If you disagree with a leftist, chances are you’ll be called a Nazi — and J.K. Rowling is no stranger to the now common, and thus meaningless, insult.

Her latest attacker is the transgender Lilly Wachowski, co-director of “The Matrix,” who accused the “Harry Potter” author of being a “literal Nazi.”

BlazeTV host Pat Gray explains that Wachowski is “upset with J.K. Rowling because J.K. Rowling doesn’t think that trans teens should have hormone blockers.”

“They shouldn’t have surgery to remove body parts. They shouldn’t have life-altering changes done to their body, which is still in the process of changing,” he says.

“Hang out for a while in that skin and see what happens,” he adds.

“These people are Nazis. They’re literal Nazis,” Wachowski had said in an interview with Variety after being asked about Rowling and Elon Musk.

“The Nazis, that you have taken to calling J.K. Rowling,” executive producer Keith Malinak chimes in, “they actually did butcher and experimented on people in concentration camps.”

“People like you,” Gray adds.

Wachowski went on to say that Rowling is “funding trans genocide.”

“So if you support Harry Potter, you’re supporting trans genocide,” Wachowski added.

“So the author of ‘Harry Potter’ is actually paying people to murder transgenders?” Gray says.

“If that’s the case, she should be arrested, tried, and probably convicted,” he continues.

“The rhetoric coming from these extreme left-wing psychos is just so butt-stupid you can’t put it into words,” he adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

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​Harry potter, Jk rowling, Lilly wachowski, Nazi, Pat gray, Transgender, Blazetv show 

Love him or loathe him, but one thing is certain about Vice President JD Vance: He’s one of the most unique and bold political figures we’ve seen in the modern era.

And this proclamation has nothing to do with his tenor, tone, or party proclivities. Amid the normal cacophony of political chaos, Vance has offered a remarkably consistent narrative — an open discussion of evil, the demonic, and even aliens — that we have never quite seen from a sitting politician.

Vance paraphrased a claim first popularized by French poet Charles Baudelaire — “the devil’s great trick is to convince people he never existed.”

We have certainly not observed it in a vice president, arguably the second-most powerful position in the entire world. Typically, people in such prominent roles are intensely buttoned up and even pretentious, watching every word and making carefully crafted proclamations.

Personal encounters

But Vance has taken a starkly different route, specifically when it comes to conversations about combustible and seemingly bizarre topics like aliens, demons, and evil.

Rather than treating these matters as too ethereal to discuss in the mainstream, he has been talking about them with relative ease. Vance has discussed evil in broad terms, and he has even said he feels it personally in his role as vice president.

Most recently, he told influencer Bryce Crawford that he has sensed spiritual darkness from various world leaders. For the typical, run-of-the-mill politician, any question about evil would most certainly be met with a secular and safe response. But Vance went much deeper.

“People that are around you sometimes give you a very, very bad feeling,” the vice president told Crawford. “Definitely, I’ve been in meetings with world leaders where various issues are being discussed, and somebody will say something or somebody will make an observation, and I will feel a certain darkness about it.”

Vance continued, “It sort of sets off every spiritual alarm bell in my body.”

He also went on to say that there are even locations like Gettysburg, where past history with the Civil War and death has led him to feel “a very dark spiritual energy.”

Aliens … or demons?

This was hardly the first time Vance dove headfirst into such conversations, with intentionality and ease.

Earlier this year, conservative commentator Benny Johnson asked the vice president about the UFO files, and the conversation took some fascinating turns, veering into Vance’s personal perspective about the origins and nature of aliens and unidentified flying objects.

“I don’t think they’re aliens,” Vance said of supposed extraterrestrials. “I think they’re demons anyway.”

When pressed further, Vance dove deeper into his personal explanation for what is truly happening behind so many alien claims that keep making their way into the mainstream.

“I think that celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people — I think that the desire to describe everything celestial … to describe it as aliens — I mean, every great world religion, including Christianity, the one that I believe in, has understood that there are weird things out there, and there are things that are very difficult to explain,” Vance said.

