In an era where every grievance gets inflated into a moral crusade, the ideology people call “wokeness” stands out for one trait more than any other: ungratefulness.

Wokeness doesn’t simply point to injustice. It fixates on it. It treats progress as an illusion, opportunity as a trap, and gratitude as complicity. Everything becomes evidence of oppression. Nothing counts as improvement. To normal people, that posture feels like a bad odor in a room: It sours everything.

Michelle Obama’s story should read like an American testimonial. Yet she often talks about the country as if it injured her.

Everyone knows the type. The chronic complainer. A friend who rants about his job every time you see him. The boss is unfair. The pay is lousy. The co-workers are idiots.

At first, you listen. You sympathize. You offer advice. Then the excuses begin.

“I can’t quit because of the benefits.”

“The job market is terrible.”

“No one would hire me.”

Not with that attitude, pal!

Eventually you realize the problem isn’t his job. It’s him. He doesn’t want solutions. He wants a permanent grievance. After a while, you stop inviting him places. Or you nod and tune out.

Wokeness runs on the same fuel. It sells victimhood as identity and complaint as virtue. It refuses to admit how far the country has moved on race, sex, and equality because that would require humility — and would shrink the movement’s moral leverage.

The result is predictable: Sympathy dries up. People get exhausted. Potential allies become spectators.

You see this pattern in activist politics across the board. Some racial activists talk about systemic racism endlessly while refusing to deal honestly with internal problems that damage communities, like family breakdown and educational collapse. Some LGBTQ activists demand constant affirmation while downplaying enormous legal and cultural victories.

The message stays the same: You owe us more. It rarely becomes: Look how far we’ve come, or here’s what we can fix ourselves.

Michelle Obama embodies this attitude better than almost anyone.

Her story should read like an American testimonial. The country elected her husband president twice. The Obamas became global figures. They turned that platform into immense wealth and influence through books, speeches, and media deals. Few families have been lifted higher by modern America.

Yet Michelle Obama often talks about the country as if it injured her.

Start with her 2008 campaign remark: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.” Whatever she meant, it landed as contempt. She had lived an elite, upwardly mobile American life — Princeton, Harvard Law, a prestigious career — and still claimed pride only arrived when her husband’s political rise validated it.

Then came the line from her 2016 convention speech: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.” She could have framed it as proof of moral progress: a black family in the White House, a nation that overcame its own sins. Instead, she chose the grievance frame, even in the middle of historic achievement.

More recently, Obama described her White House years as a kind of trauma: “What happened that eight years …? What did that do to me internally? … We made it through. We got out alive.” She doesn’t have to pretend the job was easy. But she keeps using the same vocabulary: burden, survival, damage — as if the privilege itself was the wound.

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Wokeness runs on ungratefulness — and normal people are done with it

In that same conversation, she complained about being labeled “bitter” and “angry” as a black woman. Yet she enjoyed years of glowing coverage from the same cultural institutions that demonize her critics: legacy media, Hollywood, corporate America, the prestige press. Whatever hostility Obama faced, she lived under the warmest spotlight in American public life.

That’s the dynamic people recognize instinctively. Wokeness demands that everyone feel guilty, even when the facts argue for gratitude. It can’t celebrate progress because celebration would admit the country improved. It can’t relax because the crusade requires permanent outrage. It can’t share credit because that would weaken the hierarchy of grievance.

Normal Americans don’t reject wokeness because they hate justice. They reject it because it never stops scolding, never seems satisfied, and never acknowledges anything good. It turns every achievement into an accusation and every success into a complaint.

Ungratefulness repels people. Always has. The movement that builds itself on resentment will keep shrinking — not because its enemies “silenced” it, but because everyday people walked away.

That’s the fate of every ideology that cannot say two simple words: Thank you.

​Gratitude, Woke, Wokeness, Michelle obama, Obama, Opinion & analysis 

Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas is pushing for President Donald Trump’s tax relief to be felt across America, not just in states that voted for him.

In response to local attempts to block Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act from being implemented in Washington, D.C., Gill introduced legislation to ensure that residents in the nation’s capital can still receive the tax benefits.

