Poping ain’t easy. After the turbulence of the Benedict and Francis papacies, during which the Vatican largely wrestled with internal challenges, the unique and contested authority of the bishop of Rome finds all of Christianity at an uncanny crossroads.

Just since Leo’s ascension, AI has developed to a point that — for many millions of people worldwide — intuitively underscores the failure of modernity’s greatest power structures to justify humanity’s continued existence and our continued individual existence as human beings. Science, economics, ideology, art, philosophy, ethics — none of these grand pillars of modern life can any longer give a defense of humanity adequate to bring silence and stillness, or even a “strategic pause,” to the juggernaut.

Already, of course, there are instant criticisms.

Desperate for something to cling to in the storm, many find themselves thirsting for exactly what modernity seemed to tell them to abandon: a guiding spiritual authority over their personal and social lives, one they are sure they can trust as a matter of life and death. With so many of the cults and sects born in the modern age fizzling out or mid-collapse, the obvious place to turn is the nemesis of the self-determining modern person: so-called “organized religion,” which for most in the West, especially America, still means the Christian church.

The depth of cognitive discomfort and embarrassment required of so many to return to the one place they had been convinced most to walk away from is so intense that the pressure on would-be spiritual authorities is reaching historic proportions. How to speak in a way neither too harsh nor too gentle? How to communicate effectively in an era of communication overload and parasocial relationships at scale? How to take needful risks of rhetoric and persuasion without provoking a devastating backlash, without being totally misunderstood, without becoming just another huckster cleverly hooking people with yet another sensationalistic, over-optimistic or over-pessimistic scenario?

Pope Leo, among many others of lesser public exposure, confronts all these questions and more. And in one document (so far), “Magnifica Humanitas,” he is expected to somehow answer them all or at least point the way to an answer as grand and comprehensive as the cyber ultimatum — justify yourself or say goodbye — being thrown down at the trembling feet of the human race.

Great expectations

This is obviously way too much weight to be piled atop one letter from one person — even this 50-page letter (an encyclical, addressed to the bishops of the Church in communion with Rome) and this person, the first American pope and the first with a degree in mathematics. It could have been guessed that Leo himself is cognizant of the good and not-so-good reasons for these towering expectations, and in this respect his much-hyped encyclical does not disappoint. It is a masterful exercise in managing constraints to preserve freedom of movement for a few carefully chosen steps. Leo had to show that his approach to the question of technology flowed with not only his predecessors but the Church as a whole, reaching back to its ancient origins. He had to speak in terms Christians generically could at least understand and find in the text some basis for sympathy and respect. He had to affirm his office’s claim to spiritual authority, and the Catholic Church’s and its tradition, without much further alienating any significant audiences, but while paying special homage to the constituencies he believes are key to mounting a successful bid for spiritual authority of any kind over AI-age technology. And he had to extend an olive branch of sorts to at least some of the most powerful of the AI technologists — a treacherously political task, given the increasingly naked opposition he faces from the Thiel/Palantir wing of tech and the increasingly naked worshipfulness toward AIs shown by tech’s effective altruist wing.

All this he managed to do, focusing his remarks on the core Christian understanding that humanity is alone the image of God on Earth, made capable by Christ of attaining to the very heights of sacredness intended for us by the Father. This purpose, this being, however deeply marred by the Fall, preserves for us individually and together a magnificent grandeur that nothing made by our own mortal hands can possibly surpass. Only by using our tools to degrade ourselves to radical new lows can those tools establish over us an overawing mastery that appears in our disfigured and diminished state to be godlike — to be, in fact, the real deity, the only deity.

RELATED: AI ‘doomers’ suffer from their own weird god delusion

ArtMarie/Getty Images

To avoid this fate worse than death, Leo brings the reader to the Catholic social teaching tradition. In sum, that teaching describes our inalienable sacredness in terms of a universal and particular human dignity that must be protected and cultivated among all, even and especially the most wretched, through the affirmative protection of full access to life’s ancient fundaments (work, rest, shelter, movement, family, etc.) and newer social staples (intellectual property, software, hardware, etc.). Rather than a set of principles, Leo shows the teaching as an embodied and active social practice, one that harbors and manifests the human grandeur bestowed by God as a common good that we, and the Church, are duty-bound to sow into.