“And I naturally go — when I hear about, sort of, extra-natural phenomenon — that’s where I go to is the Christian understanding that, you know, there’s a lot of good out there, but there’s also some evil out there.”

Vance paraphrased a claim first popularized by French poet Charles Baudelaire — “the devil’s great trick is to convince people he never existed.”

RELATED: Evil unmasked: How Charlie Kirk’s murder exposed a diabolical spiritual war

MELISSA MAJCHRZAK/AFP/Getty Images

Spiritual warfare

A few months later, Vance again tackled the topic with podcaster Joe Rogan, further arguing that he believes what many perceive as aliens are actually demonic entities.

“Just because I believe in the supernatural doesn’t mean I believe in everything supernatural,” he said. “But if we’re talking about an extraterrestrial being that is human-like but not human, that contains effectively infinite powers and is torturing human beings, you can call it an alien if you want.”

And Vance wasn’t done there. He added, “But I think there’s a lot of historical precedent to call that a demon.”

The vice president’s conversations have been truly remarkable, considering few politicians would ever be caught opining about such matters. He’s probably the most outspoken vice president in history — and certainly the most outspoken in modern times — on matters of spiritual warfare and evil.

There are a few compelling reasons that this deeply matters. In a world where people are hyper-obsessed with the material, Vance is open to fully understanding spiritual matters that are very likely impacting our culture and world.

And if those matters are impacting our world, we are left wondering how we can possibly confront, fix, or heal anything if we reject the notion that a spiritual component is at play.

Vance not only considers these issues, but he is also actively opening up a conversation about them. He deserves a lot of credit for acknowledging the spiritual war so many others have chosen to ignore.

​Aliens, Demonic, Extraterrestrials, Jd vance, Joe rogan, Lifestyle, Spiritual warfare, Ufos, Vice president, Ufo files, Christianity, Catholicism, Faith 

You may not realize it, but Americans are already voting in the 2026 midterm elections.

Four states have already opened in-person voting. Within two weeks, at least 12 states will begin welcoming early and mail-in votes.

‘The 2026 election begins now.’

Virginia, Minnesota, and South Dakota opened their ballot boxes statewide on Friday. Vermont law states that all ballots must be mailed by Oct. 1, and the process begins by Sept. 21. Illinois is rolling out on Thursday, but only in particular polling places.

By Oct. 7, many more will be joining them.

Maine, Nebraska, Indiana, New Mexico, Ohio, Wyoming, and Arizona open their early voting periods between Oct. 4 and 7.

There are two fundamental categories of pre-Election Day ballot-casting: true early voting and in-person absentee voting.

In true early voting states, voters deposit an anonymous ballot directly into a tabulator or sealed box. This is how votes are received by polling places on Election Day. Voters’ names are recorded in poll books to thwart attempts at double voting.

RELATED: Deadlines are fast approaching on Trump’s mail-in ballot initiatives as election season begins

Mehmet Eser/Anadolu/Getty Images

Under the alternative in-person absentee voting model, voters fill out a mail ballot at the polling place, seal it in a named envelope, and hand it over to the clerk. That envelope is later cured, accepted, or rejected.

The curing process allows voters to fix envelope defects, such as mismatched signatures compared to voter registration files, absent ID numbers, and so on. If the incongruities are not amended by a given deadline, the ballot is discarded.

Despite their misgivings, conservative groups are embracing the early voting period to mobilize their base and win over new voters.

“2024 taught us that we no longer have Election Day in America,” Citizens Alliance CEO Cliff Maloney told Blaze News. “It’s not election weekend, election week, or even election month. Now the standard is ‘election season.'”

“Vote-by-mail ballots are now out in many battleground states,” Maloney continued. “Citizens Alliance is competing toe to toe with the Democrats to make sure that every single Republican ballot is returned. The 2026 election begins now.”

Democratic state parties treat the early voting period as a time to maximize their base’s turnout. From early-vote weekends to ballot-chasing, Democrats gather as many votes as possible before Election Day.

“Vote early in person,” DNC Vice Chair Jane Kleeb told NBC News. “Go to your county election office and vote early in person.”

