The Bible tells us that when you're a Christian, things can get pretty rough — especially in countries other than the United States. Thankfully, there are some amazing rewards in store for believers who suffer for the Gospel.

The White House has assured the wife of Min Zin, an American scholar being held hostage in China, that her husband’s release is a “top priority” for Thursday’s Trump-Xi summit, Sylvia Zin told the Daily Signal in an interview.

“I had a meeting with the [National Security Council] yesterday, and they have reassured me that this is a top priority for the U.S. government and will be on the agenda for the summit with [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping],” she said.

 “Resolving the wrongful detentions of U.S. citizens is always a top priority for the president,” a senior U.S. official told the Daily Signal.

Min Zin, a husband and father of one, traveled to China for an academic conference on June 3. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs now claims he is a danger to “national security.” The U.S. State Department has designated his detention as wrongful.

Sylvia Zin believes President Donald Trump is the only one who can bring her husband to safety. Xi arrives Wednesday night for the first visit by a Chinese leader to the U.S. in more than a decade.

“President Trump has brought home over 100 Americans in his office,” Zin said, “and I am hoping that my husband is the next one.”

Zin helped her husband pack the night before and expected that this trip would be like his many others to China.

“He goes on these types of trips all the time,” she said. “Particularly to China, he was there in October of 2025, and there was no problem. It was just the usual kind of trip that he takes every other month.”

The trip felt so routine that Zin left the house to drop their daughter off at school before her husband woke up.

“Usually, he will call me after he gets seated in an airplane,” she said. “And this time he said, ‘I’m seated,’ and he texted me. And I said, ‘I’m in the shopping mall. Do you want me to go to the car so we can talk?’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, it’s OK. It’s only a couple hours flight. I’ll just call you when I land,’ and so I didn’t even take the time to go talk to him.”

He texted his wife when he landed in China. She hasn’t heard from him since.

“We called the immigration [office]. We called the airport. We called the luggage [office] to see what happened,” she said, “and we determined that there is something wrong. And so I called the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou on the morning of June 4 to report him missing, and I heard back from them on June 5 that they have been informed that he has been detained.”

Min Zin has been kept in an undisclosed location. All his wife knows is that he is in a small room with no windows and that he has developed knee pain and lost weight. He is interrogated for four to six hours a day.

No one knows why Zin has been detained. His research, which largely focuses on Myanmar, is open source, and everything is available on his website.

“I don’t know what it is about his work that they’re not happy with,” Sylvia Zin said. “It is a very big unknown for us.”

 Michael Lucci, founder of State Armor, said China negotiates by capturing hostages before U.S. summits.

“This is just how the Chinese Communist Party negotiates,” Lucci told the Daily Signal. “They grab a bunch of American hostages so that we have to ask for them back in the next summit.”

Sylvia and Min Zin have been together for 23 years. She said she knew she wanted to marry him because he always makes her laugh.

“Any hardship that we go through, he will make it light, and he will make it bearable,” she said. “And I think that’s a really good quality for us to face anything that that’s going to come our way.”

Their 14-year-old daughter is old enough to understand how serious it is to be designated a “national security threat” by China, and she is worried about her father.

“She is old enough to understand what endangering national security means, and how that will change our family, and this is the first time where I’m doing the job of both mom and dad,” she said. “So it’s been very difficult for both of us.” 

When asked what her message is to Trump, Sylvia Zin said, “Please bring my husband Min Zin’s name to President Xi.”

“Please work to bring him home,” she said. “President Trump is the only one who can do it, and we are praying and counting on him to bring my husband home.”

The saga involving a Toledo-area doctor who forced his girlfriend to ingest abortion-causing drugs has come to an end with Dr. Hassan-James Abbas receiving six months of jail time, plus two years of probation. The sentence is unacceptable to Ohio pro-lifers, who are urging the Department of Justice to step in.

On Tuesday, Center for Christian Virtue President Aaron Baer was joined by other Ohio leaders who addressed the tragic incident.

Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, was similarly outraged and penned a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche that same day calling for action.

