As Europe and much of North America endured record heat, headlines quickly appeared claiming that the heat wave was “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. Really?

As Europe and much of North America endured record heat in recent days, headlines quickly appeared claiming that the heat wave was “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change.

To many readers, that sounds like a conclusion drawn directly from observations. It is not. It is the product of a branch of climate research known as extreme weather attribution, which relies heavily on computer models rather than direct measurements.

This was not an isolated claim. Whenever a major storm, wildfire, flood, or heat wave occurs, similar headlines soon follow. We are told that climate change made an event “twice as likely,” “35 times more likely,” or even “virtually impossible” without human influence. These figures are widely repeated by politicians, journalists, and activists as though they were direct scientific observations.

They are not. They are estimates derived from computer models.

This distinction matters because modern climate policy is increasingly being built not upon observed evidence, but upon simulated realities generated by mathematical models.

The growing field of “extreme weather attribution” illustrates this transformation perfectly. Rather than simply studying weather events after they occur, attribution studies attempt to calculate how much more likely an event supposedly became because of human emissions of CO2. The numbers appear precise and authoritative, yet they rest upon assumptions that deserve far greater scrutiny than they usually receive.

Extreme weather attribution did not emerge in isolation. It represents the next stage of the same modelling paradigm that produced speculative emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5. Once those scenarios were accepted as plausible descriptions of the future, it became possible to use similar modelling techniques to attribute individual weather events to human emissions with apparently precise numerical confidence. In other words, attribution science is not a departure from the climate modelling enterprise—it is its logical extension.

Most people assume these studies compare today’s weather with historical observations. In reality, they compare the present world with a hypothetical world that never existed—a computer-generated version of Earth’s climate in which industrial carbon dioxide emissions never occurred. The difference between the two simulations is then presented as the human contribution to the event [i].

Attribution studies typically compare today’s climate with a simulated pre-industrial climate to estimate how human emissions altered the probability of a particular event.

That sounds scientific until one asks a simple question: how do we know the model accurately represents a climate that no one has ever observed?

Climate models have long struggled to reproduce observed temperature records accurately, with many projections diverging significantly from other observational datasets [ii]. They have difficulty reproducing important regional climate patterns, and one of their most important tests—hindcasting, or reproducing known historical climate changes—remains problematic. If a model cannot reliably reproduce the past, confidence in its simulation of an imaginary pre-industrial climate should naturally be limited. Yet attribution studies depend precisely upon this capability.

The growing reliance on attribution studies reflects a broader pattern within modern climate science. For years, speculative emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5 and its successor SSP5-8.5 shaped thousands of climate-impact studies, policy reports and media narratives, despite repeated criticism that they did not represent realistic future pathways. More recently, the scientists responsible for designing the next generation of climate scenarios acknowledged that these highest-emissions pathways had become implausible. Yet projections derived from them had already influenced climate litigation, net-zero policies and public perceptions worldwide. Attribution science extends this same modelling paradigm by using simulated climates to assign numerical probabilities to individual weather events. The issue is not whether computer models have scientific value, but whether increasingly speculative model outputs are being treated as empirical evidence rather than as hypotheses open to testing and revision.

A more fundamental question is whether carbon dioxide is the dominant driver of climate, as claimed by the IPCC, and whether current climate models are capable of isolating its influence with the extraordinary precision implied by modern attribution studies. If the models themselves remain highly uncertain, then the confidence attached to attribution claims becomes equally questionable.

Many highly qualified scientists argue that CO2 is not the dominant driver of climate and that natural variability plays a far greater role than is commonly acknowledged.

Another problem is that weather itself is extraordinarily variable. Floods, droughts, hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires have always occurred. Long historical records often reveal cycles, clusters and natural fluctuations extending over centuries. In many cases, the evidence does not show the simple upward trends portrayed in media coverage. Historical datasets presented during recent research on attribution science show little or no long-term increase in many categories of extreme weather, while some records even display declining trends over the periods examined.

This does not mean that climate never changes. Of course it does. Earth’s climate has always changed. The question is whether modern attribution studies can confidently separate natural variability from human influence to the extraordinary degree claimed.

Consider how attribution studies are reported. A study may conclude that an event became “twice as likely” because of climate change. The media almost never explain that this conclusion depends upon dozens of climate models, numerous assumptions about historical temperatures, statistical methods, and confidence intervals that may span a wide range of possible outcomes. Instead, the public receives a single dramatic number stripped of its uncertainty.

This creates the illusion of certainty where considerable uncertainty still exists.

