Two days before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel, parodying the upcoming event, made a joke that Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”

Many found the joke insensitive and inflammatory, especially given the repeated assassination attempts against President Trump — the most recent of which happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, during which a gunman rushed a security checkpoint and fired multiple shots in hopes of killing Trump and other administrative officials.

Kimmel doubled down on his joke in the wake of the WHCD assassination attempt, insisting that the widow joke wasn’t about assassination but Trump’s old age.

President Trump, Melania, and many other prominent conservatives are actively calling for Kimmel’s firing.

But some conservatives are pushing back. One of them is Canadian writer, podcaster, and political commentator Gavin McInnes.

“We got to drop the pearl-clutching,” he told Glenn Beck on a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” “because you lose the youth if you clutch the pearls, and if you don’t have youth on your side, you’re done, and we have the youth on our side right now.”

Further, McInnes believes that Kimmel really was joking about Trump and Melania’s age gap.

“The joke was way before the [White House] Correspondents’ Dinner, and he always jokes about their age gap,” he says, encouraging conservatives to learn how to “take [a joke] on the chin.”

There are limitations though.

When people are “calling for violence,” that’s where we draw the line, says McInnes, citing multiple examples, including comedian Kathy Griffin’s 2017 stunt where she held up a prop that looked like a bloody, severed head resembling Donald Trump.

But Kimmel, he argues, made a genuine, albeit “cruel,” joke.

He calls conservatives out for spinning a narrative about Kimmel’s “expectant widow” comment that just isn’t true.

“That’s what the left does. That’s propaganda. They twist things, and I don’t want to join that club,” he says.

To hear Glenn’s response, watch the video above.

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​Assassination attempts, Gavin mcinnes, Glenn beck, Jimmy kimmel, Kathy griffin, Latenight comedy, Left propaganda, Melania trump, President trump, The glenn beck program, White house correspondents 

Rev. Lawrence Holland fell in his bathroom on Christmas Day and suffered a hip fracture. While the 79-year-old Catholic priest went to a nearby hospital in search of help, health care workers at the facility apparently had a final solution in mind: state-facilitated suicide.

Since the Canadian federal government under ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau legalized medically assisted suicide nationwide in 2016, the so-called Medical Assistance in Dying program has been grossly liberalized.

‘The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in.’

Initially, MAID applicants had to be 18 or older and suffering from a “grievous and irremediable medical condition” causing “enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable” to them. Now, persons struggling with anxiety, autism, depression, economic hardship, PTSD, and other survivable issues appear to be fair game.

Next year, persons suffering solely from a mental illness will also be eligible.

MAID — which Canada’s Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer boasted in October 2020 would, with expanded access, “result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments” — is now among the leading causes of death in Canada, accounting for over 5% of all deaths in Canada in 2024.

“It’s a false compassion,” Rev. Holland told the B.C. Catholic, the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s biweekly publication.

The hobbled priest claimed that a doctor and a nurse at Vancouver General Hospital, directly affiliated with the British Columbia Ministry of Health, offered him MAID while he was recovering from his hip fracture, which is hardly a terminal condition. The priest further claimed that both medical professionals knew he is a Catholic priest.

“I think I was very shocked,” said Holland. “It is such a sensitive subject.”

Rev. Larry Lynn, pro-life chaplain for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, said, “This must surely be among the most appalling examples of Canada’s coercive and insensitive euthanasia regime.”

RELATED: Euthanasia and the lie of the ‘good death’

Mininyx Doodle/Getty Images

Although he was left “kind of silent” for a moment when the topic of assisted suicide was first apparently broached, Rev. Holland emphasized to the doctor that he, a Catholic priest, was morally opposed to the practice.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that direct euthanasia is “morally unacceptable”; that such actions constitute “a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator; and that “even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted.”

The Catholic Church has long campaigned against assisted suicide.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops noted in 2023, for instance, that “euthanasia and assisted suicide (MAID) have always been, and will always be, morally unacceptable because they are affronts to human dignity and violations of natural and divine law.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has similarly and repeatedly condemned the practice, affirming that “we are dealing here with ‘a violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity.'”

