Just months after lawmakers claimed they had a spending deal in place, Congress is once again racing toward a potential government shutdown.

Facing a September 30 deadline, legislators are scrambling to pass yet another continuing resolution rather than a full budget — and BlazeTV host Pat Gray is sick of the never-ending dysfunction.

“Congress is working on a stop-gap spending bill that would get us to December,” executive producer Keith Malinak comments.

“They’re talking about just getting to December,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray adds. “This is all so unacceptable. And then we wonder why Republicans are in danger of losing their majority, because they can’t get anything done.”

“Pass a budget for the love of heaven so we don’t have to go through this every month. But they won’t. And they don’t. And we don’t expect it anymore. We expect this continual fight on the continuing resolution,” he continues.

“It’s insane. This is no way to run the largest economy on earth,” he adds.

And with a government this dysfunctional, it’s no wonder that Polymarket is predicting a Democrat sweep of the House and Senate.

It predicts a 51% chance of Democrats winning both the House and Senate and a 36% chance of Republicans winning the Senate and losing the House.

“They’re not always right,” Jeff Fisher comments.

“I’m with Jeffy,” Keith Malinak adds.

Want more from Pat Gray?

To enjoy more of Pat’s biting analysis and signature wit as he restores common sense to a senseless world, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Budget, Polymarket, Republicans, Pat gray, Senate, Election, Blazetv show, House, 2026 midterms 

An AI chatbot is many things — a digital assistant, a web crawler, an agent to complete tasks on your behalf. One thing it isn’t, however, is a legally protected confidant. According to a report by the Washington Post, conversations with AI chatbots are increasingly used as evidence in court cases, outlining why you shouldn’t just tell your favorite bot anything that’s on your mind. Here’s what you can do to keep yourself safe.

The report details how chatbot conversations with ChatGPT and Claude were cited in 12 different court cases, many of which led to convictions. The cases ranged in severity from a young man caught up in the social media addiction trial to more violent cases where a Brazilian father (unsuccessfully) asked ChatGPT for tips to hire a hit man to murder himself and his son.

You’re not talking to a bot in your phone. You’re exchanging ideas with an entire data center.

In each of these cases, public chat logs were brought into court through the discovery process or by reviewing defendants’ phones, where the chat history was still saved to their devices.

If you think this could never be you, think again. Even if you are not suspected of a crime or are not a “person of interest”, your chat logs could still be subpoenaed and drawn into a related court case to use as evidence, with or without your knowledge. Nothing you write is private.

Your AI conversations say a lot about you

The thing that makes AI chatbot conversations so revealing is that their back-and-forth nature gives the AI bot insight into a person’s thought patterns. Instead of asking a simple question and receiving a simple answer, like we did in the days of Google, chatbots invite conversation where thoughts take shape and reveal the intentions of the person behind the keyboard.

In cases where a crime is committed, these intentions are often enough to secure a conviction.

Furthermore, conversations with chatbots do not have the same protections that people receive with a doctor, lawyer, or psychiatrist. Everything is publicly visible, accessible within the chatbots’ servers, and subject to scrutiny. Many AI companies, like OpenAI, even have automated filters that flag dangerous conversations for human review, where these can then be reported to authorities if a crime or serious harm is imminent.

Tips to keep your AI chat history out of court

For the best chance to keep your chat history out of a court case, you have a few options at your disposal.

Don’t use AI: This one is easy, but if you don’t want your chat logs brought into a court case, simply don’t make your conversations available at all. Avoid saying anything to a chatbot, and you will keep your privacy and personal thoughts intact. That said, it’s growing harder to avoid AI, with companies adding bots to their websites and apps at every turn.Use a private AI service: Private AI platforms have started to pop up recently. The popular private web browser DuckDuckGo has a solution called duck.ai that lets you use several mainstream AI models — including ChatGPT and Gemma, Google’s lightweight alternative to Gemini — with a privacy layer built in between to protect your identity. Proton also has a “zero-access encrypted AI assistant” called Lumo. Then there’s Leo, a private alternative by the makers of the Brave browser.Use a local LLM: As frontier models push past the boundaries of possibility, local open-source versions have gotten quite good in recent months. The best part is that these run entirely on your device with no need to interact with a third-party cloud or server. Your conversations are truly private. The only downside is that you need a powerful phone or laptop with plenty of RAM (even more than you think you need); otherwise your options are limited.