Attribution science has also acquired an increasingly important role in climate policy, public discourse and litigation.The discipline did not emerge simply from scientific curiosity about individual storms. As attribution studies became more sophisticated, they also acquired significant political, regulatory, and legal importance. If specific weather events could be attributed to fossil fuel emissions, then litigation against fossil fuel energy companies would acquire an apparently scientific foundation. Establishing causation is central to liability, and attribution studies attempt to provide precisely that link. [iii]

The implications are not confined to climate science. Increasingly, public policy in many fields is influenced by computer models whose assumptions often receive less scrutiny than the conclusions they produce.

Whether such lawsuits ultimately succeed is almost beside the point. Once the public is repeatedly told that every wildfire, flood or hurricane carries a measurable carbon fingerprint, the political narrative begins to reinforce itself. Governments demand more intervention. Journalists report increasingly alarming conclusions. Research funding follows the same direction. A feedback loop develops in which models generate headlines, headlines generate policy, and policy demands further modelling.

This pattern extends well beyond climate research. We increasingly inhabit a world governed by computer simulations. Economic models shape monetary policy. Epidemiological models justified unprecedented lockdowns during the COVID era. Artificial intelligence systems increasingly guide hiring, lending, policing and even medical diagnosis. Everywhere, mathematical models are beginning to replace direct observation and human judgment.

History repeatedly teaches the opposite lesson. Scientific progress depends upon challenging models whenever observations contradict them. Models must remain servants of evidence, never its master.

The broader lesson of the current debate over extreme weather attribution is clear. Public policy affecting trillions of dollars and billions of lives increasingly rests upon simulations of hypothetical worlds that cannot be directly observed or experimentally verified. Such models deserve careful examination, open criticism and continual testing—not unquestioning acceptance simply because they produce impressive-looking numbers.

As climate policy continues to reshape energy systems, economies and individual freedoms, the burden of proof should remain where it has always belonged: on those making the extraordinary claims.

Computer models are indispensable scientific tools. But they are not observations. When public policy increasingly relies upon simulations of hypothetical worlds rather than direct empirical evidence, sceptical scrutiny becomes more important—not less. That principle lies at the heart of science itself.

Readers interested in a more detailed examination of climate modelling, emissions scenarios such as RCP 8.5, extreme weather attribution, and the scientific evidence discussed here will find a fuller treatment in the newly updated 2026 edition of my book Climate CO₂ Hoax: How Bankers Hijacked the Real Environment Movement. This revised edition includes a new chapter examining the quiet retreat from RCP 8.5, the rise of climate attribution science, and recent challenges to the measurement of global ocean heat content. Its purpose is to distinguish genuine environmental concerns from claims that, in my view, are not supported by robust empirical evidence.

Mark Keenan | July 6, 2026

Mark Keenan is a former United Nations technical expert and an independent writer on science, technology, political economy, and human freedom. He is the author of When Models Replace Reality, Climate CO2 Hoax, No Worries No Virus, and the AI-related books The AI Illusion and Staying Human in the Age of AI. His articles are on Substack at markgerardkeenan.substack.com.

Source: Climate Change Blamed in Heat Waves: Science or Simulation? – American Thinker

‘Washington personally read the Bible and quoted the Bible. Those who deny America’s unique Christian roots will claim that many educated people in positions of prominence in the 18th century also quoted from the Bible. However, they also quoted from Greek and Roman authors of antiquity. Washington quoted almost exclusively…’

Multitudes are looking to enjoy “The American Dream.” Its glitter draws people from around the world and even catches the eye of millions of Americans.

In the days of our first President, George Washington (1732-1799), however, it was very different. There was no glitter but rock-solid substance upon which to build a nation: freedom to worship as God leads, and the conviction that “we cannot be silent, no matter what the cost.”

July 4, 1776 – 250 Years Ago

On this date, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by a unanimous decision of the Second Continental Congress. Among other things, it provides the American colonists’ grievances with the king’s abuses.

The Declaration shows that the worship of God, and the freedom to do that without a tyrant’s opposition, is a central feature of the real American dream.

The Declaration provides the primary focus of this important document: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This was a radical, but biblical concept: Our rights are not given to us by government, but by God.

The 56 men who signed the Declaration were guilty of treason, a crime punishable by death. These men were leaders in their communities and had much to lose, but for them liberty was more important than security.

The question that I will try to answer is this: Who was the man who would lead the newly birthed nation in these tumultuous years of danger, and what was he like?

George Washington was a Statesman and Not a Politician.