‘Government’s top priority should be serving families, not benefiting off them.’

“Thanks to President Trump, the Working Families Tax Cut stopped the largest tax hike since World War II, providing Americans with historic tax relief,” Gill told Blaze News.

“The D.C. Council’s actions would block D.C. residents, namely service workers, from receiving these federal tax credits, from non-taxable tips and overtime, and from keeping their hard-earned money in their wallets. I am joining my colleague Sen. Rick Scott of Florida in putting a stop to the D.C. Council’s interference with America First tax relief.”

RELATED: Exclusive: Brandon Gill unveils key legislation to accelerate deportations for criminal aliens

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

As Gill mentioned, his House bill is accompanied by Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott’s companion legislation in the Senate. Scott noted the immensely popular “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” policies, criticizing D.C. for “deliberately” denying residents these tax benefits.

“President Trump and Republicans passed historic tax cuts into law last year, including No Tax on Tips and No Tax on Overtime to support hardworking American families and businesses and to let them keep more of their own money,” Scott told Blaze News.

RELATED: Exclusive: SAVE Act hangs in the balance as Republican Study Committee pushes for Senate passage

Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images

“I cut taxes over 100 times when I was governor of Florida to help turn our economy around and businesses grow — which is exactly what President Trump is working to do on the federal level. It is absolutely absurd that self-interested D.C. bureaucrats would deliberately deny families and businesses from saving their own, hard-earned dollars. Government’s top priority should be serving families, not benefiting off them.”

Gill’s legislation is up for a vote in the House on Wednesday and is expected to pass across party lines.

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​Donald trump, Rick scott, Brandon gill, No tax on tips, No tax on overtime, Congress, House republicans, Senate republicans, One big beautiful bill, Politics 

On January 30, the U.S. Department of Justice published over 3 million additional pages of documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. This new drop contains information from various investigations, including Epstein’s cases in Florida and New York, Ghislaine Maxwell’s case, probes into Epstein’s death, and FBI investigations, among others.

Despite the massive volume of documents and numerous shocking allegations, there were no game-changing revelations that would perhaps lead to fresh accountability for big names.

Glenn Beck, however, says there was one stunning disclosure: His name is in the Epstein files.

“I want to read exactly what it says,” Glenn begins, displaying the official document containing the email where his name is mentioned.

On Wednesday, December 30, 2009, a woman named Alice Jacobs sent Jeffery Epstein the following email:

I just googled where I’m headed right now to meet some old friends and it just occurred to me that a new friend and fellow eccentric is right around the corner from where I’m visiting. I might be able to stop and say hello if you’re around later this afternoon. Would be quick visit but would be a welcome respite from the fox news/glenn beck disciples I am visiting today. They are lovely aside from their politics.

“I don’t know what that means, but this is the best way to be in the Jeffery Epstein [files], where Jeffrey and his friends are like, ‘I hate Glenn Beck, and I don’t like people who like Glenn Beck.’ Yes, so I am proudly in the Epstein files,” Glenn laughs.

In regard to the file dump, he expresses disappointment — albeit expected disappointment — that yet again, there’s nothing that directly implicates anyone.

“It’s exactly what I thought it would be. I think this thing has been picked through so many times that you’re not going to see anything new in the Epstein files,” he says.

The only thing the files really do is confirm that elites are more often than not “dirtbags.”

“There is an evil in our system, and it revolves around really dark sex stuff,” Glenn says.

Tragically, as of now, it appears there’s no way to legally challenge this insidious elitist network.

The best thing we can do, Glenn says, is “keep our eye on [the Epstein case]” without forgetting that there are other national issues that demand our attention — the violent anti-ICE movement in Minnesota, the socialist collapse of New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the ongoing power outages in Nashville, Tennessee.

But even these issues aren’t the most critical. The biggest impact we can make is at the micro level — first with our “family” and second with local politics.