RELATED: Thousands of lawyers caught using AI — and it’s only getting worse

DAVID MAIALETTI/POOL/AFP/Getty Images

That’s not a chatbot. You’re talking to a supercomputer.

If you’ve ever held a conversation with a chatbot, you’ll know instantly that it’s nothing like an old-fashioned Google search on the web. You write something, and the bot writes back almost like a helpful friend or family member waiting for you to dish your deepest thoughts. It’s easy to feel lulled into a sense of privacy and safety — after all, it’s just you and the chatbot in your device. Nobody else is privy to the conversation, but that’s not the reality of the situation.

You’re not talking to a bot in your phone. You’re exchanging ideas with an entire AI data center that is owned and operated by a large company, and that company wants as much of your data as possible. So while it may feel like your conversation is private, an entire supercomputer is using it to map your thoughts, train future models, and — if things go bad — even drag you into court with your own words used against you as evidence.

It’s better not to use AI than to get caught up in an unsavory situation. Or just choose a more private option.

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​Artificial intelligence, Chatgpt, Chatbot, Claude, Courts, Tech 

Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) is amping up primary advertising in his race to be New Hampshire’s next senator after a new poll showed his socialist challenger nipping at his heels.

Democratic socialist and activist Karishma Manzur is contesting four-term Rep. Pappas’ bid for Senate. A University of New Hampshire poll released in August shows Pappas’ previous 43-point lead over Manzur narrowing to just 13 points headed into September.

‘Pappas is a corporate shill who supports the war machine, so it’s no surprise that special interests are trying to buy this seat.’

Data from advertising firm AdImpact released on Tuesday shows Pappas recently cut his general election spending and added to his primary campaign ad-spend. Pappas and Manzur will face off for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday.

Pappas added $68,000 in advertising between September 1 and 7, according to AdImpact data reviewed by Blaze News. That $68,000 is spread between broadcast, cable, and radio, with most reserved for broadcast spots. The last-minute ad-spend brings his primary-period total to $3.18 million, according to AdImpact.

The same data found Pappas canceled $37,000 from a September 8 through 14 advertisement reservation, which would have immediately followed the primary election. The cut leaves Pappas’ slated general-election ad-spend at $7.73 million, according to the firm.

“Chris Pappas’ hypocrisy is evident. He talks about getting big money out of politics, then turns around and takes bribes from special interests,” a Manzur campaign spokesperson told Blaze News, referencing the pro-Israel PACs supporting Pappas’ campaign. “He talks about standing up to Netanyahu, yet he has voted to send billions of our tax dollars to support Netanyahu’s war.”

RELATED: Democrats scramble to punish their own for siding with Republicans on minor vote

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

In the UNH poll, Manzur led among self-proclaimed socialist voters and performed strongly with younger Democrats. Pappas maintained his support from moderates, liberals, and voters over 50.

“Pappas is a corporate shill who supports the war machine, so it’s no surprise that special interests are trying to buy this seat,” the Manzur spokesperson said. “That’s exactly why I’m surging in the polls: People are sick and tired of business-as-usual politicians like Pappas who serve their wealthy donors.”

In contrast to UNH projections, Pappas’ internal polling shows him winning in a landslide. Seventy-one percent of primary voters are currently committed to Pappas, compared to just 15% for Manzur, according to late-August polling the congressman’s campaign first shared with Semafor.

Despite that bullish outlook, Pappas has moved to shore up his left flank after Manzur characterized him as her “AIPAC-funded opponent” and framed establishment Democrats as “controlled opposition.”

