Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) claimed President Donald Trump was "being played as a fool" by Iran.

The post Booker: ‘Trump Is Being Played as a Fool’ by Iran appeared first on Breitbart.

When evangelical leader James Robison heard the words this weekend, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” the first thing on the Lord’s mind would have been the tens of millions of souls Robison brought into the kingdom over his 60 years of ministry. Not so much the 2016 election.

Still, what happened that year is something for the history books, if not the Book of Life.

According to Pew Research data, Donald Trump almost certainly would have lost the razor-thin race to Hillary Clinton if not for the support of white evangelical Christians. That support almost certainly would not have turned out in winning numbers if not for Robison’s Herculean behind-the-scenes efforts.

I had a front row seat to this political thriller, as I was then working for James (as I knew him).

A Primary Full of Friends … and ‘That Man Trump’

The story begins with the GOP primary. Of the dozen-plus Republican candidates, James was friends with about 10. Close to about seven. A father figure to two or three. Trump was not one of those friends—far from it. In fact, for about a year, I swear James never referred to him as anything other than “That Man Trump.”

When some faith leaders started endorsing Trump, oh, boy. I remember the Rev. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Dallas, an early endorser of Trump, coming on “LIFE Today.” Between segments, James chewed his ears like they were beef jerky.

Mike Huckabee, who owed his first professional job (and his first-ever suits) to James called from the campaign trail. “James, you’re not going to believe this. But Trump listens.” That caught James’ attention, because another candidate he’d known since he was young man was not listening.

But still … “That Man Trump.”

Then James got word that Ben Carson, a spiritual son, was set to endorse Trump. James immediately called Carson backstage at the Trump rally to give him chapter and verse. Carson cooly replied, “I told Trump I’d endorse him if he spent an hour with you.”

James would rather have had teeth removed without Novocain than go to Trump Tower to meet “That Man Trump.” But the evangelist in him couldn’t resist. “I hit him with everything I had,” James recalled. “I told him, ‘You might know how to be a father to these boys, but you don’t know anything about being a father to this nation!’” To James’ amazement, Trump was incredibly gracious and receptive to what he was saying.

Still, James didn’t trust the billionaire reality star. Too many other candidates schmoozed him for support only to disappear after Election Day. But Trump had taken a liking to James and suggested another meeting. Then another with a group of evangelical influencers. Next thing you know, they’re buds, with James even doing a campaign event. He also began counseling other evangelical leaders that while Trump may not be “our” choice, get used to the idea he’s the people’s choice.

Fast-forward to the general election. Trump had worked hard to win over evangelical leaders. Although some remained vehement Never-Trumpers, many had started to support him, if only as an alternative to Clinton.

And then …

The ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape

On Oct. 7, one month before the election, the “Access Hollywood” story broke, shattering the fragile alliance Trump had been building among evangelical leaders—shattering even long-term relationships between leaders who held onto their Trump support and those who saw it as immoral to back such a crude, ungodly character.

One nationally-known leader of a Christian conservative political organization was so distraught over the Trump drama that he told James he was retiring. Another leading pastor-author was near tears, broken over the rancor within his congregation. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign was in crisis mode.

James got busy. The man who could convince a leopard to lose his spots spent 17 exhausting hours a day on the phone. One minute, talking leaders off the ledge. “With Trump you don’t know what you’re going to get. With Hillary you KNOW what you’re going to get.” The next minute, praying with leaders who were at odds, healing rifts before they became insurmountable. The minute after that, counseling the campaign, ministering to the Trump family.

Hour after hour, day after day, James kept at it, the voice that could thunder across stadiums reduced to a raspy, exhausted whisper, pulling by force of will and argument the fragile evangelical coalition back together. A coalition, not incidentally, that included people who, for doctrinal reasons, would “never have even been in the same room together,” who were now banding together. This “miracle,” as James called it, would become the basis for President Trump’s Faith Council.

By the third debate, 12 days later, the alliance had mostly reformed, if held together only by Scotch tape and prayer.

Then, partway through, Trump and Clinton had an exchange over abortion, particularly partial-birth abortion. Trump let loose:

“Well, I think it’s terrible. If you go with what Hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that’s OK and Hillary can say that that’s OK. But it’s not OK with me, because based on what she’s saying, and based on where she’s going, and where she’s been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that’s not acceptable.” 

I could almost feel a jolt through the TV set. Never had a presidential candidate, Republican or otherwise, spoken so bluntly, forcefully, and even passionately against abortion. Strategic or from the heart? I don’t know. Something James had put on his mind? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

But in that moment—having been on some of those calls with James, having a strong sense of the heart of those evangelical leaders—I knew Trump had just struck a nerve and sealed the deal. What was that old “Access Hollywood” tape compared to the prospect of protecting new life?

