Swipe right for eternal love, or swipe left to ensure your primary relationship in old age is with a potted plant. Many choose right, but very few find someone to build a life with.

Silicon Valley pitched the online romantic bazaar as the ultimate solution to human isolation. Instead, it engineered a high-tech hellscape that leaves millions broken, bitter, and eating alone over the kitchen sink at two in the morning.

The year 2012 marked the release of Tinder, a dating app that effectively converted human pair-bonding into a high-speed slot machine. Instead of buying a drink for someone at a dimly lit tavern, adults began flicking their thumbs across screens, evaluating potential mothers and fathers of their future children with the exact same depth of consideration given to choosing a cheap lunch order. Ten seconds. Three photos. A witty line stolen from an old internet forum. Next.

The photogenic narcissist with a rented Lamborghini gets 80 matches before lunch.

The financial reality of these companies makes permanent romance a direct threat to corporate profits. A customer who meets a compatible partner, deletes the app, and goes on to celebrate a golden wedding anniversary represents lost revenue. The ideal subscriber isn’t a happily married suburbanite with three kids. Rather, it’s a chronically anxious 30-something who gets dumped every four months, panics, buys a premium tier to see who liked them, and spirals into a weekend of intense self-doubt. The product was never commitment, but continuous, profitable frustration.

Researchers at the Institute for Family Studies recently examined male and female users from Keeper, a service built specifically for individuals seeking long-term commitment and children. The findings exposed a hilarious truth about the entire industry: Men and women actually want the exact same things. When you remove the gamified tricks, both sexes rank shared values, clear communication, humor, intelligence, and physical health at the top of their partner wish lists. Men show a slightly higher preference for youth and appearance; women lean harder into ambition and status. These differences are rounding errors, minor details compared with the larger human desire for a trusted co-pilot on life’s unpredictable journey.

Swiped away

Humans spent centuries relying on tight-knit networks to filter out total weirdos and freeloaders. In 1950, your grandmother met your grandfather because he lived three blocks over, they went to the same neighborhood gathering, and her brother knew he wasn’t a complete lunatic. Reputation acted as a natural safety net against terrible partners.

Swiping erased that protective social structure, dumping millions of unvetted strangers into a giant digital meat market. Devoid of meaningful context, users naturally optimize for short-term visual signals. The guy with a solid work ethic, no criminal record, and a modest savings account gets buried under an avalanche of algorithmic garbage. The photogenic narcissist posing with a rented Lamborghini secures 80 matches before lunch.

RELATED: Can this super-humanoid robot ‘solve’ loneliness?

imaginima/Getty Images

This environment turns dating into an absurd exercise in artificial scarcity and total overload. A tiny percentage of hyper-exaggerated profiles swallow the vast majority of human attention, generating an unmanageable barrage of lazy messages for a small minority of users. Meanwhile, the average guy spends his evenings shouting into a vast, empty canyon, receiving zero matches over weeks of desperate effort. One group gets drowned in a sea of shallow options; the other starves in a desert of complete invisibility.

The options we need

The tragic comedy of the whole arrangement lies in our collective willingness to blame our physical flaws instead of correcting our mental ones. Single people embrace profile coaches, professional photoshoots, and premium upgrades, convinced that a slightly improved posture in a photo will finally break the spell. They treat a rigged carnival game like a personal failure of character.

Imagine applying this logic to any other crucial human need. Picture an app that promises to help you buy a home, but instead of showing you mortgages or inspection reports, it forces you to look at picture frames for three seconds and charges you five dollars a minute to talk to a real estate agent who has no intention of ever handing over the keys. You would call it a scam. In romance, we call it “having options.”

Fixing family formation requires abandoning the destructive delusion that these platforms are helping us settle down. A system actually tuned toward marriage would hide photos behind deep character metrics. It would charge users based on long-term relationship outcomes and aggressively ban anyone looking for a quick distraction on a Friday night. Until the market finds a way to profit off 50-year anniversaries, single adults will remain trapped inside an infinite first-date loop, paying inordinate sums for the privilege of staying entirely alone.

​Tech, Dating world 

If COVID-19 nearly broke civilization with a 1% fatality rate, can you imagine the pandemonium a more lethal pathogen would cause? According to national security journalist Annie Jacobsen — author of “Biological War: A Scenario” — society should be reckoning with that very question because genetically modified pathogens with a 100% kill rate are sitting in laboratories right now.