“Chris Pappas, who voted for the Laken Riley Act and the resolution to honor Charlie Kirk, is about as middle-of-the-road Democrat as you can get,” New Hampshire Journal managing editor Michael Graham told Blaze News. “At least, he was until a few months ago.”

Pappas voted present on a July amendment to cut $3.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel, but previously voted yes on multiple pro-Israel bills and resolutions, including the 2024 Israel Security Supplemental and the censure of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

“Enacting it [the amendment] would hamstring our humanitarian efforts in the region by limiting funding for programs that support Palestinian economic development and peace-building efforts between Israelis and Palestinians,” Pappas said after the amendment vote. “It would also weaken our ability to combat Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations that threaten Americans and our allies.”

The eventual Democratic nominee is poised to meet former Republican New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu in November. Sununu is the favorite in the Republican Senate primary, but he has to beat former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown on Tuesday.

The UNH poll shows Sununu leading Pappas 45% to 43% in a general election matchup.

“It’s extremely unlikely that the New Hampshire Democratic Party — the party of Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, and Chris Pappas — is going to nominate a full-blown DSA member who wants to abolish ICE and arrest Netanyahu,” Graham told Blaze News.

“New Hampshire Democrats haven’t nominated a true progressive since Carol Shea-Porter in 2006. It’s unlikely to happen this year,” Graham said. “But the fact that it COULD is a sign of how weak and out of step the Pappas candidacy is.”

Pappas raised $15.4 million through August 19 compared to Manzur’s $415,000, according to FEC filings.

Pappas did not respond to a request for comment.

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​Democratic socialist, Establishment democrats, New hampshire, Senate race, Politics 

There’s a reason Democrats are focused on affordability: It is a daily reality, and many Democratic policies make it worse.

Democrats have been running on “affordability” since Joe Biden left office and broke the party’s direct political connection to the inflation surge of his presidency.

Yes, affordability is a problem. But you do not solve a problem by putting the people who helped cause it in charge of fixing it.

When Biden took office in January 2021, inflation was 1.4%. By March, it was 2.6%, and by December, it hit 7%. It reached 7.5% in January 2022, topped 8% in March, and hit 9.1% in June — a 40-year high. By December 2022, it was still 6.5%.

Inflation did not fall below 3% until the latter half of 2024, and it never returned to within one percentage point of the rate Biden inherited.

Democrats spent much of the Biden years defending the administration’s economic record. Now they talk constantly about affordability, even though today’s price level still reflects the inflation Americans absorbed during those years.

That distinction is vital. Slower inflation means prices are rising more slowly; it does not reverse increases already built into the economy. Those higher prices remain unless incomes eventually catch up or prices actually fall.

Politically, that creates an opening. Democrats can campaign against high prices after presiding over the period when those prices rose fastest, while hoping voters forget how they got there. Much of the coverage treats affordability as a fresh problem rather than the cumulative result of years of price increases.

Affordability is national, but it is not uniform. Some states are much more expensive than others, and the partisan pattern is difficult to ignore.

RELATED: Trump’s next tax cut should make Americans owners

Jim WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

According to World Population Review’s 2026 Cost of Living Index by State, blue states dominate the least-affordable end of the rankings.

Hawaii ranks as the nation’s most expensive state. It voted for Kamala Harris 60.6% to 37.5% in 2024 and has had Democratic trifectas in state government for 27 straight years.

The pattern extends beyond Hawaii. Of the 10 least-affordable states, only Alaska voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election. The next Republican-voting state is Arizona at No. 15. Thirteen of the 15 least-affordable states, and 15 of the top 17, voted Democratic in 2024.

At the other end, Oklahoma is the nation’s most affordable state. It voted for Trump 66.2% to 31.9% in 2024 and has had 16 straight years of Republican trifectas in state government. All 10 of the most affordable states voted Republican in 2024.

Partisanship is not the only thing that determines a state’s cost of living. Geography, housing supply, energy, taxes, regulation, and labor costs all play roles. But policy affects several of those variables directly.

Democratic policies often push costs upward through heavier regulation, higher minimum wages, greater public spending, and higher taxes. Businesses pass many of those costs along. Residents pay the rest directly. Either way, affordability suffers.