“[Donald Trump] is dismantling this global system, and he’s putting it back local, as local as we care to take it,” Glenn says. “It’ll just come back to the United States government, which I don’t think is a good idea — unless we start taking our communities and our states back the right way.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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

​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Epstein files, Jeffery epstein, Epstein case, Epstein list, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze podcasts 

A “monstrous act of cruelty” by a couple to their four children in Lancaster, California, led to a life sentence for both.

Maurice Jewel Taylor Sr., 39, and Natalie Sumiko Brothwell, 49, decapitated their 12-year-old boy, Maurice, and 13-year-old girl, Maliaka, in Nov. 2020.

‘Two innocent children were brutally murdered, and their young brothers were left to live through unimaginable horror.’

The couple then forced their younger sons, ages 8 and 9, to view the bodies of their dead siblings and confined them to their bedroom for days without food, according to prosecutors.

“This was a monstrous act of cruelty that shattered an entire family,” said Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman in a statement about the conviction.

“Two innocent children were brutally murdered, and their young brothers were left to live through unimaginable horror,” he added. “The jury’s verdict delivers justice for these victims and sends a powerful message: Those who commit such evil acts will be held fully accountable.”

The two were convicted of first-degree murder as well as child abuse.

The children’s maternal grandmother maintained that her daughter was innocent and accused Taylor of “ruining so many lives” in a statement read to the court.

Taylor and Brothwell were given life sentences without the possibility of parole.

“How do you put into words that two children were beheaded?” said a close family friend outside the courthouse. “This stays with all of us. This is never going to wash off.”

RELATED: 23-year-old stripper decapitated 55-year-old boyfriend and immediately fled to Mexico, police say

The woman, who was only identified as Ellen, said she had urged Brothwell to leave the relationship for years because of domestic violence.

“She was doing what we were raised to believe. You stand by your man,” Ellen added. “You have a family, and you raise your children.”

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​Parents decapitate children, Maurice jewel taylor murder, Natalie sumiko brothwell murder, Crime, Murder and child abuse 

Imagine the Confederates attacking Fort Sumter in April 1861 and Abraham Lincoln negotiating terms of separation instead of mustering troops. We would be two separate countries. In a limited but real sense, we now live in two countries anyway — because Donald Trump has ceded ground to blue-state mobs.

States like Minnesota, working in tandem with local politicians to obstruct a basic federal function — protecting national sovereignty — are latter-day Confederates. Blue states claim the power to nullify federal immigration enforcement inside their borders. That raises a question no one in Washington wants to answer: If blue states can thwart national sovereignty to protect illegal aliens, why can’t red states remove them?

Blue jurisdictions unify behind the proposition of protecting illegal aliens. Red jurisdictions rarely unify behind protecting Americans from political persecution.

This fight doesn’t hinge on Minneapolis or the specific riots that ended with two anti-ICE agitators dead. It reflects a sustained, coordinated campaign across blue cities: street militants, local Democrats, and friendly judges working in concert to shut down immigration enforcement. The activists don’t negotiate over “rules of engagement.” They aim to ban enforcement itself, at least anywhere Democrats hold power. Blue states now run a neo-Confederacy against one of the few legitimate functions of national government.

Now look at what happens on the other side of the divide. Some weak-kneed Republicans — James Comer of Kentucky among them — float the idea that Trump should leave blue cities to stew in their own sanctuary mess, as if the locals will eventually revolt. That fantasy collapses on contact with reality. Worse, ceding sovereignty to blue states hasn’t even produced more deportations in red states.

Courts have enjoined nearly every state statute that tries to treat illegal presence as a state crime. If red states attempted full-spectrum crackdowns under a Democrat president, the same judicial buzz saw would cut them down.

The result: Democrats can block federal law regardless of who sits in the White House, while red states can’t protect themselves when Democrats run the executive branch.

That asymmetry flows from something simple and ugly: Republicans don’t believe their own promises the way Democrats believe theirs. Republicans talk problems to death. Democrats build institutions.

Democrats staff agencies, cultivate prosecutors, and train judges to pursue a shared mission. Republicans often appoint people who treat their “mission” as career management and donor service.

Democrats built parallel systems designed to frustrate immigration enforcement under an opposing president. Conservatives in red states built little beyond press releases and campaign slogans.