In an interview with Glenn Beck, Jacobsen explained that these pathogens aren’t theoretical — and that a real-world release would move far faster and more destructively than most people grasp.

The prospect of a pandemic that makes COVID-19 look like child’s play terrifies Glenn — not just because of the lethal implications of such an event but also because society has never been so skeptical of the government and institutionalized science.

If something truly deadly escaped, how many would even believe it?

“The trust is gone. It’s just gone,” Glenn says. “If an outbreak happened today, half of the country would not believe Donald Trump. If it was … Kamala Harris, half of the country would not believe her.”

And then there’s the people who are so jaded, it doesn’t matter who’s in office — “they don’t trust the science,” Glenn says, because COVID-19 mistakes still have never been owned by the scientific authorities.

These skeptics, justified as their mistrust may be, would be in peril, however, if an invariably fatal pathogen were to escape.

“There are genetically modified pathogens out there that have a 100% case fatality rate. Everybody dies. And [in the book] I show readers what the government has planned for that kind of event,” Jacobsen says.

“I take the readers from outbreak to anarchy in six days … and then you learn what happens after anarchy,” she adds.

“How convinced are you that we are near … an accident in one of these labs?” Glenn asks.

“[Biological] accidents are listed in Defense Department nomenclature as having the same plan go into effect as an attack. … So, a lab leak 100% is as deadly as an attack because the pathogen, if it’s airborne, the weapon system is the human lung set,” Jacobsen explains.

Glenn then pivots to gain-of-function research.

“I understand if we’re looking for, you know, cures for these weapons, but I just don’t know — it feels as though we have crossed a point to where we’re almost insane and will appear to be suicidal at some point down the road,” he says.

“You can’t use any of these biological weapons. It’s all against the law since Nixon, but how many countries are still doing this stuff?” he asks.

To understand just how prevalent gain-of-function research is, all you have to do, Jacobsen says, is “look at the labs.”

“There are 110 BSL-4 labs around the world. That’s the maximum containment lab. And BSL-3, by the way, is just right below that. You can work with plague, hantavirus, anthrax, rabies in a BSL-3 lab, and there are 3,500 of those labs around the world,” she explains.

“And so, the idea of an accident is, you know, we’re just right at that precipice.”

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​Anthrax, Covid-19, Glenn beck, Hantavirus, National security, Pandemic, Pathogen, Rabies, Nixon, Gain of function research, Blazetv show 

When President Trump reposted a video featuring President John F. Kennedy warning about subversion in America, he renewed focus on a threat we have long ignored at our peril.

Spotlighting JFK’s admonition is part of the administration’s all-out attack on foreign subversion — an effort that has no presidential precedent. Its designation of Antifa and certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as terrorist organizations was a first. The revocation of visas for foreign subversives, if carried out on a larger scale, will be unmatched in scope.

Kennedy understood that peace through strength was broader than deploying military power or international diplomacy. But he never had the chance to deliver that warning.

During the July 16 Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and other officials made clear that the Trump administration would use every tool of statecraft to dismantle the decades-old subversive networks operating in the United States.

This effort has also refocused attention on an older — but no less potent — enemy: communist subversion.

The State Department published a 100-page report “Cuba: The Capital of 21st-Century Communism,” detailing how Cuban communists have worked for decades to overthrow the United States. It names names, past and present.

Cuba, of course, brings us back to President Kennedy. Despite his failed effort to remove Fidel Castro’s communist regime, Kennedy frequently pointed out how communists abused constitutional protections and infiltrated U.S. institutions — the news media, labor unions, academia, and the government itself.

JFK’s words still apply today to surviving Soviet spin-offs like the Cuban regime, critical theory and critical race theory, cultural Marxism, and democratic socialism.

As a new senator, at the height of Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s investigative hearings, Kennedy warned in successive speeches that the greatest foreign threat would rely on “the weapons of subversion, economic disintegration, and guerrilla warfare to accomplish our destruction, rather than the direct assault of an all-out war.”

Kennedy warned every possible audience — schoolteachers, university professors, community leaders, newspaper editors, women’s clubs, union leaders, military personnel, veterans, business groups, political fundraisers, civil liberties leaders, church groups, and the general public — about the communist threat right up to the last day of his life.

