Americans are breathing a sigh of relief at the apparent end of woke lectures masquerading as movies. The last few that slipped through have been sent to the box office graveyard.

But another problem remains.

What gives a human life ultimate meaning? That is a question woke ideology cannot answer. It is also the question every civilization, and every soul, must face.

As John Wick taught us, bad choices lead to consequences. And after 15-plus years of woke education and pop culture, one consequence may be that American audiences can no longer handle a movie that wrestles seriously with the deepest questions of human life.

Permit me to explain why this trouble looms on the horizon like Kafka’s “Metamorphosis.”

The woke agenda, with its oppression-studies degrees and DEI catechisms, has trained generations of students and audiences to think superficially. They are told suffering comes from “whiteness” and “heteronormativity,” and that if they elect enough democratic socialists, these problems will vanish and free stuff will rain down from heaven.

Spend enough time on a modern university campus, and you will see how often life’s deepest questions are flattened into identity categories.

Why do people suffer? Systems of oppression.

Why does life feel empty? Unjust structures prevent economic flourishing.

The standard DEI professor solves the problems of evil and meaning by reassuring one group of students that their hardships are caused by another group of students, and that each group can be identified by skin color and sexual preference.

The solution is always the same: Become an activist. Advocate for the marginalized. Restructure society. Stop whiteness.

Think of the Ralph Wiggum meme: “I’m helping.”

Movie after movie has thrown these inane answers at American audiences. Marvel has done more than most. It had a chance to get serious when Ultron sought a solution to the problem of evil. Instead, it simply got violent.

What was the franchise’s answer to evil? Some saccharine claim about the innate goodness of human beings when they are “free” under a nanny state of superheroes.

But those supposedly good humans are the same people who committed all the evil Ultron saw when he studied world history.

The Avengers are an existential nightmare, making one wonder whether each member of the team was meant to be a hero of the absurd after all.

RELATED: Give He-Man credit for mocking the unmockable

Screen Archives/Getty Images

These reflections made me wonder whether today’s audiences, ruined by DEI, could watch a movie like “Cool Hand Luke.”

The film would almost certainly never be made today. But even if it were, would anyone make it to the end? Better yet, would anyone understand what the movie asks us to confront?

Luke, played by Paul Newman, returns home from World War II to a life with no obvious purpose. In a drunken act of vandalism, he cuts the heads off parking meters and is sentenced to a southern prison camp.

The crime is almost beside the point. The movie is not really about criminal justice. It is asking an older question: What does a man do when he cannot find meaning?

Luke’s struggle is existential. He first fights the toughest prisoner, and his refusal to stay down becomes a declaration that he will not surrender his humanity. Later, when Luke wins at poker, the men call him “Cool Hand Luke.”

His coolness is defiance against a universe that appears silent. If nothing matters, why get upset?

The prison itself becomes a metaphor for human existence. The laws appear arbitrary. Luke tells another prisoner, “All I see is a lot of guys laying down a lot of rules and regulations.”

Then, Luke’s mother visits one last time as she is dying.

Their final conversation is painfully cold. He calls her “Arletta” rather than “Mother.” Neither expresses love. As she leaves, he simply says, “So long, Arletta. Take care.”

Harry Dean Stanton sings “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” as Luke walks back into the prison. The inability of sentimentalized religion to give Luke meaning becomes the movie’s second theme, after the helplessness of law.

Soon afterward, Luke receives word of his mother’s death. He sings a mocking song about the empty superstition of popular religion:

Get yourself a sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones, sitting on
A pedestal of abalone shell.
Going 90, it ain’t scary,
’Cause I got the Virgin Mary
Assurin’ me that I won’t go to hell.

Popular religion pours opium over the suffering of this life with empty sentimentality and promises of a better afterlife.

Neither law nor sentimental religion can quiet Luke’s soul. So he runs.

Captured once, he hears the famous line from the captain: “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.”

After another escape attempt, the guards force him into a grotesque cycle of digging and filling the same hole.

“Luke, what’s your dirt doing in the boss’ hole?”

After Luke digs a grave-sized hole, another boss asks, “Luke, what’s your dirt doing on my yard? Put it back in that hole.”