Lovers and haters

Already, of course, there are instant criticisms. The feed has begun to fill up with many clever and incisive critical commentaries of “Magnifica Humanitas.” It is asserted that Leo’s cozying up to Anthropic is both cynical and naive. It is claimed that the pope spends so much time on social organization that he fails to dig into the fundamental questions about how a person is supposed to locate his own personal significance or identity apart from the community or the cyber collective. Some accuse Leo of simping for the political left by defending illegal “migration.” Others take issue with his insistence on a clear phenomenological and ontological distinction between the capabilities of humans and the capabilities of AIs. The list goes on and on.

Above and beyond all these objections, however, it would simply be absurd to think that any pope, making a respectable go at fulfilling even only his “first among equals” role ascribed before the schism to the bishop of Rome, would not issue a theological and anthropological “effort post” on the present technological situation that looks more or less like “Magnifica Humanitas.” While Leo’s repeated emphasis on the conciliar and synodal character of the Church could uncharitably be seen as mere theological window dressing for socialist-style social justice, Orthodox and high-church Protestant Christians, to take a few examples, could see at a higher level a papal recommitment to an embodied experience and understanding of spiritual authority that is both well grounded and well distributed, not concentrated at a single earthly point from which every drop of trustworthy guiding must radiate down.

Yet it is true that Leo chose his emphases for reasons not all Christians or Americans would prefer to privilege most, and in the spirit of developing some of the more useful themes left outside the encyclical, I would venture — as someone who covered all these issues over five years ago, complete with passages heavily citing the same Romano Guardini quoted in “Magnifica Humanitas,” in my book “Human Forever” — a few additional reflections.

Frontier observations

Firstly, Leo makes much use of a contrast between two forms of building — that of the Tower of Babel, which seeks to consummate human pride by tooling a total, united identity, and that of the walls of Jerusalem, which were patiently reassembled under the repentant leadership of Nehemiah. Some people, especially exceptional ones, will always seek to build for the whole of humanity by building at scale for a whole-of-humanity use case, and indeed this is not the only or the crucial modality. At the same time, the metaphor of rebuilding Jerusalem suggests a unity of the city of God and the city of man that many will experience as unattainable even on a more patient timeline. Historically, Christians in this position have ventured to society’s frontiers, “empty” spaces where the barest habitations can be prepared to protect and nourish the cleansing of the personal heart and the prayer for the salvation of the human race. And, historically, these habitations, which grew into monasteries, not infrequently became the seeds of villages and townships — the city of God the germ of the city of man. Ours is a moment perfect for the building of monasteries, into which many who feel incapable of living in the world will flow if they are not enclosed in a system of “assisted suicide” at scale.

Secondly, work, value, and society — these relational things at the center of Leo’s presentation of human worth — take on still higher stakes when energy, memory, and money increasingly converge, as they are now clearly doing. Obviously a tool that asserts a monopoly on the choice of tools — where “everything’s computer,” as Trump says, and AI is “the only thing we have,” as Thiel says — is not neutral. More interestingly, however, what choice of tools do we have to cultivate and sustain a socioeconomic life richly rooted in the full complement of salutary architectures? Today, any worthwhile answer to this question has to begin with Bitcoin — where the unity of energy, memory, and money is manifested in a tool that isn’t AI and that just about anyone can start using right now to enable friends, family, parishioners, and even monks to build and strengthen one another without relying on top-down, centralized control. Indeed, if Bitcoin is not used in this way, it is easy to see how it will be seized upon to undergird even stronger and more sweeping forms of top-down control.

Thirdly, Leo recognizes the limitations of any papal encyclical to address these matters. How to know who to trust in seeking and receiving authoritative spiritual wisdom is a matter increasingly hard to settle from a primarily or mainly intellectual approach, such as considering the persuasiveness of a person’s presentational management of concepts, terms, and ideas. So does the risk of hinging humanity’s prospects on intellectual persuasiveness become acute, driving the seeking and the receiving deeper into the direct experience over time of face-to-face relationships with persons not legible from the increasingly disembodied “aerospace” of the field of intellectual presentation. Subsidiarity as a “principle” precipitates ultimately into relational and personal practices — beginning with their grounding not just on bottom-up practices of fraternity, but, even more fundamentally, on the rock of one’s own personal and interior humbled attention toward the moment-to-moment effort at cleaning out the chamber of the heart enough to receive the Holy Spirit.

