Birthdays should mark milestones, offer hope for another year, and remind us to cherish the people we love.

But on the first anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to restrict access to Elevidys, a gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, there will be no cake or candles in our home.

The only birthdays Duchenne families want to celebrate are the ones our children are still here to have. The FDA should help us light those candles.

My 14-year-old son, Ryu, is still fighting to reach another birthday.

A year ago, I was exploring Elevidys as a treatment that might help him live a longer, fuller life. Then, almost overnight, that hope disappeared. The FDA first halted use of the therapy entirely before restoring access only for boys who could still walk. Ryu, who already uses a wheelchair, was left behind.

By age 14, more than 82% of Duchenne patients use a wheelchair. After age 15, the share exceeds 90%.

I have spent my life living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a rare, progressive genetic disease that causes muscles to waste away and almost always leads to premature death. It has shaped every chapter of my family’s story. I watched my brothers, Angelo and Antonio, die from Duchenne in their early 20s.

I began considering Elevidys because I trusted the science and the physician who brought it to my attention. I believed my son deserved the same opportunity other eligible patients were receiving.

Instead, the past year has been heartbreaking.

Ryu’s disease has progressed. His breathing is weaker, and he relies on his BiPAP machine more than he did a year ago. Duchenne families measure time differently. Every lost ability is marked by a clock that never turns back.

RELATED: The FDA seems to care more about celebrities than sick Americans

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The FDA said it restricted Elevidys after reports of three patient deaths. Those boys died from liver complications, not complications caused by wheelchair use. Families like mine struggle to understand why patients with advanced disease lost access to a treatment because of risks that were not unique to them.

Safety must remain paramount. We are not asking regulators to approve every experimental therapy or ignore serious adverse events. Elevidys had already passed through years of research and clinical trials and had been administered to Duchenne patients before access was narrowed.

We are asking for something more modest and more humane: When a disease is progressive and fatal, families should be allowed to work with their doctors to decide whether the potential benefit justifies the risk for their own children.

The anniversary of the Elevidys restriction also marks the moment I turned 40 years of helplessness into action. I learned what an op-ed was and wrote my first one. I entered the intimidating world of social media.

On my first trip to Washington, D.C., I learned how to call an Uber and met with senators, staff members, other rare-disease mothers, and patients. I did not go because I wanted to become an activist. I went because I am a mother. I had to speak for my son and honor the memory of my brothers, who never lived to see the possibilities available to patients today.

My brother Angelo volunteered for experimental research in the 1990s, when almost no treatment options existed. He wanted future children with Duchenne to benefit from his courage. Years later, one of those children would be his nephew — my son.

RELATED: Medicare red tape turned insurers into villains

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The FDA is entering a period of new leadership. The next commissioner should put patients first, recognize that rare diseases demand urgency, and trust families and physicians to make informed decisions together. Returning to the old approach would cost families the one thing no regulator can restore: time.

Hope has a birthday too. We celebrate it whenever a scientist makes a breakthrough, a doctor refuses to give up, a parent fights for one more chance, or the FDA chooses urgency over bureaucracy.

I pray this dark anniversary is the last time FDA policy leaves Duchenne families behind — and the beginning of a new era in which boys like Ryu have the chance to live as fully and as long as possible.

The only birthdays Duchenne families want to celebrate are the ones our children are still here to have. The FDA should help us light those candles.

​Bureaucracy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Fda, Opinion & analysis, Red tape, Science, Therapy, Regulation, Treatment, Children, Healthcare 

Hollywood’s budget addiction is catching up with even its biggest franchises.

Two major projects have hit financial speed bumps, proving that even recognizable brands aren’t automatic green lights anymore.

‘This is the match that we needed to, quite frankly, burn it all down and finally build a country for mothers.’

First, there’s the last “Fast & Furious” film. The previous installment earned a tepid $146 million stateside in 2023, but more than $500 million from international sales. The film’s massive budget still made getting into the black a chore.

Now, the studio is dragging its feet on the last “Fast” feature, hoping to somehow whittle down the big bucks needed to make it happen. Let’s hope the studio doesn’t send our heroes into space again.

Meanwhile, after a lot of jawboning, “Heat 2” appears ready to go before the cameras. Director Michael Mann wanted a massive shooting budget for his sequel to the beloved 1995 crime caper, and multiple studios flirted with the film but ultimately said no.

Now, the deep pockets at Amazon will help make this movie happen, with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role originally performed by Val Kilmer and Christian Bale standing in for Al Pacino.

Pass the hat, folks. If you want to see these bloated IP extensions, someone’s got to pick up the tab.

‘Man’-handled

It’s a wonder it lasted this long.

Disney+’s “Wonder Man” series, based on the obscure MCU character of the same name, supposedly earned a second-season renewal earlier this year. Not so fast. The Mouse House just slammed the door shut on new episodes.