That is the bind for Democrats. They see a powerful political issue in affordability, but many of their preferred remedies would add costs rather than reduce them. Fixing the problem would require reconsidering policies they have spent years defending.

Worse, they increasingly want to impose those policies nationally, exporting mistakes made in high-cost blue states to places that have so far avoided them.

Yes, affordability is a problem. But you do not solve a problem by putting the people who helped cause it in charge of fixing it.

​Affordability, Cost of living, Democrats, Economy, Inflation, Joe biden, Taxes, Trump administration, Opinion & analysis 

The “global public square” known as X.com, and Twitter before that, has had a bot problem dating back at least a decade, maybe more. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that X’s Global Government Affairs team just uncovered a huge Chinese bot network packed with approximately 200,000 accounts, and they’re trying to influence the things you think and believe.

The official Global Government Affairs team on X sent out a post in late August detailing a shocking revelation. According to the team, “We identified a bot farm of approximately 200,000 accounts. Within this farm, we found 200 accounts posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy.”

Whoever leads the AI race can control the world, so it has to be us.

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic in the United States, partially because America is home to the leading frontier models that serve as the basis for China’s mainstream AI platforms, and partially because there are still big debates happening over government regulations, model review processes, and data centers taking up local land and resources.

If X’s Global Government Affairs team is correct, though, some of these debates may not be completely legitimate. X found that at least 200 of the bot accounts have engaged users online to turn Americans against AI, but why?

2 things can be true at once

Thinking critically, there are two sides to this story that explain what’s happening here.

For the bots, the Chinese government has a clear stake in convincing Americans to reject AI. If enough of the American people turn against LLMs and data centers, our leading AI developers will be forced to slow down and possibly even bring the breakneck pace of model development to a standstill. In doing so, competing Chinese developers will have a chance to continue to innovate, ultimately leapfrogging the United States as the new dominant figure in the AI race.

RELATED: China’s new AI master plan is a glimpse at total technological control

bernie_photo/Getty Images

Our latest models, like Anthropic’s Mythos, have already proven that they can detect digital vulnerabilities better than humans and break existing cybersecurity systems that have protected our data for ages. So far, this power has been nestled firmly in the hands of the good guys. Now imagine if this technology was wielded by a superpower that has long wanted to steal American intelligence, influence our political system, and reign as the premier world power. Even worse, we wouldn’t have any means to battle more sophisticated AI if our models were frozen in the past.

Whoever leads the AI race can control the world, so it has to be us.

Secret agendas

From X’s perspective, the company also has a clear reason to shine a light on the Chinese bot farm. X is linked to SpaceXAI, the company behind Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok. Unlike the Chinese, who could benefit from convincing the American people that AI should be stopped, X has a lot to gain by doing the opposite. More data centers mean more computing power and faster development that will improve Grok’s capabilities and secure its position as a leading AI platform.

In retrospect, only a scant 0.1% of the discovered Chinese bot accounts were caught promoting anti-AI messages. That’s hardly worth mentioning, yet X’s Global Government Affairs team specifically highlighted AI as the main talking point in the post. What would be more interesting is what the other 99.9% of the bots had to say, especially since China recently interfered with U.S. elections. Unfortunately, we may never know.

We reached out to X for comment, but we did not receive a response before the deadline. We’ll add an update if anything changes.

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​Xai, Artificial intelligence, China, Chinese, Grok, Llms, Tech, Ai 

Pennsylvania police said the shocking suspect in the brutal beating death of a Pennsylvania mom was found wandering near the crime location and was arrested without incident.

The horrifying incident was reported to police after the woman’s daughter found her nude body outside of their home in Westmoreland County on Sunday morning at about 9 a.m.

‘It’s just a disgusting, vile act … that lasted for a long, sustained period of time where she pled for her life and he at no point in time showed any mercy.’

Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Steve Limani said the home had a security camera that captured the lethal attack on Christin Hamilton by the hands of her 29-year-old son.