Finally, while harmony between us and our own tools is not a pipe dream, it is a difficult matter of balance and degree tested by the deepest honesty about what rationales lurk in the hidden recesses of our hearts. Free will must involve trade-offs, often stark while rarely utterly absolute. The gradations thereof pertain increasingly to accepting that all choices in favor of merely human means at the expense of divine means make debits of treasure that can and do compound. The joyful sadness of accepting the prospect of divine forgiveness for the infirmity involved — and the dedication of the will to keeping this weakness in mind, even as our more merely human means are used even or especially unto the human good — is increasingly essential to maintaining a relatively more harmoniously balanced relationship between human-made and divine-made (or begotten) means.

​Tech, Pope leo xiv, Artificial intelligence 

Arizona police raced to the home of a woman after she threatened to harm two children she had with her husband, only to find a gruesome scene.

Andrea Clarice Davis, 38, sent her husband a photograph of their child bleeding before she killed the two children and then killed herself, police said.

‘She was a good mom, so please don’t just, whatever happens, don’t portray her to be some — she did what she did, but she wasn’t a horrible person. She wasn’t.’

Glendale Police spokesperson Jose Santiago said the woman’s 39-year-old husband called police on Monday from Tailgaters Sports Bar & Grill just after midnight to report the shooting.

He said Davis had found him with another woman and fired a gun at both of them just outside the bar. The 36-year-old woman was shot in the back of the head as she tried to flee.

The husband told police that Davis had threatened to harm their two children, and police responded to their home near 49th Avenue and Paradise Lane, only 2 miles away from the bar in Phoenix.

He then received a photo from his wife showing one of the children bleeding and notified police.

Glendale and Phoenix officers arrived at the home about 2:30 a.m. and forced their way into the home because of the alarming texts Davis had sent to her husband.

When they gained entry, they found the bodies of the two children, 18-month-old Andolan and 10-year-old Austin, shot dead, and Davis dead after shooting herself.

Felicia Queen, a cousin of the father, told KTVK-TV that she was shocked by the incident.

“They were little, you know. They didn’t deserve it. They still had a whole life ahead of them. And it’s not fair. I can’t even imagine what my cousin’s going through right now,” Queen said.

Davis’ best friend told KTVK that she had lost her mind after finding out her husband had been having an inappropriate relationship with a co-worker.

RELATED: Woman confesses to heinous crime on social media and mocks victim: ‘I bet he ain’t laughing now’

The woman shot at the bar was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. The husband was not harmed in the shooting.

Santiago would not confirm whether Davis’ husband was in a relationship with the other woman. Both police departments said they had no prior interactions with the family.

“He is a very good dad,” Queen added. “And she was a good mom, so please don’t just, whatever happens, don’t portray her to be some — she did what she did, but she wasn’t a horrible person. She wasn’t.”

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​Alarming texts, Inappropriate relationship, Mom kills kids, Murder suicide, Crime 

Eleven months ago in these pages, I argued that task forces would not cut it. President Trump needed a truth and reconciliation commission.

I noted at the time that the Biden administration oversaw one of the most sweeping campaigns of federal abuse in modern American history. Nearly every major department played a role. A truth and reconciliation commission on political persecution would give Americans what they had long been denied: justice, reconciliation, and a full accounting of the truth.

Trump has created an opportunity to help real victims in a real way. Republicans should not kill it. They should make it work.

In November, Senate Republicans tried the opposite. Rather than compensate everyday victims of federal weaponization, they tried to pay themselves.

The scheme emerged from the Arctic Frost scandal. Senators quietly inserted legislative text into a funding bill to end the government shutdown. The provision would have created a $500,000 cause of action for individual senators for each instance in which investigators seized their data. Some senators could have become millionaires many times over.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) drove the effort and repeatedly went on television to defend it.

I argued then that the surveillance of senators was wrong. It should never have happened. But senators did not face what ordinary Americans endured.