This continues until his spirit finally breaks. He begs them to stop. He promises never to escape or back-sass again.

Yet he escapes once more.

RELATED: The left’s icons keep face-planting in public

Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images

His final refuge is an empty church. There, Luke finally speaks honestly. He addresses God simply as, “Hey, Old Man.” He admits that he began strong but has grown tired. He wants answers. He wants someone to respond.

Silence.

“I guess you’re a pretty hard case too,” Luke concludes.

A fellow prisoner is sent in to persuade him to come out peacefully. Luke yells out the window, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” but he is shot and killed before he can finish.

The movie refuses every easy answer. The audience is meant to leave and wrestle with the problem of meaning.

Luke cannot be right about final emptiness. But where can we find meaning if neither law nor superficial popular religion can provide it?

That is precisely the sort of question our culture increasingly avoids.

The last 15 years have been a parade of DEI sermons and ideological mush. The worry is that Americans raised in this, educated in woke K-12 schools, and graduated into oppression-studies assumptions would not know how to contemplate existential meaning in a movie like “Cool Hand Luke.”

They would reduce the story to demographic categories. White prisoner. White guards. Southern prison. Oppression explained. Luke deserves what he got.

As a philosophy professor, I hope Americans have not lost the ability to appreciate stories that force us to confront the deepest questions. I hope they are not merely rejecting the stupidity of DEI but also rejecting superficial answers and longing for something deeper.

What gives a human life ultimate meaning? That is a question woke ideology cannot answer.

It is also the question every civilization, and every soul, must face.

​Cool hand luke, Evil, Movies, Woke hollywood, God, Opinion & analysis 

A huge brawl at an Arizona In-N-Out Burger was caught on video early last week, and customers are seen running for cover in the clip.

Tempe police told KSAZ-TV they were called to the fast-food restaurant near Rural Road and Playa del Norte Drive just after 7 p.m. Monday.

‘Bunch of future doctors and lawyers.’

The station said people were seen screaming and running for the door as the melee commenced.

In the clip, numerous individuals are seen trading punches, wrestling, and tackling each other all over the restaurant, KSAZ said.

A person who uploaded video of the fight told the station customers were “camping out” inside the restaurant during an active monsoon storm.

But by the time police arrived at the scene, all those involved in the brawl had already taken off, KSAZ said, adding that some fled on foot while others departed in cars.

The station said what sparked the fight is unknown, and no names have been released in connection with the case.

Police did tell KSAZ that officers were able to speak with witnesses and restaurant staff, and a follow-up investigation is under way.

RELATED: Male, 55, accused of grabbing 15-year-old by neck, throwing him to floor of In-and-Out Burger — and it’s all caught on video

Commenters who posted reactions under the KSAZ video report showing the brawl were disgusted by it:

“Bunch of future doctors and lawyers,” one commenter wrote.”Did they order it animal style?” another commenter quipped, referencing an In-N-Out Burger serving option.”Stay in school, kids,” another commenter suggested. “This is what happens when you drop out and become a loser. Becoming violent and then running away speaks volumes about your level of education.””In my day we took it outside,” another commenter recalled. “Not in front of women and children.”

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​Arizona, In-n-out burger, Brawl, Police, Crime 

McAllister, Montana, does not take long to drive through. We have a post office, a cabinet shop, and an empty lot where the old bar and restaurant once stood.

Yet there it was. The American flag hung at half-staff.

Somewhere between the Carolina foothills and a tiny town in southwest Montana, I was reminded that no matter how far life carries us, the places that formed us never quite let us go.

It was not for someone from Montana. It was for a boy from upstate South Carolina.

Standing in the parking lot of that tiny post office, I found myself thinking that southwest Montana might as well be another country from the red clay, pines, and dogwoods of northwest South Carolina.

Yet one lowered flag carried me back more than 2,000 miles, leaving me with an unexpected ache for both places.

Lindsey Graham’s passing felt different. There had been no long illness, no farewell tour, no gradual retreat from public life. He worked until the end. One day, he was in the middle of the nation’s business. The next, the flag in our little Montana town flew at half-staff for a man whose life began just a few miles from mine.