Earlier in 2026, the Trump administration sought to secure mail-in and early voting systems across the country after supporters became concerned noncitizens were voting.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March directing the United States Postal Service to impose new restrictions on mail-in ballots. The order also instructed the Department of Homeland Security to compile state voter data, including citizenship status.

“The cheating on mail-in voting is legendary. It’s horrible what’s gone on. It’s very clearly covered. … I think this will help a lot with elections,” Trump said when signing the order.

Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked key portions of that order from taking effect, and a lengthy legal battle ensued. The Supreme Court declined to lift her injunction on Sept. 14, citing timeline concerns.

Despite those obstacles, Maloney believes it is incumbent upon conservatives to vociferously engage in get-out-the-vote efforts during the early voting period.

“At Citizens Alliance, our motto is ‘doors win wars,’ and we’re using that tactic right now to create real impact,” Maloney told Blaze News. “We must beat the Democrats at their own game and fight fire with fire to win.”

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​Absentee voting, Early voting, Midterm elections, Polling places, Voting, Politics 

President Donald Trump will greet Chinese President Xi Jinping personally when his plane lands at Joint Base Andrews for the start of his historic state visit.

The trip on Wednesday will be the first state visit for Xi in the U.S. for over a decade.

‘This is a very tough ticket for me. I’ve told a lot of very good friends of mine, “You just can’t come.”‘

The main portion of the visit will begin Thursday at an arrival ceremony on the State Floor of the White House when Trump and first lady Melania Trump will greet Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan.

The first lady and Xi’s wife will have a separate engagement from the presidents.

Later the Chinese president and his wife will be the guests of honor at a state dinner in the East Room with Trump and the first lady. Both presidents will give remarks at the dinner.

“Thousands of people would love to be at that dinner,” said Trump to reporters at the White House Friday.

“This is a very tough ticket for me,” he added. “I’ve told a lot of very good friends of mine, ‘you just can’t come.'”

Among those that are invited to the state dinner are Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Google, Sam Altman of OpenAI, as well as Tim Cook formerly of Apple.

At the end of the ceremony, a B-2 Spirit bomber and four F-22 Raptors will reportedly conduct a flyover.

The Trumps will also later give Xi and his wife a tour of the National Archives.

RELATED: Trump claims ‘incompetent’ Minnesota responsible for cyberattacks, not Iran

Critics of the communist government in China point to China’s aggressive posture in the South China Sea as one of the country’s most provocative actions.

Xi’s last state visit to the U.S. was in Sept. 2015 during the last term of former President Barack Obama.

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​Chinese president xi jinping, Elon musk, First lady melania trump, President donald trump, State visit, White house, Politics 

On July 31, 2026, a buddy of mine whom I’ve had on my podcast, a fellow trucker who really put down the miles and kept this country fed, turned over his last mile and passed on to the great truck stop in the sky.

Kevin Kenneth Koehnke died as he lived, out on the road and working, a lifestyle he hardly strayed from in his four decades over the road. Kevin had some kind of health episode immediately after completing a delivery in San Jose, California. An ambulance came to get him from his customer’s driveway, and he didn’t make it to the hospital. Kevin was only 64 years old.

‘Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.’

Man of many hats

I came to know Kevin, like so many other people in my life these days, from the internet. At some point a few years ago, selfies Kevin was posting on Facebook began to be copied and were circulated around various corners of the internet, often with commentary attached written by posters who were imagining what someone who looked like Kevin would say, and were congruous with the custom-made trucker caps that Kevin had become known for.

Kevin Koehnke

There was an incongruity to Kevin’s habit of printing these hats, which come off as abrasive and unnecessarily inflammatory to some; by all accounts, Kevin was a very warm and talkative guy who really liked people and had friends all over the country. There is an innocent quality to these photos that Kevin took of himself that I believe connected with people at a deeper level than the sort of online meme legend that grew around him. That said, the memes followed the messaging on the hats, and once unleashed on Twitter, they touched a particular nerve.

