A library board member in the reddest part of one of the reddest states in the union recently learned what “progress through cooperation” really means: Sit down, shut up, and stop objecting to porn for kids.

Teri Hubbard, a Sioux Center, Iowa, library board member, was the only vote to remove the book “Icebreaker” — which contains a six-page, graphic sex scene — from the shelves. Her reward? A gentle nudge from City Manager Scott Wynja suggesting she resign.

If these people can’t be trusted to protect children from graphic sex scenes, they can’t be trusted with anything else.

“As our motto with the city states, ‘progress through cooperation,’ I would ask that you work in a spirit of cooperation for the best interest of all,” Wynja wrote, after the board voted 8-1 to keep the book available to everyone, including minors. “If you feel you are unable to serve in that capacity … we can consider going another direction.”

So let’s take a moment to appreciate what “progress,” “cooperation,” and “best interest of all” apparently sound like in Sioux Center. They sound like a passage that opens with: “Don’t be gentle. F**k me like you hate me.”

Wholesome stuff, truly. Norman Rockwell could never.

In fact, I’m shocked Wynja doesn’t put that line on a welcome sign, right under “Population: Proudly Confused.” And why not? I’m sure the eight board members — Tara Berkenpas, Angeles Bahena, Andrew Geleynse, Logan Kaskie, Brian Van Der Vliet, Lynn Van Beek, Lisa Dykstra, and Ruth Clark — would approve. They voted to keep the book, so the public deserves to know their names.

Clark even made the motion to retain it. And here’s the plot twist: She’s a Christian schoolteacher! Apparently, the gospel is no match for the mystical powers of library director Becky Bilby, who seems to think the First Amendment collapses into dust if 13-year-olds don’t get unlimited access to graphic sex scenes.

When Hubbard asked whether the concerned parents could attend the library board meeting — as they had requested — Bilby shut it down immediately.

“Becky made it clear this was a very bad idea,” Hubbard wrote to Wynja, “and that we do not want the public at board meetings because that would lead to media at board meetings, and that would be disastrous.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Public board meetings should avoid the public. The threat of transparency is far more frightening than distributing smut to minors.

Naturally, the usual cast of local intellectuals showed up to defend the cause. Kim Van Es, former chair of the Sioux County Democrats, solemnly warned that “excluding certain authors or certain views leads to authoritarianism, as it did in Nazi Germany.” She then offered a hypothetical about a majority-Muslim town imposing beliefs on Christians — because when you’re out of arguments, you go straight to Hitler and a thought experiment.

But she’s a Democrat. This is exactly the level of analysis we have come to expect.

RELATED: Australia BANS key social media apps for kids under 16 — and platforms must enforce the rule

Photo Illustration by Algi Febri Sugita/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Then Northwestern College theology professor Jason Lief stepped up in “hold my beer” fashion.

“I’m afraid the Bible’s going to be pulled off the shelf,” he said. “I mean, if we go by kind of lewd, sexual stuff. I don’t know if you’ve read the Bible. The Judah-Tamar story …”

This is the profound insight he brought “on behalf of the Bible.”

Has Lief ever read Romans 12:9: “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good”? Doesn’t seem like it.

For those in Sioux Center and at Northwestern College who have read it, here’s a modest proposal: Demand everyone on the board except Hubbard resign immediately. Then fire Wynja, Bilby, and Lief. They all had the easiest job in America — don’t give kids access to pornography — and failed spectacularly.

If they can’t be trusted to protect children from graphic sex scenes, they can’t be trusted with anything else.

​Iowa, Library, Children’s books, Pornography, Opinion & analysis, Censorship, Icebreaker book, Book bans, Sioux center, Progress, School library books, Public library explicit books, Transparency 

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani calls himself a “Democratic Socialist,” but he clearly doesn’t support the cooperative federalism that keeps American democracy functioning.

Just weeks after projecting a diplomatic, moderate tone during an Oval Office visit, Mamdani issued a message that should chill any American who values the rule of law. Responding to a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Chinatown, Mamdani in a video urged illegal aliens to “stand up” to federal agents by exploiting every legal loophole to stall enforcement.

Mamdani’s encouragement mirrors the toxic doctrine of states’ rights absolutism that fueled the nation’s march toward civil war.