Washington knew him as a senator. The world knew him as a fixture on Sunday morning news programs, in committee hearings, and on diplomatic missions halfway around the globe.

Upstate South Carolina knew him simply as Lindsey.

Our paths crossed long before I could have imagined standing beside a lowered flag in a small Montana town thinking about him.

He grew up in Central. I grew up in nearby Anderson. We may even have been born in the same hospital.

When Lindsey first ran for Congress, my sister worked on his campaign. His district included my parents’ home. For a time, his sister lived only a few doors from them. Years later, one of my four brothers worked closely with him through the State Department on matters involving Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other countries.

RELATED: The internet makes monsters and saints before the body is cold

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The first time I met Lindsey personally was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where my wife, Gracie, had been invited to sing for wounded warriors. We shared dinner that evening with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and his wife, along with Montana’s Conrad Burns.

At one point, Lindsey laughed and said he and I could carry on a conversation without anybody needing subtitles.

After meeting several members of my family over the years, he ran into my parents somewhere back home, shook his head with that familiar grin, and asked, “How many of y’all are there?”

That was Lindsey. For all the demands placed on him, he remembered people.

We disagreed on more than a few things over the years. Some of those disagreements mattered. But disagreement is not the same thing as dismissal.

Somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that.

In an era when too many public careers seem measured by growing fortunes and lucrative opportunities after leaving office, Lindsey’s modest estate told a different story. Whatever history ultimately concludes about every vote he cast or every position he took, it is difficult to argue that he entered public life to enrich himself.

He seemed to take the title literally.

It was public service in the truest sense of the phrase.

Whether one agreed with him or not, Lindsey’s work ethic was undeniable. He left behind a reputation far larger than his estate.

Lindsey Graham died with his boots on.

Only hours earlier, he was still in motion — meeting with allies, working with foreign leaders, talking with colleagues, and carrying the responsibilities that had defined most of his adult life.

Then, almost in an instant, the meetings ended, the phones stopped ringing, and the man who had spent a lifetime helping shape history took his place within it.

Flags across America have been lowered. Soon, they will be raised again. The mail will be sorted. Ranchers will stop by the post office. Life will continue, as it always does.

But standing there in the parking lot of our little post office, I closed my eyes and sighed.

I was not thinking about Washington or the halls of power. I was thinking about upstate South Carolina.

RELATED: Consider the lilies — and one old Montana fir

Photo courtesy of Peter Rosenberger

I was thinking about the red clay my mother could never keep her five sons from tracking into the house. Boiled peanuts from a roadside stand. A sticky, hot Carolina afternoon with pine trees swaying just enough to remind you there was a breeze after all.

I was thinking about familiar voices, familiar roads, and a local boy from Central who somehow found himself helping shape the course of a nation without ever quite losing the cadence of home.

The United States lost a man who served first in uniform, then in the House of Representatives, and finally in the Senate.

South Carolina lost a son.

And somewhere between the Carolina foothills and a tiny town in southwest Montana, I was reminded that no matter how far life carries us, the places that formed us never quite let us go.

I suspect Lindsey Graham never heard of McAllister, Montana.

But that flag outside a tiny post office quietly testified that McAllister, along with countless other towns across America, paused to honor him.

​Lindsey graham, Opinion & analysis, Montana, South carolina, American flags, Caregiving, Senate, Republicans 

In 2019, Mercy Culture Church — a charismatic, conservative Christian church — was founded in Fort Worth, Texas. In the seven years since, it has planted numerous churches in Texas and elsewhere, the most recent satellite campus being in Washington, D.C.

Mercy Culture’s D.C. plant is pastored by none other than BlazeTV contributor Jaco Booyens and his wife, Philipa.

Sadly, getting Mercy Culture D.C. up and running has been something of a nightmare. On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Booyens pulled the curtain back on D.C.’s deeply entrenched spiritual battle, where historic churches allegedly function as gatekeepers against conservative biblical teaching.

Booyens explains that due to the Biden administration encouraging churches to sell their properties to developers, it’s been difficult to find a physical location for Mercy Culture D.C.

After much searching, they finally picked a building, but the nightmare was just beginning.