Just last month, Catholic bishops in New York published a guidebook reiterating the church’s moral teaching “that this practice is objectively immoral and must be avoided, despite the false veil of compassion with which it is sold.” The state was apparently in need of a reminder given its recent adoption of a law legalizing doctor-assisted suicide.

Even when dealing with a patient from a “faith community” that’s opposed to MAID, the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers still recommends that Canadian health care professionals make the pitch for assisted suicide.

After informing his doctor that he was opposed to assisted suicide, Rev. Holland recalled the doctor explaining that he “just wanted to make sure that, if a [terminal] diagnosis came up or not … I knew the different services I had access to.”

Rev. Holland told the B.C. Catholic that weeks later, a nurse also raised the matter of MAID with him.

A spokesman for Vancouver Coastal Health, which runs the hospital, told the B.C. Catholic that “staff may consider bringing up MAID based on their clinical judgment, provided they possess the necessary knowledge and skills to do so.”

Staff are also “responsible for answering questions when patients bring up the topic of MAID,” added the spokesman.

Rev. Ronald Sequeria, the Catholic chaplain serving at Vancouver General Hospital, suggested there was something demonic about how MAID-pushers prey on suffering patients’ despair — especially when suffering can be redemptive.

“The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in, in different personalities, and says, ‘Do you want MAID? I don’t want people to suffer,'” said Rev. Sequeira.

“God makes us more pure, more strong, through the suffering when we offer it up,” said the chaplain. “So we give hope — help them not to lose hope.”

Rev. Holland drove home this point, stressing that enduring pain “can encourage growth.”

“It can motivate you, it can open up new worlds, new vistas, new opportunities,” added the priest.

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​Canada, Catholic priest, Euthanasia, Health care workers, Medical assistance in dying, Demonic, State-facilitated suicide, Assisted suicide, Suicide, Eugenics, Hospital, Health care, Death, Killing, Catholic, Religion, Politics 

Microsoft Windows is one of the most popular operating systems on the planet, second only to Android. With 1 billion users spread out across interests and industries, robust security software is critical to keeping personal files and private information safe. Unfortunately, a newly discovered flaw in Windows’ built-in Microsoft Defender could give hackers full access to a PC without the user’s knowledge.

What is Microsoft Defender?

Windows PCs didn’t always have antivirus protection built in. In fact, Microsoft’s first-party solution didn’t come along until 2006, 21 years after Windows debuted. Today, the aptly named Microsoft Defender ships on every PC from Windows Vista all the way to Windows 11.

The purpose of Microsoft Defender is simple: It is designed to protect your PC from the usual online threats that pervade the internet. This includes viruses, malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks. Microsoft even boasts that Defender “can block almost all malware at first sight, in milliseconds.”

That sounds promising.

In short, it provides a necessary layer of protection in a world of increasingly dangerous cyberattacks driven by AI. Unfortunately, while Microsoft Defender is meant to minimize hacking threats, it can now be used to infiltrate a PC wholesale.

Microsoft Defender’s fatal flaw

An anonymous researcher who goes by “Chaotic Eclipse” discovered a major flaw in Microsoft Defender. Dubbed “RedSun,” the threat can lead to hackers gaining administrative privileges to a target PC without the user’s knowledge or permission.

RedSun affects a wide range of PCs running Windows 10 and Windows 11.

With administrative privileges, a hacker can essentially control every aspect of the user’s PC. This includes installing or uninstalling software, running programs, changing user settings, modifying user accounts, resetting system passwords, disabling security software and firewalls (including Defender itself), and accessing user files.

RedSun, at its core, is a form of malware — the same kind that Microsoft claims to block in the blink of an eye. Then again, the company did say that Defender stops “almost all malware,” so there’s some wiggle room. It just so happens that this particular bug that the system missed comes with potentially devastating consequences.

