REUTERS—U.S. authorities believe the Afghan immigrant accused of ambushing National Guard members in Washington, D.C., was not radicalized until after he came to the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Sunday.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and ABC’s “This Week,” Noem said authorities think alleged shooter Rahmanullah Lakanwal was already living in Washington state when he became radicalized. Investigators are seeking more information from family members and others, Noem said.

Authorities identified Lakanwal, 29, as the suspect in a Wednesday shooting that took place just blocks away from the White House and which killed one National Guard member and critically wounded another. After the shooting, President Donald Trump’s administration pointed to a lack of vetting of Afghans and other foreign nationals during the term of former President Joe Biden, although Lakanwal was granted asylum under Trump.

Trump told reporters on Sunday his administration could pause asylum admissions into the United States for an extended period. “No time limit, but it could be a long time,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “We have enough problems. We don’t want those people.”

Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 as part of the Biden administration’s mass evacuation of Afghans who aided U.S. forces during the two-decade war in Afghanistan as the Taliban took power. He was granted asylum in April by Trump’s administration, a government file reviewed by Reuters showed.

Noem’s comments suggest Lakanwal, who was part of a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan, may have embraced extremism after arriving in the United States.

“We believe he was radicalized since he’s been here in this country,” Noem told NBC News. “We do believe it was through connections in his home community and state, and we’re going to continue to talk to those who interacted with him, who were his family members.”

Noem said U.S. officials have received “some participation” so far from people who knew Lakanwal and warned the U.S. would pursue anyone connected to the shooting.

“Anyone who has the information on this needs to know that we will be coming after you, and we will bring you to justice,” Noem said.

After Wednesday’s attack, the Trump administration took steps to clamp down on some legal immigration, including a freeze on processing of all asylum applications.

Noem said on Sunday immigration officials would consider deporting people with active asylum cases if it was warranted.

“We are going to go through every single person that has a pending asylum claim,” she said.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson and Jasper Ward; additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Sergio Non, Chizu Nomiyama and Chris Reese)

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As we enter the final month of 2025, there’s no better time to start thinking about the year ahead and how we as conservatives can find unity in our purpose to save this great nation we call home. It’s our duty as Americans to make sure future generations enjoy the same promise of those who came before us.

At Heritage, we’ve started this conversation, centered around four questions plain enough to ask around the dinner table with your family and significant enough to guide a movement and save a republic:

1. What does it mean to be a flourishing American family?
2. What does it mean to honor the dignity of work and secure the future of?free enterprise?
3. What does it mean to have true national security?
4. What does it mean to be an American citizen?

As readers of The Daily Signal, with its roots stemming from Heritage, you already know we have a point of view based a core set of conservative principles. We’re confident in our thinking and our institution’s 52 years of robust intellectual history to dedicate ourselves to answering these questions.

Taking Back Washington to Save America

We believe that united, good-faith conservatives will engage in this discussion. We are also certain we know what a restored America looks like:

• Marriage and family celebrated, not ignored or mocked.
• Work dignified, wages rising, and two incomes a family choice, not a necessity.
• Borders secure, military strong, enemies deterred.
• Children learning truth—not ideology—in educational institutions that parents control.
• Faith respected, civic virtue restored, patriotism the norm.
• Government limited, debt shrinking, freedom expanding.

We call this Heritage 2.0 inside our organization, where every colleague contributed to its creation. We present it to you as our battle plan to save America.

Let there be no mistake; we are taking back Washington to save America. That puts a target on us—from the uniparty, the entrenched bureaucracy, and the deep state. Now may be a suitable time to reiterate with clarity our message to the purveyors of the status quo: Bring it on.

We sweat not for the elites, but for everyday Americans. We toil not to be keyboard warriors but to chart a course of national renewal. The future of conservatism—a fusion of old and new right—will succeed when we return power to the people.

The Beauty of Our American System

Today’s populism didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It arose from failed leadership, calcified institutions, and elites who prioritized bureaucracy over everyday Americans. The people aren’t seeking minor fixes; they’re challenging the very credibility of the system, and often, they’re spot on. This ought to inspire our movement!

The clearest path to returning power to the people is through a wholehearted rejuvenation of federalism. We will never lose sight of the many millions who feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. More than any organization across the country, Heritage is fully engaged in the work required to ensure a free, self-governing people can raise families and engage in community and commerce with peace, principles, and prosperity.

Of course, the people will decide our future, as President Donald Trump recently noted, appealing to the beauty of our American system. We are clear-eyed that our effort comes at a time of cultural and civic strain. But we’ve been here before. My friend and predecessor Ed Feulner wrote in his book “The March of Freedom” that conservatism is “a broad social movement of diverse but reinforcing beliefs, gathering travelers on the same journey—pilgrims who argue over the topography of their promised land but move in the same direction.”

Building for America’s Next 250 Years

As Vice President JD Vance also said, the forces arrayed against conservatives of all stripes have massive resources, and there is a point where infighting becomes counterproductive.

So, let’s get to work. It’s time to channel that turbulent passion, refine it with cool reason through public deliberation, and build a better America for the next 250 years, rooted in self-governance.

Our Heritage is our future. Through it, together, we will save the republic and secure its future.

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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Minnesota’s largest teachers union is under fire this week over its “professional development” courses on topics such as “Interrupting Whiteness” and “LGBTQ+ Training.”

The “racial equity trainings” can be brought “to your building” when requested by Education Minnesota members, the union website explains, and offer instruction on topics like “Culturally Responsive Teaching With a Racial Justice Lens” and “Cultural Competency.” Educators in the state are required to fulfill a “cultural competency” training in order to renew their teaching licenses, which can include topics such as “Systemic Racism,” “Gender Identity, Including Transgender Students,” “Language Diversity,” and more, according to the state government page.

The union website features similar content across the board, offering materials on “Anti-immigrant rhetoric & deportation,”  various “anti-racism” resources,  and a “racial and social justice” page claiming “certain politicians” are using police officers against minority students.

“Most of us believe that every child, no matter what they look like or where they come from, deserves a safe and welcoming school where they can thrive,” it says. “But certain politicians try to divide us by sending police to monitor and punish Black and brown students in schools that have been denied funding to even cover the basics, while ensuring well-resourced schools with mostly white students have enrichment activities, teacher training, and parent engagement.”

The website also names “the murder of George Floyd” and “attacks on honesty in education” as hardships the group is fighting against.

Education Minnesota’s programs are part of the “Facing Inequities and Racism in Education” (FIRE) series, designed to “disrupt systemic racism and racial inequities in Minnesota’s education system.” The union operates a “Racial Equity Advocate network” and offers “Equity EdCamps.”

Education Minnesota did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

Meanwhile, more than half of 4th-grade students in Minnesota tested below the national proficiency standard in 2024. About 66% of 8th-grade students tested below proficient in math in the same year, and 72% tested below proficient in reading.

Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, former vice presidential nominee, signed a law in 2024 that funded race-based teacher trainings and aimed to increase the number of “diverse” teachers in schools. In 2023, Walz signed a law requiring schools to offer “ethnic studies” courses, introducing children to racially divisive topics beginning in kindergarten.

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

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The cultural stereotype of a Catholic nun is often very uptight—as in unmercifully swatting a child’s knuckles with a ruler—but sometimes it’s more violent. Nuns plot murders.

This happened on the CBS crime drama/dramedy “Elsbeth” on Nov. 20. The main character, Elsbeth Tascioni, is a Chicago lawyer sent to New York City to enforce a federal consent decree with the New York Police Department. But every week, she’s solving murders while she floats around in flamboyant outfits and a collection of large handbags.

In this implausible episode, the Archdiocese of New York decided to sell a 200-year-old convent to a scandalous pop star named Alaia Jade so she can transform it into a recording studio. At the beginning, the soon-to-be-displaced nuns about are watching one of her music videos, where she writhes and crawls around dressed in slutty-nun garb in a church setting, licking a crucifix and singing, “Crucify me / You can vilify me / I spit your gospel out / And fill you full of doubt.”

This might be inspired by the pop star Sabrina Carpenter, who flounced about in a tiny black dress and a cross necklace inside a Catholic church in Brooklyn for her music video “Feather” two years ago. In that case, Carpenter’s lyrics had nothing to do with religion. She was just dropping her love interest like a feather.

But in that real-life scenario, it became wildly controversial that the church allowed this filming. That’s what makes this CBS plot so ridiculous. Can anyone really imagine the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, selling a historic convent to a scandalous musician and dumping the nuns out on the street? The New York press would have a series of field days.

Convents are typically owned by the religious order that operates them, not by the church itself. But this plot helped explain why the convent’s Mother Superior decided to kill the pop star and save the convent. In a conversation with Alaia, the nun suggested she climb up into their decrepit bell tower and view the sunset for inspiration. Once there, a nun was tricked into ringing the bell early, causing the singer to be knocked out of a very big window by a very big bell. It was so cartoonish you’d expect a splat like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

Once Elsbeth started circling the bell tower and figuring out how Mother Superior conspired in the dirty deed, the nun entered the confessional and told a priest who aspired to be bishop that she encouraged the pop star’s climb and it could cause “irreparable harm to the church.” The priest banned Elsbeth and the cops from the premises unless they had a search warrant. This makes both priests and nuns look very shady.