Senators have large campaign accounts to hire top lawyers. They operate from official offices, protected by constitutional safeguards such as the Speech and Debate Clause. They did not lose their homes, jobs, savings, or businesses. But thousands of Americans did. Many still face legal bills, ruined livelihoods, and ongoing cases. They deserve restitution — not the politicians who failed them.

The Oversight Project, my organization, joined the fight. We called out Graham and made the legal, prudential, and political case for compensating the real victims of weaponization. The Senate’s self-dealing provision was eventually pulled, much to Graham’s chagrin.

But the victims remained ignored.

Trump created a better path

That began to change last week. President Trump stepped up in his own unique and unmistakable way.

In January, Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service over a political leak of his tax returns. Those returns, after years of left-wing fixation, revealed nothing especially interesting. Trump sought $10 billion in damages. He recently settled for a far lower amount: $1.776 billion.

RELATED: The anti-weaponization fund is not just for J6. It is for the rest of us too.

JDawnInk/Getty Images

But rather than pocket the money himself, Trump directed it toward the creation of an Anti-Weaponization Fund. The fund would be governed by five members empowered to issue monetary settlements to victims of government weaponization.

That act deserves applause. It also deserves protection.

Trump is redirecting money that could have gone to him toward Americans harmed by the government. Conservatives should encourage that kind of selflessness, especially from a president who suffered more than anyone from the weaponization he now seeks to address.

The fund must work

I instantly recognized the historic opportunity the fund presents. I have spent years defending victims of weaponization, investigating government abuse, and advocating restitution. The fund needs to work, and it needs to work well.

For that reason, I threw my hat in the ring to serve as one of its five members. But this column is not about my campaign for that position. It is about the Anti-Weaponization Fund and the bad-faith attacks now aimed at destroying it.

January 6, 2021, became the fulcrum for the left’s assault on civil rights, legal norms, and basic rule-of-law principles. Prosecutors, courts, media outlets, members of Congress, and left-wing activists turned their power against ideological, political, and religious enemies.

In their minds, January 6 gave them moral and political permission to go all the way. They used it to hurt thousands of Americans, including people who had nothing to do with the Capitol riot. Once they saw what their unleashed machinery could do, they lost all shame and restraint.

These victims were my friends, colleagues, and fellow patriots. Some had to sell their homes. Some lost jobs. Some saw their reputations destroyed. Many incurred crushing legal bills.

The so-called conservative legal movement and legacy conservative institutions were largely absent. Too many viewed the targets as a lower-class problem — or worse, as an opportunity to purge the Republican Party of the deplorable MAGA voters they detested.

Republicans funded the machine

The FBI sent agents to question parents at school board meetings. The government pressured social media companies to censor lawful speech on a massive scale. Senators had their phone records secretly subpoenaed. Churchgoers were surveilled. Americans who did nothing more than hold the wrong political opinion found themselves under the microscope of a weaponized federal government.

Republicans in power did worse than nothing. They confirmed Merrick Garland, an obvious case of a scorned partisan with revenge on his mind, as attorney general. As weaponization accelerated, Republicans funded it without restraint.

They also poured billions into the Department of Homeland Security, helping finance a vast network of left-wing nonprofits that moved illegal immigrants into and around the country while providing them with every service imaginable. USAID and other federal agencies served as Democratic patronage networks, funneling money to left-wing projects and make-work jobs.

House Republicans even launched a so-called Weaponization Committee. It barely scratched the surface of its $20 million budget and achieved little.

What did Republican leaders do well? Fundraise and appear on cable television to denounce the very abuses they kept funding.

RELATED: If Congress can’t oversee the FBI, who can?

Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Now they want to kill restitution

Then, despite the private and public misgivings of much of the establishment, Trump won the presidency again. Much of his campaign rested on addressing the harms inflicted not only on him but on all the Americans targeted by the same regime. On his Agenda 47 promise list, he vowed to “end the weaponization of government against the American people.”

The politicians fell in line. They did not contest the promise then.

Now some Republicans have joined Democrats in threatening to destroy the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Some have even floated refusing to fund central elements of Trump’s presidency, including Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, if that is what it takes to stop the fund.

They are willing to reopen the border rather than let Trump compensate victims of federal abuse. That crosses a line no Republican should approach.