Staying true to the name, Chaotic Eclipse left detailed instructions on a GitHub page, explaining how hackers can use the exploit to raise awareness of the issue. The move is a double-edged sword for users and Microsoft alike. On one hand, Chaotic Eclipse hopes that with this information divulged, Microsoft will patch Defender promptly to keep all 1 billion users safe around the world. On the other hand, these instructions tell hackers exactly how to infiltrate PCs using the Microsoft Defender exploit, potentially leading to mass cyberattacks of critical systems — from personal computers to businesses and even government agencies — that run on Windows.

RELATED: RED FLAG: FBI says these apps let China suck up your personal data

Dragos Condrea/Getty Images

RedSun affects a wide range of PCs running Windows 10 and Windows 11, as well as Windows Server for enterprise applications.

How to protect your PC from RedSun

At the time this article was published, there is currently no fix available for RedSun, and it could take weeks or even months for Microsoft to issue an update. Since the exploit is now openly available and receiving attention from the media, we hope this spurs Microsoft to act fast, but considering all the bugs that have plagued Windows 11 lately — including this BitLocker hole we covered earlier this year — the company already has its hands full.

While you may not be able to stop a hacker from breaching your PC through Microsoft Defender, you can add an extra layer of protection by temporarily installing a trusted third-party antivirus solution. Some options include McAfee, Bitdefender, and Norton.

In the meantime, keep an eye on the Windows Update page in the Settings app on your PC for the latest bug fixes that will finally put RedSun to rest. Of course, if all else fails, there’s always Mac!

​Tech 

From the time of one’s childhood, a person learns a sense of proportion in addition to a sense of right and wrong. Even good things must be measured in the right proportion. It is this lack of proportionality that is missing from advocates of Big Tech seeking to build hyperscale AI data centers — often multiple facilities — in nearly every region of the country.

A recent Washington Post exposé of the data center fight in Archbald, Pennsylvania, exemplifies why the data center agenda is unprecedented, is unsustainable, and makes the entire generative AI concept economically insolvent.

We have never asked so many communities to give so much for abstract and speculative promises of return.

Tucked into the Pocono Mountains northeast of Scranton, Archbald is a mountain town of 7,000. Now, town council leaders have sold out to Big Tech and plan to build six sprawling hyperscale data centers covering about 14% of the town’s land.

Those campuses would include 51 data warehouses — each about the size of a Walmart supercenter — including seven buildings encompassing more than 1 million square feet. If all the data centers were built, they would occupy about 2.5 miles of land.

We have simply never done this before. And remember, this is playing out to varying degrees in thousands of places throughout the country. And of course, these campuses offer locals nothing but surveillance and slop relative to what edge computing can do with an infinitesimal footprint.

Over the past month, most members of the seven-person Archbald Borough Council, along with several planning board members, have resigned.

Keep in mind that Big Tech wants to rezone and buy up land that is exponentially larger than anything ever done before. Apologists for the industry within the GOP accuse some of us of being anti-growth and anti-infrastructure, but there is an obvious difference between this and every other infrastructure project: namely, the return on investment.

For a fraction of the space, a gas-powered plant supplies the power to an entire region and is a universal need. These behemoths, on the other hand, require exponentially more land, and rather than offering power, they suck it out — not to mention treating the neighbors to a constant 90 decibel humming. It is all being done on the promise of “artificial general intelligence,” which is nothing more than a scam.

It would be one thing if the scaling of large language models required that one region of our country get turned into a parking lot, such as what is being proposed in Archbald. But they are trying to do this with mega-hyperscale facilities in thousands of places across the country.

To provide some sense of proportion, let’s just take eight of the proposed hyperscales under contract in Indiana. Taken together, these data centers that will power cloud computing for Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon will consume 8,300 MWs of power. That is the usage equivalent of twice the number of households in the entire state.

RELATED: Republicans must reject Big Tech land grabs or start losing elections

Nathan Howard/Washington Post/Getty Images

If not for opposition from locals, Prince William County, which is already saturated with data centers, was going to permit a 2,100-acre, 37-building campus that would have been one of the largest in the world. To put that size in perspective, one could probably build well over 50 gas-powered plants in that footprint.

The Box Elder County, Utah, Commission is about to sign off on a mega data center project on 40,000 acres of private and DOD lands that, when completed, will eventually use nine GWs of power. To put that in perspective, the entire state of Utah uses four GWs.