It wasn’t about Trump. It was about rescuing the unborn, rescuing the nation from the curse of secularism—heck, rescuing the ability to say “Merry Christmas” without getting grief for it.

What was fragile would now be a force.

Trump would go on to ride the support of white Christian evangelicals to victory.

Mere hours after being declared the winner, the president-elect called James. After jokes about how remarkable their wives were for putting up with them, Trump closed with this:

“James, never let me forget what you did for me.”

I certainly won’t. Nor should the nation ever forget James Robison.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

On Sunday, on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) criticized Trump-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R), saying he did not deserve to win.

The post Tillis: Paxton Is a Failure, ‘He Doesn’t Deserve to Be in the U.S. Senate’ appeared first on Breitbart.

Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said Congress would defund President Donald Trump’s so-called anti-weaponization fund.

The post Thom Tillis: Congress Will Defund the ‘Bogus’ Anti-Weaponization Fund appeared first on Breitbart.

Nearly 40 Pizza Hut locations across the country have returned to the restaurant's iconic vintage vibes and customers are overjoyed.

The post VIDEO — ‘A Lot of Feel-Good’: Franchisee Goes Old-School for ‘Pizza Hut Classic’ Locations appeared first on Breitbart.

Climate litigation is having a difficult month. 

As plaintiffs suing energy companies for global warming gear up for their upcoming Supreme Court hearing, the plans to extract billions under local tort laws suffered significant setbacks in recent weeks. 

Last week, the modeling scenarios used to predict the most dire consequences from global warming were deemed “implausible” by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which climate activists typically cite as the key source for global warming projections.  

And on May 12, the government of New Zealand outlawed climate lawsuits in that country, echoing energy companies’ defense that regulating global greenhouse gas emissions belonged under the purview of national regulators and lawmakers rather than local courts. 

“Even in a place that is far to the left of the United States on most policy issues, they can see the common sense that you don’t want your government policy and your national economy regulated by lawsuits,” O.H. Skinner, executive director of the Alliance for Consumers, told the Daily Signal. 

Calling the lawsuits “a backdoor way to set policy through the courts instead of through elected lawmakers,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said that the “legal and evidentiary landscape has shifted substantially” against climate litigators. 

“Layer on the recent developments—the Federal Judicial Center pulling its climate science chapter from its judicial reference manual, the EPA reconsidering the 2009 Endangerment Finding, and the IPCC retiring [its most extreme modeling scenario]—and the entire scientific scaffolding underpinning these cases is being reassessed in real time,” Isaac told the Daily Signal.  

On the New Zealand government’s website, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith stated that climate lawsuits were increasing uncertainty and undermining energy investment.  

“The courts are not the right place to resolve claims of harm from climate change, and tort law is not well-suited to respond to a problem like climate change, which involves a range of complex environmental, economic and social factors,” Goldsmith stated.  

This action comes as climate lawsuits proliferate, not just in America, but around the world.  

According to a 2025 report by London School of Economics research fellows Joana Setzer and Catherine Higham, there have been nearly 3,000 climate lawsuits filed in 60 countries since 1986. About 1,900 of them were filed in the U.S., 164 in Australia, 133 in the U.K., and 131 in Brazil.  

“Climate litigation has evolved into a powerful global tool for advancing climate action and accountability,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the U.N. Environmental Program, stated. 

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Suncor Energy v. Boulder County, a Colorado lawsuit that will likely set a national precedent. In these suits, plaintiffs claim that burning oil, gas, and coal harmed local residents by creating a “public nuisance” and that energy companies “failed to warn” consumers that using their products can cause bad weather. Plaintiffs are seeking billions of dollars in damages, with one lawsuit in Multnomah County, Oregon, alone demanding $50 billion. 

These claims are often based on climate models produced by organizations like the IPCC, but the IPCC’s recent statement that the most extreme modeling scenarios are unrealistic undermines many of the damage claims. The IPCC’s “Representative Concentration Pathways (RPC) 8.5” projection is based on assumptions, such as the dramatic expansion of coal burning, despite the recent rise of natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar energy.  

“Every study that comes out that says the world is ending is based on these extreme scenarios,” Kenny Stein, policy vice president at the Institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Signal. “If you use the scenario estimates that are actually closer to what’s really happening and you run those through a climate model, you don’t get significant impacts.” 

Climate litigators have denied that they are attempting to regulate energy companies.  

Attorney Victor Sher argued before state supreme court justices last fall that his lawsuit on behalf of Baltimore, Annapolis, and Anne Arundel County “does not involve capping, regulating or limiting emissions by the defendants or anybody … It doesn’t involve changing pollution control measures or installing equipment or anything like that.” 

But attorney David Bookbinder, who represented Boulder in its suit, stated that the goal of the suits was indeed to impose “an indirect carbon tax.”  