The incident took place in late 2024, when Abbas was in a relationship with the victim, Jona Affholder, after separating from his wife.

When Affholder informed Abbas on Dec. 7, 2024, that she was pregnant, he told her to get an abortion, though she did not want one.

The next day, Abbas acquired pills from an out-of-state telemedicine abortion provider and used his estranged wife’s information to do so, using his own credit card, email address, and delivery address. Three days later, the drugs arrived.

On Dec. 18, when Affholder was staying the night, she woke up to Abbas on top of her as he held her down and forced a crushed powder into her mouth, which was absorbed into her bloodstream through her gums. While she fought her way to the kitchen and called 911, Abbas took her phone and hung up.

Affholder was documented by the hospital as an “assault victim” and had a diagnosis of vaginal bleeding. She lost the baby.

Abbas was sentenced on Sept. 11. The surgeon pleaded no contest in May to four felony charges, including disrupting public services, unlawful distribution of an abortion-inducing drug, identity fraud, and deception to obtain a dangerous drug.

On Tuesday, Baer and others gathered in Toledo to express their outrage over the six-month sentence.

“So, we have to ask ourselves, how did this happen? How did a life get taken, a woman get abused … and the predator only got six months in prison?” Baer asked. He went on to blame the Biden administration’s relaxing of standards for acquiring the pill in December 2021, especially as it pertains to acquiring pills online.

The Food and Drug Administration stopped requiring that abortion drugs be dispensed to mothers in person, which allowed them to receive such drugs through telehealth appointments and by mail.

“Predators like Abbas can steal an identity, order the pills, drug a woman, and take a life. So I tell you, where was her choice in this whole process? Where’s the voice of that unborn child? That’s why we stand here today to fight for the unborn life and fight for Ohio’s women,” Baer continued.

That theme was expressed by speakers throughout the press conference, including Dave Yost, Ohio’s former attorney general who now works with Alliance Defending Freedom.

“Whatever you feel about the abortion issue, whether you feel it’s a right or not, you should be appalled. My friends on the left should be appalled by the assault that happened on this woman,” Yost said about Abbas.

“This was a forcible administration [of the drug]. He used his superior size to push this into her body. I can think of no other fact patterns where there wouldn’t be nearly universal outrage. It is act of violence, and I concur that first, the federal government needs to reimpose the commonsense Obama-era restriction for safety of women, and secondly, the Ohio General Assembly needs to act.”

Moreno was similarly dissatisfied by the sentence, as his letter made clear.

“Unsurprisingly, reckless Biden-era mail-in abortion policies are responsible for this hell-on-earth tragedy,” Moreno wrote early on.

“Without ever setting foot inside a pharmacy, Mr. Abbas procured the mail-order abortion drugs fraudulently using his estranged wife’s name. It is hard for me to imagine a wickedness more significant than this,” Moreno later wrote. “What makes this even worse is that Mr. Hassan Abbas was only sentenced to six months of jail time and two years of probation.”

Yost also highlighted how regulations were stronger during President Donald Trump’s first term and also under former President Barack Obama’s administration.

“This would not have happened because of the legal structure,” Yost said. “During the Obama administration, and actually from the time of its approval, Mifepristone required a three-visit regimen.”

Pro-lifers, including ADF, have tried for years to get the matter of the abortion pill dealt with before the U.S. Supreme Court. The unanimous decision in 2024 of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine found that the pro-life doctors in the case did not have standing. There’s a new effort, however, with Louisiana v. FDA. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit heard oral arguments earlier this month.

“As a matter of public policy, I encourage you to act quickly to conclude the Louisiana v. FDA case, such that the in-person dispensing in a medical setting requirement is reinstated as the FDA continues its critical safety review of the drugs,” Moreno urged Blanche.

For all of his frustration toward the Biden administration, the senator expressed hope in the Trump administration’s DOJ.

“I applaud the historic work the United States Department of Justice has done to unveil the damage the Biden Administration caused, including the weaponization of federal law against pro-life Americans. However, the work is far from done. I look forward to working together to protect mothers and babies from the real threats of evil that exist, such as what tragically Ms. Affholder endured,” Moreno concluded.