“We start getting complaints from the building. They’re saying … ’You’re very political … you’re saying you’re anti-abortion; you’re saying that there’s two genders; you’re saying that kids should not be trans-ified,”’ Booyens recounts, noting that he countered these complaints by arguing that these issues are “not political” but deeply “spiritual.”

Disturbed by the pushback, he started “digging” into D.C.’s long church history, and what he found was this: “There are demonic strongholds in [D.C.] that have been given right of passage, dominion — a home inside the church.”

He found the proof hiding in D.C.’s oldest churches.

“There are 13 churches in this city that are 200+ years old that run on the principle that they are — and they said it out loud to us in person — that they are the collective mind of the Holy Spirit, which is blasphemy,” he tells Glenn.

When he was touring the oldest of the churches (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, founded in the 1700s), the man conducting the tour bragged that the church of Mariann Edgar Budde — the female bishop who gained national attention for her progressive sermon at the Washington National Cathedral during Trump’s 2025 inauguration prayer service — was “one of the 13.”

He told Booyens, “We all approved that speech because that’s how correction gets made in this city; that’s how things pass through to Congress. [It] comes through this collective mind of the Holy Spirit.”

Immediately, Booyens could see the demonic “strongholds” controlling the city’s church ecosystem, ensuring the true gospel cannot spread.

This nefarious 13, he tells Glenn, is why Mercy Culture D.C. is having such a difficult time finding a permanent building. To them, Booyens is a “radical” who must be stopped.

“We are at our fourth location now,” he says, noting how evictions keep rolling in because his church is consistently labeled “too political” for standing against abortion and gender-transitioning procedures for children.

“[D.C.] is different than other cities. In this city, that which is evil often is led by the church.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Washington dc, Christianity, Church 

Jennifer Welch recently unleashed a tirade against Christian homeschooling families, calling homeschooling “trickle-down stupidity” and a “fundamental crazy Christian problem” and calling parents with traditional values “the worst, worst, worst.” She even dismissed the decision to homeschool as selfish.

Welch isn’t an education researcher or a homeschooling expert. She’s a progressive podcaster whose “I’ve Had It” podcast has built a large audience by channeling liberal anger at conservatives into viral commentary. Her latest target just happened to be Christian homeschool families. But her latest broadside is still worth answering, if only to correct the caricature she presented of millions of families who have chosen a different path.

Welch’s comments reveal a deeper, increasingly common assumption: the belief that educational institutions are better equipped than parents to shape children.

As a serious Christian who was homeschooled from kindergarten through 12th grade and intends to homeschool my own two children, I couldn’t disagree more. In fact, Welch’s contempt for families like mine is a reminder of exactly why I will never hand my children over to what have become taxpayer-funded ideological institutions.

The irony is hard to miss. At a time of collapsing birth rates, declining academic achievement, and a culture struggling to pass on its moral inheritance, America needs more strong families willing to invest their time, resources, and lives in raising the next generation.

Yet instead of encouraging those families, Welch chooses to mock them.

Here are three reasons Welch couldn’t be more wrong about families like mine.

1. Homeschoolers outperform their peers in nearly every measure

Study after study has found that homeschoolers outperform their peers across a wide range of academic measures. The facts simply don’t support Welch’s dismissive caricature of homeschooling or her claim that it produces “trickle-down stupidity.” Homeschooled students consistently perform well in standardized testing, reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies. Research has also found that homeschooled adults tend to be highly engaged in their communities and successful in higher education and professional life.

Interestingly enough, there were at least 16 U.S. presidents who received part or all of their education at home through their parents or tutors, which was a more common practice in early America.

Public schooling, by comparison, is a relatively recent invention — and one that is increasingly failing America’s students. If we’re going to question an educational model, perhaps we should begin with the one producing declining test scores and growing dissatisfaction.

If Welch believes homeschooling produces “trickle-down stupidity,” she’s overlooking a remarkable list of accomplished homeschool graduates. In addition to presidents, homeschooling has helped produce notable entrepreneurs, athletes, military leaders, and scholars for generations. More recently, figures such as Tim Tebow, Charlie Kirk, Serena Williams, Simone Biles, and Bethany Hamilton demonstrate that an education at home is hardly a barrier to excellence.