The sheer unprecedented amount of power these leviathans would need also necessitates an unnatural and inordinate number of transmission lines that will cut through, distort, and disturb private property. For example, Dominion Power is proposing a $1 billion 765 kV high-voltage transmission line project that would span from Lynchburg to Culpeper County, Virginia. The project would impact nine counties with the most powerful lines, standing 135-165 feet tall.

It’s even worse in West Virginia, where the residents are being forced to fund projects that cut up their land with transmission lines to fund the Northern Virginia “Data Center Alley” that is not even in the same state!

Is it any wonder why there is a national bipartisan revolt against the ruling class of both parties on the sheer insanity of this model? We have never asked so many communities to give so much for abstract and speculative promises of return.

It’s more likely that we will be stuck with the surveillance state, a degraded quality of life, and a decrepit internet full of slop than that we will achieve any greatness in human progress from such sacrifice of land, power, and continuity of communities.

Never before have we had a technology that is supposedly so progressive and futuristic, yet its resource-stripping is so cloddish, archaic, and draconian.

Everyone knows the industry lacks the power and money to actually operate thousands of hyperscale data centers. Everyone recognizes that the scaling model of LLMs is unsustainable and is not the future of AI. But will we stop this madness before so much of our land is rezoned and re-owned by a centralized monopoly?

Remember, the land-grab is not the side effect, but the main point.

​Ai data centers, Big tech, Data centers, Generative ai, Transmission lines, Eminent domain, Water usage, Land grab, Power usage, Opinion & analysis 

Between January 2023 and May 2025, Fortune 100 companies reduced their use of the term “DEI” by 98%, according to an analysis by Gravity Research.

Within weeks of President Trump’s executive order targeting federal DEI initiatives, major corporations including McDonald’s, Walmart, and Target announced they were ending DEI programs.

Conservatives celebrated as one company after another backed away from the acronym that had dominated (and in many cases terrified) corporate America for years.

That celebration was premature.

The goal is no longer to showcase diversity initiatives. The goal is to make those initiatives invisible and permanent.

DEI is far from dead. According to “inclusion consultant” Lily Zheng, its disguise is now called FAIR: Fairness, Access, Inclusion, and Representation. “It’s not just a communications rebrand,” Zheng recently told Time magazine. “It’s not just that we’re avoiding the letters DEI and trying to replace it with FAIR. It’s that the work itself is evolving.”

What Zheng calls “legacy DEI” focused on visible programs like heritage months, diversity training sessions, and demographic targets. These programs were public-facing, easy to identify, and therefore vulnerable to political pressure. The new approach abandons surface visibility in favor of work to change what Zheng calls “systems.”

Instead of counting the number of women or people of color in leadership positions, FAIR focuses on changing institutional systems. Instead of heritage celebrations, FAIR embeds what it calls “inclusion” into hiring algorithms, promotion processes, and organizational structures.

The goal is no longer to showcase diversity initiatives. The goal is to make those initiatives invisible and permanent.

Progressives adapted after losing Virginia elections in 2021. Teachers’ unions suffered a historic defeat. Rather than retreat, Data for Progress and similar groups spent millions analyzing voter habits and anxieties, then redesigned their campaign around different messaging. By 2023, Democrats won nearly every close Virginia race.

Progressives don’t abandon goals when challenged. They simply adapt their methods. Similarly, when conservatives successfully challenged outrageously unconstitutional explicit DEI programs, the machinery wasn’t dismantled. It burrowed deeper into institutional foundations, where it became harder to identify and harder to remove.

RELATED: How Republicans have failed to defund sanctuary cities for a generation

J. David Ake/Getty Images

Companies dropped “DEI” and adopted phrases like “universal fairness,” “algorithmic bias mitigation,” and “inclusion by design.” The framing shifted from blatant identity-based preferences to much more subtle process-based interventions.

In my book, “The Political Vise,” I describe group identity politics as organizing around grievance rather than achievement. This fact explains why DEI programs can never declare victory and dissolve. If equity were achieved, the machinery would become unnecessary. The system requires permanent grievance to justify permanent intervention.

