consider what those departures say about the state’s tax and regulatory climate.

The state’s employment figures offer another warning. New Jersey’s initial estimate of 25,600 jobs lost in July was subsequently revised to 21,900. Officials have reason to examine the burdens they put on employers.

Americans have also seen welcome gains. The Census Bureau reported that real median household income reached a record $87,460 in 2025, up 2.6% from 2024, while the official poverty rate fell to 10.2%. Median income for black households rose 4.8%.

Democrats are free to make their case that Republican policies have made life more expensive. Voters should require them to answer for their own record: the price surge under Biden, the tax burdens in Democrat-led states, the cost of energy mandates, and the fiscal consequences of immigration policy.

Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.

​American families, Bureau of labor statistics, Consumer price index, Consumer prices, Donald trump, Exxonmobil, Federal reserve, Gasoline, Groceries, Hakeem jeffries, Housing, Inflation, Iran war, Joe biden, Migration, New jersey, Public services, Republicans, Taxes, Opinion & analysis 

This last Saturday, a 15-year-old girl in a remote Guatemalan village was believed to be dead. Her family brought her home for a wake, and mourners gathered around her coffin. Then, hours later, she opened her eyes.

The extraordinary story prompts Glenn Beck to revisit a forgotten historical fear held by even George Washington — being buried alive.

“Some say her father was carrying her towards a clinic and just felt her go still. Some say she had gotten to the hospital and the hospital pronounced her dead,” Glenn explains.

“And Dad has put her in a box. He gets a box, picks [his] daughter up, I mean, it’s, you know, the mountains. Picks her up, puts her in the box, puts her in the car, drives her home. The coffin goes into the house, and they start having a wake and, you know, doing it the way that generations in Guatemala and the mountains have done it forever,” he says.

“All the neighbors come, women are bringing food, somebody lights candles, nobody leaves her alone. Seven hours, maybe eight, she’s perfectly still in the box,” he continues.

“Around 2:30 in the afternoon, somebody is standing near the coffin and sees the girl’s eyes open up. She doesn’t move, just her eyes open up,” he says.

“Then she tries to sit up.”

That’s when they started giving her oxygen. Now, it’s reported that she is “getting better every day.”

“There’s no medical report. Nobody has produced a death certificate, you know, nothing. Deep faint, heart that goes quiet, body goes cold, frightened father can’t find a pulse, goes to the hospital, they can’t find a pulse,” Glenn says.

And had she not woken up, had they buried her too quickly, she would have been buried alive.

“Being still in the room,” Glenn says, is what saved the girl.

And this is what George Washington was afraid of.

“Washington wasn’t afraid of dying. He said so. The fear was being given up on while you still could be reached,” Glenn explains.

“And we do that now, not with coffins. We do that with people. The marriage that we call dead. The friend we wrote off. The son who wandered off and stopped calling. We’ve written them off,” he continues.

“We pronounce it. We close the lid. And we go home early. The bell never saved anybody. What saved things were those people who refused to leave the room,” he adds.

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​Glenn beck, Guatemala, George washington, Buried alive, Blazetv show