The Center for Christian Virtue has a campaign urging people to reach out to the DOJ on the matter.

The Daily Signal reached out to the Department of Justice about the letter but did not hear back in time for publication.

Furthering the need for action, speakers during Tuesday’s press conference highlighted stories of other forced abortions via the pill across the state and country.

State Rep. Josh Williams warned that “this light sentence that was given to this man is only going to destroy the voice and kill in this community,” and he echoed other speakers, including calling for the Ohio Legislature to ban the mailing of abortion pills.

Democrat Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, who believes there are six biological sexes, is leading Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race, a Marist survey revealed Tuesday.

The post Poll: James Talarico Leading Ken Paxton in Texas Senate Race appeared first on Breitbart.

NC Senate candidate Roy Cooper (D) jetted off to New York City as Hurricane Helene gathered strength and prepared to make landfall--and he was supposed to be leading preparedness efforts.

The post Two Years Ago Roy Cooper Chose NYT Climate Conference Over Leading Hurricane Helene Preparedness appeared first on Breitbart.

A Texas reverend whom state Rep. James Talarico said had an impact on him as a Christian has been caught on camera saying that evangelical Christians are not smart. 

Talarico, a Democrat who is in a highly contested race against Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton for the Texas U.S. Senate seat, has said that the Rev. Jim Rigby, the pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, was one of “the biggest influences on [him] as a Christian, as a human being.” 

Talarico is a part-time Presbyterian seminarian who has had a tainted career in the Texas Legislature for being against religious initiatives, including keeping the Bible out of schools. He has also used Scripture to justify abortion and voted against legislation to prohibit minors from accessing gender transitioning procedures and treatments using public funds.

However, Blaze News exclusively obtained hidden-camera footage that reveals what Talarico’s spiritual mentor, Rigby, thinks of evangelical Christians. 

A video from Aug. 30 shows a person off-camera asking Rigby, “What’s wrong with evangelical Christians?” Rigby responded to the question, allegedly saying that evangelical Christians are “just not that smart.” 

“My guess is that they’re people who are just not that smart, in like, abstract thinking, which is where a lot of the liberal stuff and the principles of human rights and all that stuff comes up—it’s like they just, it doesn’t show up on their radar.” 

But Rigby didn’t stop there. He further complained about evangelicals’ beliefs in hell, angels, and demons, telling the individual that those beliefs are irrational. 

“The church is a huge part of the problem—teaching people from the cradle that things are true because you believe them,” Rigby said in the video. “A belief in hell shuts everything down, because when you think that you could be tortured for all eternity, and you believe in demons and angels and stuff like this, you can’t stay rational for long.” 

Rigby added that if “supernatural beings are affecting things, good logic wouldn’t make any sense.” 

The undercover video is not the only instance in which Rigby has made controversial statements. Talarico’s mentor has also made headlines for calling for a “true jihad” at a pro-Palestine rally and has stated that he rejects the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

“You see, God loves us very much, but mindless obedience is VERY important to God, so God decided to barbecue us eternally for the mistakes of our ancestors,” Rigby wrote on Facebook. “But God has a son named Jesus who asked God to abuse him instead. And so God killed Jesus in our place. And we call this story, the ‘good news.’ All that matters is that we admit that we are worthless trash, but that Jesus likes us anyway. Oh, and we have to LITERALLY believe Jesus’ corpse got up.”  

In an Easter post, Rigby also wrote that he doesn’t “believe Christianity is the only way, or even the best way for many people.” 

“If we Christians are ‘chosen,’ it is to be of service to everyone else. I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe the miracle stories of scripture were intended to describe the magical powers of supernatural beings. I believe miracle stories were originally a whimsical teaching device used by wise rabbis to reveal and illumine the miraculous nature of our everyday experiences,” he wrote. 

Although Rigby has been supportive of Talarico and his campaign messaging, he has posted that he does not speak for Talarico and that “he owes no one an explanation” for his comments.