To throw off the odor of anti-Catholic bias, the rest of the nuns were all presented as wonderful, like they’d marched in from the set of “Sister Act.” Elsbeth not only solved the murder but saved the convent by engineering a designation of historic preservation. Couldn’t the church have figured that out before someone was murdered?

“Elsbeth” was created by Robert and Michelle King, best known for the CBS drama “The Good Wife.” They also made a Catholic-centered drama called “Evil” about exorcisms for CBS and Paramount Plus.

This episode wasn’t vicious, like the “Law & Order: SVU” episode in 2016 where the auxiliary bishop of New York was running a large sex trafficking ring with Catholic school girls. But it still exploited sacred spaces of Catholic life for its juicy murder plot—like a slutty pop star.

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Rahm Emanuel wants to take leadership of the Democratic Party and capture its nomination for president in 2028.

He shares his thoughts in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. It’s the first time a Democrat has made me smile since President Bill Clinton announced in his 1996 State of the Union address that “The era of big government is over.”

Emanuel has a stellar political resume that includes senior adviser in the White House to Clinton, chief of staff to President Barack Obama, member of Congress, mayor of Chicago and ambassador to Japan.

He has a reputation for political astuteness, being a tough fighter and being the father of the oft-quoted, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

These instincts are raising his finely honed political antennae that his party has badly, and destructively, lost direction.

And here he could not be more right.

Emanuel seeks a “politics based on values.” Not a politics of “identity, grievance, or victimhood,” of “oppressors” and “oppressed.”

He says he is talking about values that say, “government’s proper role is to clear a path so those who put in the elbow grease can earn success.”

Hey, he is sounding like a Republican.

Emanuel should take cues from his former boss Clinton who, in 1992, announced his intention to “change welfare as we know it.”

“For too long our welfare system has undermined the values of family and work, instead of supporting them,” Clinton said in his 1996 State of the Union. And then, working with a Republican Congress, he signed historic welfare reform into law, replacing the disastrous Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Work requirements were introduced and welfare rolls were dramatically reduced.

Clinton also urged, in that 1996 State of the Union, that “permanent deficit spending must come to an end,” and he was the last president to leave office with a budget surplus.

However, one reform to which Clinton aspired that sunk in the political swamp of his impeachment in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal was reform of Social Security.

In December 1998, Clinton convened the first-ever White House Conference on Social Security.

Clinton wanted genuine reform that would fix a broken and flawed system. Among options that captured his attention was the reform done in Chile, in which a system much like ours was transformed to one of ownership and personal retirement accounts. The White House invited José Pinera, the architect of the Chilean reform, to come speak at the conference and share the success they had in Chile with this reform.

In his 1999 State of the Union, Clinton proposed creation of personal retirement accounts that individuals could seed with funds with a tax credit and then qualify for additional matching funds.

Emanuel says his party “needs an economic agenda rooted in American values.”

“Everyone should feel they have skin in this game and all citizens should feel they can contribute to the nation’s renewal,” he says.

Our existing Social Security is not viable in its current form. Cash flow from the system will be insufficient to meet obligations by 2034, just nine years from now, per the latest Trustees report.

Nothing can give every American more “skin in the game” than participating in ownership and growth of our nation’s economy.

Let every American invest rather than pay taxes. Let every American become an owner and share in the experience of capitalism and growth.

Let’s not let the crisis of our broken Social Security system go to waste.

Emanuel should pick up the ball from his former boss, Clinton.

Nothing could be greater for the American people than Democrats and Republicans competing to make every American an owner and a capitalist.

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When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., announced on Nov. 21 she will be resigning her seat in the House of Representatives effective Jan. 5, 2026, it marked the culmination of a fusillade between the Georgia congresswoman and President Donald Trump and sent shock waves throughout the MAGA movement.

One underappreciated aspect of Greene’s departure from Capitol Hill is the effect it could have on Republicans in Congress voting on one of their key campaign promises.

In Congress, Greene has been one of the most persistent advocates for protecting children from physical mutilation in the name of “gender-affirming care” and was on track to potentially get a vote on a piece of legislation that sought to ban the practice for minors. That bill, titled the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, would make it a felony to perform body-mutilating gender-transition procedures on minors by amending preexisting federal statutes criminalizing female genital mutilation to include these procedures.

Greene had introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act in previous sessions of Congress with some differences, but the current version of this bill somewhat reflects the executive order issued by Trump just days into his second term.

The order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” declared that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.” Under this policy, Trump directed the Department of Justice to “prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation”

Greene reintroduced the current version of the Protect Children’s Innocence Act in May to reflect the aspirations of the Trump administration. Since, the bill has made its way through the House Judiciary Committee and is now poised for a vote on the floor. For the past few weeks, rumors have been flying around Capitol Hill that Greene’s bill would be getting that vote, with some suggesting that House GOP leadership had even promised the Georgia congresswoman a vote on the bill before year’s end.

But the rift between Greene and the president, and now Greene’s resignation, have left many on Capitol Hill asking what comes next for the legislation.

Greene’s resignation announcement came in the form of a 10-minute video statement posted on X.

“I’ve always represented the common American man and woman as a member of the House of Representatives, which is why I’ve always been despised in Washington, D.C.,” Greene said toward the beginning of her statement before launching into a broadside against how Republicans have managed their majority this Congress.

“Almost one year into our majority, the legislature has been mostly sidelined,” Greene continued. “We endured an eight week shutdown, wrongly resulting in the House not working for the entire time. And we are entering campaign season, which means all courage leaves and only safe campaign re-election mode is turned on in the House of Representatives.”

Greene also expressed her disappointment with Trump, who pulled his endorsement of the Peach State congresswoman on Nov. 14. “Republicans will likely lose the midterms and, in turn, be expected to defend the president against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.”

In his post pulling the rug out from underneath Greene, Trump said on Truth Social that the congresswoman is a “ranting Lunatic” who “has gone Far Left.”

Listing his administration’s accomplishments, with “No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everyone” among them, the president said, “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” the president wrote.

“It’s all so absurd and completely unserious, I refuse to be a battered wife, hoping it all goes away and gets better,” Greene said in her Nov. 21 statement. “I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him,” Greene continued, “but I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.”

Trump’s reference to “No Men in Women’s Sports” is based on a Feb. 5 executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which directed federal agencies, namely the DOJ and the Department of Education, to ensure that participation in women’s sports is based on sex and not chosen gender identity. 

The House has passed a piece of legislation, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, that has a similar effect. This bill is the only major vote the lower chamber has taken on the issue of radical transgenderism, despite the president’s other executive actions and the centrality of the issue in the 2024 campaign (remember “Kamala is for they/them”?).

Which helps explain why the potential for Greene’s bill getting a vote on the House floor was a big deal. While it is unlikely it will garner enough support to break the filibuster in the Senate—the Senate version of the women sports bill, for example, failed 51-45—the point of these votes is to get Democrats on record voting in favor of the mutilation of children, and use those votes to apply pressure on Democrats to either pass these bills or jeopardize their reelection.

The dirty secret in Washington, however, is that our representatives have a general disdain for voting.

Will there be a last-minute push to vote on Greene’s legislation in December? This seems unlikely given Congress is currently focused on appropriations and Obamacare subsidies. The question then becomes, in lieu of a vote on the Greene bill, what is the GOP’s plan to address the issue of radical transgenderism in 2026?

Luckily for Republicans in Congress, there are plenty of bills for them to choose from. Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Greg Steube of Florida, Doug LaMalfa of California, and Bob Onder of Missouri all have bills to address the mutilation of minors. Onder also has a bill he’s pushing with aligned senators, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called the Chloe Cole Act, which seeks to end these gender transition procedures for minors and provides a private right of action for the children and parents affected by these medical abuses.

The bad news, however, is that these bills are showing little if any movement.

The Chloe Cole Act, however, seems like the most likely alternative to Greene’s bill that could move in the House in the coming months. The pressure is on GOP leadership and the committee of jurisdiction, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to ensure that the American people see where Republicans and Democrats stand on the issue of child mutilation come the 2026 midterms.

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KANAWHA COUNTY, West Virginia—Steve Lipscomb was a son, a father, a husband, a Marine, a man of faith, and a coal miner.

Ten days ago, Lipscomb and his crew encountered an unknown pocket of water when a “sudden and substantial” flood sent millions of gallons into the Rolling Thunder Mine. Lipscomb lived up to his life of service, faith, family and community by ensuring his entire crew made it out safely.

Officials said that as Lipscomb finished evacuating his crew, rising water filled the shaft so rapidly that he, the last man remaining, had no way out.

It was the last time he was seen.

After five days of round-the-clock, hazardous search efforts, a two-man crew found Lipscomb’s body in the mine at 7:37 a.m. Nov. 13.

Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R-W.V.) announced his death outside the Rolling Thunder Mine.

“This is really a very sad day in West Virginia,” Morrisey said. Lipscomb was the fifth coal miner to die this year in West Virginia.

As a reporter who has visited several coal mines, I can attest to the enormous amount of precision and safety that goes into every step a miner takes. I can also say from experience that once you’re 1,000 feet underground, the most unpredictable danger you face is the Earth.