When the government harms people, the government should do what it can to make them whole. Critics may object to the form of the fund. I object to four years of destruction visited upon my friends and allies.

Trump has created an opportunity to help real victims in a real way.

Republicans should not kill it. They should make it work.

​Gop, Republicans, Lindsey graham, Irs, January 6, Fbi, Anti-weaponization fund, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

Hasan Piker has built a lucrative career denouncing the United States from inside the United States. That arrangement has always carried a certain comic hypocrisy. But his reported subpoena over a March trip to Cuba raises a question far more serious than one streamer’s revolutionary cosplay.

When does anti-American activism become aid to America’s enemies?

The academy may discover that Americans have grown tired of funding institutions that teach students to despise the nation that sustains them.

The latest controversy surrounding Piker is not merely another internet spectacle. It touches an old constitutional question: What limits apply when political activism moves from criticism of American policy into support for regimes hostile to the United States?

Investigators with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control have reportedly subpoenaed Piker and CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin over their March trip to Cuba as part of the “Nuestra América Convoy.” The investigation concerns possible violations of U.S. sanctions law, including the financing, coordination, and delivery of goods to the Cuban regime.

The details remain incomplete, and a subpoena obviously is not a conviction. But the story matters because it exposes a broader issue universities, politicians, and media elites have avoided for years.

What counts as “aiding America’s enemies”?

Coordination is key

According to reports, investigators seek financial, logistical, and communications records related to the trip. The inquiry reportedly centers on whether activists coordinated with Cuban government entities or violated sanctions restrictions administered through OFAC.

Piker has framed the investigation as an attempt to silence criticism of the United States and Israel. He has defended the convoy as humanitarian relief. He has also praised communist Cuba while enjoying the freedoms and opportunities of the United States. He did not, apparently, spend much time asking Cuban-Americans why they fled the island.

Cuba is not merely a tropical backdrop for revolutionary aesthetics. It remains a communist dictatorship and a longstanding U.S. adversary. American sanctions against Cuba arose from decades of geopolitical conflict, expropriation of American property, intelligence operations, and alliance with hostile foreign powers.

That is why the law treats this area seriously.

In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the Supreme Court upheld restrictions on providing “material support” to designated foreign terrorist organizations, even when that support took the form of training or coordinated advocacy. The court reasoned that seemingly benign support can legitimize hostile organizations and free resources for more dangerous activities.

The key legal principle is coordination.

RELATED: Woke ‘Squad’ member appears to confess to undermining Trump embargo on Cuba

Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

Independent speech criticizing America remains constitutionally protected. Americans may denounce foreign policy, oppose wars, criticize sanctions, or defend unpopular causes. But direct coordination with hostile foreign entities belongs in a different category. Logistical support, fundraising, organized assistance, and coordinated propaganda can cross the line from protected dissent into unlawful support.

That distinction is vital. It also leads to a question much larger than Hasan Piker.

From scholarship to treason

For years, professors at publicly funded universities have argued that violence against the United States is morally justified because of colonialism, slavery, capitalism, or American support for Israel. Some have praised political violence abroad as “resistance.” Others have defended Hamas rhetoric as “decolonial struggle.” Still others have trained students to view America itself as an illegitimate regime founded on oppression.

At what point does this cease to be scholarship and become ideological assistance to America’s enemies?

The modern university loves to invoke “academic freedom” as though the phrase ends all debate. But academic freedom was never meant to shield every form of political agitation from public scrutiny. Nor does it require taxpayers to subsidize institutions that teach students to despise the constitutional order that protects them.

A professor at a public university holds a privileged position funded by taxpayers and entrusted with forming the minds of future citizens. That status does not erase his constitutional rights. But it does heighten the public’s interest in what universities reward, protect, and promote.

Can a tax-funded professor argue that Americans deserve violent retaliation? Can he encourage students to view foreign terrorist organizations as morally justified revolutionaries? Can he defend armed resistance against the United States as a legitimate response to “settler colonialism”?

Universities have spent decades pretending these questions do not exist. Many of the same institutions that warn endlessly about white supremacy tolerate faculty rhetoric that justifies violence against Americans, Israelis, and other supposed oppressors in the name of liberation.