Current polling shows that Talarico has a one-point advantage over Paxton as voters prepare to vote in the upcoming midterm election.

Former Harvard President Claudine Gay is reportedly back at the Ivy League school nearly three years after stepping down in disgrace due to plagiarism accusations . This time, Gay will teach a course about Harvard itself.

The post Former Harvard President Claudine Gay Returns from Plagiarism Scandal to Teach Class appeared first on Breitbart.

The State of California has spent more than $11 billion tax dollars to give illegal migrants free healthcare, free food, housing, legal assistance, education, smart phones, and even free car insurance, a report finds.

The post Report Exposes California’s $11B ‘Shadow Welfare System’ for Illegals appeared first on Breitbart.

Speaking to a forum hosted by the Economist in New York, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright explained that banning the export of diesel fuel will do nothing to impact the price of diesel fuel and would, eventually, raise the price. The reasoning is simple. “The blunt tool ​of banning diesel exports definitely doesn’t work,” Wright […]

The post Energy Secretary Wright is Correct – Banning Exports of U.S. Diesel only Raises the Price of U.S. Diesel appeared first on The Last Refuge.

Congressional-Executive Committee on China Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., plans to advocate for the release of American citizens and religious advocates detained in China in a call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio ahead of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States on Thursday.

On Tuesday, the committee held a hearing that included the testimony of Pastor Ezra Jin, who spent 200 days in a Chinese prison for running a non-state-sponsored church. Jin was released after President Donald Trump met with Xi in Beijing in May and raised the issue. But others, like Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt, remain imprisoned in China. Tuesday’s hearing included testimony from family members of Wells and Hunt

In an interview with the Daily Signal, Smith said that he’s optimistic about the call’s success, describing Rubio as a “humanitarian at heart” who will prioritize the issue of imprisoned worshippers when speaking with Trump ahead of Thursday’s summit.

“He’s very successful, he’s a humanitarian at heart, he’ll see why this is so important,” Smith stated.

Smith now sees this call as the best opportunity to alert Trump about the detention of other pastors and Americans imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party ahead of the president’s Thursday meeting with the Chinese leader.

Smith added that he will tell the secretary to prioritize “these issues” during the summit.

“How many times do you [the United States] get to talk to Xi Jinping like this?” Smith added.

Smith continued, adding that if the president were to raise the issue of those wrongfully detained by the Chinese government, Xi might actually follow through.

“He’s in charge of that country. He could do it tomorrow and tell the other Communist Party officials to get back in line,” the chairman continued. “He could make this happen, and Trump can help him to make an offer.”

The State Department did not respond to the Daily Signal’s inquiry on whether the call will occur.

Steve Yates, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal that Trump has proven successful in negotiating the release of Chinese prisoners and should continue to do so.

“I support the effort. President Trump has proven able to get tough cases released from other parts of the world, contrary to what most of his critics will grant, and far more effectively than most of his predecessors,” Yates told the Daily Signal.

“He also succeeded in getting Pastor Jin released after the May summit. So why not continue with this meaningful effort?” Yates added.

The senior research fellow continued, stating that if both leaders, especially Jinping, want to highlight strong diplomatic relations and their commitment to a humanitarian cause, they should proceed with the release of such prisoners.

“While not an American citizen, I think the Jimmy Lai case is the strongest prospect for a humanitarian release and would send the strongest signal that the personal relationship between the two leaders matters more than summitry and economic negotiations,” Yates concluded.

Andrew Harding, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, added in a statement to the Daily Signal that by the president advocating for the release of the prisoners during his meeting with the Chinese leader, it could produce “tangible outcomes” and determine “whether China follows through on concrete actions.”

“Securing the release of wrongfully detained Americans, including cases such as Min Zin, or persecuted Christians, would be a low-cost step China could take to signal that it is serious about stabilizing the bilateral relationship,” Harding continued. “It would also serve as a test of whether Beijing is willing to back its calls for more stable U.S.-China relations with meaningful actions rather than rhetoric.”