Kennedy recognized the danger posed by American traitors who sought, through subterfuge and collaboration with the foreign enemy, to corrode Americans’ belief in their country and the principles of their nation’s founding. He praised some American labor unions for ridding themselves of communist subversion.

Defending President Eisenhower’s counter-subversion approach in 1957, Kennedy nonetheless chided his fractured and squabbling Republican opponents. Republicans, he said, “found that their chief concern was with questions of disloyalty and subversion — not within the Federal Government but within the Republican Party.”

That was just three weeks to the day after Joe McCarthy’s death. JFK never publicly criticized McCarthy, who had been a welcome guest of his father at the Kennedy Compound on Cape Cod. “Half my people in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero,” he once said.

RELATED: The socialists are coming for the Senate

Kid-a/Getty Images

Infiltration and subversion

Kennedy repeatedly warned of what he called “nonmilitary avenues of Soviet advance”: “I fear our emphasis on the dangers of missile attacks may cause us to forget. For their thrust is more subtle,” and “the task of opposing them more formidable.”

Among those threats were “economic and political penetration, intimidation, and subversion,” he said in 1958. “There is little value in rushing new billions in defense expenditures to fight total wars … if we are unprepared to prevent continued Soviet advances through … subversion and intimidation.”

As he was preparing his presidential run, Kennedy mused during a speech at a civil liberties conference that the public had been so subjected to subversive attacks that they no longer shared the civic principles that once united them.

On the campaign trail in 1960, Kennedy raised the topic of subversion even before audiences asked about it. As the Democratic nominee for president, Kennedy became more critical of the Eisenhower administration for focusing on massive military buildups at the expense of a predictable pattern of communist ideological conquest made easier by America’s weakness in counter-subversion:

In other words, there is every chance that the pattern of conquest of the communists will not be military action, but will be by subversion, by fear, by persuading the people of those countries and their leaders that the communist system represents the way of the future. I don’t believe the administration has recognized that danger. … I don’t believe that our influence has increased as fast in recent years abroad as that of the communists.

In his last weeks of campaigning, Kennedy even called the communist threat more challenging than dealing with the Nazis. “I must say that the problems we will face in the next 10 years are far more complex than any that Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman faced, particularly in the field of foreign policy,” he said to supporters in Ohio. “What has happened in the last two years in the field of foreign policy indicates a whole technique of subversion and infiltration, which will be extremely hard to counter.”

That subversion, he continued, “will require a far great[er] subtlety, far more constant vigilance, far greater personnel, far greater foresight than we have ever shown before.”

Unaware of President Eisenhower’s plan for toppling the new Fidel Castro regime that he would inherit, Kennedy tore into U.S. unpreparedness that led to Cuba becoming “a base from which to carry communist infiltration and subversion throughout the Americas.”

Kennedy was alone in bringing up subversion during his fourth debate with Vice President Richard M. Nixon, which was striking since Nixon had become a national political figure while serving on the House Un-American Activities Committee.

What you can do

Kennedy hammered away at the threat of communist subversion in the first minutes of his presidency. In his inaugural address, he vowed “to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas” — the same speech in which he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

He warned in a 1961 emergency address to Congress that “nuclear weapons cannot prevent subversion.”

He and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had no love for FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, but they worked closely with him to investigate and disrupt communist infiltration of the civil rights movement. JFK, like Eisenhower before him and Lyndon Johnson and Nixon afterward, treated it properly as a counterintelligence problem.

On the day of his assassination in Dallas, President Kennedy was ready once again to warn about subversion. The president’s remarks as prepared read:

I want to discuss with you today the status of our strength and our society because this question clearly calls for the most responsible qualities of leadership and the most enlightened products of scholarship. For this nation’s strength and security are not easily or cheaply obtained, nor are they quickly and simply explained. There are many kinds of strength and no one kind will suffice. Overwhelming nuclear strength cannot stop a guerrilla war. Formal pacts of alliance cannot stop internal subversion.

Kennedy understood that peace through strength was broader than deploying military power or international diplomacy.