A statesman is a man of good character and integrity, who focuses on the long-term good of the country, not just winning an election. Politicians often prioritize immediate gains. Statesmen focus on long-term goals. Ronald Reagan was in the latter category.

George Washington believed that there were certain rules of civility that must be observed. When he was 14, Washington translated a French document titled “The Rules of Civility.” Rule Number One: “Every action done in the presence of others ought to show some sign of respect to those who are present.” How you eat, sit, engage in conversation, and the showing of respect for women were high on his list of respectful behaviors.

Even when Washington was general in the War for Independence, he required the soldiers to refrain from objectionable behaviors, drunkenness, fighting, cursing, and gambling. And on Sundays, if not on the battlefield, each soldier was required to be in church.

George Washington was a Leader Who Effectively Organized a Diverse People for a Specific Purpose.

Washington believed in the importance of good leadership. One of his aphorisms brings this out: “A pack of jackasses led by a lion is superior to a pack of lions led by a jackass.”

The 13 colonies were not united in becoming a new nation. Those in opposition were The Loyalists. For one thing, going to war against England with its well-trained military and huge navy seemed doomed from the outset. The small sailing vessels possessed by the Americans were no match for the heavy cannon on British warships. Indeed, there were Americans who did want to break free from the King, but there were many who thought it was too risky.

In addition to the Quakers who were pacifists and did not believe that war is permissible, some of the Colonists feared that the new American government might be worse than being under the king. It was amazing that Washington was able to do anything with such a diverse multitude.

Washington also had leadership skills when it came to the military. Many soldiers went without pay for months and sometimes soldiers’ rations were meager. What was it about Washington that made him so remarkable?

George Washington And The Bible.

Washington personally read the Bible and quoted the Bible. Those who deny America’s unique Christian roots will claim that many educated people in positions of prominence in the 18th century also quoted from the Bible. However, they also quoted from Greek and Roman authors of antiquity. Washington quoted almost exclusively from the Bible and applied its teachings to his personal life and role as a leader. Here are some of his most-quoted Scriptures:

Micah 4:4: “But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”

Washington quoted this Scripture in his letters and speeches more than 50 times. The vine produces grapes, and being under a fig tree means immediate access to nutritious food. Notice it is “under HIS vine” and “under HIS fig tree.” This speaks about personal property. It is not a communal setting. “And none shall make them afraid.” If you are living under royal authority, you always live in fear.

Micah 6:8: “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

We can all benefit from this reminder. We all have a duty to God and those in His world.

Proverbs 29:2: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”

Those who have lived under a king who believes in the divine right of kings say “Amen” to this Scripture.

America – A Continuing Testimony

In 1607, 125 years before the birth of Washington, the first permanent English settlement in the New World, organized at Jamestown in what is now Virginia, printed its First Charter. The settlement was for “the propagating of the Christian religion…” and for “the glory of His Divine Majesty.”

The real American dream is far more God-honoring than what we have today. The true American patriot is working and praying that Washington’s vision for America will once again claim the hearts of Americans.

Southwest Radio Ministries has been dedicated for 91 years to equipping people with Bible-based teachings on Bible prophecy to guide their understanding of the signs of the times. 

Source: The Real ‘American Dream’ Of George Washington Was Far More God-Honoring Than Many Have Been Led To Believe – Harbinger’s Daily

Independence was not guaranteed.

Two-hundred-fifty years ago, the Second Continental Congress lit the fuse for human freedom by declaring the United States of America independent from Great Britain.  Although we Americans celebrate the Fourth of July as our nation’s birthday, our country did not have an easy birth.

In July 1776, the men who became known as our “Founding Fathers” had many problems.  First among them was the reality that not everyone believed the United Colonies of North America (as they were then called) should sever ties with the Crown.  During the First Continental Congress, convened in Philadelphia for fewer than two months in the early autumn of 1774, delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies (Loyalist Georgia did not attend.) could not agree how best to respond to Britain’s naval blockade of Boston Harbor and Parliament’s imposition of the Intolerable Acts as collective punishment for the Boston Tea Party.  Staunch Loyalist and Pennsylvania delegate Joseph Galloway even proposed a Plan of Union to formally unite Great Britain and the North American colonies.  That did not sit well with Massachusetts firebrand Samuel Adams, and the proposal was eventually struck from the official record of the proceedings.