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

x.com/Tha_Big_Dog

Conversation with a ‘Bub’

I’m a follower and friend of the poster “Big Sib,” who first introduced me to these images of Kevin, and I became intrigued by the guy. Being a trucker myself, I’m familiar with the type that spends a lot of time on the road and, in times past, perhaps consumed a little too much AM radio, which provided a weird mental placeholder for the “normal” lives one cannot live while out over the road. Sib seemed to channel a particular “Bub” working-class outlook in the commentary he added to Kevin’s photos, especially those of Kevin enjoying a hard-earned meal, and it all sort of worked. Sib was one of the guys who helped Kevin become somewhat infamous online.

At some point I decided to try to seek Kevin out and invite him on my podcast, and sure enough, his contact details were found on a Facebook post he had made of his business card. I made a few phone calls and got in touch with him, and he agreed to come on my show, which you can listen to right here or on most podcast players of your choice.

Kevin Koehnke

Kevin had stopped at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop to call in and speak with me, and he filled my listeners in on much of his life story, from working on his parents’ cabbage farm in Wisconsin as a kid, where he came into contact with the type of truckers made famous in films like “Smokey and the Bandit,” through his life on the road, to various adventures and misadventures with police, abusive employers, and friends along the highway who helped him out when times were tough. It’s a fun listen and one of the most downloaded episodes of my podcast. You will also hear a lot about truck stop food and the types of freight Kevin hauled.

‘Just like his dad’

When I received news of Kevin’s passing, I asked to be put in touch with his family by the folks at the Konrad-Behlman funeral home, who have been helping them along at this time. I’ve had a couple of phone calls with his mom, Pat, who is pretty spry and a great conversationalist at the ripe old age of 86. She had listened to the podcast at some point as well and got quite a chuckle out of it.

”Kevin told some pretty tall tales,” she said, laughing. “He certainly was not born in the cab of his father’s dump truck. I spent 24 hours in labor trying to push him out.”

Pat did mention that much of Kevin’s career was spent away from home and family and that he was indeed a very high miler. When Kevin’s father died, Kevin couldn’t be there and was a day and a half late getting home.

”Kevin was just like his dad — loved being on the road. Before we bought the farm, his father would drive the dump truck all day and then hop in an 18-wheeler at night for another company and run up to northern Michigan and back overnight. He often only lived on two or three hours of sleep.”

Pat tells me that Kevin worked for about 10 different companies throughout his career, and a certain pattern emerges from her confirmation about things he told me on the show. Kevin is what we in the industry call a “runner,” a guy who basically lives in his truck, works his tail off, and almost never goes home. As of 2023 when Kevin came on the podcast, he told me that he had worked for 17 years straight, mostly only ever taking the mandatory 34-hour reset periods truckers are subject to under Hours of Service regulations. So no weekends, no going home, living in the truck, putting miles behind him as he crisscrossed the nation he loved so much.

The problem with “runners” is that trucking companies become dependent on them, reliable as they are, but often do not return much in the way of gratitude for all that hard work and sacrifice. Kevin told me he was fired from one company after requesting four days off to go visit family, being told he could take it, but when the time came, they wanted him to keep going. He had put over 1 million, 300,000 miles on one truck for that particular outfit and was thrown out the door as replaceable. This in an industry that has been whining about a supposed shortage of truckers since the mid-1980s. The real shortage, in Kevin’s case, was making it home for Christmas or almost anything else important.

RELATED: Despite welcome reform, the war on America’s truckers rages on

Anadolu/Getty Images

No days off

I invited Kevin to join my friends and me at the Mid-America Trucking Show in March 2024 and even managed to get him a media pass, which comes with access to a room with catered breakfast and lunch, something he would have taken full advantage of. I told everyone that he was coming, and there was quite a bit of anticipation about “Uncle Kevin” or “the Big Dog” coming to MATS. Having never met him in person, I was pretty pumped about getting to meet the guy myself.

Kevin told me months prior that he had booked the time off and that he was most likely going to rent a car and drive down to Louisville from his company’s yard up in Michigan. When I arrived at MATS, Kevin was nowhere to be found, and it took me a little while to get ahold of him on the phone.

”Awww, when I got to the yard, they had a hot load going down to Pennsylvania and they asked me to go, so I took it. Sorry, Gordo.”

He sounded almost embarrassed on the phone, as if he knew he had let me down.