Legacy DEI focused on representation metrics that could theoretically be satisfied. FAIR abandons those metrics in favor of systemic analysis that can never be completed.

There are always more systems to audit, more processes to redesign, more barriers to identify, and more marginalized people to uplift. A company can cancel a heritage month event, but it cannot skip the algorithmic audit hardwired into its hiring platform.

President Trump’s executive order triggered the strategic retreat. The grievance lobby, however, wasn’t giving up without a fight. Its members demanded that companies and public institutions find other ways to keep DEI alive. By January 2026, when Zheng described the FAIR framework to Time magazine, the evolution was complete.

Trump’s March 2026 executive order requiring federal contractors to certify that they do not engage in discriminatory activities based on race or ethnicity suggests the Trump administration recognizes the evasion.

The order notes that “some entities continue to engage in DEI activities and often attempt to conceal their efforts.” But just prohibiting “disparate treatment based on race or ethnicity” can’t root out systems-based approaches that claim to focus on universal fairness while pursuing the same demographic outcomes through different methods.

RELATED: Trump’s antitrust policy is working for everyday Americans

Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images

DEI under any name serves the larger goal of institutionalizing learned helplessness. It teaches that your struggles result from discriminatory systems rather than personal choices, that flourishing depends more on institutional intervention than individual effort. Worst of all, it teaches dependence. And a lot of progressives are deeply invested in maintaining that dependence.

Eliminating DEI departments and scrubbing corporate websites of diversity language are satisfying, but not final a victory, not when the actual work of grievance culture continues under different names.

With the grievance machinery adopting ever more subtle disguises, the fight to defend merit requires more shrewdness and patience than ever before. We must ask direct questions.

When companies rebrand DEI programs as “universal fairness” initiatives, we must demand to see the metrics. When they tout “algorithmic bias audits,” ask what disparities trigger intervention — and what outcomes those interventions produce.

The left hid the machinery underground because the surface became too costly to defend. It is critically important to drag DEI back into the light and destroy it once and for all.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.

​Algorithmic bias mitigation, Diversity initiatives, Group identity politics, Grievance culture, Dei, Trump, Executive order, Opinion & analysis 

A very disturbing TikTok video has gone viral after a pregnant woman recorded herself playing ABBA songs to make her unborn son gay — while thousands of mothers cheered her on in the comments and across social media.

The video shows her blasting the lyrics “Gimme, gimme, gimme a man after midnight” next to her stomach.

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is shocked to read the comments, which include things like, “My son is 4 and exclusively listens to Sabrina Carpenter. Hopes are very high for him being gay.”

“My son just officially came out a few months ago,” reads another comment with a cheering emoji.

Another one reads, “My son was born to ‘Dancing Queen.’ I have high hopes for him.”

“This is disgusting that you are thinking about your child’s sexuality,” Stuckey says.

“It’s a horrible thing to wish on someone. It is. Now, I’m a Christian, and I believe that homosexuality is a sin, OK. But I also think that it’s bad for society to encourage this kind of thing,” she continues.

“We should be encouraging our boys to be strong and to be brave and to be protectors and to be fighters and to rein their masculine energy into good things. Yes, and you can call that old-fashioned, but it’s true,” she adds.

Stuckey likens these mothers’ hopes for gay sons to “conversion therapy” and calls it “very, very grotesque.”

“I talk about this concept of what I call ‘toxic mommy culture’ in my book, ‘You’re Not Enough (and That’s Okay)’ — when moms make their feelings and their validation and their social image the highest priority and they project that onto their kids and they use their children as props to perform this, like, progressivism on social media for likes, affirmation, cultural approval,” Stuckey says.

“I just find this little thing that this mother is doing gross. … Kids are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments,” she continues. “It’s not good.”

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.

​Abba songs, Allie beth stuckey, Allie beth stuckey podcast, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Christian, Conversion therapy, Dancing queen, Gay, Leftism, Masculine energy, Mothers, Pregnant woman, Progressive social experiments, Progressivism, Sabrina carpenter, Sin, The blaze, Tiktok video, Toxic mommy culture, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

Immigration policy is often argued in abstract terms — statistics, ideals, and political talking points — but its real effects are felt most sharply at the local level.