Following the April 19, 1775, Battles of Lexington and Concord — the first armed conflicts in America’s War for Independence — colonial delegates reconvened in Philadelphia on May 10.  For the next fourteen months, the Second Continental Congress debated what to do next.  Formal separation from Great Britain remained a contentious issue.  Even after fighting in Massachusetts had begun, most American colonists resisted calls for independence throughout 1775.  However, public support for the cause of liberty grew as Christian ministers exhorted members of their congregations to recognize the fight against political tyranny as a struggle for God-given rights and a duty to pursue His will (and our happiness) here on Earth.  Patriots of Massachusetts and Virginia worked tirelessly to shift public sentiment throughout the colonies and to persuade each colony’s representatives that the time for revolution had arrived.

Then an anonymously authored forty-seven-page essay was published in Philadelphia on January 10, 1776.  Written by Thomas Paine and “Addressed to the Inhabitants of America,” its title was simple: Common Sense.  Described by recently deceased historian Gordon Wood as “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era,” it remains the best-selling American work of all time.  In the first half of 1776, American colonists read aloud from its pages in taverns and secret meeting places while British soldiers passed on nearby streets.  Colonial sentiment quickly transformed from hopes for reconciliation with Britain to fervent cries for independence.  Paine ignited in Protestant Christians a passion that united the colonies in a righteous war for freedom against the Crown.

After the Virginia Convention then meeting in Williamsburg instructed its delegates to the Continental Congress to push for independence, Richard Henry Lee proposed this motion in Philadelphia on June 7:  “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”  A year of back-and-forth debate was finally brought to a head.

Although the mood among delegates to the Second Continental Congress had shifted toward general acceptance that a war against Britain was inevitable, unanimity was far from certain.  The colonial governments of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina had not authorized their delegates to vote for independence.  Lee’s resolution was therefore tabled for three weeks, so that delegates could return home and make the case for a formal declaration of independence.  After a “trial vote” on July 1 indicated that South Carolina and Pennsylvania would vote against Lee’s resolution and that Delaware’s vote was split between two delegates present in Philadelphia, South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge requested that the official vote be postponed until the following day.

What happened next is the part of history that often gets left out of textbooks.  Between Monday and Tuesday, Benjamin Franklin strongly suggested to two of his fellow Pennsylvania delegates that they be absent for the final vote.  Rutledge managed to convince South Carolina’s delegates to flip in favor of independence.

Meanwhile, Delaware’s pro-independence delegate, Thomas McKean, had already dispatched an urgent letter to Caesar Rodney, Delaware’s third delegate to the Continental Congress and a consummate patriot in favor of independence.  Rodney was eighty miles away in Kent County training Delaware’s militia and providing General George Washington’s Continental Army with needed supplies.  He was also suffering from a serious facial cancer that took his life eight years later at the age of fifty-five.

McKean’s letter arrived in Dover on Monday, July 1.  Rodney, realizing that he was the tie-breaking vote for Delaware, did not hesitate.  Disregarding warnings from the physicians treating his cancer, he mounted his horse and took off.  Through thunderstorms and lightning, Rodney rode through the night over poor roads and across wild terrain.  Stopping only once to change horses, he made it to Philadelphia in eighteen hours, a trip that normally required two full days.

Just as the voting in Philadelphia began, delegates heard heavy hoofbeats on the cobblestone outside of the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall).  Exhausted, still in his riding clothes with spurs attached, covered in mud, and wearing a green silk scarf around his cancer-ridden face, Rodney strode in and took his seat.  “As I believe the voice of my constituents and all sensible and honest men is in favor of independence,” Rodney announced, “and as my own judgment concurs with them, I give my vote for independence.”  His fateful ride secured Delaware’s vote for the cause of liberty.  (Next time you find a Delaware state quarter in your pocket, take a look at the man riding on a galloping horse; that’s Caesar Rodney!)

Virginian Richard Henry Lee’s resolution for independence secured support from twelve of the thirteen colonies, with New York’s delegates abstaining from the vote as they still lacked formal approval from their colonial government (an error remedied seven days later when it voted tardily to “join with the other colonies in supporting” independence).  Unanimity among the colonies was important.  It deprived the British of the opportunity to exploit colonial divisions.  It also demonstrated to the American people that the colonies were united in purpose.  The history of the War for Independence could have been much different had the delegates to the Second Continental Congress not found a way to come together.

The Pennsylvania Evening Post reported on July 2: “This day the CONTINENTAL CONGRESS declared the UNITED COLONIES FREE and INDEPENDENT STATES.”

John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.”

The American people, on the other hand, immediately recognized July 4 — the date the Declaration of Independence was unanimously ratified and first published by a local printer — as America’s Independence Day.