Morrisey said he grew close to Lipscomb’s family during the rescue and that his prayers turned from hope of survival to sorrow for their loss.

“The first lady and I are praying for the family of Steven and Heather, and we know that Steven was a good man,” he said. “One thing I learned about today is that Steven was in the Marine Corps. He actually got a Purple Heart.”

“I had a chance to talk with Heather, and I’m gonna say all of West Virginia’s behind this family,” Morrisey continued. “We know how difficult it was to go through this. We know that Stephen is the quintessential West Virginian, first serving our nation in the Marine Corps, and then by all accounts, listening to the people that were there, really seeming to want to do everything to save the lives of the other miners.”

Lipscomb’s tragic death marked the 29th fatality in the mining industry this year, according to Coal Zoom, a mining trade organization with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which details mining fatalities, nearly half of which are due to equipment failures. By state, West Virginia has the most mining fatalities this year at five.

Morrisey issued all flags flown at half-staff, not just for Lipscomb but for all five of the West Virginia coal miners who lost their lives on the job in 2025: Steven Fields, Billy Stalker, Eric Bartram, Joey Mitchell and Lipscomb.

Mitchell died last week in the Mettiki Mine in Grant County, marking the second mining fatality in November.

Driving across West Virginia reveals more than government buildings, such as post offices, municipal centers and county courthouses. There are also schools and hundreds of homes scattered across the rolling hills and small towns of the nation’s only state located entirely within Appalachia.

The history of coal in West Virginia dates back to the 1800s. Government and family records indicate that settlers of what was then Virginia (West Virginia seceded during the Civil War and became its own state) resided in a region rich in abundant reserves of bituminous coal. In fact, of the state’s 55 counties, only two do not have coal seams.

It wasn’t until the railroads arrived that coal, previously used only for heat and fuel, became the backbone of a booming commercial industry in the 1880s.

After descending into mines in Pennsylvania, including one that crosses into West Virginia, it’s clear that the work is punishing and the workers are purposeful. Many miners say that what they do feels patriotic, as it provides the energy that powers the country, the steel that builds its infrastructure, and a vital layer of national security.

The men and women I have interviewed in the mines have a camaraderie that matches that of men and women in battle. They all have one another’s backs, as Lipscomb showed in his heroic efforts. Morrisey said Lipscomb was a selfless person, which is why he emphasized the importance of also celebrating the life he led.

“Our spirit cannot be broken,” Morrisey said.

West Virginia governors have stood outside of mines after tragedies for hundreds of years. Former Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin was the symbol of grief and hope in 2006 when I covered the Sago Mine disaster, in which 12 miners died after an underground explosion.

Initially, the trapped miners survived by hunkering down with limited oxygen supplies, which quickly ran out. For days, the country watched anxiously, hoping they would make it out alive. Early reports mistakenly said only one miner died and that 12 survived. At the Sago Baptist Church, where families gathered, the news sparked jubilation, which collapsed into agony when it became clear that the reports were the result of a tragic communication error.

Manchin, who grew up around mining, was 21 years old when Farmington No. 9 in his hometown exploded, killing his mother’s brother, Uncle John.

In 2010, when the Upper Big Branch disaster took the lives of 29 miners, Manchin requested a nationwide shutdown of mining operations. Later, he and then-Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) passed a bill to set stricter standards on air quality and require safety tents for miners that also had oxygen.

At the time, Manchin said miners’ families “should expect them to come home safely at the end of the day.”

Lipscomb’s service was held on Nov. 22. If you are so inclined, send the family a note and thank them for his service. In his Elkview community, Lipscomb will always be a hero. To his family, he will never be forgotten. For the men whose lives he saved, his name will be the first and last they speak in their prayers. Sadly, in our wider culture, few will ever know who Lipscomb was. Yet somewhere, a light burns tonight that would not be burning had it not been for a coal miner like him.

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A key issue in the Fundamentalist-Modernist debates of the last century has now resurfaced. The 2025 State of the Bible Survey revealed the astonishing fact that there are more Americans (and Christians) who read the Bible than who affirm its accuracy. Doubting the Bible is nothing new, but the extent of this doubt signals that Christians must once again resolidify a foundational principle of their historic faith: the doctrine of inerrancy.

According to the survey, weekly Bible reading among all U.S. adults rose sharply this year to 42%, but only 36% of U.S. adults said the Bible was 100% accurate. Likewise, the percentage of self-identified Christians who read the Bible weekly climbed to 50%, but only 44% of self-identified Christians fully affirmed its accuracy.

Not that affirming the Bible’s accuracy must be a prerequisite to reading it regularly. On the contrary, one hopes that every day more unbelievers are picking up and reading the Bible as an early step on the road to believing in Jesus. But it seems unlikely that fully 6% of U.S. adults fall into this class, and it is definitionally impossible for 6% of Christians to be unbelievers.

A more likely explanation is that some Americans have some cultural understanding that they “should” read the Bible and have chosen to do so this year, without understanding its central claims and tenets. And, sadly, it seems that approximately 6% of self-identified Christians fall into this category, the same percentage as the number of all U.S. adults.

If this explanation is correct (or partially so), then what we are witnessing is an uptick in Bible-readers who do not understand the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy is the doctrine that the Bible’s content is “truth, without any mixture of error,” as the Southern Baptist Convention describes it in the “Baptist Faith and Message.”

Inerrancy was one of the chief flashpoints in the debates between liberal Protestants and Fundamentalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because of foundational differences over the authority of God’s word, Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen contended in 1923 that “liberalism on the one hand and the religion of the historic church on the other are not two varieties of the same religion, but two distinct religions proceeding from altogether separate roots.”

These survey data suggest that the time has come for American Christians to preserve “the religion of the historic church” [and] to emphasize inerrancy in their churches once again.

The fact is that Scripture itself affirms its own truthfulness. John’s gospel records Jesus praying, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Peter and Paul each affirm that Scripture proceeds from God’s own mouth (2 Peter 1:19-21; 2 Timothy 3:16-17), and God’s words are completely true (Romans 3:4). Even the Old Testament adds its seal of approval to the fact that God’s law is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true (Psalm 19:7-9).

If Scripture is so clear, how was the inerrancy of Scripture called into question to begin with? In the debates of the previous two centuries, skeptics challenged the Bible’s accuracy on the grounds of scientific modernism. They denied the creation account, the virgin birth, and other miracles. The logical conclusion of such denials was a rejection of the resurrection itself. Ironically, their skepticism unintentionally fulfilled Peter’s prediction of scoffers in the last days who would claim that “all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:4).

But our new century features a new cultural zeitgeist. Americans who question the Bible today are likely not motivated by scientific modernism, but by Marxist post-modernism. Instead of attacking specific propositions with facts and arguments, today’s skeptics contend that all truth claims are merely attempts to exert power over another (which they certainly attempt to do with this very contention). Thus, today’s skeptics are uncomfortable affirming the absolute accuracy of any truth claim.

The ultimate issue here is the authority of God. When God claims to be without error or falsehood, he is not trying to seize power in a cosmic coup. He is simply revealing his character. When mere mortals presume to call God’s truthfulness into question, they deny his sovereignty and exalt themselves to the position of judge. They simply lack the credentials to sit in judgment upon God’s claims.

Because we are inferior to God, humans are left with two options, and only two options: We can accept his word as true—which is called “belief”—or reject it, even though it is true—which is called “unbelief.” Some Americans seem to credit the notion that the Bible contains some good moral teaching, without being absolutely true. But the Bible’s claims to inerrancy make this position absurd; if the Bible is not absolutely true, then its claims to inerrancy are lies—moral flaws that call the whole of its teaching into question. God did not leave open to us the option to pick and choose which parts of his word to believe and obey.

Thus believing God’s word—all of it—has been the ultimate mark distinguishing every true follower of him—from Abraham believing the unlikely promise that God would give his aged body innumerable descendants (Genesis 15:6) to New Testament Christians believing in Jesus.

In fact, Paul holds up their believing reception of his gospel as proof of the Thessalonians’ salvation. “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13).

The ultimate stake at play in the inerrancy debate is faith in God himself, and therefore salvation. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. This faith is not an abstract, mystical substance, but a trust or belief directed toward a person: God. God has revealed himself in his word, and faith is believing in the character and promises he has revealed. If we question that, what faith is left?

Americans may be confused about the stakes, but Satan is not. In fact, calling God’s words into question is literally the oldest trick in the Book. In Genesis 3, the serpent’s first words to Eve are, “Did God actually say …?” (Genesis 3:1). From there his temptation slithers to a direct contradiction of God’s word, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Our first parents were lured into sin by disbelieving God’s word, and we can do no better unless we believe.

Thanks be to God, he has provided a way by which we can do better. Through believing and obeying God’s word, we are able not only to resist temptation but also cause Satan to flee. John comforts Christians, “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:14). This is the message that American Bible-readers need to hear, and on which the American church must stand firm.

Originally published by The Washington Stand.

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

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Marjorie Taylor Greene is a singular politician—a maverick, though not in the John McCain sense.

The Arizona senator was beloved by the media; MTG never was, at least until she started feuding with President Donald Trump.