And while other countries have much stricter laws surrounding immigration, Americans like BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre are personally feeling the effects of our own lax ones.

“While the Dominican Republic is, you know, not really someplace I want to spend the rest of my life, it is a wildly, wildly better civilization, to the point where they have a wall, and they will just shoot any Haitians that get near it because they basically treat it as some kind of contamination that’s going to destroy their society,” MacIntyre explains.

“Haiti was literally founded on a satanic voodoo blood ritual. A blood sacrifice of white Europeans was the core beginning of this. … The idea that you’re just going to have the native population rise up and slaughter the oppressor and then rule itself, that played itself out in Haiti, and we can see the exact result,” he continues.

“And yet, we see people constantly trying to bring this culture into the United States. It’s absolutely crazy,” he adds.

MacIntyre notes that this has already affected his own community, where a woman in his area “was beaten to death with a hammer by a Haitian immigrant” in “one of the most horrific videos” he’s ever seen.

“So, this is no longer some kind of abstract understanding. … No, this is directly getting people murdered in my community. People in places I have been, I have driven by, are getting murdered because of what is going on here,” he says.

“And yet, we see the main concern is the safety not of American citizens who are beaten to death by hammers, but to the Haitians who are coming here themselves,” he continues, pointing out that the majority of these immigrants add no value to the country.

“If you look at the statistics, you can see that 65% of Haitian households are on welfare. They are dependent on welfare for their living. That means that the entire community is a net drain on the American social system,” he explains.

“You and I are paying to keep these people here and possibly murder our fellow Americans,” he says. “So everything about this from the economic argument to the moral argument is a complete lie.”

Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

To enjoy more of this YouTuber and recovering journalist’s commentary on culture and politics, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​American citizens, Auron macintyre, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Blazetv host, Blood ritual, Crazy, Dominican republic, Haiti, Haitian immigrants, Illegal immigration, Immigrant, Immigration policy, Satanic voodoo, Statistics, The blaze, United states, Welfare, The auron macintyre show 

I don’t get sick days, so the test results were posted to my chart while I was sitting in my office. I opened them before I ever saw the doctor.

I knew what I was looking at, but I checked it again. After researching what I already suspected, I sat there for a moment. The first thought came and went, then the one that remained: What about Gracie?

For 40 years, I have been my wife’s caregiver. After a catastrophic car wreck at age 17, doctors didn’t expect her to survive the night. No one imagined she would marry, have children, and live to see grandchildren.

Trusting Him does not remove the burden, but it defines how I can carry it.

But she did. What didn’t change was the crises.

When the surgery count approaches 100, a crisis is no longer an interruption. It becomes the environment. For 40 years, it has never plateaued.

The pressure doesn’t arrive once a month in tidy episodes. Sometimes it arrives daily. You live on alert, always vigilant, always calculating what could go wrong next. Choking. Seizures. Code blue. Falls. Wound care. Non-responsive. I’ve seen it all. This is the terrain we live in.

Our life runs on a system most people never see and few could imagine. Meals, medications, transfers, safety, transportation, finances, advocacy. I carry all of it. I speak when she can’t. I’m there when she needs something as simple as a glass of water.

It’s a highly specialized operation with no backup, no redundancy, and no margin for error. And like millions of caregivers across this country, I am the one running it.

Two days after I received my test results, sitting in the exam room, the doctor asked if I had any questions. I had the usual, plus two more: How much care will I need afterward? And how much care will I still be able to provide?

That’s how close this is.

RELATED: Life can be hard, but don’t forget to laugh

Liudmyla Musiichuk/Getty Images

So when cancer enters the picture, the question isn’t so much about survival as collapse. If I go down, what happens to her?

That’s not fear; it’s just math.

We spend a great deal of time arguing about who is fit to lead this country. But across this country, there are millions of people quietly carrying responsibilities that would break most of the people we argue about.

Those responsibilities don’t come with cameras or talking, and they have no margin for error. There is just the weight of responsibility.