”But they knew you were coming here. What the hell, man?”

”You know how it is. No one wants to work, and I couldn’t say no.”

No one wants to work. An eternal Boomerism.

I’m not sure if his excuse was true or not, but it followed a pattern set by himself and his previous employers. Being a runner becomes a lifestyle for a certain kind of trucker, a badge of honor for being institutionalized to the truck. Kevin was 61 years old at that time and had never been married, no kids, and he didn’t see his family much.

Kevin’s mom, Pat, was not surprised by the MATS story.

”I haven’t seen Kevin in 15 years. He doesn’t come home.”

Heavy load

On my podcast, Kevin relayed the story of how he hurt one of his big toes, but didn’t think too much of it and kept on working. Eventually it got so bad that he had to stop and have surgery to prevent gangrene at a hospital near Atlanta, Georgia, pretty far from Wisconsin. He took a couple of months off afterward to recover at his friend’s place in Michigan, and that may have been one of the only, if not the only, vacation the man ever had.

Kevin turned 64 on June 13 of this year, and Pat tells me that four days later, Kevin was in the hospital with pneumonia, having water in his lungs. The type of trucking lifestyle he led was clearly not good for his health. Once he recovered, he went straight back to work, taking little oxygen bottles in the truck to help him breathe. Pat is not sure whether Kevin lied to his employers about being fit to return or if they looked the other way, or perhaps failed to engage in any due diligence on a driver returning to duty. I contacted them to ask a few questions about what went down, and their head safety guy said it was “not their place to discuss a personal matter.”

Well, a man died on the job under their employ, and I doubt they would give a stock answer like that to an investigator from OSHA or the Workers Compensation Board.

It seems to me that Kevin Koehnke was one of these guys who had some kind of hurt deep inside him and either ignored it or escaped it by just staying on the road. Many Old Hands know such a person, and to be honest, its an easy way out that I myself have undertook in the past. Always working long hours away from home is a good way to let the sleeping dogs lie, but a bad way to manage your own mental health. This scheme is then compounded by employers who take full advantage of the situation, almost like a drug dealer who is always there with the next hit to soothe the pain.

The trucking industry makes a good show of highlighting health and safety, managing hours of service, trying to color between the lines where so many shady operators do not, and end up as part of the steady stream of collisions and chaos on our newsfeeds. But it strikes me that the business is also opportunistic in its use and abuse of runners like Kevin and failing to ask why such a nice man would just keep on working like that, never saying no, always getting it done no matter the cost to his own health — mental and physical — or the cost to relationships with family.

“Having an intervention” is a phrase often tossed around for those with serious problems like addiction. Maybe interventions are needed for the runners like Kevin.

Save me a seat at that truck stop in the sky, Kevin. I’ll be there sooner or later, too, and I’ll be darned if you won’t need a hug.

*******

Pat Koehnke tells me they have yet to see any of Kevin’s personal items returned to them, including his phone or his wallet with all of his ID. If anyone has intel on Kevin’s things, please email me at gordilocks@protonmail.com, and I will see to it that you are connected with his family.

He was cremated in California and thus made easier to ship home, obviating the need for assistance from an organization like Truckers Final Mile, which assists families in retrieving the bodies of loved ones who pass on the road but whose companies refuse to help with getting them back home. It tells you something about certain players in this industry that such an organization exists at all.

You can read Kevin’s official obituary here. There are links to leave a message about Kevin or purchase a memorial tree at the link above.

And make sure you reach out and say hello to someone distant. You never know what they might be going through or how much it would make their day to hear from you.

This essay originally appeared in the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.

​Bub, Culture, Lifestyle, Memes, Mental health, Truck stops, Truckers, Trucking industry, Wisconsin, Working class, Kevin koehnke, Obituary, In memoriam 

A 13-year-old boy is facing a 16-count juvenile petition after a crime spree involving car thefts in Pontiac, according to Michigan police.

Deputies were called to the used car dealership on Cesar Chavez Avenue over a report of a break-in on Sunday.

That dealership was broken into, and two other cars were damaged after someone tried unsuccessfully steal them at a nearby dollar store.