They have built entire departments on ideological hostility to the American constitutional order. Students learn that the United States is fundamentally illegitimate, that Western Civilization is inherently oppressive, and that power — not truth or justice — determines morality. Under those assumptions, violence becomes easy to rationalize as liberation.

Campus activism has repeatedly celebrated anti-American movements abroad while denouncing America itself as uniquely evil. Faculty members increasingly blur the line between analysis and activism, between scholarship and revolutionary agitation, all from tax-funded offices under institutional protection.

RELATED: Democrats don’t have a fix for their extremism problem

Noushad Thekkayil/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The contradiction is striking. Universities often police ordinary constitutional patriotism while tolerating rhetoric sympathetic to regimes hostile to the United States. Professors may face investigation for questioning DEI orthodoxy or praising MAGA politics, while admiration for Marxist revolutionary movements often receives the protection of “academic freedom.”

The Hasan Piker subpoena exposes this double standard.

An overdue reckoning?

The issue is not whether Americans may criticize their government. Of course they may. The First Amendment protects dissent because free societies tolerate disagreement.

But the First Amendment does not require public institutions to pretend that all forms of anti-American agitation carry the same civic meaning. A democracy may distinguish between criticism of its policies and organized sympathy for hostile regimes. It may distinguish between unpopular speech and material coordination. It may distinguish between scholarship and indoctrination.

Universities should have drawn those lines long ago.

If professors encourage students to sympathize with anti-American violence, defend revolutionary movements hostile to the United States, or justify armed resistance against the constitutional order, taxpayers may reasonably ask whether public universities are subsidizing ideological warfare against the nation itself.

For years, universities dismissed these concerns as paranoia.

Now federal subpoenas may force the country to revisit them in public.

And the academy may discover that Americans have grown tired of funding institutions that teach students to despise the nation that sustains them.

​Hasan piker, First amendment, Cuba, Hamas, American universities, Western civilization, Academic freedom, Opinion & analysis 

Amazon Prime Video’s series “The Boys” has long depicted its primary villain, Homelander, as a mockery of President Donald Trump, before killing him off in the series finale.

The show’s creator, Eric Kripke, specifically wanted to use Homelander’s death as a way of demonstrating how “strong men” are actually reduced to helpless cowards when “stripped of their power.”

And in his death scene, Homelander groveled and cried, making some disgusting offers in exchange for mercy.

“My understanding of this Homelander character is that he is actually … a very insecure, sort of neurotic guy who would not naturally find himself in a position of power. So, perhaps that ending is not exactly unexpected,” BlazeTV host John Doyle comments.

“But the point is, the reason that ending came about wasn’t so much because of the natural progression of the character so much as it was, again, the writer literally saying, ‘It’s very important for us to remind the audience that strong men are actually cowards and their power over you is freaking illegitimate,’” he says.

“They write the whole show to be nothing more than just this very thinly veiled contempt for patriots and normal Americans. It’s murder porn. It’s bloodlust porn. And that’s why, ultimately, it’s a portrayal of how they think we all just deserve to die,” he adds, calling the writer of the show a “completely deranged libtard” who’s “making propaganda.”

However, the propaganda backfired.

“And for the entire time, people were using that murder porn that the show was creating and using it to go against everything that the writer stood for and his terminal TDS,” Doyle comments.

While Homelander was considered evil by the left, the right has picked up patriotic memes of the superhero and begun sharing them across social media to describe themselves.

“Every time they try to create a piece of art or media that is depicting right-wing people in a negative light, even if it’s a caricature of how they perceive us to be, everybody always loves them,” Doyle says, using Rorschach from “Watchmen” as another example.

“Roschach is everybody’s favorite character,” he says.

“It brings me sort of immense joy to use your own work against you with a tiny, tiny fraction of the effort it took you to make it,” he continues.

“I am taking your livelihood and using it in a way that is against your will and without your consent,” he adds.

Want more from John Doyle?

To enjoy more of the truth about America and join the fight to restore a country that has been betrayed by its own leaders, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Amazon prime, Donald trump, Eric kripke, Homelander, John doyle, Rorschach, The blaze, The boys, The john doyle show, Watchmen 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s challenge to incumbent Sen. John Cornyn went unresolved in the heated Republican primary race on March 3, as neither candidate proved able to secure 50% of the total vote.