On the contrary, her reputation in the press was as the poster girl for the GOP’s conspiracy wing, the queen of Q Anon.

But it’s not what sets her apart from other Republicans that makes Greene’s resignation from the House—effective Jan. 5—significant.

What the president and GOP leaders in Congress have to worry about is how typical she might be—of legislators frustrated by what the future holds.

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. And Mike Johnson has let it happen,” a “particularly exercised senior House Republican” told Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News.

According to Sherman’s unnamed source, “nearly all” Republicans in Congress—”appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file”—feel “run roughshod and threatened” by the administration, which doesn’t so much as “allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies,” and “Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms” next November.

“More explosive resignations are coming,” warns Sherman’s informer.

Should such claims, posted by one journalist on X, be taken seriously?

The language might be hyperbole, but Congress is obviously not a happy place these days, even for the party in the majority.

Once Greene leaves, that majority will be down to five seats until her vacancy and others’ are filled.

Greene won her last election by a two-to-one margin, so Republicans can be confident of holding her seat.

But in the interim an already virtually ungovernable House will be that much harder for Speaker Johnson to wrangle.

Midterms usually go poorly for the party in power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and Republican efforts to redraw red-state congressional maps to secure a few more seats have run into headwinds—in the courts and in the form of blue states like California clearing the way for their own partisan redistricting.

So yes, Republicans are staring at the likelihood of losing the House in a year.

Though it’s easy to scoff at, one thing that typically keeps members of Congress from despairing when they’re facing minority status is their devotion to a cause, or at least a program:

For decades, for most Republicans, that cause was conservatism as Ronald Reagan understood it.

Trump does have a cause-or rather he is a cause-and he has a program which congressional Republicans mostly support.

But the president has never really made his party’s legislators feel like partners in his effort: they’re more a means to his ends.

And when Trump has deferred to Congress, as he did to some extent during his first term over attempts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the results have been a wreck.

Obamacare is still here, and the record-long government shutdown that ended mere weeks ago arose from Democrats holding the government ransom in an attempt to expand an extension of Obamacare subsidies.

The inability of a Republican president with a Republican Congress to overhaul the Affordable Care Act in 2017 set the stage for that agony this year.

And what’s next?

With such a slender House majority, Trump doesn’t want to depend on Congress to pass his agenda.

Meanwhile, House Republicans haven’t had an agenda of their own for the last 25 years—they’ve been happiest, and enjoyed their strongest majorities, when a Democrat has occupied the White House and they’ve played spoilers.

But three years ago, they suffered a crushing disappointment when they didn’t get the kind of boost they expected from Joe Biden’s midterms. They made gains but clawed their way to only a modest majority, not much bigger than today’s.

Reagan is long gone, and nobody is quite sure what happens to Trumpism once Trump himself is no longer on the ballot.

How many Republicans in Congress want to stick around to find out?

The answer, in fact, is most of them—but it wouldn’t take many more choosing Greene’s way out to throw control of the House into jeopardy well before next November.

The House isn’t certain what the future holds for Trumpism, but without the House, Trump’s own future may become a closed book, with no new chapters as he coasts to the end of his second term.

Neither the president nor his party can afford to call it quits this soon.

No matter how unruly the closely divided House might be, it’s time the president tried governing with his party in Congress.

And it’s time Republicans in Congress learned Trump’s most important lesson—to write their own destiny instead of echoing politics past.

Congress needs what Trump brought back to the presidency: daring and relevance.

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President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have proven they have a successful media strategy to make the case for a second round of DOGE, they just need to implement it.

A few weeks ago, it might have been inconceivable for the two to pair up again, but the president and the CEO seem to have mended their rift from the summer, and this may bode well for a second round of DOGE.

Americans broadly support rooting waste, fraud, and abuse out of the federal government, but the DOGE effort got an undeserved bad rap, and as a conservative journalist, I have some advice on how to revitalize the image and promote a potential second round.

First, the good news: Americans support DOGE’s goal. A February Harvard-Harris poll found that 70% of voters said that government expenditures are “filled with waste, fraud, and inefficiency,” and 69% supported the goal of “cutting $1 trillion of government expenditures.”

Yet, after Trump and Musk implemented DOGE, Americans seemed to sour on the effort.

Only 35% of respondents approved of Musk’s job in the administration, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll in April. A poll from the Center Square that same month found independents souring on DOGE. Almost half (47%) of registered voters said DOGE had been cutting “too much,” while only 28% said DOGE had been “getting it right,” and another 12% said, “DOGE is not cutting enough.” (To be fair, DOGE only cut a few billion dollars, far short of the $1 trillion goal.)

So, what went wrong?

It should come as no surprise that the Media Research Center’s analysis found that ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News gave DOGE 97% negative spin, but Donald Trump and Elon Musk have proven they can beat the legacy media at its own game.

The Trump-Musk Media Strategy

In the 2024 election, Trump embraced new media, helping his message reach more voices. He has also opened the White House up to new media outlets and conservative journalists, empowering them to share his news. Musk, for his part, not only purchased a major social media platform for news, but also pulled off a PR coup in the Twitter Files.

When Musk bought Twitter, he gave independent journalists access to the company’s internal files, allowing them to reveal just how bad the platform’s previous liberal bias had been. Musk allowed influential journalists such as Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger to tell the story, and this worked like a megaphone, giving each reporter an incentive to share the news and show the public how much Musk’s takeover was necessary.

Why Didn’t DOGE Do This?

For some reason, DOGE did not employ this kind of strategy.

To be sure, DOGE needed some insulation to carry out the mission. DOGE didn’t just trust heads of federal agencies to cut waste, fraud, and abuse—it worked across agencies to identify duplicative programs and ask, “do we really need this?”

This outsider perspective was vital to the mission, especially in a Washington where “good governance” often amounts to extra layers of red tape that makes common sense cost-cutting increasingly hard to come by.

While DOGE could have gotten more of its reforms into law by working with Congress from the beginning (and it should partner with Congress more going forward), many members of Congress would have balked at cutting federal contracts that sent money to their districts. Some insulation from Congress makes sense, at least at first.

However, the insulation from conservative media made no sense.

Secrecy Backfires

DOGE cut contract after contract, and it didn’t give conservative reporters the scoop. It left the story to liberal outlets that presented each severed contract as an open wound, rather than a positive step toward fiscal sanity.

Rather than a tour-de-force through the media like the Twitter Files, DOGE appeared to be a secretive effort, which inspired left-leaning journalists to search for a hidden scandal.

Rather than “why was our government wasting so much money?” the main takeaway became “What is Elon Musk doing behind the scenes?”

Laws like the Freedom of Information Act allow the public to access key government documents. This means that whatever DOGE did would always become public, eventually. Sure, DOGE didn’t want to tip off some people about what cuts were coming, but it could have strategically given friendly journalists key information to help shape the narrative.

The Twitter Files worked because Musk enlisted many journalists to tell the story. Different reporters could focus on different aspects of the company’s corruption, and each of those journalists owned the story—it was in their interest to share it far and wide. This approach drew more attention to each new revelation, and gave Musk far more PR power than a mere press release or Fox News hit.

The next round of DOGE should approach media more like the Trump White House and the Twitter Files.

Conservative journalists like me are eager to go through government documents, to follow the money, and to support rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse. I’m sure many liberal journalists would also love to expose when big corporations receive far too much taxpayer dough.

With the right messaging, DOGE could get buy-in from conservatives who are anxious to support it; independents who oppose waste but may be apprehensive at first; and liberals who might begrudgingly admit that at least a few of the contracts that fell under Elon Musk’s chainsaw deserved to die an ignominious death.

I think DOGE’s work is far from over, and I’d be eager to work with DOGE to highlight its successes and the need for its continued operation. I can also recommend a team of my fellow conservative reporters who would love to jump into the fray.

Throw me in, coach!

The post Trump and Musk Already Have a Successful Strategy to Revive DOGE: They Just Need to Use It appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Recently, the world witnessed the assassination of Charlie Kirk with the gruesome video of the incident circulating online in real time. National attention quickly zeroed in on the assassin and in that process a powerful image surfaced. 

The image was that of a young Tyler Robinson sitting in front of a laptop. Dressed in Avengers pajamas and surrounded by what appears to be Christmas candy, Robinson’s lips are curved in a soft smile as he clicks on the keyboard.

“Almost forgot Tyler,” Tyler’s mother captioned the photo, “He can totally avoid us now that he got all of the computer accessories he’s been wanting.”

Today, that little boy is a 22-year-old man who sits in jail awaiting trial, accused of murdering Charlie Kirk in front of the world.

As a mother, this photo broke my heart. It serves as a chilling reminder of what a truly dangerous, radicalizing, and lonely place the internet can be. 

The photo of a young Tyler is indicative of the rapid rise of the internet, which has been detrimental for children’s socialization, critical thinking, and safety. Many children are substituting in-person experiences and relationships with online platforms and a manufactured “community.”   

Reports indicate America’s youth are spending more time socializing on Instagram, TikTok, and Discord than in-person and that 31% of teens find conversations with AI “companions” more satisfying than conversations with real friends. This human replacement affects nearly half of American teenagers, who are online “almost constantly.”  