RELATED: Education without ‘schooling’: Why a godly home is the best place for children to learn and thrive

Heritage Art/Getty Images

2. Homeschooling puts our children’s needs before our own

Welch calls homeschooling “child abuse” and “selfish,” then goes on to admit she cannot imagine spending that much time with her own children: “For me personally, it was that I would have gotten up on my hands and knees and strapped them to my back and crawled to get them to school every day just to get them where I wasn’t.”

It’s difficult to square those remarks with the claim that homeschooling parents are the selfish ones.

Parents who educate their children at home invest thousands of dollars in curriculum, books, and educational resources while often sacrificing an entire income so one parent can teach full-time. They willingly make those financial and personal sacrifices because they believe giving their children a strong education, solid character, and a biblical worldview is worth far more than the cost.

This is exactly why, long before we ever started dating, my husband and I had each independently decided that homeschooling would be non-negotiable for our future family. If we couldn’t agree on homeschooling or Christian school for our children, it would have been a deal-breaker. That’s how deeply we care about raising children who love God, love their country, think critically, and become exceptionally well educated.

That isn’t selfish. It’s putting our children’s needs ahead of our own.

3. Parents — not the government — should raise children

Welch’s comments reveal a deeper, increasingly common assumption: the belief that educational institutions are better equipped than parents to shape children. But our children don’t belong to the state, to cultural elites, or to government institutions. Parents bear the primary responsibility for raising them. That isn’t simply a Christian conviction; it’s one of the foundations of a free society.

The Bible commands parents to teach their children diligently, pass on the faith, and train them in wisdom and truth, especially in a culture that has lost its bearings. Homeschooling is one way families can faithfully live out those convictions. As the late preacher Voddie Baucham famously warned, “If we continue to send our children to Caesar for their education, we need to stop being surprised when they come home as Romans.”

Whenever people ask why my husband and I plan to homeschool our children, the conversation almost inevitably ends with the same question: “How will they socialize?” — as though homeschoolers spend their childhood hidden away from society.

My own experience was exactly the opposite. I interacted with people of all ages and walks of life through church, sports, music lessons, homeschool co-ops, volunteer opportunities, and countless experiences outside the walls of a traditional classroom.

I still remember living and working in Washington, D.C., and watching people’s jaws drop when I told them I had been homeschooled.

“But you’re so normal?”

Exactly.

Homeschooling isn’t about hiding children from the world. It’s about preparing them to enter it with strong convictions, intellectual curiosity, and a sense of purpose.

Jennifer Welch is free to mock families like mine. We’ll keep raising our children according to our convictions — and we’ll let the results speak for themselves.

​Biblical worldview, Charlie kirk, Christian school, Serena williams, Simone biles, Tim tebow, Traditional values, Homeschooling, Education, Christian living, Indoctrination, Faith 

For decades, Hollywood fed us a steady diet of tracksuit-wearing Gambino soldiers whining about their mothers and cartoonishly tattooed cartel enforcers threatening to dissolve people in vats of premium tequila.

But those legacy brands are officially losing market share to a heavily armed, highly aggressive corporate competitor that weaponizes car horns to deafen the opposition. International syndicate networks tied directly to India are systematically restructuring the geography of global street violence, proving that globalization works beautifully for extortion rackets too.

By establishing these isolated, closed-off cultural zones, these factions maintain a fierce allegiance to old-world tribal hierarchies.

Playing ‘Hard Ball’

California serves as the primary battleground for a ruthless wave of Indian organized crime tearing through the state. These syndicates use major metropolitan hubs as operations bases for massive drug trafficking corridors and organized intimidation schemes. Federal agents recently dismantled a major cell during Operation Hard Ball, arresting 11 Indian operatives across targeted raids in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

Investigators seized massive stockpiles of high-grade narcotics, automatic weapons, and cash, exposing a highly sophisticated network built for domination rather than minor street theft. This aggressive expansion shows exactly how foreign syndicates import overseas violence directly into the heart of American suburban communities. India is best known for bowel-blasting street food and a population of drivers apparently trained exclusively in demolition derbies. The American public would do well to update its perspective — fast. That goes for the rest of the West too, because this brand of trouble spans continents.