But he never had the chance to deliver that warning. More than six decades later, President Trump and his team have fortunately picked up where he left off, reviving a neglected part of Kennedy’s legacy. It’s time to follow President Kennedy’s lead and uproot domestic subversion in America once and for all.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Antifa, Critical race theory, Cuba, Democratic socialism, Fidel castro, John f kennedy, Joseph mccarthy, Opinion & analysis, Donald trump, Marco rubio 

Surveillance video from a Georgia gas station captured a scary scene late last month — a male chasing a child around a car while the child’s mother was pumping gas.

It all played out after midnight at a Shell station on Delk Road in Marietta, WSB-TV reported.

‘The million-dollar question everyone watching is going to ask: Why did this happen? Why did this occur? And we don’t know those answers.’

Video shows a shoeless, shirtless male approaching the car, the station said. While he eventually walks away, the male returns to the car, WSB said.

The male this time walks closer to the mother but notices a child jumping to the driver’s seat and exiting the car, the station said.

The video then shows the male chasing the child.

At one point, the male is seen opening the car’s back door where the mother’s other child was seated, WSB said.

The mother then holds up the gas pump nozzle and gestures toward the male as he backs away, which gives her child time to get back into the car, the station said, adding that two witnesses appear in the frame and help.

RELATED: Heroic gas station clerk saves girl from sex offender amid alleged kidnapping after she mouths desperate plea to him

“The actions of the mother and everyone on the scene, their ability to remain calm under pressure and … get him away from the children, get a hold of us so that we can get to the area allowed us to hold this individual accountable,” Public Information Officer Charles McPhilamy of the Marietta Police Department told WSB.

The suspect, Jerahn Tucker, was arrested on three charges, including attempted kidnapping, the station said.

Police told the station they found a THC vape in Tucker’s car when they caught up to him.

The gas station manager added to WSB that he’s kicked Tucker off the property multiple times.

“The million-dollar question everyone watching is going to ask: Why did this happen? Why did this occur? And we don’t know those answers,” McPhilamy added to the station.

Jail records Blaze News reviewed Friday indicate Tucker was still behind bars.

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​Georgia, Attempted kidnapping, Arrest, Gas station, Mother and child, Fighting back, Crime 

America’s debate over poverty has undergone a remarkable and troubling transformation. Two centuries ago, the central challenge was persuading needy people to accept public assistance. Today, the challenge is preventing people from fraudulently claiming benefits to which they were never entitled.

That trajectory tells us something profound about the nation’s changing moral culture.

What had once been viewed as a last resort gradually came to be seen as an entitlement detached from personal responsibility.

Alexis de Tocqueville noticed something remarkable when he traveled through America in the early 1830s. Unlike Europe, where poverty often produced permanent dependence upon the state or aristocratic patrons, Americans possessed an almost universal determination to remain independent. They formed voluntary associations to care for neighbors in distress, but they regarded prolonged dependence as inconsistent with the character of a free citizen.

That observation reflected a broader understanding shared by the American founders and the generation that followed them.

Every state maintained some provision for public relief, but it was deliberately limited and administered locally. It existed for those genuinely incapable of caring for themselves — the disabled, widows, orphans, and others facing extraordinary hardship. Families, churches, fraternal organizations, and private charities bore the primary responsibility for helping the poor.

Public charity carried a social stigma — not because Americans lacked compassion, but because they believed that independence was itself a form of human dignity.

Justice Joseph Story explained that republican government depended upon a virtuous and independent citizenry. The ideal citizen governed himself before participating in governing others. Economic independence fostered political independence; citizens who could support themselves were less susceptible to manipulation by those dispensing favors or public largesse.

One of the striking features of early America is not that assistance was unavailable, but that many people who qualified for relief were reluctant to seek it.

Contemporary accounts from several states — including New Jersey — describe respectable men and women enduring extraordinary hardship before accepting public charity. To modern ears, such reluctance may seem irrational. To them, it was a matter of preserving self-respect.

That moral instinct — that accepting public assistance should be exceptional rather than ordinary — formed an essential part of the American understanding of citizenship until the 20th century.

The first cracks in that understanding appeared during the Progressive Era and deepened during the New Deal. Faced with industrialization, urban poverty, and the Great Depression, Americans increasingly looked to government to perform functions that earlier generations had entrusted to institutions outside the government.