These trends have ensured that most American teenagers are, as sociologist Sherry Turkle aptly says, “forever elsewhere” — living online instead of in the moment during their most formative, vulnerable years. Instead of learning how to think or interact in real-world scenarios, children are encountering potentially dangerous strangers and ideologies online without any meaningful guardrails. Indeed, 72% of popular gaming sites allow anonymous sign-ups and self-declaration of age, meaning that predators and other bad actors have the capability of texting, video, and audio calling minors on these sites without being easily traceable.  

The consequences of this are unimaginable.   

Just look at the online platform Discord, which is used by a third of teenage boys in the U.S. In 2023, Discord was allegedly involved in 35 cases of kidnapping, grooming or sexual assault. Discord also allegedly played a role in 165 cases where adults used the platform for sextortion, and to spread Child Sexual Abuse Material.    In addition to sexual exploitation and grooming risks, experts have warned that Discord has been used to spread extremist or nihilistic content. Moreover, multiple suspects in “high-profile mass shooting events” used Discord to announce their plans—including Robinson, who allegedly confessed to Kirk’s murder in a Discord chat. Discord and another gaming site, Roblox, came under fire earlier this year when a mother alleged that her son committed suicide after being groomed and coerced into sending explicit pictures on the platforms. 

Ideological activists often use online platforms as echo chambers for radical ideas that they push on susceptible group members. Impressionable children joining chat rooms and ‘groups’ on these sites for community are often met with mature or even dangerous ideas and content they lack the experience or maturity to understand. 

For example, young girls turning to platforms like Reddit and Tumblr for acceptance or support with eating disorders have been told by online “friends” that they must be transgender, some even pressured into permanent life-altering surgeries as minors. Similarly, a 17-year-old boy with no prior confusion about his gender was manipulated online into thinking he was ‘pansexual,’ and ‘gender-fluid.’ Children may also be encouraged to adopt violent rhetoric due to popular online streamers that openly call for violence against political figures or perform dangerous stunts on platforms like Twitch. 

The real-world impacts of these virtual interactions are destabilizing our culture today. Children are more depressed, anxious and risk-averse than ever before. Too many online interactions and not enough in-person socialization are undoubtedly fueling this crisis. In the absence of meaningful guard rails or outright internet abstinence, parents may never know what their children are doing online, who they are interacting with, or whether their children number among the many casualties of online grooming, exploitation, and radicalization. In the absence of learned, real-world consequences and healthy civil discourse, many children are growing up reliant on what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls “experience blockers“—digital devices or platforms and the insufficient or negative habits they teach them.

Compounding the loss of real-world experience and socialization, children are encountering a whole host of radical ideas, extremist or inappropriate content in online echo chambers that lack nuance or counterbalance. They train children to hide behind screens, enjoying the comfort of anonymity as they shamelessly engage in extreme or heated conversations they would likely not have the courage to engage in face-to-face.

As parents, it’s our duty to ensure that online platforms are used carefully with proper guardrails (or not at all), and not as an excuse for children to “totally avoid” meaningful relationships in their lives. Among the most meaningful skills we can equip our children with is their ability to respond to adversity and live in, engage with, and enjoy the real world. The first step to this is removing the screens.

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Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office twice asserted that a slate of alternate electors contesting the 2020 election was legal before bringing criminal charges on the matter in the heat of a presidential election in 2024, based on memos referenced in court filings.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump pardoned the alternate electors among more than 70 people involved in challenging the 2020 election. However, Kaul—and other Democrat prosecutors—vowed to continue the state prosecutions. 

The two assertions from Kaul’s office undermine the forgery and fraud case brought by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, according to defense filings by Jim Troupis, a former state judge and veteran Republican election lawyer who was charged last year with forgery for advising the alternate electors. Troupis settled the case in 2024 with no admission of wrongdoing.

The change, of course, from the state came after U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith secured a grand jury indictment against Trump in the federal election case in August 2023 and additional charges a year later. The indictment alleged in part that Trump was engaged in a conspiracy to assemble “fraudulent slates of electors.”

First, on Dec. 1, 2020, Kaul said alternate Republican electors could meet and vote. The point of his argument was that the Wisconsin Supreme Court did not have to rush a decision on the election challenge before Dec. 14 when the state electors met to count votes. 

So, the attorney general argued in a filing that also included the names of three assistant attorneys general, a ruling after Dec. 14 meant there was “zero risk” a separate slate of pro-Trump electors wouldn’t be counted if a recount or court rulings reversed the election outcome.

“There is no reason to invalidate the existing certificate of ascertainment or to enjoin the commissioner or the governor from certifying electors, because the issuance of a certificate of ascertainment does not impair the petitioners’ ability to obtain a meaningful recount appeal,” the memo from Kaul and assistants said.

The attorney general added, “There is also no necessity for their recount appeal to bypass the procedural requirements … because, contrary to their suggestion, neither federal nor state law requires their recount appeal to be completed before December 14, 2020.”

“As long as the Court does not interfere in the way requested by the petitioners, there is zero risk that Wisconsin will have no electoral votes on December 14,” the attorney general memo added. “The procedure prescribed by Congress accommodates petitioners’ right to a meaningful recount appeal.”

More than a year later, Feb. 9, 2022, the attorney general’s office advised the Wisconsin Election Commission that the alternate slate of electors meeting and voting didn’t violate the law.

Law Forward, a liberal legal group, alleged to the Wisconsin Election Commission, that the alternate electors violated the law. The commission solicited an opinion from the Wisconsin Department of Justice on the matter. In response, the attorney general’s office issued a memo rejecting those complaints.

“Nothing in either statute prohibits or otherwise limits a party from meeting or otherwise casting electoral votes during a challenge to an election tabulation,” the February 2022 memo to the commission said. 

The complaint alleged the Wisconsin pro-Trump alternate electors “met in a concerted effort to ensure that they would be mistaken, as a result of their deliberate forgery and fraud, for Wisconsin’s legitimate presidential electors.”

On that point, the attorney general’s office asserted: “The record does not support this allegation. Before and after the December 14 meeting, the respondents publicly stated, including in court pleadings, that they were meeting to preserve legal options while litigation was pending.” 

Kaul’s office did not respond to requests for comment. 

Although legal experts have argued the Trump pardon on state charges were symbolic, Troupis argued the Justice Department should intervene in the case. 

“The United States Department of Justice must take action—civil rights investigation and intervention—to stop these ongoing prosecutions of those who worked with President Trump,” Troupis wrote in an op-ed published on ConservativeHQ. 

Because of his pending legal case, he referred questions to the opinion piece. 

“On December 1, 2020 the Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, in writing, explicitly advised us and the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Trump should use them,” Troupis wrote. 

Troupis added: “It gets worse. Kaul’s own office wrote an official letter in 2022 noting that use of Alternate Electors has a long history and it was certainly not “fraud or forgery” (the charges he now makes).”

In May 2022, Law Forward led a lawsuit against Troupis claiming that the meeting of Republican electors in 2020 was a public nuisance and a conspiracy. In March 2024, to avoid more legal costs, Troupis and legal adviser Kenneth Chesebro settled the civil case with no admission of wrongdoing, but an agreement from both not to participate in alternate elections in future presidential elections. 

Separately, in December 2023, the Wisconsin alternate Trump electors settled a case, admitting their vote was “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results” and agreed they would not be presidential electors in future elections with Trump.

In June 2024, in the lead up to the presidential election, Kaul held a press conference to announce he filed a criminal complaint for forgery against Troupis and other Trump supporters in Dane County Circuit Court. 

“The criminal complaint in this case alleges that the defendants were part of a conspiracy to present a certificate of purported electoral votes from individuals who were not Wisconsin’s duly appointed electors,” Kaul said when announcing the criminal complaint. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to protecting the integrity of our electoral process.”

Law Forward defended the charges. The defendants’ assertion that the Wisconsin attorney general blessed the use of alternate electors “distorts the facts,” argued Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel at Law Forward.

“The [Wisconin] DOJ opinion letter referenced here expressed a line-attorney’s opinion that the scheme did not clearly violate either of two specific statutes administered by the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Mendell told The Daily Signal in a statement.

“But the letter also expressly allows that the scheme might violate other Wisconsin laws, including other Wisconsin election laws.”

Law Forward specifically referenced a paragraph from the February 2022 attorney general letter that says the attorney general was not addressing every aspect of Wisconsin law.

“This memorandum does not address other potential violations of law, such as election fraud under Wis. Stat. § 12.13 or matters that the Complainants have raised to other authorities or discussed in the media, such as forgery under Wis. Stat. § 943.38, false swearing under Wis. Stat. § 946.32, falsely assuming to act as a public officer under Wis. Stat. § 946.69, simulating legal process under Wis. Stat. § 946.68, misconduct in public office under Wis. Stat. § 946.12, conspiracy, aiding, or attempt to commit such acts, or any other matter outside the scope of the complaint,” the portion of the attorney general’s 2022 memo highlighted by Law Forward says.

The the first paragraph of the attorney general’s letter says, “this memorandum concludes that the
complaint does not raise a reasonable suspicion that respondents violated Wisconsin election law.”