Officers found that a Dodge Dart had been stolen and a Dodge Charger had been heavily damaged after a break-in at the business, according to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

Members of the Oakland County Auto Theft Task Force connected the incident to another theft of two vehicles from a landscaping company in Pontiac.

On Sept. 19, a Chevrolet pickup truck was stolen from that business and rammed through a fenced parking lot.

On Sept. 20, a Dodge Ram was stolen from the property and driven to the Cesar Chavez Avenue dealership.

Surveillance video from the dealership captured a person breaking a window and entering inside, where keys were stolen. That person stole the Charger and tried to ram the gate to escape, but only succeeded in damaging the car and making it inoperable.

Then the person abandoned the car, stole the Dart, and drove to Watergate, where he rammed the car into another dealership.

That dealership was broken into, and two other cars were damaged after someone tried unsuccessfully steal them at a nearby dollar store.

Investigators said they identified their suspect, a 13-year-old boy, from the footage from numerous surveillance video systems.

That suspect had been arrested twice in 2025 for auto thefts in Waterford as well as Pontiac.

RELATED: 16-year-old arrested for shooting and killing 15-year-old girl and her 9-year-old brother

The teen was transported to the Oakland County Children’s Village.

The Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office will review the 16-count petition against the teen. The investigation into the crime spree is ongoing.

Pontiac is a suburb of Detroit.

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​Crime spree, Car thefts, Michigan, Child crime, Crime 

President Trump may have accomplished something fiscal conservatives have been trying unsuccessfully to do for decades: He got Washington talking seriously about the national debt.

All it took was promising a $5,000 payment — what he calls a “Trump Dividend” — to every adult American citizen if Republicans retain control of Congress. With roughly 240 million eligible recipients, the back-of-the-envelope cost is about $1.2 trillion.

Somebody proposes mailing the money directly to the people, and suddenly everyone remembers that the Treasury has a balance sheet.

Suddenly, the political class discovered fiscal responsibility. Critics immediately pointed out that the federal government doesn’t have over a trillion dollars laying around. They warned that the checks would increase the deficit. They reminded us that the national debt has surpassed $40 trillion. They worried about inflation, borrowing costs, and the burden we are leaving to future generations.

Those are legitimate concerns. In fact, they should have been dominating our national political debate for decades.

The federal government has been spending money it does not have at an astonishing rate. Annual deficits that once would have produced political panic are now treated almost as background noise.

A trillion dollars has become an almost meaningless abstraction. Consider how large a trillion is. A million seconds is about 12 days. A billion seconds is nearly 32 years. A trillion seconds is more than 31,000 years. Yet our political representatives routinely toss around trillions as though they are discussing the office-supply budget.

That is why the reaction to Trump’s proposed $5,000 checks is so revealing. Whatever one thinks of the proposal itself — and there are perfectly good reasons to question sending another trillion-plus dollars out the Treasury’s door — the renewed concern about borrowing raises an obvious question: Where has everybody been?

The United States did not wake up one morning with a $40 trillion national debt because somebody proposed sending Americans a check. The debt accumulated because, year after year, Congress spent more than the government collected and borrowed the difference.

Entitlement programs were created or expanded. Emergency spending became routine. Temporary measures acquired permanent constituencies. Politicians discovered that voters enjoy receiving government benefits considerably more than they enjoy paying the taxes necessary to finance them.

Washington’s addiction to debt is bipartisan, and Republican Congresses and presidents have substantially increased it just as Democrats have.

But that makes the current moment all the more useful. If a $1.2 trillion proposal is irresponsible because the country is already deeply indebted, then fiscal responsibility cannot begin and end with this particular $1.2 trillion. The same arithmetic should apply to every spending proposal.

RELATED: Trump picked the wrong way to fight fake news

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Every dollar Washington spends ultimately comes from one of three places: current taxpayers (including importers via tariffs and, potentially, taxpayers if those costs get passed through to consumers), borrowing from future taxpayers, or money creation, which can erode purchasing power through inflation. There is no fourth category called “government money.”

That elementary fact tends to disappear from political debate whenever Congress is considering a favored program. Costs are described over 10 years. Spending is called an “investment.” Borrowing is treated as somebody else’s problem.