Much of that expansion responded to genuine crises, and programs such as Social Security reflected the extraordinary circumstances of their time.

Even so, the nation’s underlying philosophy was beginning to change. Government was no longer viewed simply as a safety net for those unable to care for themselves; it increasingly became expected to solve all social and economic problems.

The shift was gradual and often justified by necessity. But it subtly weakened the older assumption that public assistance should remain exceptional, temporary, and closely tied to preserving personal independence.

RELATED: 1776, not 1608: What the Supreme Court got wrong on birthright citizenship

Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call Inc./Getty Images

Then came the Great Society, which transformed that gradual evolution into a new governing philosophy.

It was no longer enough for government to provide a backstop against destitution. Washington now assumed responsibility for eliminating poverty itself, dramatically expanding both the scope of public assistance and the expectation that government would provide it.

Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty initiatives promised not merely to relieve poverty, but to eradicate it. The federal government assumed responsibilities that had traditionally rested with families, churches, private charities, and local communities. Welfare increasingly became not an emergency measure but a permanent feature of American life.

Though the Great Society’s architects believed they were expanding compassion, they failed to appreciate that they were also reshaping character. As benefits expanded and eligibility became more complex, government increasingly rewarded dependency rather than independence. Bureaucracies grew. Incentives shifted. Entire industries arose to help people maximize government benefits rather than minimize their reliance upon them.

Most importantly, the moral understanding surrounding public assistance changed.

What had once been viewed as a last resort gradually came to be seen as an entitlement detached from personal responsibility. The question shifted from “Do I truly need help?” to “What benefits can I qualify for?”

Today, we appear to have entered yet another stage.

The headlines are filled not merely with dependency, but with outright theft. Fraudulent unemployment claims. Identity theft used to obtain government benefits. Organized criminal enterprises exploiting Medicare and Medicaid. Billions of dollars in pandemic relief stolen through fake applications and fictitious businesses. International criminal organizations siphoning taxpayer dollars from programs intended to help struggling Americans.

In state after state, investigators have uncovered elaborate schemes involving food assistance, housing subsidies, disability payments, and health care reimbursements.

That is not to say that every welfare recipient is dishonest or even dependent. The overwhelming majority of Americans who receive public assistance are law-abiding citizens, many facing genuine hardship. But a system that steadily weakens the connection between work and reward inevitably creates opportunities — and temptations — for abuse.

RELATED: Will America need a Caesar?

Chudakov2/iStock/Getty Images

Once government benefits come to be viewed less as charity for the truly needy than as a pot of money available for the taking, the moral barrier separating dependence from outright fraud begins to erode.

No society can long endure when the distinction between earning and taking begins to disappear. The welfare state ultimately depends upon trust: trust that recipients are honest, that taxpayers will continue to support programs for those in genuine need, and that government will faithfully safeguard the public treasury. Rampant fraud destroys each of those assumptions.

The greatest victims are often the truly needy. Every dollar stolen by fraudsters is a dollar unavailable to a disabled veteran, a struggling single mother, or an elderly widow living on a fixed income. Every scandal further erodes public confidence in programs that exist for legitimate purposes.

Reforming welfare therefore requires more than better auditing, modernized computer systems, or tougher prosecutors, although all of those are necessary. It requires recovering an older understanding of citizenship.

The founders recognized something that modern policymakers have too often forgotten: Independence is a political virtue. Citizens capable of supporting themselves are more capable of governing themselves. A republic cannot flourish if large portions of the population come to regard government not as the protector of liberty, but as the primary provider of livelihood.

America’s success has historically rested primarily on the character of its people, not on government programs.

Our national journey — from dignity to welfare dependence to thievery — was not inevitable, and it is not irreversible. The same nation that once prized independence above comfort can recover that ethic.

But doing so will require us to remember what earlier generations instinctively understood: There is a profound difference between helping a neighbor in genuine need and constructing a system that slowly erodes the very virtues upon which a free people depend.

Compassion remains indispensable. But so do dignity, self-reliance, and personal responsibility. Lose those, and we will discover that the greatest poverty afflicting America is no longer material. It is moral.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at the American Mind.

​Great society, Social security, Personal responsibility, Welfare state, American founding, Charity, Benefits, Public assistance, Government programs, Opinion & analysis, Fraud, Alexis de tocqueville, Joseph story 

Journee McGrew says the man she brutally murdered with a metal hammer had groomed and molested her since the time she was in elementary school.