The expansion strategy mimics that of a tech startup, rapidly scaling operations across Europe and the Great White North. Take Portugal, for instance. The historic streets of Lisbon and the sunny coastal regions of the Algarve are currently experiencing an influx of Punjab-themed turf wars. Rival Indian syndicates are actively fighting over localized human smuggling routes and synthetic drug distribution rights, turning once-peaceful European plazas into active combat zones.

RELATED: A Memphis mom was fired for telling the truth about crime; now she’s fighting back

Sen. Marsha Blackburn/Austin Johnson/Getty Images

Canada war zone

Meanwhile, Canada has become something of a war zone. In the suburban sprawl of Surrey, British Columbia, and the Greater Toronto Area, daylight drive-by shootings are now a standard feature. These are high-volume tactical ambushes executed on public streets with automatic weapons.

Organized crime expert Martin Purbrick notes that the massive Indian diaspora across the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States provides the perfect camouflage for foreign syndicates. Because these criminal networks integrate effortlessly into pre-existing social and cultural enclaves, they remain entirely invisible to outside law enforcement.

This insulating effect is particularly troubling in the United States, where a massive influx of Indian nationals flood the country utilizing heavily abused H-1B visa programs, fraudulent tech certifications, and rubber-stamped degrees from fake universities to set up illicit cash-heavy operations under the guise of legitimate business.

For those who argue that these people are simply desperate migrants seeking a better life, I would argue that if an individual is entirely comfortable breaking federal immigration laws and committing systemic document fraud just to enter the country, there is absolutely no reason to believe he will suddenly develop a moral conscience and stop breaking the law once he is safely inside.

Clannish communities

And once inside, the immediate consequences are clear. In Texas, suburban stretches outside Dallas and Houston have been completely overrun by waves of rapid migration. The sudden demographic shift is sobering because it features a total lack of assimilation. Instead of adopting local Texan culture, these highly clannish Indian communities stubbornly lock themselves into insular, self-governing pockets that refuse any meaningful integration with the broader American population.

This refusal to assimilate allows them to import third-world values directly into respectable neighborhoods from a nation where female genital mutilation, forced child marriages, and primitive honor killings are routine societal practices. By establishing these isolated, closed-off cultural zones, these factions maintain a fierce allegiance to old-world tribal hierarchies. This absolute rejection of Western legal and social standards provides a protected operational base for crime syndicates, allowing them to enforce their own brutal brand of street justice entirely outside the reach of American law.

Normalized savagery

When a syndicate recruits enforcers raised in an environment where killing your own sibling is considered a legitimate way to preserve family reputation, putting a bullet in someone’s head to settle a drug debt becomes second nature. This normalized savagery feeds directly into the operational tactics used on streets in America and beyond.

Modern law enforcement agencies are forced to adapt to a criminal structure that operates like a multinational corporation rather than a traditional street corner crew. The hierarchy relies on distinct, siloed departments handling recruitment, international money laundering, transport logistics, and tactical intimidation. The primary advantage these syndicates maintain is their ability to exploit the immigrant communities they embed themselves within. Victims of extortion may refuse to contact authorities due to targeted threats directed at their relatives back in the homeland.

With over 3 million Indian nationals now residing in America, the scale of this blind spot is staggering. While the multiculturalist consensus assumes the vast majority are law-abiding, it is past time to acknowledge the harsh reality. A significant and growing number are not, having entered the country through illicit, fraudulent, or entirely illegal means. It is precisely this undercurrent of lawlessness that provides the perfect, impenetrable human shield, enabling foreign thugs to operate with total impunity on American soil.

​India, Immigration, Culture, Organized crime, Canada, Crime 

Latino voters overwhelmingly support requiring government-issued photo ID to vote.

A Poll conducted by Pew Research Center confirmed that 82% of Latino voters in the United States approve such a requirement. The SAVE Act would codify the popular supermajority opinion on voter identification into law, but while the House has passed it multiple times, it has stalled in the Senate.

As citizens, Latinos want to protect the democratic republic that has blessed their lives so richly.

It should be no surprise that Latino voters support the key feature of the SAVE Act.