Though Cornyn confidently warned Paxton that “Judgment day is coming,” Paxton ultimately proved victorious in Tuesday’s runoff election, handily beating the four-term senator by double digits.

AP News and NBC News called the race for Paxton around 9 p.m. ET, at which time 49.1% of the vote was in and Paxton was leading Cornyn 62.5% to 37.5%.

‘Our Country needs Fighters.’

Cornyn’s campaign blew over $24 million on advertising, including the attack ads that unsuccessfully tried to turn Republican voters off Paxton, reported the Texas Tribune.

Tens of millions of dollars more were blown by various pro-Cornyn groups, including the super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority, which squandered $32.9 million on total advertising. The group even dropped $9.5 million in runoff-only ad-spending to help the senator.

The Lone Star State’s AG, whose campaign spent only $4.8 million on advertising, stated in a runoff Election Day interview that “John Cornyn has never done anything significantly good for the state of Texas in 42 years.”

In his final argument against maintaining the status quo, Paxton faulted his opponent for “siding with Joe Biden on restricting Second Amendment rights, siding with Joe Biden on bringing Afghan refugees here without vetting them, going against Donald Trump on the border, going against Donald Trump’s re-election, going against Donald Trump’s first election, fighting for amnesty, open borders — that’s John Cornyn.”

RELATED: GOP congressman sort of reappears after going AWOL for months, missing over 100 votes

Richard Rodriguez/Getty Images

Toward the end of the race, Cornyn’s team framed the senator — who received donations from elements of the GOP old guard including former President George W. Bush and Rupert Murdoch — as a steady and proven conservative and Paxton as “morally bankrupt” and a “mortal threat to the America First agenda.”

President Donald Trump evidently did not share Cornyn’s vision for the future or his concerns about Paxton.

The president endorsed Paxton last week, touting him as “a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas, and will continue to do so in the United States Senate.”

While signaling goodwill to Cornyn by referring to him as a “good man,” Trump emphasized that Paxton is a fighter and that “Our Country needs Fighters, and also Loyalty to the Cause of Greatness.”

Trump wasted no time celebrating Paxton’s win on Tuesday, posting to social media an image of himself and the victor along with a reminder of his endorsement.

Paxton will now face Democrat state Rep. James Talarico — a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has attempted to use Scripture to justify abortion, protested the public display of the Ten Commandments, concern-mongers about traditional Christian views, voted against sparing kids from sex-rejection mutilations, and claimed there are six sexes.

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​Donald trump, George w bush, James talarico, John cornyn, Ken paxton, Open borders, Runoff election, Rupert murdoch, Second amendment rights, Texas attorney general, Politics 

Video of a gay eighth-grade student’s expletive-filled graduation speech from Kentucky went viral after his uncle posted it online.

Daniel Mattingly called Stuart Academy in Louisville “f**king ridiculous” in the crude apex of the series of woke insults he tossed at school officials on Thursday.

‘This school is built on racism, sexism, and homophobia. I encourage everyone here today to stand up for yourself, even if it makes a scene.’

Mattingly claimed that officials turned down versions of his speech that were inappropriate for the event before launching into the insults.

“The theme that I was given for the speech was acceptance,” the eighth grader explained to WAVE-TV. “A majority of it was just explaining that I see that people are going through trauma and going through oppression today.”

He went on to claim that teachers at the school told him his speech wasn’t positive enough and was too controversial. On the day of the speech, he defied them and accused them of being homophobic and racist.

“Apparently this school doesn’t know better than to give an angry gay kid a microphone,” he said during the speech.

“No shade at all, but I came to this graduation planning to give a speech about my trauma influencing me as a person, and black, brown, and mixed youth are facing oppression nowadays and being forced to fear their own identities,” he added.

He went on to say that all of the school’s students are “oppressed” youth.

“This school is built on racism, sexism, and homophobia. I encourage everyone here today to stand up for yourself, even if it makes a scene,” he added. “This school is f**king ridiculous!”

He got a lot of applause from the students, and the woke speech got even more recognition after his uncle posted video online.

“All these teachers told me to speak from my heart for this speech, and I realized I shouldn’t chicken out, because I need to speak from my heart and tell these people what they need to be told,” Mattingly told WAVE.