RELATED: Memo to Trump: Stop negotiating and ramp up deportations

Photo by Sean Bascom/Anadolu via Getty Images

Democrats in Minnesota and elsewhere have effectively executed the state interposition James Madison described in Federalist 46.

“The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices … would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments,” Madison wrote. “And where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.”

So the first step is to stir public “disquietude.” Then teach “repugnance” toward federal action. Encourage refusal to cooperate with “officers of the Union.” Then use the governor, legislature, and adjacent states “in unison” to create obstacles so severe that the federal government hesitates to enforce the law.

Blue states have followed that script with discipline. They align the branches. They coordinate the message. They deploy local officials to deny cooperation. They rely on judges in blue jurisdictions to shred the Immigration and Nationality Act, even when Congress tried to limit judicial interference, and they order illegal aliens released from custody.

The political class says the quiet part out loud. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) invoked Fort Sumter to describe his interposition against the federal government. Mayor Jacob Frey (D) declared that Minneapolis “does not, and will not, enforce federal immigration law.” Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner threatened to “hunt down” ICE agents he believes violated civil liberties, calling them “wannabe Nazis,” and promised to identify them and pursue them.

RELATED: Civil war chatter rises when Democrats fear losing power for good

Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images

Blue jurisdictions unify behind the proposition of protecting illegal aliens. Red jurisdictions rarely unify behind the proposition of protecting Americans from political persecution. Where did red-state leaders stand when the Biden Justice Department went after pro-lifers for praying outside abortion clinics? Where did they stand when federal authorities treated ordinary citizens like criminals for walking through the Capitol after barriers and rope lines moved?

Democrats now operate by a new rulebook: anarchy for their people, coercion for ours.

Republicans still operate as if the old system can save them. Even when a red-state leader shows spine, he often stands alone — without a legislature willing to act, without an attorney general willing to litigate, without courts willing to defend state interests.

Watching blue states succeed at sabotaging immigration enforcement under Trump should alarm everyone. A darker problem looms: the next Democrat Justice Department won’t limit itself to immigration. When it turns its machinery against Americans again, red states won’t have Madison’s “in unison” design ready to defend their citizens. They will prove as impotent against federal coercion as they have been against the importation of millions of illegal aliens.

Americans now live like second-class citizens while illegal aliens enjoy first-class protection — because the party that claims to represent Americans has failed at the most basic task of representation: fighting to win.

​Blue states, Red states, Ice, Dhs, Democrats, Gop, Antifa, Minneapolis, Opinion & analysis, Civil war, National divorce, Donald trump, Department of homeland security, Secession, James madison, Federalist papers 

President Donald Trump lambasted CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins when she challenged him on his allies referenced in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein files.

Collins also questioned the president on whether the release had been fumbled by officials, after Epstein victims complained about redactions in the releases.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face.’

“On the Epstein files, you talk about Democrats who were there,” she said. “Elon Musk was also in there, and so was your commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and correspondence that he had with him.”

She asked him if he read the new files.

“I didn’t. I have a lot of things that I’m doing,” Trump responded. “And I don’t know. You mentioned two names. I’m sure they’re fine.”

“A lot of the women who are survivors of Epstein were unhappy with those redactions that came out,” Collins continued. “Some of them, entire witness interviews are totally blacked out.”

“I think it’s really time for the country to get on to something else, now that nothing came out about me,” he responded.

“But what would you say to people who feel like they haven’t gotten justice, Mr. President?” she asked.

“You are so bad. You are the worst reporter. No wonder CNN has no ratings, because of people like you,” the president said.

“You know, she’s a young woman. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face,” he added. “You know why you’re not smiling? Because you know you’re not telling the truth, and you’re a very dishonest organization, and they should be ashamed of you.”

“These are survivors of sexual abuse,” Collins persisted.

RELATED: Karoline Leavitt berates CNN’s Kaitlan Collins over inflation and the economy

Collins posted video of the interaction on her social media account.

“President Trump argues the country should move on from the Epstein files and lashes out when asked about the survivors’ response to the latest release from the Justice Department,” she wrote.

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