The delegates to the Second Continental Congress committed acts of high treason against the Crown — crimes punishable by torture and death.  We Americans celebrate their treason every year on this day.

Our country was birthed in adversity, nourished on liberty, christened as the land of opportunity, guided by God, and preserved by His blessings.  Two-hundred-fifty years later, let us pray for two-hundred-fifty more.  Happy Independence Day!

Hat tip to John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who died two hundred years ago today!

J.B. Shurk | July 4, 2026

Source: America Did Not Have an Easy Birth – American Thinker

Success or failure? Here is your answer.

From the very beginning, and for a century afterward, Americans often referred to their country as an experiment.  And for very good reason.

At the time, almost all civilizations were monarchies.  Indeed, many Europeans expected Washington to become king of the colonies, or at the least dictator, and were surprised when he did not even try.  They were just as surprised when he stepped down from the presidential office, thereby cementing a peaceful transition of power.  (A minority of Americans also considered a monarchy out of habit.)

The type of government the Americans had concocted was a novelty.  Initially, soon after declaring independence without achieving it, they cobbled together the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union; in a reaction against authoritarian government, they created a government without any authority.  After independence, it proved worthless — what James Madison referred to as “in fact nothing more than a treaty of amity of commerce and of alliance, between so many independent and sovereign states.”  The Dutch Republic, the Amphictyonic League, and the Swiss confederacy were similarly organized, with mixed outcomes.  Indeed, some in the states’ governments thought of declaring war on others over boundaries and trade.  It must be kept in mind that people considered themselves Americans and Virginians (or Georgians, etc.); they still do.

They tried again.  But what to create?  The reader should not make the common mistake of thinking the present form of government was inevitable and logical.  It could have taken any number of forms.

The Founding Fathers, like all educated people, were well versed in the history of ancient Greece and Rome.  They, particularly Madison, had examined the forms of government that had previously existed, thereby learning the lessons of history.

A democracy was out of the question because of the sheer size of the country.  Leaving dictatorships, oligarchies, and monarchies aside, they settled on a republic — but of what form?  (For example, to avoid dictatorship, Rome had two consults [presidents], who alternated days when wielding power.)  Each region had its own concerns and identity.  How much authority should the executive have, and how far could it extend?  How much Congress, and how far?  What guarantee was there that the central government would not eliminate freedoms?  What guarantee was there for the central government to veto state laws?

Large states such as Virginia and Pennsylvania thought it absurd that tiny states should have the same importance as them (as in the Senate), whereas small states thought they would be ignored if representation went by population size (as in the House of Representatives).  Hence, the bicameral Legislature and the Electoral College.  Can the central government carry out actions not specifically outlined in the Constitution?  (Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were of the opinion that it did not; Jefferson jettisoned this principle with the Louisiana Purchase, even though there was nothing in the Constitution about purchasing additional territory.)

Eventually, the Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution and sent it to all the states to ratify.  Unanimous ratification was not a certainty, which is why Hamilton, Madison, and Jay put out a series of articles in newspapers giving the reasons for ratification.  Significantly, they used Roman noms de plume.

There could have been a United States of America without, say, Connecticut.  Some states announced they would not join unless a Bill of Rights was included.  Once the government was in session and the first ten amendments were passed, some of the holdouts joined the Union.

The Constitution is devoid of flowery language.  It is simply a manual on how to run the government.  Over the years, it has been tweaked — such as senators now being popularly elected instead of appointed by the states, which was originally a measure to prevent the federal government from crushing the states’ local authority.

Over the years, partly because of comity and partly because of planning, the rigid decentralization of political power became set in stone.  This was one of the things that has made the American Constitution truly unique.  The other is the Bill of Rights, which is a protection against government overreach.  By contrast, in so-called democracies in Europe (that look down on America), the people have lost free speech and a free press.  The Supreme Court has rigidly upheld the Bill of Rights and the principle of comity in legal matters not pertaining to the U.S. Constitution (such as how many persons can be in a jury).

When the United States was first created, European rulers were certain that the United States would follow historical precedent and become a dictatorship, dissolve, or plunge into civil war.  Though they were proven right in 1860 with regard to a civil war, the Union nevertheless held firm.  At the same time, America was seen as an example of what could be done in other countries.  To this day, the American flag has been flown by people in countries oppressed by dictatorships, such as Cuba and Hong Kong (at the same time that Democrats burn the flag).

So, to sum up, the experiment has been a success.