The 22-year-old woman is awaiting sentencing for beating 41-year-old Waduta Londrell Woodley to death on July 2, 2025, in Jacksonville, Florida.

‘I really wasn’t in my right mind when this happened. I’m not violent, and I’m sorry for this situation.’

McGrew said Woodley had sexually molested her for many years before she left him in a pool of blood in the breezeway of an apartment complex. Police said he had blunt force trauma to his head and face.

They also found a paper on his chest with a message that read, “PEDO Touches Children.”

McGrew said in court that her plan was to lure him into her apartment by falsely claiming to want sex in order to gather evidence against him. She said she did not plan to kill him.

“This was not supposed to happen. I really wasn’t in my right mind when this happened. I’m not violent, and I’m sorry for this situation,” she testified.

Police said they knocked on her door and she answered. They found bloody footprints as well as the bloody hammer.

Woodley’s mother testified at trial on his behalf.

“Everything changed in a second when your only son has been murdered,” she said in court. “Yes, this has affected my family, my daughter, my granddaughter. … We don’t know how to cope.”

McGrew also testified that she had been diagnosed with psychosis and post-traumatic stress disorder before the murder.

She initially pleaded not guilty to the two charges but changed her plea to guilty in Dec. 2025. She will be sentenced in August. The state has recommended life in prison.

“McGrew decided last year to be judge, jury, and executioner,” the state said. “She decided she was going to take the law into her own hands. She decided to be a vigilante, to be retaliatory and to impose a sentence.”

WJXT-TV reported that Woodley had no criminal history related to sexual assault or the abuse of children.

McGrew’s mugshot shows her smiling happily after she was arrested.

RELATED: Family of 10-year-old girl allegedly tortured to death says child protective services ignored dozens of warnings

McGrew was asked if she had any comments for her victim’s family.

“I am sorry about what I did,” she said. “I know how much I impacted your family and mine. I’m really sorry for what happened.”

No one appears to have submitted anything for Woodley’s obituary. The staff of the funeral home planted a tree in his memory.

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​Brutal beating, Child molestation, Florida, Revenge, Child grooming, Crime 

New York has long styled itself as a national champion of tolerance and individual freedom. Yet when it comes to one of the oldest civil liberties in American life — the freedom to live according to one’s conscience — the Empire State is moving in the opposite direction.

The 2026 Religious Liberty in the States index, a data-driven investigation published by the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, measures how hard state governments work to protect the basic right of conscience. New York, it seems, works overtime to achieve the exact opposite.

A genuinely civilized society accommodates honest differences rather than requiring total ideological agreement.

Dead last

The index measures the everyday points where state power clashes with religious conviction. Can a nurse refuse to assist in genetic counseling that conflicts with her faith? Can a Seventh-day Adventist opt out of mandatory union dues that finance causes he considers morally objectionable? Are citizens safe from religious bias at their local bank, state university, or public school board?

On those fundamental questions, New York performs worse than every other state in the nation. The latest edition places New York dead last — 50th out of 50.

The ranking reflects a governing philosophy that rejects religious liberty whenever it conflicts with progressive policy goals. Rather than treating conscience protections as a cornerstone of a pluralistic society, state leaders regard them as obstacles to be managed or even eliminated. With Zohran Mamdani and his political allies continuing to push an aggressive far-left agenda, protections for religious beliefs are increasingly treated as hazardous waste requiring active containment.

RELATED: Euthanasia and the lie of the ‘good death’

Mininyx Doodle/Getty Images

Death drive

The ranking isn’t merely academic. On the very day the report was released, four orders of Catholic nuns and several Catholic health care ministries were back in federal court challenging New York’s assisted-suicide law, arguing that it would force them to violate their religious convictions by participating in the process of ending patients’ lives.

Backed by the religious liberty legal group Becket, the plaintiffs in Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. James had asked the court to block the law before it takes effect on Aug. 5. On Friday, they won an important early victory when New York agreed not to enforce the law against the ministries while the case proceeds. Without that protection, the plaintiffs argued, religious health care providers who refused to facilitate assisted suicide could face steep financial penalties, the loss of professional licenses, and even criminal prosecution.