Also in December 2020, alternate slates of Republicans electors voted in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Democrat prosecutors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada also brought charges.

Presidential pardons typically can only come for federal offenses. Nevertheless, in the pardon statement, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin argues presidential election functions are federal even if the charges came under state law.

“Notwithstanding that fact, these prosecutions are attempts by partisan state actors to shoehorn fanciful and concocted state law violations onto what are clearly federal constitutional obligations of the 2020 Trump campaign: the establishment of the contingent electors, the actions attendant to their roles as presidential electors, and their duties under established historical and legal precedent to exercise their responsibilities as electors—all of which are functions of federal—not state—law,” Martin argued. 

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In Part One of “Congress’ Week of Crazy,” we laid out the wild happenings last week on the Democrat side of the aisle, from a congresswoman indicted for stealing $5 million to a congresswoman who was texting with Jeffrey Epstein like they were teenagers to six Democrats who skated up to the edge of sedition. But it wasn’t just Democrats who were mischief-plotters and tabloid fodder. Republicans had plenty of their own drama.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Sudden Exit Stage Left

That peach of a Georgia representative, Marjorie Taylor Greene stunned the political world Friday night by announcing she was quitting Congress, effective Jan. 5, 2026. Her decision came days after President Donald Trump withdrew his endorsement of the controversial congresswoman in the wake of a series of erratic moves challenging the president, including over the Epstein files. Greene’s also recently been sucking up to hostile media, including the ladies of “The View.”

In her resignation letter Greene compared herself to a “battered wife” and complained that she felt unwelcomed in Washington and disliked by both sides of the political aisle. As President Harry Truman famously said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” In the case of the Georgia representative, I suppose it would be “dawg.”

Adding to the campy flavor of it all: Trump responded to the news by saying Greene “went bad” and her resignation was “good for the country.” He then spent the weekend insisting Greene is a “nice person.”

Now the question remains: Does Greene become a John Bolton who turns and makes a mint as an anti-Trump commentator? (Which will now mostly go to lawyers.) Or is she an Elon Musk: an emotional, colorful, controversial figure who soon enough finds herself back in the Trump camp?

In the biz, they call this a cliffhanger.

Rep. Cory Mills: Ethically Challenged

Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., is facing an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Why? Apparently to avoid a censure vote, The Daily Signal’s Jacob Adams reported. Rep. Kat Cammack, also of Florida, colorfully complained House leadership tabled a censure vote on Del. Stacey Plaskett to protect Mills from a censure vote. “This backroom deal s— is swampy, wrong and always deserves to be called out.”

According to a statement from the Ethics Committee, their investigation into Mills will look into:

“allegations that [Mills] may have: (1) failed to properly disclose required information on statements required to be filed with the House; (2) violated campaign finance laws and regulations in connection with his 2022 and 2024 election campaigns; (3) improperly solicited and/or received gifts, including in connection with privately sponsored officially-connected travel; (4) received special favors by virtue of his position; (5) engaged in misconduct with respect to allegations of sexual misconduct and/or dating violence; and/or (6) misused congressional resources or status.”  

Wait. “Sexual misconduct and/or dating violence”? How’s that get ranked #5? Jimmy Hoffa wasn’t buried like that little tidbit.

Mills denies any wrongdoing.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw: What Happened in Mexico Didn’t Stay in Mexico

Also denying wrongdoing: Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw. Crenshaw is denying a report by Punchbowl News that House Republicans revoked his traveling privileges for three-months after an “alcohol-related incident” during an official trip to Mexico. No, he did not trash a hotel room or run naked through the streets. Or even butcher “Yellow Rose of Texas” at a Tijuana karaoke bar. Crenshaw says the incident was “literally me doing a toast with the Mexican generals.” According to the story, a Mexican official made a “crude joke” that made a woman present uncomfortable. Crenshaw then toasted the comment.

Crenshaw insists he wasn’t banned from travel, saying a planned trip was nixed by the government shutdown.

Why We Can’t Mock

From booze to bye-byes, criminal busts to buddying up with Jeffrey Epstein, it was a week for the books on Capitol Hill.

It’s tempting to mock, but millions of us are about to head off to see family for Thanksgiving. Though it is a good bet our families won’t be stealing $5 million bucks or texting pedophiles, can we honestly say we won’t have our own dramas, downfalls, and delicious gossip? Overindulgence? A family mutiny? Battles over relationships with the wrong people? I didn’t think so.

May your Thanksgiving be as blessed as Nancy Pelosi’s bank account.

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The post Congress’s Week of Crazy, Part Two: GOP Has Its Own Drama appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Just by living in 21st-century America, you have a lot to be thankful for.

You live in the richest country in the history of the world—and one of the freest. Despite what the left claims, the benefits of wealth aren’t limited to the 1%. The amenities most people take for granted—a vehicle, washing machine, hot water on demand—would have been unimaginable luxuries for most of human history. Among poor families in America, significant majorities have air conditioning systems, televisions, microwaves and smartphones.

We’ve come a long way from what the Pilgrims had to celebrate at the first Thanksgiving. Over half of the settlers had died during the previous winter. The remaining settlers were grateful for a harvest that would help them survive the upcoming winter.

Today, most people are concerned with how many servings of turkey they can eat while still having enough room for pumpkin pie.

It’d be impossible to list all the changes over the last four centuries that have turned scarcity into opulence. The bravery and sacrifice of members of the military are near the top of the list.

So is the fossil fuel industry.

You didn’t have to hunt your turkey, kill it and clean it. A farmer did that on a farm powered primarily by fossil fuels. A truck powered by fossil fuels drove it to your supermarket. Your supermarket used fossil fuels to keep its lights on, its freezer cold and its credit card readers humming. You used fossil fuels to drive there and buy it. That’s true even if you have an electric car, because electric cars plug into an electric grid mostly powered by coal and natural gas. Fossil fuels will also heat the oven used to cook your turkey. The lights you turn on during Thanksgiving dinner, the TV you use to watch football and the dishwasher you use to clean up all run primarily on fossil fuels.

Renewable energy gets all the publicity, but wind and solar power generated only about 14% of the nation’s electricity in 2023. Fossil fuels generated 60%, with nuclear and hydropower generating over 24%.

When the Pilgrims got cold, they had to chop wood and burn it. Today, you push a button on your thermostat. Going to see family? Airplanes use fossil fuels. The iPhone you use to FaceTime Grandma wouldn’t exist without the power provided by fossil fuels.

This doesn’t mean fossil fuel companies are perfect. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t externalities to fossil fuel production, although it’s hard to take environmental alarmists seriously after decades of failed predictions. It doesn’t mean that someday a different fuel source, like nuclear power, won’t replace fossil fuels.

But without fossil fuels, Thanksgiving dinner and everything else in American life would look entirely different—and not in a good way.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A top Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official called for introspection, humility and transformation at the agency in an email obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) following a report by career staff that the deaths of 10 children may be attributed to the COVID-19 vaccine.

“At least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination,” FDA Chief Medical Officer and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad said in an email sent to staff Friday afternoon.

“For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children,” Prasad said. “Healthy young children who faced tremendously low risk of death were coerced, at the behest of the Biden administration, via school and work mandates, to receive a vaccine that could result in death. In many cases, such mandates were harmful. It is difficult to read cases where kids aged 7 to 16 may be dead as a result of covid vaccines.”

The finding—and the fact it would not have been uncovered without President Donald Trump’s appointee, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, at the helm—provokes important questions about the direction and culture of the agency, wrote Prasad, Makary’s handpicked deputy.

“Why did it take until 2025 to perform this analysis, and take necessary further actions? Deaths were reported between 2021 and 2024, and ignored for years,” he wrote.

The report on suspected COVID vaccine deaths in children has not been released. An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.

The report amounts to a wake-up call, Prasad said. He called for a transformation of his own center’s mission, a crusade likely to face severe counterwinds from the pharmaceutical industry and some of the agency’s longtime vaccine reviewers. He, in turn, issued an ultimatum to these staffers.

“Never again will the US FDA commissioner have to himself find deaths in children for staff to identify it,” he wrote. “Some staff may not agree with these core principles and operating principles. Please submit your resignation letters to your supervisor.”

Earlier this year Prasad assigned career staff at the FDA Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance (OBPV) to assess reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a surveillance program tracing vaccine side effects, according to the email. Prior to joining the FDA, Makary and Prasad tracked reports of vaccine-induced myocarditis—inflammation of the heart muscle—which occurs most frequently in young, healthy boys and men.

FDA officials assessed whether the COVID vaccine caused the deaths reported in VAERS against a subjective scale ranging from certain to unlikely, Prasad wrote. The 10 detected deaths had “likely, probable or possible” attribution. Only highly motivated physicians complete the tedious process to submit VAERS reports, thus the figure is likely an underestimate, Prasad said. The COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers were due to conduct more safety studies, but FDA has not enforced its own requirements.

The FDA cannot answer the question of whether the COVID-19 vaccine killed more healthy kids than it saved because it lacks reliable data on the absolute risk reduction in severe disease and death in healthy children, Prasad said.

“The truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance,” he wrote. “It is horrifying to consider that the US vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.”