Armando Simon | July 4, 2026

Armando Simón is originally from Cuba, a retired psychologist and historian, author of When Evolution Stops, Stories for Lions and Other Felines, and The Transgender Cult: Psychology, Politics, Religion and the Media.

Source: A Verdict on the American Experiment – American Thinker

As America turns 250, it’s good to remember how young our country is. Let’s be patient with our new generation of Americans.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

—John Adams’s letter to the Massachusetts Militia, 1798

As we approach our country’s 250th anniversary, the Adams quote above remains an enduring summary of what the Founders envisioned for We the People.  Yet the long march through our institutions has sought to produce a different kind of people, characterized by President Obama’s pledge to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

As a professor at a small American college, I can attest to the fruits of this effort.  In my less optimistic moments, I observe my students doom-scrolling before class and struggling to read (or pronounce) Plato and Descartes in class.  When they do engage, it is to correct Aquinas or Mill with what they have been told that Marx and Nietzsche said (as opposed to what they actually said).  The bottom line of our Social Contract — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — is pop-cultured into “I’m right, I get liberty, and you do, too, if you agree with me.”

Okay, that’s a bit of a hasty generalization.  In some cases, students submit truly engaging, non-A.I. essays in which they express a genuine desire to do better but struggle to do so.  In a word, they want virtue but aren’t even sure what this means.  For these students, I provide the following comments, which apply to my students’ youthfulness and, I believe, to the youthful age of our nation as well.

I find that most students resonate with this historical correction to the critical theory fire hose from which they are made to imbibe in most other courses.

Regarding politics, Aristotle states that the “main concern … is to is to engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions.”

Somewhere along the way, my young students have lost (or have yet to gain) sight of one crucial point: They are young.  According to Aristotle, “A young man … is not versed in the practical business of life from which politics draws its premises and subject matter,” an underdevelopment due “not to lack of years but to living … under the sway of feelings.”

But again, I see hope, primarily because of Aristotle’s qualifier of virtue pursued over the big-picture course of “a complete life … characterized by rational action.”  At age 61, I am in the fourth quarter of my life, and if I lack virtue, that fault rests squarely on me.  My students, though, are just starting out, and the opportunity to learn virtue is always before them.  As their lives go on and their tax bills increase, they will have the same opportunity we elders have had: to reject childish feel-goodism and pursue hard won but heart-satisfying virtue.

The same applies to our country.  This 250th Fourth of July, will our federal, state, and local governments seek to “engender a certain character in the citizens and to make them good and disposed to perform noble actions”?  Will our young people learn to move beyond emotion to reason and virtue?  Will we together play our part in the ongoing “complete life” of our “more perfect union”?  Much of that depends on the habitual choices that We the People — or more specifically, Each of Us the Individuals — make every day.

A notable time marker for our nation is upon us.  May it be a reminder, individually and collectively, that age is no guarantee of wisdom.  May the allure of maturity, rooted in liberty and the pursuit of happiness, be our focus in our coming week and remaining years.  And along the way, may our young people catch this same timeless vision of virtue.

C.H. Howard | June 27, 2026

Source: Bring Virtue Back for the Next Generation – American Thinker

More than two decades ago, in 2004, Harvard professor Samuel Huntington warned in his book “Who Are We?” that America was facing a crisis of identity. He argued that a nation cannot remain united without a common culture, a common history, and a common understanding of itself. Remove those foundations, and a society inevitably fragments into competing tribes, interests, and identities.

Huntington pointed to the Anglo-Protestant Creed as the core of America’s unifying identity. He argued that America’s political institutions and civic ideals did not arise in a vacuum but were rooted in a culture shaped by Protestant Christianity. If Huntington identified the foundation of America’s shared identity, educator E.D. Hirsch explained how that identity was transmitted: through a common biblical literacy that provided Americans with a shared vocabulary, history, and moral framework. Without that shared knowledge, the cultural foundations of national identity inevitably begin to erode.

The Founding Fathers were immersed in biblical imagery. Benjamin Franklin famously proposed a national seal depicting Moses at the Red Sea. The Israelites’ exodus taught lessons about liberty, tyranny, divine providence, and national purpose.

The Bible shaped how Americans understood freedom, law, covenant, human dignity, and self-government. Even those who were not orthodox Christians were influenced by the biblical worldview that permeated colonial America.

But what happens when that biblical literacy disappears?

A nation that forgets its story loses its identity. And when a people lose their identity, they become fragmented. That is precisely what Huntington warned about. Americans increasingly identify themselves by race, class, political ideology, or special interest rather than by a common national story.