“We can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights,” he declared, offering a tutorial on how to shut doors in agents’ faces, demand endless clarifications, and film operations to disrupt them.

This is a blueprint for openly defying federal authority, wrapped in the rhetoric of righteous resistance. As a self-avowed Democratic Socialist who promised to “fight back” against ICE and labeled the agency a “reckless entity,” Mamdani reveals a contempt for constitutional order that has moved from fringe to mainstream on the American left.

The peril in this rhetoric is not theoretical. While the circumstances differ, Mamdani’s encouragement mirrors the toxic doctrine of states’ rights absolutism that fueled the nation’s march toward civil war. In the 1850s, leaders of the nascent Confederacy preached nullification — the idea that states could ignore federal laws they deemed unjust, particularly those touching slavery.

South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification, defying federal tariffs, was a dry run for the secessionism that exploded in 1861. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens later declared in his “Cornerstone Speech” that the Confederacy rested on the principle of state sovereignty over federal authority.

Fast-forward to Mamdani’s New York, a sanctuary city where local laws are exalted above national ones and illegal aliens are coached to treat ICE as an invading force. This reckless approach can only ratchet up tensions, increasing the likelihood of violent confrontations and accelerating the erosion of our constitutional order.

This isn’t rights protection. It’s the resurrection of a philosophy that once split the nation in two. The Civil War claimed more than 600,000 lives because defiant states elevated their local priorities over the union’s supremacy. Mamdani’s sanctuary-state playbook risks igniting a similar dynamic — one resisted arrest at a time.

The hypocrisy is glaring. For nine years, Democrats and their media allies branded Donald Trump a “threat to democracy,” insisting that “no one is above the law.” Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on camera, declaring his actions an assault on the Constitution. Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s border enforcement would “Balkanize” America.

Yet when Mamdani — a rising progressive star — directly subverts federal immigration statutes, the same chorus falls silent. No calls for indictments. No panic-stricken editorials about authoritarianism.

Democrats declared Trump’s alleged election interference a constitutional crisis. But Mamdani’s defiance goes straight at the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law the “supreme law of the land.” By elevating New York’s sanctuary policies and restricting cooperation with ICE to only 170 “serious crimes,” Mamdani is not safeguarding democracy. He is undermining it.

America’s founders envisioned a balance: states as laboratories of democracy but always subordinate to the union’s paramount authority. Sanctuary cities flip that design on its head. Once New York shields violators of immigration law, copycats are inevitable. What happens when California nullifies EPA emissions rules? Or Texas ignores ATF gun tracing? Or Florida decides federal taxes are optional?

RELATED: ‘Shoot ICE on sight’: Twin brothers arrested after allegedly threatening to hang DHS’ Tricia McLaughlin

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Localized resistance metastasizes into a patchwork of fiefdoms where the law becomes whatever the local politician decrees.

Mamdani’s vision, if replicated, promises rapid national deterioration: a swelling illegal population operating in the shadows, strained public resources, and cities like New York — home to at least a half-million illegal aliens — functioning as de facto no-go zones for federal agents.

Progressives who cheered Mamdani’s victory must reckon with the monster they helped unleash: a leader who cloaks defiance in compassion while sowing the seeds of anarchy. American federalism depends on shared laws, not selective compliance. If New York wants to lead, it should honor the union that made its success possible — not mimic the Rebels of 1861.

Otherwise we’re not securing the nation. We’re dismantling the house that stands between order and oblivion.

​Constitution, Opinion & analysis, Zohran mamdani, Supremacy clause, Illegal immigration, Mass deportations, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice raids, Democratic socialist, Nullification, Alexander stephens, New york city, Civil war 

The coverage surrounding the murder of Charlie Kirk may have been honest if you watch conservative media, but the rest of the media wasn’t so keen on telling the truth — and a recent poll just made that hard to ignore.

According to a November 25 McLaughlin & Associates national poll of 1,000 likely voters conducted for the Media Research Center, only 24% of respondents correctly asserted that Tyler Robinson — Kirk’s assassin — was left-wing.

The participants were asked, “On September 10, 2025, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk was murdered while speaking on a college campus. What was the political ideology of his killer?”

Of the respondents, 27.5% answered that they didn’t know Robinson’s political ideology, and only 24.1% correctly answered that he was left-wing. A whopping 22.3% incorrectly answered that he was right-wing, while another 13.2% claimed he was a moderate or a centrist.