First, immigrant voters highly value their citizenship and the right to vote that it conveys to them. It takes at least seven years of legal presence in the U.S. to become a citizen, and those who have gone through that process value what they learned and who they became in the process.

They are proud and patriotic and zealous to preserve the system they have adopted and mastered. They do not take their rights as citizens lightly, and they do not want noncitizens to vote. Second, immigrant voters highly value the rule of law, which they recognize as the main thing that makes the United States what it is — the best place in the world to work and build a prosperous and free life.

While writing my book, “The New Pilgrims: How Immigrants are Renewing America’s Faith and Values,” I interviewed many immigrants who specifically explained that they moved to America for the purpose of coming under the rule of law. They understand that no justice, no equal protection under law, is possible without it.

They can also articulate how lawlessness and cheating undermine prosperity in their home countries. They understand that the land of the free and home of the brave persists because of America’s deep cultural commitment to obeying the law. They understand how illegal voting would undermine the very thing they value most about life in America.

Third, Latino immigrants, whether they are here legally or illegally, do not want noncitizens to vote in our elections. While the vast majority of illegal immigrants in America lead disciplined lives characterized by arduous labor, careful observance of the law, and moral practices such as church attendance, Latino immigrants recognize that there is a criminal element among many new immigrants that they do not want to empower in the United States.

Many of the most vulnerable illegal immigrants fled to the United States to get away from such people in their countries of origin. They do not want to risk arrest, imprisonment, or deportation by voting illegally, and they certainly do not want the criminal element to do so.

Hispanic immigrants in the United States who have become citizens have a terrific record of success in building the American dream of prosperity and freedom.

RELATED: Where is the outrage over our stolen birthright?

Douglas Rissing/Getty Images

Many current U.S. government officials and members of Congress illustrate spectacular success stories of immigrants and children of immigrants from Latin America: Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), not to mention Sonia Sotomayor, Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Luz Rivas (D-Calif.), and many others on both sides of the aisle.

Stories from industry, business, education, the military, the clergy, and every institution and profession in our society offer a literally never-ending story of Latino success in America. The system works beautifully for those who pay the price to become citizens and raise their children to love our country.

As citizens, Latinos want to protect the democratic republic that has blessed their lives so richly.

Latino voters are not a monolith. They voted for the Republican and Democrat presidential candidates in nearly equal numbers in 2024. In future elections, they will vote for the candidates that best represent their values and support them in Congress.

It’s time for both Democrat and Republican senators to represent the overwhelming Latino opinion and vote to pass the SAVE Act now, while there is still time to rescue America’s political integrity.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

​2028 election, American dream, Congress, Immigration, Legal immigrants, Opinion & analysis, Pew research center, Rule of law, Save act, Voter fraud 

On July 4, the $450 million Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opened its doors to the public — a public that, according to a letter in a library exhibit, Roosevelt felt was similar to cattle.

In the letter written to Charles Davenport at Cold Spring Harbor in his own hand, he explained that “society has no business permitting degenerates to reproduce their kind.”

Roosevelt wrote in the letter, “We have to refuse to apply human beings the same elementary knowledge every farmer applies to his own stock. And that’s madness.”

“The farmers who let all the increase come from the worst stock would be threatened as fit inmates for an asylum,” he added.

Roosevelt also wrote that the “inescapable duty of the good citizen of the right type is to leave his blood behind him in the world.”

“We have no business permitting the perpetuation of a citizen of the wrong type,” he said.

Like most progressives, Glenn points out that Roosevelt made it clear that he believed in “categories.”

“This fight is about categories,” he says. “It’s about, you know, the collective and not the individual in his own hand to the director of the Carnegie-funded scientific institute. This was not the fringe. This is the cutting edge. This is the settled science that you must pay attention to of the time.”

“Theodore Roosevelt believed in the science and in the expert and in the government strong enough and clever enough to act upon what the experts knew. That’s progressivism all in one letter,” he explains.

“Now, was he great with the national parks? Yeah, he was great on national parks. Was he great on the individual and the man in the arena? Yeah, he was brave. He was funny. He read a book every day. A book every day. He took a bullet in Milwaukee and finished the speech. He set aside 230 million acres. That’s not the argument,” he continues.

“The argument is what he thought the American government was for,” he adds.