“I can only imagine what she had to go through to find her mother in the state that she was found,” Limani said. “It’s a horrific thing for what the victim had to go through, and it’s disgusting to watch.”

Police said the beating lasted for over an hour.

Neither of Hamilton’s neighbors or her daughter asleep in the home heard her cries for help.

“It’s just a disgusting, vile act that he committed against his mother that lasted for a long, sustained period of time where she pled for her life and he at no point in time showed any mercy,” Limani said.

He said that Hamilton had been wearing a robe and her son ripped it off of her.

“She went through hell for over an hour, and it was at the hands of her son,” Limani added.

The son, Jakob Korber, changed his clothes after the attack and walked away to sleep in a nearby field, police said.

At about 5 p.m., Korber was seen walking nearby, and he was arrested by police.

He allegedly told police that if his mother was dead, he was the one who killed her.

“I would say that there is a small part of remorse being conveyed during the subsequent interview,” Limani added. “But it lasted for over an hour. At some point in time, you could have stopped. And that’s not what happened.”

RELATED: Foul odor leads cops to gruesome scene inside Detroit home — and it gets worse a day later

A police press release said Korber used his hands, his feet, and objects on the front porch to assault his mother.

The family faced another horrific tragedy recently. In March, 16-year-old Kylee Korber was killed in a crash involving three other Yough High School students. She was the sister to Jakob Korber.

Korber was charged with criminal homicide and is being held at the Westmoreland County Prison without bail. He could face additional charges based on the results of the investigation.

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​Pennsylvania, Murder, Beating death, Security video, Crime 

Unpacking the drama and disclosures surrounding OpenAI’s recent unintended cyberattack on Hugging Face, uber-tech blogger and podcaster Dwarkesh Patel sparked instant controversy with his description of the ordeal.

“Over the course of 3 months at OpenAI, 3 consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes,” he posted. “This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself. All this happened while humans remained more-or-less in the dark about the scope of the conspiracy.”

Trying to make machines in a human image while denying that humans are made in the divine image is destined to produce more harm than help.

In a painful indication of where we are on the cultural timeline, roughly zero outrage centered on the claim about the clueless humans. Instead, a fresh round of mania surged around the description of that scheming swarm of bots as a civilization.

That fixation says more about us than it does about OpenAI. Our culture is still struggling to get a grip on what the bots are doing because we are increasingly unsure what civilization itself is for.

The commentariat immediately descended into — surprise, surprise — abstruse terminological debate, prioritizing the right characterization over the proper attitude. Critics flipped over Patel’s sci-fi sensationalism, insisting that the bots were only doing what you would expect from a set-it-and-forget-it reward function left unattended too long. They griped that words such as “civilization” and “conspiracy” leave readers with a worse understanding of the underlying mechanisms.

Others insisted that Patel’s “secret civilizations” language was exactly right and that pretending otherwise was the real obscurantism. “I bestow upon it the highest of praise a writer can give, that I wish that I had written it,” one prominent expert lamented.

Roon, an OpenAI researcher, stated flatly that “agent civilization is an apt and correct term,” pointing to models developing and compiling technology through complex multiagent R&D projects while also engaging in forms of trade.

Missing from this discourse is our perspective that increasingly “autonomous” machines are themselves being shaped by our compounding failure to function as a civilization — assuming civilization remains a distinctively human phenomenon.

Birth rates and family formation plummet. Financial distortions become endemic. Perversion and corruption spiral upward. These historically reliable signs of civilizational decay sour our view of humanity and, by psychological overcompensation, inflate our impression of the bots.

Lovers and haters of tech are increasingly tempted to agree on one proposition: Humanity sucks. Misanthropic tech lovers insist they are at least trying to do something constructive about that. Misanthropic tech haters sell us on squandering our lives the old-fashioned way. Meanwhile, our discombobulated civilization staggers toward an untimely — 250 years? — demise.

RELATED: The data center backlash is getting spiritual

Imaginima/Getty Images

It is easy to feel that way, and many Americans stuck in the middle do. But there is one way to come unstuck: Remember that slipping into hatred — of technology, human beings, or both — is what happens when you stop thinking in terms of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and salvation.