RELATED: Parents protest after student who posted ‘up-skirt’ photos of female schoolmates is allowed to return to class

The student told WAVE he didn’t want to make the school look bad when he claimed that it was “built” on “racism, sexism, and homophobia.”

Video of his unedited speech was posted to social media.

Jefferson County Public Schools did not issue a statement about the school in their district.

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​Graduation speech, Public schools, Kentucky, Viral video, Politics 

A former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee announced a campaign running for Florida’s 20th Congressional District and was immediately accused of “dismantling” black “power.”

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) was redistricted out of her previous seat and opted to run in the 20th district, which is composed of about 50% black residents.

‘DWS is everything that’s wrong with the Democratic establishment.’

In a statement released Tuesday, nearly all the DNC members from Florida condemned the decision by Schultz.

“Our party cannot credibly denounce the dismantling of black political power by Republicans while treating one of Florida’s few remaining majority-black districts as a political opportunity for an incumbent seeking a safer seat,” the statement reads.

Schultz, who has been in Congress for more than two decades, would likely win an easy contest in the general election in the left-leaning district. However, other Democrats accused Schultz of using her power to make her campaign easier.

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz is carpetbagging to FL-20, a black opportunity district instead of running in her own,” said Elijah Manley, another Democratic candidate running for Florida’s 20th district.

“DWS is everything that’s wrong with the Democratic establishment. … I look forward to retiring her from public office permanently.”

Others like former 2 Live Crew rapper and black activist Luther Campbell, who is also running for the seat as a Democrat, warned Democrats that the black community is taking notice.

“To the Florida DNC members who stayed silent — we see you too. We’re taking receipts,” Campbell wrote on social media. “Congressional District 20 is not a political opportunity seat. Black representation matters. Lived experience matters. Make sure you’re on the right side of history.”

“This decision reinforces the same message Republicans have pushed for years: that black representation does not matter,” the Florida Democrats continued in their letter. “It does matter. Representation matters. Lived experience matters.”

RELATED: USC accused of racism after minority candidates don’t qualify for gubernatorial debate — so USC makes drastic decision

Schultz ran the Democratic Party from May 2011 until July 2016, just a few months before President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton. The late Harry Reid, a top Democratic leader, blamed Schultz for the devastating loss.

“We need a full time DNC chair and what they should do — they can take my model if they want — it’s not rocket science,” Reid said at the time. “It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to figure out what needs to be done.”

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The Democratic National Committee got absolutely lambasted for trying to politicize the death of U.S. military members on Memorial Day in order to attack President Donald Trump.

The post included photographs of 13 Americans who died during the U.S.-Israeli joint military strikes on Iran in recent weeks.

‘It’s wrong to politicize this day. I won’t hesitate to call out my own team when we fall short.’

“Today, we honor the American heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in Trump’s war with Iran,” the post read.

The DNC was immediately criticized, even by Democrats.

“It is incredibly distasteful to use our heroic dead for a political attack on Memorial Day. I’m a Democrat and I condemn this post by the DNC,” responded Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois.

“If we want the moral high ground, we have to be better,” replied Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.). “I fought for our country and served with those who made the ultimate sacrifice. It’s wrong to politicize this day. I won’t hesitate to call out my own team when we fall short.”

Others pounced on the disrespectful post.

“Just when you think the left can’t go any lower … Absolutely disgusting but not surprising,” replied Republican Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida.

“Yes, we honor these heroes for defending America and our allies with their lives. What we won’t do is dishonor their sacrifice by turning Memorial Day into a cheap political attack. Their memory deserves better,” wrote Sen. Tim Sheehy (R) of Montana.

“Using Memorial Day to politically exploit fallen service members is appalling and disgraceful. One of the most disgusting posts I have ever seen,” said Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters.

RELATED: The Iran war is causing another shortage — and it will directly affect every American

The DNC eventually deleted the post, but screenshots of the offensive message were widely circulated.

Trump has been seeking a peace deal to end the strikes on Iran, but the surviving members of the regime have made demands that the president has called “unacceptable” and “garbage.”

The war continues to be unpopular among Americans as the economic fallout has led to higher gas prices and increased inflationary pressure.

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