Glenn explains that Roosevelt also believed that “property is subject to the community’s right to regulate its use” and that government officials were the “stewards of the public welfare” rather than “servants of the law.”

“In a speech he called a ‘Charter for Democracy,’ he proposed when a court strikes down a progressive statute, the people should be able to vote to overturn the court. Former president of the United States in 1912 proposing a popular recall of judicial decisions. That’s not constitutional. That’s not how it works,” Glenn says.

“Theodore Roosevelt is exactly what we’re seeing. He’s just dressed up in prettier clothes. He’s not a despicable man where Woodrow Wilson is just a despicable man,” he says, adding, “And I don’t think he actually saw what was coming.”

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​National parks, Presidential library, Progressivism, Theodore roosevelt, Woodrow wilson, The glenn beck program 

A couple of months have gone by since the last major security threat to plague Apple’s ecosystem, so we’re due for another round. This time, a fatal flaw has been identified for a very specific group of iPhone models, and unlike most bugs we cover here on Blaze Media, this one costs real money to fix. Here’s everything you need to know.

The flaw

The fatal flaw in question is a BootROM exploit known as usbliter8. For curious minds, BootROM is the on-device component that’s required to boot up a device, or turn it on from a power-off state.

It can’t be resolved by downloading a future iOS update.

This system relies on a “chain of trust” to validate a device’s hardware and software every time the phone boots up to ensure that all components are secure and uncompromised on a cybersecurity level. If BootROM is compromised in any way, hackers can install unauthorized code, downgrade your phone to a less secure version of iOS, and potentially leverage other exploits to access data.

Luckily, not all iPhones are at risk. The usbliter8 exploit specifically affects Apple devices with A12 and A13 chips under the hood. Drilling down deeper, these iPhone models are in danger along with several Apple Watches. Check the list to see if your phone is included:

iPhone XRiPhone XiPhone XS MaxiPhone 11iPhone 11 ProiPhone 11 Pro MaxiPhone SE (second generation)Apple Watch Series 4Apple Watch Series 5Apple Watch SE (first generation)

If you’re not sure which iPhone you have, open the Settings app, tap on General, then About, and find the model of your phone under Model Name.

Screenshots by Zach Laidlaw

The problem

What makes this flaw so tricky is that it takes place on the hardware level. Unlike software-related bugs that can be patched with a quick update directly from Apple, usbliter8 is attached to the chip inside your smartphone.

That means it can’t be resolved by downloading a future iOS update. The problem will remain on your handset for what’s left of its life.

The solution

So how do you fix a flaw that can’t be repaired with new software?

There’s only one solution, and you probably won’t like it.

RELATED: Dems launch new push to control more of what you do in your car

SergeyBitos/Getty Images

You have to upgrade your iPhone to a new model outside of the affected devices. In other words, if your phone is on the threat list, you need to replace your vulnerable device with an iPhone 12 from 2020 or newer.

The bright side

For many iPhone owners with these older models, this may be a hard pill to swallow. New phones are expensive, and they’re only growing less affordable, thanks to the RAM shortages brought on by AI.

So let’s say you can’t or don’t want to upgrade to a new iPhone to fix the problem. Should you be worried about someone hacking into your device?

By all accounts, the risk of an usbliter8 actually happening in a real-life situation is slim. In order to carry out an attack, the hacker would need physical access to your device, and he would have to be able to put the phone into Device Firmware Upgrade mode. As long as you keep your phone on your person or in a bag at all times, you’re probably safe.

Bonus tip: Never plug your phone directly into a public charging cable you might find at a restaurant, airport, rest stop, hospital, or a college campus. Sometimes these cables are tampered with or comprised in a way that exposes your device to bad actors. If you must charge your phone in public, bring your own cable and charging brick that plugs directly into a wall outlet.

That said, in the event that your phone is stolen or accessed via usbliter8, there isn’t much that can stop a hacker from breaking in. The hacker doesn’t need your password to access DFU mode and install malicious code. However, usbliter8 can’t break into encrypted data on an iPhone on its own, so always use a complex password and biometric authentication, such as FaceID or TouchID. Those are your best defenses.

​Iphone, Security, Hackers, Ios, Tech