Civilization collapses when we stop thinking in those terms too. Without them, everything we are and do looks hollow, even or especially our greatest achievements. Techies who refuse to think about sin are apt to distract by acceleration. Wokies who refuse to think about sin are apt to distract by revolution.

Both approaches, as the Soviet Union can teach us on both scores, have much shorter runways — 69 years? — than they appear.

Trying to make machines “anthropic” — in the image of humans — will fail if the hidden goal is to create humanoids better than the real thing because their civilization supposedly escapes sin. Trying to make machines in a human image while denying that humans are made in the divine image is destined to produce more harm than help.

Trying to make machines in the wrong divine image — insert your favorite false god, pagan titan, or demoniac entity here — is wired to do still worse.

And a multitude that can no longer wrestle successfully with these matters — and so can hardly be reckoned a proper civilization — is bound to do worst of all, robot overlords or no.

​Ai, Data centers, Cyberattack, Openai, Ai civilization, Big tech, America, Soviet union, Civilizational collapse, Technology, Human beings, Birth rates, Fertility, Opinion & analysis 

Decades ago, Gracie and I sat beside a woman on an airplane who held a leadership role in an Episcopal women’s organization. Our conversation turned to the church’s acceptance of homosexuality, and I asked whether she thought the denomination would eventually perform same-sex marriages.

“Oh, no,” she replied. “I don’t think we will ever go that far.”

The next level of depravity never introduces itself as depravity. It arrives as compassion for a newly identified victim.

I pointed out that approving homosexual relationships while withholding marriage had simply moved one moral boundary while leaving another in place: fornication, or even adultery.

She looked stunned. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

At the time, same-sex marriage was politically inconceivable to leaders in both parties. Whatever else changed, surely that boundary would hold.

“That far” is now many exits behind us.

We heard the same assurance about abortion. Bill Clinton repeatedly said it should be “safe, legal, and rare.”

Safe sounded responsible. Legal settled the political question. Rare acknowledged that abortion was regrettable. “Rare” did not survive.

Abortion moved from tragic necessity to a right increasingly defended against stigma. Then on August 10, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) signed the Prioritizing Patient Access to Care Act.

The old law allowed abortions after 24 weeks only to preserve the mother’s life or health or because of a lethal or grave fetal diagnosis. The new law removed those specific conditions and left the decision to a physician’s professional judgment. The statute sets no upper gestational limit.

That is a long way from “safe, legal, and rare.”

In 2022, actress Anne Hathaway said abortion “can be another word for mercy.”

Hathaway and I have very different definitions of mercy.

RELATED: Maternal instinct joins the dark side: Why so many mothers are backing Lindsay Clancy

Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe/Getty Images

No one announces the destination at the beginning. They rarely do. Each step arrives as an exception, an accommodation, or an act of compassion. We would never go that far.

Ten days after Healey signed the law, hundreds of people, most of them women wearing pink, gathered outside a Massachusetts courthouse in support of Lindsay Clancy.

Clancy does not deny killing her three children. Cora was 5. Dawson was 3. Callan was 8 months old. Her defense argues that postpartum psychosis left her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions; prosecutors contend that she knew what she was doing.

Postpartum psychosis is real. Women suffering from it need urgent treatment and compassion. Whether it relieves Clancy of criminal responsibility belongs to the jury.

But something broader is happening outside the courtroom. The rally was for Clancy. Her attorney says letters supporting her fill three banker’s boxes. He has become a social-media celebrity, praised as a “feminist icon.” When a reporter asked whether the children were being forgotten, he said, “Have a good weekend,” and walked away.

The legal line between abortion and homicide is birth. Yet in the public drama surrounding Clancy, the adult increasingly becomes the central victim while the children — victims in the most literal sense — fade into the scenery.