And when something like cancer enters that equation, the question isn’t political, but structural. What actually holds up when the person holding everything together can’t?

This diagnosis was caught early. That gives me time to deal with it.

Caregivers are told to take care of themselves. I have said that for years, and I meant it. But this case is no longer maintenance. It requires intervention, recovery, and being pulled away from the work. And that interrupts and affects everything: Health. Emotions. Lifestyle. Profession. Money. Endurance. Nothing is left untouched.

Spell that out, and it says what so many caregivers struggle to say: Sometimes we need help.

I need the system to hold while I step away long enough to deal with this current issue, and that means accepting care that won’t be done the way I would do it. It means training others and paying for help. It means absorbing the reality that things will go wrong, as they inevitably do.

But this is where conviction steps in. My wife has a Savior, and I am not that Savior.

But still, breakfast has to be made and the laundry has to be done. Trusting Him does not remove the burden, but it defines how I can carry it.

RELATED: Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest challenge of all

Francescoch/Getty Images

The question I have asked for years now returns to me: Christian, what do you believe?

If I believe what I say I do, then what is required of me in this moment? We sing hymns about trusting God, and times like this are when that trust is tested.

Years ago, a reporter asked me, “What would Jesus do as a caregiver?”

I don’t know what He would do. I know what He did do. From the cross, He looked at His mother and entrusted her to John.

Over the years, I have trusted surgeons I barely knew to take my wife into a room and do what I could not. I have signed the papers, handed her over, and waited. Not because I understood everything they were doing, but because I trusted that they did.

I trust surgeons I barely know. How much more can I trust the Savior whom I do?

In His hands, what looks severe is not careless. It is precise and purposeful.

I don’t get to step out of this, but I am not standing in it alone. So I take the next step.

​Cancer, Caregiver, Christian, Emotions, Health, Recovery, Savior, Trusting god, Opinion & analysis 

If you still believe you “own” your car, you’re already behind the eight ball. What you actually own is a permission slip on four wheels. A machine that watches you, evaluates you, and decides, in real time, whether you’re allowed to drive it.

Not a police officer. Not a court. Not even common sense. But instead — an algorithm.

Every piece of technology fails at some point. When it does, you’re stuck explaining to a machine why you deserve to drive your own vehicle.

And if that sounds like something ripped out of a dystopian script, it’s because we’ve crossed the line where dystopia gets rebranded as public safety. And our elected officials have voted for it.

View to a kill

Automakers are already moving toward biometric identification, behavior-based safety systems, and deeper integration with external data sources.

The stated goal is reducing drunk driving. The real-world effect is broader: cars that monitor drivers and increasingly act on that data. The trigger for all of this sits inside the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Buried in Section 24220 is a mandate that forces the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require “advanced impaired-driving technology” in every new car sold in America. That phrase sounds harmless on purpose.

Because if lawmakers called it what it actually is — a federally required driver surveillance system with the power to disable your vehicle — there might have been a real debate. Instead, it slid through.

RELATED: New Minnesota bill could run classic car owners off the road

Education Images/Getty Images

Designated driver

Here’s what is coming. Cameras locked on your face. Sensors tracking your eyes. Software analyzing your behavior, your attention, even your emotional state. The system doesn’t just look for alcohol impairment; it looks for anything it interprets as risk.

Are you tired? Distracted? Stressed? That’s enough for the system to decide you aren’t fit to drive.

And once that threshold is crossed, your car can refuse to move. You can sit there with the keys, with the title, with the payment book in your glove box, and the answer is still no. You’re not going anywhere.

This is the shift nobody voted for in plain English. And it’s already happening.

Driver monitoring systems are in millions of vehicles globally. Europe mandates them. U.S. automakers are embedding them. This isn’t theoretical. It’s slowly being built into new cars, and from 2027, every new car will have it. No exceptions.

I spy

At the same time, automakers are pushing even further. Ford Motor Company has filed patents that read less like safety features and more like surveillance blueprints. We’re talking about biometric identification, behavioral tracking, even the potential to integrate with external databases.