The series race-swapped the main character, played on screen by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, but the show didn’t build on that sweet, sweet MCU synergy.

The character could reportedly pop up in future Marvel films, proof that Disney still believes more superheroes — not fewer — are the answer to audience fatigue.

RELATED: SUPER FLOP: Sneering ‘Supergirl’ flees multiplex for home streaming

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Harvey’s ‘heartbreak’

Gossip monger Harvey Levin built a career asking uncomfortable questions. Apparently, Anthony Fauci is the exception.

The TMZ boss called it “one of the most heartbreaking things I have seen in government” after Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times before a Senate committee investigating the government’s COVID response.

Levin acknowledged he has “problems with the way CDC handled COVID,” saying the agency “did damage to children and adults.” Even so, he insisted Fauci had been “an amazing public servant” and dismissed the hearing as a Republican “witch hunt.”

That’s an odd conclusion. If the CDC’s pandemic response caused real harm — as Levin now concedes — why shouldn’t one of its most influential public faces be asked tough questions under oath?

Mother of all leftists

Is Reshma Saujani a filmmaker or arsonist?

Saujani, an executive producer of the new documentary “No Country for Mothers,” used a PBS interview to promote more than just the film.

The documentary explores the challenges facing modern motherhood, offering familiar progressive prescriptions — more government intervention, expanded social programs, and a renewed push for the Equal Rights Amendment.

But Saujani saved her most provocative remarks for the end, describing the film as the spark for something far bigger than policy reform.

And they are staying until midnight, talking, crying, holding each other, hugging each other, talking about the laws are going to change, the policies are going to pass, the neighbor that they’re going to help. Like, this is the — this is the match that we needed to, quite frankly, burn it all down and finally build a country for mothers.

She also claimed, without offering a lick of evidence, that unseen forces are “suppressing women’s content.” One suspects those mysterious gatekeepers have an orange complexion.

More telling, though, is the revolutionary flourish. A documentary about helping mothers somehow ends with a call to “burn it all down.” That’s an odd way to pitch a movement built on caring for families.

Sleazy does it

Your newest OnlyFans creator got her start when Jimmy Carter was president.

Donna Mills, 85, is embracing the most 2026 career pivot imaginable. The “Knots Landing” star announced she’ll be joining the adult-centered platform, saying it “offers the opportunity for a more personal and direct connection.”

Good luck with that. A sizable share of the actress’ longtime audience may need a grandchild just to download the app.

​Leonardo dicaprio, Lifestyle, Entertainment, Movies, Tv, Harvey levin, Tmz, Fast and the furious, Hollywood, Anthony fauci, Disney, Toto recall 

What began as two teenage girls holding a sign at a WNBA game has exploded into a much larger controversy over Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and the future of the league itself.

After Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted and berated the young fans for thanking Cunningham “for speaking up for girls,” the incident quickly became a national story. But BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock argues the real target isn’t the teenagers — and it isn’t even Cunningham, who has spoken up against allowing men in women’s sports.

“Two teenage girls sit courtside holding a sign at the Fever-Storm game. ‘Thank you, Sophie, for speaking up for the girls.’ That’s the provocation. That’s the whole crime. And Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton walks up to those children and unloads,” Whitlock explains.

“‘I hope Jesus can forgive you for what sin you’ve done. God can save you,’” he mimics. “Points at her own head. Calls them ‘effing insane,’” he says.

Whitlock is disturbed, pointing out that “a grown millionaire owner used the name of Jesus as a weapon against those two girls.”

And Cunningham spoke out again following the incident, writing in a post on X: “I truly believe there is a safe space and love for EVERYBODY. Biological girls, biological boys, trans women, and trans men. Everyone is welcome at my table! You can disagree and still be kind. Bravo to those girls for standing up for what they believe. You’ll be hearing from me soon. Yay for gifts.”

“Truly embarrassing of the co-owner. Unfortunately shows the type of leader she is,” she added.

And while Cunningham is taking heat for not denouncing the young girls and their beliefs, so is Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark.

“This was never about a sign. It’s about who that sign represents. Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and the millions of normal, heterosexual sports fans they dragged into these arenas. This league resents the audience that legitimized it,” Whitlock explains, before playing a clip of Elle Duncan of Netflix demanding Clark denounce her fans.

Duncan called on Clark to say, “Stop that s**t. I don’t want it. I’m tired of it.”

“She’s demanding that Caitlin Clark denounce her fans for what other adults did,” Whitlock says.

“She’s an idiot,” he adds.

Want more from Jason Whitlock?

To enjoy more fearless conversations at the crossroads of culture, faith, sports, and comedy with Jason Whitlock, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Caitlin clark, Celeste keaton, Jason whitlock, Sophie cunningham, Wnba, Womens sports, Seattle storm, Indiana fever, Blazetv show 

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?

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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.

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.

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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

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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