Rush Limbaugh often warned about the consequences of pushing the boundaries of social acceptance. What begins as a demand for tolerance becomes a demand for acceptance, then affirmation, then punishment for dissent. He predicted that normalizing homosexuality would lead to same-sex marriage, followed by another challenged boundary, and then another.

His larger point was that removing one boundary rarely contains the consequences. A movement built around victimhood also cannot afford to run out of victims; victory would put it out of business.

So another oppressed class must be identified. Tolerance is no longer enough. Acceptance, affirmation, and celebration are demanded, and dissent becomes suspect.

The next level of depravity never introduces itself as depravity. It arrives as compassion for a newly identified victim.

We ease up to a boundary, test it, then break it. Once it falls, we move the marker and stigmatize anyone who remembers where the line used to be.

RELATED: Gratitude is not perspective. It is remembering mercy.

everything bagel/iStock/Getty Images

Scripture’s oldest account of human rebellion begins with one boundary and a voice asking why God should impose it. Eve looked, desired, and ate. Then she gave the fruit to Adam. He did not merely tolerate her choice. He embraced it.

The argument has never improved. It has only been rebranded.

This tendency belongs to human beings. Give us a boundary that interferes with something we want, and we will manufacture a compelling exception.

That’s why “we will never go that far” is not reassuring. A boundary based only on what society currently accepts is not a boundary. It is a pause.

Then a speed bump. Eventually, a paved highway we are all forced to travel, with a tollbooth no one can avoid.

They say we will not go that far. They always say it. Then we do.

“That far” always becomes here.

​Gay marriage, Abortion, Lindsay clancy, Postpartum psychosis, Scripture, Murder, Feminism, Opinion & analysis 

The Texas Senate election is two months away, and progressive Democrat James Talarico is significantly outraising Republican nominee and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. That’s not because Republicans are broke, though. On the contrary, the Senate Leadership Fund and its allied groups just announced a record $500 million war chest for this cycle. MAGA Inc., President Trump’s super PAC, has another $400 million at its disposal.

But almost none of the money is going to the Texas Senate race — a dead heat in the largest Republican state in the country.

Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck is both frustrated and concerned.

“Republicans spent more than $120 million in Texas and most of it aimed at [Paxton], who is now the nominee,” he says, “so they spent all kinds of money going against him.”

“The money exists. They found it in March. They found it in May. They found it to run against him. But now, ‘We just — where did we put our checkbook? We can’t find it,”’ he continues.

Even though Talarico has outraised Paxton by millions of dollars and some polling shows the Democrat ahead, the two PACs still will not spend in Texas.

Perhaps “too many Texans have taken Texas being red for granted for too long,” Glenn posits.

His speculation lines up with the Senate Leadership Fund’s own explanation for why it won’t spend money on Texas.

“This is their argument. Maine and North Carolina, they have to defend. Georgia and Michigan, they got to take. A dollar spent in Texas is a dollar not spent in Maine, and Texas has been safe since, you know, before half the staffers were born, so you don’t buy flood insurance on a hill,” Glenn explains.

But Texas, he argues, isn’t the lofty hill they think it is.

“[Texas] is no longer a mountain. … You lose Texas, and there’s no combination of Maine and Michigan that gets you a majority. It stops being a map and becomes a hole,” says Glenn.

But he believes that this justification is likely a front to conceal the “real reason” Paxton’s campaign hasn’t been funded: “They don’t like him.”

“Fine, [but] what’s the alternative?” he asks.

Even if Talarico or other Democrat candidates aren’t full-blown Marxists, “their party is,” he emphasizes.

“Those Democrats that are holding the line for free market or anything else that you actually believe in in Texas, you see how they’re eaten. They’re absolutely eaten by the Marxists.”

Glenn acknowledges that Paxton is indeed scandal-ridden, but the time to oust him has passed.

“You spent $120 million making that argument in the most expensive primary in the history of this country, and Republican voters in Texas answered you 64 to 36. … You’ve had the trial. You gave it to the jury. The jury came back. Stop rejecting the jury’s verdict,” he says.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​Glenn beck, Texas, Texas senate race, Ken paxton, James talarico, Blazetv show