Then somebody proposes mailing the money directly to the people, and suddenly everyone remembers that the Treasury has a balance sheet. Perhaps taking spending seriously again in speech is the most valuable thing about the $5,000 proposal.

This should immediately raise basic, nonpartisan questions: Can we afford this? Where will the money come from? How much interest will taxpayers pay on that borrowing? Is this expenditure important enough to justify passing its cost to our children and grandchildren? These questions should be asked whenever anyone — Republican or Democrat — proposes spending another dollar.

And the interest clock is already running. As the debt grows, interest consumes an ever-larger share of federal resources. Unlike most federal programs, interest cannot simply be canceled without defaulting on the nation’s obligations. Money spent servicing yesterday’s borrowing is money unavailable for defense, national infrastructure, Social Security, tax relief, or anything else tomorrow’s voters might consider important.

So by all means, debate the $5,000 dividend. Ask whether it is affordable. Calculate its effect on deficits and inflation. Demand to know where the money will come from. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a Republican from Ohio, is drafting legislation to pay for it by instituting a market access fee on imports. That is a salutary development in a town that for too long has spent first without even bothering to consider who would pick up the tab.

But having rediscovered those questions, the political class should not forget them the moment this proposal disappears from the headlines.

If the prospect of $5,000 checks finally makes Americans look at a $40 trillion national debt and ask, “How on earth are we going to pay for this?” then the proposal will already have performed a useful public service.

The only question is whether Washington will keep asking it.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

​Fiscal conservatives, Inflation, National debt, Social security, Tax relief, Trump dividend, Midterm elections, Republicans, Bernie moreno, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump 

There’s a clip going around of Lindsay Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick, saying she has never apologized or asked forgiveness for killing their three children.

Given the growing arrogance of her defense, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. It also cuts against the portrait her defenders have painted of a loving mother temporarily overtaken by postpartum depression or psychosis. If that were the whole story, you might expect some sign of remorse toward the grieving husband who lost all three of his children.

What we once called common sense grew out of a Christian moral culture that no longer commands the culture. What was once common no longer is.

Instead, nothing. Because she’s a monster.

But the culture’s numbed reaction to the Clancy mistrial raises another question about the 11 jurors who were prepared to absolve her of criminal responsibility for those ghastly killings.

How do you persuade people still coasting on the fumes of a once-great Christian culture that they are now the counterculture — and must learn to think and fight accordingly?

Between the positive Christian world of the American founding and today’s negative world came the so-called neutral world that produced the counterculture of the 1960s. For my entire lifetime, we have run an experiment based on the assumption that Americans shared enough fundamental values to sustain multiple competing cultures at once.

At 53, I think that experiment is over. It probably never had much of a chance.

Listen to the nice things Clancy’s jurors keep saying about her, then confront the horror of what she did. No neutral conversation is possible here. So it is with good and evil generally. There is no neutral boulevard called tolerance. Every time Christians travel down it, they eventually discover that tolerance runs in one direction.

We live in a negative world now. The spirit of the age intends to show us what a real inquisition looks like, because the Christian worldview that once formed this country has been steadily forfeited in exchange for other gods.

Third-wave feminists inhabit the positive world now, whether they hold formal political power at a given moment or not. The Overton window governing our language, emotions, psychology, and public discourse is largely theirs. Spiritually, the enemy holds the high ground.

We are the rebels now, not the founders.

That means Christians can no longer rely on easy assumptions about shared values, shared definitions, or even shared moral fundamentals.

RELATED: A Christian guide to trolling without sinning

Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images

We are not simply a nation of laws. Laws are downstream from political will, and political will is downstream from moral conviction. By that measure, the American church is not exactly operating from a position of strength.

My friend Chris Goble likes to say we must “exegete the times.” He’s right.

By what civilizational standard regularly enforced in America today should Lindsay Clancy be expected to ask forgiveness? Common sense?

This is precisely the problem. What we once called common sense grew out of a Christian moral culture that no longer commands the culture. What was once common no longer is.

A second American revolution took place, and we did not so much lose it as surrender.