At the same time the RLS rankings were published, four orders of Catholic nuns and several Catholic health care ministries filed a federal lawsuit challenging New York’s newest assisted-suicide law. Their complaint centers on being forced to participate in ending human life in violation of their faith.

The most vulnerable

For generations, Catholic ministries throughout New York have cared for the most vulnerable. The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, and the Little Sisters of the Poor have devoted decades to serving the sick, the elderly, and the dying. They believe that every human life has inherent dignity and requires loving care until the very end.

The state’s legal arm operates with total disregard for that history. When the New York Court of Appeals decided Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Albany v. Serio in 2006, forcing religious employers to pay for prescription contraceptive coverage in their health plans, the court established a precedent that statutory mandates routinely override religious objections. The current assisted-suicide mandate pushes that line of warped logic into literal life-and-death territory.

The First Amendment exists precisely because early Americans recognized that government inevitably abuses power when it forces citizens to violate their deepest beliefs as the price of participating in public life. In 1786, Thomas Jefferson drafted the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, declaring that “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” That principle laid the foundation for the American constitutional order.

Existential fight

That standard served the country remarkably well for over two centuries. Religious hospitals, schools, charities, adoption agencies, and social service organizations routinely fill massive gaps that state agencies lack the administrative capacity to manage. These groups strengthen their communities precisely because they stay true to their values. Forcing them to compromise those values undermines their work and ultimately leaves the most vulnerable with nowhere else to turn.

Supporters of New York’s policies claim that eliminating religious exemptions promotes equality. But that is utter nonsense. Equality achieved through state coercion inevitably creates an oppressive, standardized public square. A genuinely civilized society accommodates honest differences rather than requiring total ideological agreement.

The assisted-suicide litigation now before the federal courts represents the latest collision in this existential fight. Government forces operating with zero regulatory pushback tend to expand their reach until an independent judiciary steps in to draw a hard line.

The expansion of state power at the expense of individual conscience should alarm every reader. Today’s regulatory target is a collection of Catholic nuns running eldercare facilities. Tomorrow, the same administrative apparatus could target another faith community, another profession, or another belief system that conflicts with the prevailing political orthodoxy.

Religious liberty serves an essential purpose in the United States. It prevents state power from controlling what you think and how you live. Let’s hope these sisters win their legal challenge. Because a win for them is a win for the everyday, decent American.

​Catholic ministries, Catholic nuns, Civil liberties, First amendment, Individual freedom, New york, Public life, Religious freedom, Religious liberty, Assisted suicide law, Euthanasia, Lifestyle, Faith 

You probably think the EV mandate is over. That’s exactly what Washington wants you to believe.

Congress celebrated. The White House touted what it called one of the largest deregulatory efforts in modern history, highlighting the repeal of federal vehicle emissions rules as the centerpiece of more than $1 trillion in projected savings. Automakers began telling investors they were pivoting back toward the vehicles customers actually want. Dealers finally saw hope after years of trying to move electric vehicles that many buyers simply didn’t want.

Gas-powered vehicles continued dominating large parts of the country because they remain practical, affordable, and easy to refuel.

‘Not yet’

Then I started talking to people who follow automotive policy for a living.

I kept hearing the same answer: “Not yet.”

The reason is California.

While Washington rolled back federal emissions rules, California’s authority to set stricter vehicle emissions standards largely survived. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia now follow California’s rules, representing roughly 40% of the nation’s new-vehicle market. That means one state’s policies can effectively shape what automakers build for the entire country.

The fight now centers on four California Clean Air Act waivers that allow the state to enforce stricter emissions standards, including requirements that automakers sell increasing numbers of electric vehicles and meet tougher tailpipe-emissions limits. The EPA sent those waivers to Congress for review under the Congressional Review Act. California immediately sued, arguing the waivers aren’t subject to congressional repeal.

Congressional Republicans disagree.

California king

They’re racing to overturn the waivers before the Congressional Review Act deadline expires. If they succeed, future administrations would face a much steeper legal hurdle before restoring California’s authority. If they fail, the legal framework that has allowed California to shape the national auto market could remain in place for years.

To be fair, the Trump administration fundamentally changed federal auto policy. Repealing the EPA’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding removed the legal foundation for nationwide greenhouse-gas regulations, marking one of the biggest deregulatory shifts in decades.