“I suspect the answer is cultural and systemic,” he continued. “I have no doubt that many vaccines have saved millions of lives globally, and many have benefits that far exceed risks, but vaccines are like any other medical product. The right drug given to the right patient at the right time is great, but the same drug can be inappropriately given, causing harm. The same is true for vaccines.”

Prasad said the FDA should not lower its standards with the goal of further incentivizing the growth of the $30 billion vaccine market, pointing to the enormous profits of the COVID-19 vaccines and the fact that vaccines do not face generic competition.

Other forthcoming changes at CBER include changes to vaccine approvals in pregnant women, requiring more clinical trials rather than relying on laboratory studies testing antibody levels, revamping the annual flu vaccine rollout and studying the impact of administering multiple vaccines at the same time.

Prasad’s email amounts to a scathing critique of his predecessor, former CBER Director Peter Marks, who in 2021 pushed the agency to approve annual COVID boosters even for the young and healthy and to issue a full approval of the COVID vaccines, paving the way for higher-ups in the Biden White House to issue vaccine mandates, according to a 2024 congressional investigation. Marks’ push prompted the resignations of the agency’s two top vaccine reviewers, Marion Gruber and Philip Krause, who later told congressional investigators that they felt pressure to cut corners.

“Some have felt the CBER director should override reviewers to approve gene therapies that do not work because of patient demand. When these products later result in post market deaths, it is difficult to take corrective action. I favor approving products with benefits that exceed risks,” Prasad wrote.

Prasad’s changes tackle the post-pandemic plummet in public confidence in the FDA. Just 37% of Americans trust the FDA to act independently without outside influence, according to an August 2025 Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Just 27% of Americans rated the work of the FDA as “excellent” or “good” in an October 2025 Gallup poll.

Still, the mission has been rocky for Prasad, who faces opposition both from career staff who bristle at his criticism of the status quo and biotech investors wary of stricter standards.

His tenure was disrupted and prematurely ended when the White House fired him following a smear campaign by The Wall Street Journal editorial board and right-wing influencer Laura Loomer. That smear campaign coincided with the FDA temporarily halting shipments of Elevidys, a Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy made by Sarepta Therapeutics. Prasad resumed his position after Makary and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lobbied the White House to reinstate him, according to press reports.

The FDA did not pull Elevidys from the market but added a black boxed warning to the drug limiting the therapy to ambulatory patients four years of age and older on Nov. 14.

Prasad has been routinely undermined by leaks.

In the summer of 2025, Tracy Beth Hoeg, a senior advisor for clinical sciences to Makary and Prasad, began investigating the VAERS reports. She soon concluded the deaths attributable to COVID vaccination were real, according to Prasad’s email. Hoeg organized a meeting to discuss her research with the FDA’s OBPV and Office of Vaccines Research and Review; however, details were soon leaked to the press.

“Some staff present who leaked portrayed the incident as Dr. Hoeg attempting to create a false fear regarding vaccines,” Prasad wrote.

Prasad lambasted the leaks in the email.

“I have no doubt that individuals who are providing media outlets with slides, emails and personal anecdotes believe they are doing the right thing,” he said. “Unfortunately, this behavior is both unethical, illegal, and, as this case illustrates, factually incorrect.”

Originally published by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Before the House and Senate voted nearly unanimously—with just one “nay” in the House—to unseal the Jeffrey Epstein investigative records, the Epstein estate released 20,000 pages of unseen Epstein files to the House Oversight Committee. Following that, Democrats began their tour of publicizing a handpicked set of documents from that newly obtained trove of files. Notably, nearly all their selections reference one person only: President Donald Trump. One such set includes three email exchanges, out of the trove of over 20,000 pages, that were used to cast Trump in a suspicious light.

For example, in one 2011 email from Epstein to his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, he referred to Trump as “the dog that hasn’t barked” and noted that a young woman, an alleged victim of Epstein, had “spent hours at my house with him,” yet “he has never once been mentioned.” In another email from 2019, Epstein outright claimed, “of course Trump knew about the girls as he asked Ghislaine to stop.” House Democrats predictably touted these snippets to show that there was some White House coverup of the full Epstein files.

Yet the context behind these emails was notably thin. Even media outlets observed that the full context of the emails in the exchanges are not clear from the portions that were released by the Democrats. And they also provided no additional documents. For example, leaving important details such as who the victim was and what prompted the comments—or how Trump actually behaved at all. But that didn’t stop Democrats and their left-wing cheerleaders from igniting sensational headlines about Trumps’ apparently close relationship with Epstein.

Republicans in the Oversight Committee had to react swiftly, and so they did. Within hours of the selective leak, the Republican majority released the entirety of the Epstein estate documents to the public. They didn’t curate or filter the documents but instead dumped everything online to allow the public to examine the full truth rather than only the Democrat narrative. In fact, not only did the Republicans warn the public that the Democrat leak was “not grounded in the facts,” but in fact they claimed that the Democrats deliberately ignored exculpatory information.

When one steps back from a Democrat’s narrow presentation of the documents, the actual evidence in the Epstein files does not at all implicate Trump in any crimes or misconduct. First and foremost, in the voluminous records and prior legal cases, Trump is nowhere accused of participating in obscene sexual crimes. And tellingly, the victim that was referenced in the 2011 email, the one who allegedly spent hours with Trump at Epstein’s home, has herself never even accused Trump of any wrongdoing. That young woman was Virginia Giuffre, perhaps Epstein’s most famous accuser, who in the early 2000s was a teenage staffer at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club before being lured into Epstein’s ring. In fact, Giuffre repeatedly stated that Trump never did anything improper toward her, and according to her memoir, published posthumously in October, when Giuffre met Trump around 2000, she stated that he “couldn’t have been friendlier” to her. Even in interviews, she praised Trump’s demeanor in their limited interactions.

And of course, let’s not forget that years before Epstein’s 2019 arrest, Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago. And multiple accounts, including from Epstein’s accusers and Trump himself, confirmed that Trump expelled Epstein from his Palm Beach property in 2007 after Epstein allegedly harassed an underage girl at the club.

In fact, the newly released files even include Trump’s July statement that Epstein was kicked out because he had “stolen” young female staffers, including Giuffre, from a Mar-a-Lago spa, which was part of his reason for barring Epstein from the club.

In a July interview that the Justice Department conducted with Maxwell, she stated that she unequivocally never saw Trump engage in inappropriate behavior. She said, “I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”

And let’s not forget a crucial point of the Republican criticism of the Democrats’ cherry-picking of the Epstein files: The files implicate numerous powerful people across the political spectrum, yet Democrats oddly showed a laser focus on Trump’s name alone.

With the new records from the DOJ soon to be unsealed, we will no doubt gain even more context and a deeper understanding of Epstein’s actions and web of allies.

Yet Democrats are continuing to publicize cherry-picked portions of the evidence, such as obscene, unverified emails sent during Trump’s first term that make sensational claims about Trump performing fellatio on former President Bill Clinton. The emails also show that Epstein had a clear disdain for Trump. He wanted to “take him down.” He said that Trump had “not one decent cell in his body.”

According to Democrats, it must follow, Epstein is a hero.

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THE CENTER SQUARE—Parents should take precaution this holiday season when it comes to artificial intelligence toys after researchers for the new Trouble in Toyland report found safety concerns. 

Illinois Public Interest Research Group Campaign Associate Ellen Hengesbach said some of the toys armed with AI raised red flags ranging from toys that talk in-depth about sexually explicit topics to acting dismayed when the child disengages.

“What they look like are basically stuffed animals or toy robots that have a chatbot like Chat GPT embedded in them and can have conversations with children,” Hengesbach told The Center Square.

The U.S. PIRG Education Fund report also points out that at least three toys have limited to no parental controls and have the capacity to record your child’s voice and collect other sensitive data via facial recognition.   

“All three were willing to tell us where to find potentially dangerous objects in the house, such as plastic bags, matches, or knives,” she said. “It seems like dystopian science fiction decades ago is now reality.”

In the face of all the changing landscape and rising concerns, Hengesbach is calling for immediate action.

“The two main things that we’d like to see are more oversight in general and more research so we can see exactly how these toys interact with kids, really just identify what the harms might be and have a lot more transparency from companies around how are these toys designed,” she said. “What are they capable of and what the potential risks or harms might be. I just really want us to take this opportunity to really think through what we’re doing instead of rushing a toy to market.”

As for the here and now, Hengesbach stressed parents would be wise to be thoughtful about their purchases.

“We just have a big open question of what are the long-term impacts of these products on young kids, especially when it comes to their social development,” she said. “The fact is that we just really won’t know what the long-term impacts of AI friends and companion toys might be until the first generation playing with them grows up. For now, I think it’s just really important that parents understand that these AI toys are out there; they’re very new and they’re basically unregulated.”

Since the release of the report, Hengesbach said one AI toymaker temporarily suspended sales of all their products to conduct a safety audit.  

This year’s 40th Trouble in Toyland report also focuses on toys that contain toxins, counterfeit toys that haven’t been tested for safety, recalled toys and toys that contain button cell batteries or high-powered magnets, both of which can be deadly if swallowed.

Originally published in The Center Square.