Wake up, Dorothy. You ain’t in Kansas any more.

In Massachusetts, where the Sons of Liberty once helped set the course of American freedom, 11 jurors just concluded that Lindsay Clancy was not criminally responsible for killing her own children.

So what follows?

For starters, Christians need to stop assuming that people who reject Christianity are nevertheless entitled to every cultural inheritance Christianity produced, on precisely the same terms Christianity produced it.

That does not relieve me of Christ’s command to love my neighbor as myself. It does mean Christian love cannot be reduced to cultural surrender or a lazy suicide pact with people who reject the moral order that made our freedoms intelligible in the first place.

It’s Christ or chaos. Christians need to become comfortable saying that plainly.

You do not get the full inheritance of Christian civilization while discarding the faith and moral assumptions that built it. Those are the terms of the negative world. If we want the future to look different, we first have to acknowledge the world as it is.

Most people will not tell you this, because rebuilding will be hard.

We will have to lay cornerstones and plumb lines again. We will have to reclaim ground that was once considered sacred and is now treated as disposable. It will cost us comfort, status, friendships, and perhaps careers.

RELATED: How groupthink replaces truth

John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

It will hurt.

But the alternative is worse: leaving our children and grandchildren a country so morally fractured that political disagreement eventually becomes something much uglier.

Do not kid yourself about the cost. The Puritans who founded New England were fleeing Anglicans, not Muslims or even Catholics. Civilizational conflict can divide people who share a language, a history, and much of the same religion.

Brother will turn against brother.

If Tucker Carlson’s deconstruction has taught us anything, it is that these fractures are already running through the right itself.

But Christians still have an obligation to stand. Not for a party. Not for a personality. Not for nostalgia. For the only kingdom that lasts.

Here we stand. We can do no other.

​American founding, Criminal responsibility, Faith, Forgiveness, Jurors, Lindsay clancy, Massachusetts, Muslims, New england, Postpartum depression, Psychosis, Christians, Negative world, Opinion & analysis 

Debates around artificial intelligence continue to rage. Many plead for halting development, fearing it’s only a matter of time before AI eradicates humanity.

To illustrate the fear and panic this camp feels, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales points to the Anthropic researcher who resigned earlier this month, warning in a viral post that developers are pushing onward despite knowing AI “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Others, including President Trump, however, claim the AI doomsaying is rooted in conspiracy theories that benefit only China — America’s archrival in the AI race.

But there’s another critical factor in the debate Sara claims people are neglecting: chips.

“It’s not necessarily the technology itself that we need to be discussing. It’s more what’s driving it, which are the chips,” she says.

To illustrate, she highlights a recent Fox News article titled “America and China are fighting for the future of AI — chips are the battlefield,” which claims that “China’s tech giant says demand for its AI computing equipment already exceeds supply as it accelerates new chip generations.”

The war for controlling the chip supply, says Sara, is a bigger concern than the capabilities of the AI models themselves.

“It’s more about who controls the chips, computing infrastructure, the technology ecosystem underneath it. And China, to be real, has had an advantage on this for years now,” she says.

President Trump, she explains, has been trying to move chip manufacturing to the United States.

“Remember, up until 2024, Taiwan actually held a 68% market share of all global chip production, which, you want to war-game this out, that’s kind of a problem, because we are constantly on the brink of China invading and retaking Taiwan,” says Sara. “When and if that happens, what’s to stop them from cutting us off from the chips? And then what happens to us and our technology?”

Militarily, the United States would suffer, she explains.

“America has remained the global leader in advanced AI technology and semiconductor design. And for years, the United States has used export controls to restrict China’s access to advanced semiconductors and semiconductor manufacturing technology, particularly technologies with potential military applications,” says Sara.

“But if we allow them to get chip supremacy, like, America could be looking at no longer being the biggest military superpower in the world.”

For this reason, Sara is in support of continuing AI development.

“I’m so tired of living in this world where so many people just are burying their heads in the sand and not realizing … we’re essentially in a cold war with China on every single platform,” she says.

“We don’t want them getting the upper hand with AI. America wants a world running on American chips, American software, American standards.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

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