But Washington only dismantled part of the system.

Once enough states adopt California’s standards, automakers face a simple business decision. They can engineer different vehicles for different parts of the country — or build to the toughest standard and sell it everywhere. Guess which option usually wins.

RELATED: California wants to decide what tires you can buy — what could possibly go wrong?

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Sunk costs

Now follow the money.

Over the last decade, automakers invested hundreds of billions of dollars preparing for an electric future regulators insisted was inevitable. Battery manufacturers expanded production. Charging companies attracted billions in public and private investment. Utilities planned for rising electricity demand. Entire business models were built around the assumption that government would continue pushing rapid electrification.

When that much money depends on one regulatory direction, nobody quietly accepts a change in course.

Businesses fight to protect their investments. Lobbyists fight to preserve the policies that created them. Investors fight to protect their returns. That’s not a conspiracy. It’s economics.

Consumers, however, had other ideas.

Real life over regulations

Electric vehicle sales in America never matched many of the industry’s most ambitious forecasts. Hybrids surged because they offered better fuel economy without requiring people to change how they live. Gas-powered vehicles continued dominating large parts of the country because they remain practical, affordable, and easy to refuel. Dealers struggled with inventory that reflected regulatory priorities more than consumer demand, and manufacturers wrote off billions after investing ahead of the market.

None of this means electric vehicles are a bad option. Buy one if it fits your lifestyle. Buy a hybrid if that’s the better option. Buy a gasoline-powered pickup if that’s what your family or business needs.

That’s what consumer choice looks like.

Looking back over the last decade, I don’t see consumers driving this transition. I see regulations shaping investment, investment shaping production, and production shaping what buyers were offered in the showroom.

That’s a very different sequence.

Washington may have dismantled the federal EV mandate. But unless Congress also closes California’s regulatory back door, the pressure that reshaped the auto industry could return under a future administration.

The question isn’t whether electric vehicles have a future. They do.

The question is whether consumers or regulators get to decide how quickly that future arrives.

​Auto industry, California, Clean air act, Electric vehicles, Epa, Ev mandate, Congressional review act, Gavin newsom, Automotive 

BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is passionate about protecting American culture — and that includes the roadside fever dream that is Buc-ee’s gas station.

“They have a HomeGoods store. They sell barbecue. They have beef jerky. They have everything you could ever want and the cleanest freaking restrooms you’ll ever see in your life. Like, Buc-ee’s is a national treasure,” she gushes.

But it seems not everyone shares Sara’s love for the Texas-sized travel center. British-American comedian John Oliver devoted a segment of his show “Last Week Tonight” to criticizing Buc-ee’s for suing smaller businesses over trademark issues involving beaver imagery and similar names. He even launched a parody “Buc-Off” merch line featuring a squirrel mascot and dared the chain to sue him.

“Buc-ee’s should be careful here because as one legal expert has said, ‘The more you do this, the more you might run into somebody who has the means or the will to fight with you about.’ That is where we come in because it turns out we very much have the will to get into a fight with Buc-ee’s,” Oliver said, before debuting his new “Buc-Off” brand and merch line.

“If any gas station chain out there has an issue with our new logo and products and wants to get lawyers involved, then you know what? Bring it the f**k on,” he taunted.

Calling Oliver a “British clown,” Sara retorts, “Imagine having so little material that you’re like, ‘You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to pick a fight with Buc-ee’s’ … Over what? Buc-ee’s protecting their own IP?”

“He’s saying indirectly he’s supporting small companies that are trying to profit off of Buc-ee’s image and likeness by imitating a successful brand,” she adds.

Sara sees Oliver’s stunt as yet another attempt by a foreigner to destroy American culture.

“I find it very offensive he’s going to come into my country and speak the way that he speaks and go after one of the biggest national treasures in this entire country,” she says.

But it’s not just offensive — it’s hypocritical too.

“Let me just show you, John Oliver, your own parent company — the company that owns HBO, where you can find his sh***y program. Warner Brothers Discovery sued an AI firm for Batman Superman copyright infringement,” Sara points out.

“So rules for thee, but not for me,” she quips.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Bucees, Comedian, Last week tonight, Sara gonzales, Blazetv show, John oliver