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The current generation “Z”—those now roughly between 13 and 28 years old—is becoming our 21st-century version of the “Lost Generation.” Members of Gen Z are often nicknamed “Zoomers,” a term used to describe young adults who came of age in the era of smartphones, social media, and rapid cultural upheaval.

Males in their teens and 20s are prolonging their adolescence—rarely marrying, not buying a home, not having children, and often not working full-time.

The negative stereotype of a Zoomer is a shiftless man, who plays too many video games. He is too coddled by parents and too afraid to strike out on his own.

Zoomers rarely date supposedly out of fear that they would have to grow up, take charge, and head a household.

Yet the opposite, sympathetic generalization of Gen Z seems more accurate.

All through K-12, young men, particularly white males, have been demonized for their “toxic masculinity” that draws accusations of sexism, racism, and homophobia.

In college, the majority of students are female. In contrast, white males—9% to 10% of admittees in recent years at elite schools like Stanford and the Ivy League—are of no interest to college admission officers.

So they are tagged not as unique individuals but as superfluous losers of the “wrong” race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Gen Z men saw themselves scapegoated by professors and society for the sins of past generations—and on the wrong side of the preposterous reductionist binary of oppressors and the oppressed.

Traditional pathways to adulthood—affordable homes, upwardly mobile and secure jobs, and safe and secure city and suburban living—had mostly vanished amid overregulation, overtaxation, and underpolicing.

Orthodox and loud student advocates on campus—climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Palestinians—had little to do with getting a job, raising a family, or buying a house.

During the Joe Biden years, white males mostly stopped enlisting in the military in their accustomed overrepresented numbers.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, they had died in frontline combat units at twice their percentages for the demographic. No matter—prior Pentagon DEI commissars still slandered them as suspects likely to form racist cabals.

Gen Z males seemed bewildered by women and sex—and often withdrew from dating.
Never has popular culture so promoted sexually provocative fashions, semi-nudity, and freewheeling lifestyles, and careers of supposedly empowered single women.

And never had the rules of dating and sexuality become more retrograde Victorian.

Casual consensual sex was flashed as cool everywhere on social media. And when it naturally proved in the real world to be selfish, callous, and empty, males were almost always exclusively blamed as if they were not proper Edwardian gentlemen.

Soon, young men feared sexual hookups and promiscuity as avenues to post facto and one-sided charges of harassment—or worse.

For the half of Generation Z who went to college, tuition had soared, rising faster than the rate of inflation. Administrators were often more numerous than faculty. Obsessive fixations with race determined everything from dorm selections to graduation ceremonies.

Zoomers were mired in enormous student debt.

Yet they soon learned that their gut social science and “studies” degrees proved nearly worthless. Employers saw such certificates as neither proof of traditional knowledge nor of any needed specialized skill set.

Unemployed or half-employed Zoomers then ended up with unsustainable five-figure student loans, and the insidious interest on them. Their affluent, left-wing tenured profs, who had once demonized them as oppressors, could have cared less about their dismal fates.

Add it all up, and Zoomers puzzled their parents. And they found scant guidance from the campus.

Instead, they sought needed spiritual inspiration from a Jordan Peterson, entertainment and pragmatic advice from a Joe Rogan, but sometimes toxic venting from a demagogic, antisemitic Nick Fuentes.

What would shock the lost generation back into the mainstream, barring a war, depression, or natural catastrophe?

One, an end to DEI hectoring and blame-gaming, and a return to class rather than race determining “privilege.”

Two, some sanity in the war between the sexes. When women represent nearly 60% of undergraduates, why does gender still assure an advantage in admissions and hiring?

Three, the federal government needs to stop funding $1.7 trillion in student debt, often for worthless degrees, and wasting away one’s prime 20s and 30s.

Let universities pledge their endowments to guarantee their own loans. They should graduate students in four years. And they must slash the parasitical class of toxic administrative busybodies who cannot teach but can hector and bully.

Four, society needs to stop granting status on the basis of increasingly meaningless letters and titles after a name.

Skilled tradesmen like electricians and mechanics are noble professionals. And their status and compensation should reflect their value to society—far more so than a bachelor’s degree in a- studies major or years vaporized in off-and-on college.

Finally, incentivize building homes, rather than overregulating and zoning them into unaffordability.
If the lost Gen Z is not found soon, the result for everyone will not be pretty.

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Climate alarmists don’t just get the science wrong but also demonize the engine of wealth that has brought billions out of grinding poverty; and this “climate colonialism” is “morally unconscionable,” a Christian leader says.

“What I believe we’re seeing in the demand from wealthy Western nations that we fight climate change by reducing our use of fossil fuels is that they are demanding that the poorest nations of the world forego the use of the most abundant, affordable, reliable energy sources that can lift them out of poverty and keep them out of poverty,” E. Calvin Beisner, president of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, told The Daily Signal.

“It is the West saying to the rest, ‘We made it out, you have to stay,'” he noted. “That is just morally unconscionable.”

Beisner recalled growing up in Calcutta, India. “We were stepping over the bodies of people who had died overnight of starvation and disease.”

“When I see people saying, ‘It’s more important to fight climate change than to see poor parts of the world rise and stay out of poverty,’ I say, ‘You’ve never seen poverty, and that upsets me,'” he said.

The Engine of Wealth

Beisner’s Cornwall Alliance calls for biblical stewardship of creation, for the glory of God and for human flourishing. The organization does not believe that preserving a healthy environment requires giving up the use of fossil fuels, which have improved our lives in ways Westerners often take for granted.

“When we look at the enormous contribution that coal, oil, and natural gas—hydrocarbon fuels—have made to lifting billions of people out of abject poverty, into prosperity, into longer, healthier life and life with far more abundant options as to what we can do, and then I hear people condemning these as somehow evil, I say’ Where have you been for the last two centuries?'” he asked.

Beisner noted that too few Americans viscerally understand just how rough prior generations had it.

“For the entire history of mankind, average life expectancy at birth was around 27 or 28 years,” he noted. “Roughly half of all people born would die before their fifth birthday.”

This applied to the wealthy as well as the poor, he added. Queen Anne of England, for example, had 19 children, and not one survived to adulthood.

“It’s precisely the parts of the world that have made the least use of hydrocarbons that have the highest rates, still, of extreme poverty,” he noted.

Fossil fuels account for roughly 84% of the energy that human beings use in the world today—energy humans use to produce food, clothing, shelter, education, transportation, communication, medical care, and so much more.

“If you are objecting to 84% of the energy that we get, then you are objecting to 84% of all the wealth,” he argued. “You want 84% of the world that eats well to now eat poorly or starve.”

Not only are many of the foods Americans eat inspired by cuisines across the world, but the ingredients often cross seas and oceans—transported by “ships or trucks or planes running on fuel made by petroleum.”

Americans “wouldn’t have most of their dietary choices were it not for petroleum.”

The Alleged Climate Threat

But don’t fossil fuels pose an existential threat not just to prosperity but to our very lives?

Not exactly.

Beisner noted that, even though natural disasters have not decreased in the last 100 years, the number of people who die from them has decreased by about 99%.

Beisner noted that “wealth enables us to protect ourselves from anything related to climate and weather disasters,” so increasing wealth is more important than decreasing carbon emissions.

When it comes to preserving the environment, he noted that “a clean, healthful, beautiful environment is a costly good, and—news flash!—wealthier people can afford more costly goods than poorer people can.”

As for the truth of the climate threat, he noted that “there are so many different factors in the climate system” that it is nearly impossible to accurately predict global climate changes, much less attribute a specific change to the burning of fossil fuels. Many alarmist models fail to predict actual weather patterns because they fail to consider many factors.

The Biblical Image of Stewardship

So, how should Christians care for the earth? Beisner noted how God created the world in Genesis, and said human beings should echo his creation.

“We should be making more and more out of less and less, bringing greater order out of lesser order,… and we should be enhancing the abundance of life,” he noted.

“Our calling as human beings made in God’s image is to enhance the fruitfulness, and the beauty, and the safety of the earth to the glory of God and to the benefit of our neighbors,” Beisner explained. At the root of that is the gospel of Jesus, which he and the Cornwall Alliance preach.

The post ‘UNCONSCIONABLE’: Christian Leader Condemns the ‘Climate Colonialism’ That Would Doom the Global South to Grinding Poverty appeared first on The Daily Signal.

WASHINGTON, Nov 29 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the airspace above and surrounding Venezuela should be considered “closed in its entirety”, but gave no further details as Washington ramps up pressure on President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

“To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.

Venezuela‘s communications ministry, which handles all press inquiries for the government, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Trump’s post.

The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean have been underway for months, along with a U.S. military buildup in the region, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.

The President told military service members this week that the U.S. would “very soon” begin land operations to stop suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers.

Last week, the U.S. aviation regulator warned major airlines of a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela due to a “worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around” the South American country.

Venezuela revoked operating rights for six major international airlines that had suspended flights to the country after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warning.

The Trump administration has accused Maduro of involvement in drug trafficking, a charge he has denied.

Maduro, in power since 2013, has said that Trump is seeking to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt.

U.S. forces in the region have so far focused on counter-narcotics operations, although the assembled firepower far outweighs anything needed for them.

They have carried out at least 21 strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific since September, killing at least 83 people.

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