While that’s bad, it gets worse when you break it down by the party affiliation of the likely voters.

“Only 18.8% of those who primarily watched left-of-center cable news outlets were able to correctly describe his ideology, as compared to 27.7% who asserted that he was right-wing. Surprisingly even among right-of-center cable news viewers, barely over a third of participants (33.5%) answered that Robinson was left-wing, and a still-considerable 18% believed him to be right-wing,” a LifeNews article reports.

“The professed political ideology of respondents also heavily affected their perception of Robinson’s own political proclivities. A whopping 35.4% of liberals believed he was right-wing, while just 12.7% identified him as left-wing. For conservatives, 17% answered that he was right-wing, whereas over 41.9% described him as left-wing,” it continues.

“Students were the single least likely cohort to correctly identify Robinson’s political bent; 33.2% of students believed Charlie Kirk’s accused murderer was right-wing, while a paltry 4% accurately labeled him left-wing,” the article concludes.

“I was shocked when I read this, and I had to take some time to process,” BlazeTV host Liz Wheeler comments.

“We know so much about every terrorist, every mass shooter, every assassin, every school shooter, almost immediately after they commit their grizzly crime. How is it that only 24% of voters know that Charlie Kirk’s killer was left-wing? This is the most horrendous, grizzly, political assassination in our lifetime, if not in our nation’s history, and 3/4 of people don’t know the truth,” she says.

“Well the reason why is because the loudest voices … on both sides of the aisle, had from the beginning, from the moment that this happened, from the day that Charlie Kirk was murdered, they had in their mind preconceived villains,” she explains, pointing out that the mainstream media had immediately focused on Robinson’s family being registered Republicans.

“They assumed without any journalistic diligence,” she adds, “because this is what they wanted to believe was true, that Tyler Robinson was a Trump supporter.”

Want more from Liz Wheeler?

To enjoy more of Liz’s based commentary, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Free, Video, Upload, Camera phone, Sharing, Video phone, Youtube.com, The liz wheeler show, Liz wheeler, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze media, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Charlie kirk, Charlie kirk assassination, Left wing media, Tyler robinson, Tyler robinson left wing, Left wing violence, Left wing extremism 

New Mexico law enforcement says an online tip about child sex abuse material led to the arrest of a school bus driver for special-needs students.

Patrick Bilbo was arrested Friday at the Albuquerque Public Schools bus depot, and his phone was confiscated at that time.

‘This case is especially disturbing because it involves someone who was entrusted with the care of some of our most vulnerable children.’

A criminal complaint said that Bilbo’s phone had been signed into email accounts that were associated with the dissemination of child sex abuse material, including the graphic rape of young children.

Bilbo was identified through information associated with the accounts that included his birth date and his last name, according to a press release from the New Mexico Department of Justice.

He was charged with two counts of distribution of visual medium of sexual exploitation of a child under 13 years of age and one count of possession of visual medium of sexual exploitation of a child under 13 years of age.

One of the videos allegedly associated with Bilbo included the text, “All pedophiles should rape kids,” while the bottom of the video had the text, “#pedopride.”

Each charge carries a possible prison sentence of 11 years, if he’s convicted.

Albuquerque Public Schools senior director of communications Martin Salazar said in a statement that Bilbo had been placed on administrative leave.

“We are deeply disturbed by the charges brought against Patrick Bilbo,” Salazar said. “We became aware of the criminal case against him this morning and immediately began the process of placing him on administrative leave. He was taken into custody by authorities at our west-side transportation center early this morning.”

Salazar said that Bilbo passed a background check when he was hired in Sept. 2024 and that there were no reports of “inappropriate behavior” about him during his time as a bus driver.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez posted video footage from the police arrest.

RELATED: Elementary school teacher allegedly possessed thousands of files of child sex abuse material

“This case is especially disturbing because it involves someone who was entrusted with the care of some of our most vulnerable children,” Torrez said in a statement.

“We will pursue offenders like this with absolute urgency and relentless focus,” he added. “Our message is simple: If you target or exploit children in New Mexico, you will be found, you will be arrested, and you will be held accountable.”

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​Patrick bilbo, Special needs school bus driver, Child sex abuse material, School worker caught with child porn, Crime