The consequences of this loss of historical memory extend beyond America’s understanding of itself. They also affect America’s understanding of one of the most important sources of its cultural inheritance: the Jewish people and the biblical story of Israel.

America’s affinity for the Jewish people did not begin with the modern State of Israel. For generations, Americans viewed Jewish history through the lens of Scripture and found in Israel’s story lessons about liberty, covenant, and national purpose.

As biblical literacy declines, Israel is increasingly viewed only through a contemporary political lens, ignoring its biblical and historical foundations. Meanwhile, anti-Semitism has risen across America and the West. Certainly, anti-Semitism has many causes. Yet it is difficult to ignore the connection between a society that no longer understands the Bible and one that increasingly misunderstands the Jewish people whose history fills its pages.

The rise of anti-Semitism and the weakening of support for Israel did not occur overnight. The ground was prepared over decades as biblical literacy declined, historical memory faded, and Americans became disconnected from the sources that once helped them understand both their own identity and the identity of the Jewish people.

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we have an opportunity not merely to commemorate our history but to recover it. We can rediscover the biblical foundations that shaped our nation and strengthen the shared identity Huntington warned was slipping away.

The Bible is not merely a religious text but one of the foundational documents of American civilization. To understand America, one must understand the Bible. And when that understanding is lost, we lose not only part of our history but part of our identity.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Source: What Happens When The Biblical Literacy That Shaped America’s Founding Disappears? – Harbinger’s Daily

The most alarming projections of climate change have been built upon a scenario known as RCP 8.5 and its successor, SSP5-8.5, which climate scientists now admit are “implausible” parameters.

For years, some of the most alarming projections of climate change were built upon a scenario known as RCP 8.5 and its successor, SSP5-8.5.

The public rarely heard those technical labels. Instead, they encountered the conclusions. Headlines warned of climate catastrophe. Studies projected severe economic losses, rising mortality, agricultural disruption, sea-level rise, and increasingly extreme weather. Governments cited such projections when developing policy. Courts referenced them in climate litigation. Businesses incorporated them into risk assessments.

Yet a significant development has received remarkably little public attention.

In the official CMIP7 ScenarioMIP design paper published in 2026, Detlef van Vuuren and more than forty climate-scenario researchers wrote:

For the 21st century, this range will be smaller than assessed before: on the high-end of the range, the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible….

The significance of that statement is difficult to overstate.

The shift became explicit in 2026 during the development of the CMIP7 climate-scenario framework that will help inform the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report. Researchers involved in designing the next generation of official climate scenarios concluded that the highest-emissions pathway widely used in previous climate assessments should no longer be regarded as a plausible representation of the world’s likely future.

This does not mean climate change has disappeared. Nor does it mean the IPCC has formally withdrawn SSP5-8.5 from climate modeling. The scenario remains available for analytical and stress-testing purposes.

What has changed is its status.

That distinction matters.

Now many of the scientists responsible for developing future climate scenarios appear to be reaching similar conclusions.

The implications extend far beyond an academic dispute among climate researchers.

RCP 8.5 was never merely another modelling exercise. It became one of the most influential scenarios in the history of climate science.

Thousands of academic papers relied upon it. Researchers used it to estimate future economic damages, heat-related mortality, agricultural disruption, sea-level impacts, and extreme weather losses. Studies based upon the scenario influenced adaptation planning, climate litigation, ESG investment frameworks, and government policy discussions throughout the Western world.

The distinction between a severe hypothetical scenario and a likely future became blurred.

This is where the controversy begins.

Imagine a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug using a risk model that later came to be regarded as unrealistic.

Imagine financial regulators restructuring the banking system around stress tests built upon assumptions later acknowledged to be implausible.

Imagine military planners justifying vast expenditures using threat projections that their own analysts no longer considered likely.

There would be serious questions.

How were the assumptions chosen?

How were the projections communicated?

Were policymakers given a balanced understanding of the uncertainties involved?

Yet when one of the most influential climate scenarios of the last decade loses credibility, there is remarkably little discussion.

There are no front-page reassessments by the media organisations that amplified the most alarming projections. There are few reflections from the institutions that used those projections to advocate sweeping policy changes. The climate narrative largely continues unchanged.

Consider some of the consequences.

Governments across the Western world declared climate emergencies.

Net-zero commitments were incorporated into legislation.

Public and private institutions adopted ESG frameworks.

Climate litigation expanded.

Schoolchildren were repeatedly told that they faced an existential crisis.

Entire sectors of the economy were reorganised around projected future risks.