Your vehicle isn’t just transportation anymore. It’s a data collection terminal with wheels. And once that data exists, it doesn’t stay private.

In-cabin monitoring systems are already being used in fleet vehicles. Live feeds. Driver tracking. Behavior analysis. And it’s being sold as valuable data to whoever wants to pay for it.

Now connect the dots. This government mandate meets corporate capability. That’s not an accident. That’s alignment.

And here’s where it gets even more convenient for everyone involved, except you.

DADSS joke

Congress is pouring money into this. About $45 million has already been allocated for research, with over $100 million backing the Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety program.

Government and car businesses are not paying to install it in your car. You, the taxpayer, are paying for it.

Automakers will comply, then pass every dollar of cost straight down the line to the buyer. More expensive vehicles. More complex systems. More opportunities for failure. And more profit margins built into something you never asked for.

That’s the quiet part. The loud part? It is about control.

Because once your car has the authority to decide whether you can drive, you’ve handed over something bigger than convenience. You’ve handed over autonomy. And don’t expect a political rescue. Most politicians have bailed on you.

When Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Scott Perry (R-Penn.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas) tried to push back, they exposed a vote showing dozens of Republicans and over 200 Democrats supporting measures tied to this mandate. They passed this into law.

Road to nowhere

That’s not division. That’s consensus. And consensus in Washington usually means one thing: The machine is moving forward, whether you like it or not. This is how permanent change happens. Not with headlines, but with technical language most people will never read. Until it shows up in their driveway.

We’ve seen the warning signs before. In 2017, WikiLeaks revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency had explored the ability to hack vehicle control systems remotely. At the time, people were outraged. Now we’re building systems that make that capability look tame and calling it progress.

Supporters will say this saves lives. And yes, impaired driving is a real issue. But we already have targeted solutions like ignition interlocks for convicted offenders. Which, by the way, there are already over 30 devices that stop drunk driving.

This is universal monitoring.

This is your car assuming you’re guilty before you’ve done anything at all.

Fail safe?

And here’s the question nobody in Washington wants to answer honestly: What happens when the system gets it wrong? Because it will.

False positives. Glitches. Misreads. Software errors. Even placing drivers in dangerous situations. Every piece of technology fails at some point. When it does, you’re stuck explaining to a machine why you deserve to drive your own vehicle.

Good luck with that.

And once the door is open, it doesn’t close.

If your car can stop you for “impairment,” what’s next?

Speed enforcement built into the vehicle?

Geofencing where your car simply won’t go?

Insurance companies tapping into your driving data in real time?

Law enforcement accessing in-cabin feeds?

None of that requires a leap. It’s the next logical step.

And the groundwork is already being laid and can change with no notice.

No way out

Meanwhile, your escape routes are disappearing. Older vehicles are being pushed off the road through regulation, parts shortages, and policy pressure. The market is being engineered so that opting out becomes less realistic every year.

You won’t be forced into this overnight.

You’ll just wake up one day and realize every new car on the lot plays by the same rules. That’s how control scales. Slow, steady, and almost invisible until it’s too late.

To be precise, Section 24220 doesn’t flip a literal kill switch today. But it creates the legal and technological pathway for systems that can absolutely prevent your vehicle from operating based on algorithmic decisions. And this is the law, not just an idea. And it will be in all new vehicles.

Call it whatever makes it easier to swallow.

If your car decides you’re not driving, the outcome is the same.

This isn’t about left or right. It’s about power — who has it, who’s gaining more of it, and who’s quietly losing it.

Right now, drivers are on the losing end. And that is not about to change.

And once this system is fully embedded, reversing it won’t be simple, cheap, or quick. It will be treated as essential infrastructure, too big to remove, too normalized to question.

That’s the real endgame.

Not safety.

Not innovation.

Control, baked into the very machines Americans rely on every single day.

And as of today, only a few officials are fighting on our side.

Who gets to decide when you’re allowed to drive? Because if the answer isn’t you, then you don’t own your car. You never did.

​Automakers, Biometric identification, Driver monitoring systems, Government control, Modern vehicle technology, National highway traffic, Ownership, Software authority, Align cars