“You sue an oil company, an oil company is liable, the oil company then passes that liability on to the people who are buying its products. In some sense, it is the most efficient way—the people who buy those products are now going to be paying for the cost imposed by those products,” Bookbinder stated at an Oct. 10 Federalist Society webinar. 

If the suits succeed, Isaac said, “they would raise prices sharply—through damages passed to consumers, higher liability insurance and capital costs, and reduced investment in domestic energy production.” 

And this presents another hurdle for climate litigation. The recent spike in gasoline prices due to the Gulf war has given consumers around the world a taste of what would happen if climate lawsuits succeeded. European consumers have already been paying significantly higher electricity rates since the EU-mandated shift to wind and solar energy. 

“In a democracy, that’s a political problem because people rightly ask their governments: why are our prices rising?” Stein said. “Climate change actions are absolutely on their back foot in general because of this problem of responsive democracy.” 

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal. 

Economists and energy experts have lambasted Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D-CA) recent call to boycott Chevron, noting the state's high gas prices are due to Newsom's anti-energy agenda.

The post Economists, Energy Experts Torch Gavin Newsom’s Chevron Boycott appeared first on Breitbart.

Pentecost ought to remind us of our identity and renew our trust that God is always with us.

After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Apostles all gathered together in a building’s upper room, worried and confused about how to move forward. Then the Holy Spirit came rushing forth upon them (Acts 2:2). They were immediately emboldened to rush out of the upper room and proclaim Jesus’ identity to anyone who would hear.

This is what the God’s Spirit does: It ignites us.

The Holy Spirit was felt and seen among the Apostles, and He reminded them of who Jesus called them to be. The Apostles were convicted; they knew that they were not alone. God’s presence in them showed them how to act and what to do.

The same is true for Christians today.

Pentecost confronts us with a question: are we stuck in our own “upper room”? Do we silo our faith from our lives, rather than allowing God’s Spirit to move through us in all of our interactions?

In my prayer during this Easter season, I have been reflecting on the general tone of my conversation with God. If I am completely honest, much of it is self-centered. I ask Him for help. I implore His love to be with my wife and kids. I pray for sick family members, and I am open with God about what is bothering me. My prayer is often too centered on myself, rather than being an expression of the fact that God is with me.

This had to be a factor in the Apostles’ gathering in the upper room. They were worried about what to do and how to move forward. In the midst of their turning inward, the Spirit came to convince them of their identity: They were made to be with God and to tell others about Him.

The role of the Christian in today’s world is the same.

In 2003, Pope Saint John Paul II put it well: “The Church of Christ is always, so to speak, in a situation of Pentecost: she is always gathered in the Upper Room in prayer, and at the same time, driven by the powerful wind of the Spirit, she is always on the streets preaching.”

This is the dual foundation of the Christian life: to be in communion with God and to be willing to share that union with others. Believers in Christ exist in order to know Him, love Him, and serve Him. Therefore, the celebration of Pentecost implores us to consider how we do so. We should ask ourselves two questions.

First, are we people of daily prayer? Do we make intentional and personal time for God each and every day?

If the answer is no, then we can implement practices and structures that can help bolster our prayer life. Set aside an extra 10 minutes when you wake up and before you go to bed. Start small, perhaps by making a promise to God, in prayer, that you will give Him this time. Tell a friend or family member about it so you are kept accountable and have someone to speak with about your prayer life.

Second, we must ask ourselves if we courageously speak about the faith openly to people. This does not mean that we become street preachers, nor does it mean that we heckle people with our faith. It simply means that we become more aware of how we can bring up the faith or our practice of prayer to people in casual and organic ways.

This can happen at work when someone asks about our weekend. We can explain our experiences with family and friends but also mention our attendance at church and how it helps guide us. This can also take place among our immediate family by calling for more opportunities to pray before meals or together as a family before bed.

These two little practices can go a long way to mold us into men and women like the Apostles, who ran out of the upper room on that first Pentecost.

It only takes some commitment and a daily encounter with Christ in prayer to light a fire in our souls to live with a Pentecost spirit. This spirit will help shape our families and communities for a brighter future and a holier world.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Missing Canadian actor Stewart McLean's remains were identified Friday just 24-hours after it was announced he was possibly a victim of homicide.

The post ‘Virgin River’ Actor Stewart McLean Went Missing, Found Dead — Police Are Investigating as a Homicide appeared first on Breitbart.

Multiple reports have indicated that U.S. negotiators believe that Iran has committed to giving up its nuclear ambitions and its highly enriched uranium as a part of a broader peace deal with President Donald Trump.

The post Iran Agreed to Surrender Enriched Uranium, End Nuclear Ambitions in Tentative Deal with Trump: Reports appeared first on Breitbart.