Whether one supports or opposes those policies is ultimately a matter for democratic debate. The more immediate question is whether the assumptions underlying some of the most influential projections were communicated honestly and accurately.

There is nothing controversial about scientists revising a scenario when new evidence emerges. That is exactly what scientists should do. The question is why the public is hearing so little about a revision involving one of the most influential climate scenarios of the past decade.

The problem arises when institutions spend years promoting a particular narrative and then show little interest in examining whether the assumptions underpinning that narrative remain valid.

The issue is not simply climate science. It is what happens when worst-case scenarios and flawed assumptions migrate from technical modelling exercises into public policy, media narratives, court decisions, and investment strategies.

For years, projections derived from SSP5-8.5 were treated not merely as one possible future but increasingly as the future. The distinction matters.  Models are useful tools, but a model is not reality. Its conclusions depend upon assumptions, and when those assumptions change, the conclusions deserve re-examination.

That is precisely what appears to be happening with SSP5-8.5.

One of the most underreported climate stories of 2026 is that the scenario underpinning many of the most alarming projections is no longer regarded as plausible by those developing the next generation of climate models.

It may be the growing recognition among climate-scenario researchers themselves that one of the most influential pathways used to shape public understanding of climate change no longer represents a plausible picture of the future.

If so, policymakers, journalists, and citizens alike should be asking a simple question:

What else was built upon assumptions that no longer hold?

Mark Keenan | June 23, 2026

Mark Keenan is a former United Nations technical expert and an independent writer examining the intersection of science, technology, finance, and power. His work focuses on how dominant narratives are formed—and what lies outside them. He is the author of Climate CO2 Hoax, When Models Replace Reality, The Planned Pandemic, The Debt Machine, and Demonic Economics, where he examines the intersection of history, finance, and systems of power. His essays are read internationally and published on Substack (markgerardkeenan.substack.com). He writes to challenge assumptions, encourage critical inquiry, and invite readers to examine the structures shaping modern life. His work is archived at Reality Books.

Source: The Climate Scenario Behind A Decade of Alarmism Is No Longer Considered Plausible – American Thinker

This century-long experiment of demonizing, removing, and replacing men has failed.

I’d like to use Father’s Day to make a humble request: Let’s bring back the patriarchy.  Whatever we currently have just isn’t working.

Empowering an odd collection of feminazis, soy boys, pronoun people, emotional nutcases, women pretending to be men, and men pretending to be women has produced a dysfunctional world that makes no sense.  We’ve got gays celebrating Muslim jihadists who throw gays off buildings for sport.  We’ve got “Me Too” pink-hat-ladies defending pedophiles and rapists from decorated military veterans now serving as ICE agents.  We have male Democrat Party politicians harnessed with strange contraptions that allow them to “breastfeed” adopted babies.  We have Hillary Clinton clones wearing pantsuits and using the lowest register of their vocal chords to bark orders in the most raspy, gruff, masculine voice they can muster.

I remember when Hillary Clinton and other female politicians used to stare up at the stars just beyond the glass ceiling and wistfully ponder, “What a wonderful world it would be if only women were in charge.”  Even before the cancerous Clintons rented out the Lincoln Bedroom, traded military secrets for Chinese campaign contributions, and built a money laundering operation disguised as a family charity, it had become quite common for the chattering class to go all twinkly-eyed on television as corporate news mouthpieces told the public that wars would probably end once women were running things.

In 2026, does anybody believe women are the missing link to global peace?  Have you seen those Minneapolis harpies screaming in the faces of ICE agents?  And that coven of Cloward-Piven communists hail from a state so broadly admired for its distinctive generosity and graciousness that the rest of us once fondly described its spirit as “Minnesota nice.” “Nice” does not come to mind when I watch videos of angry women running over federal agents with their cars, blocking officers from arresting violent illegal aliens, and yelling all manner of profanities at guys and gals who risk their lives to keep Americans safe.

If the women of America’s “nicest” state can be so venomous, just imagine the unholy scenes of female madness that erupt outside of a New York City Chick-fil-A when a young employee politely says, “Thank you, sir,” to a bearded man in a dress who demands to be addressed as a “Ma’am.”  Women jump on tables and start throwing things faster than J.B. Pritzker and Chris Christie tag-team-devouring a buffet.  (Nota bene: Never suggest to a woman ransacking a restaurant that she behave as a lady; such suggestions produce the opposite result.)

Say what you will about “toxic masculinity,” but when boys grow up learning how to take and throw a punch, they become men capable of both aggression and restraint.  You don’t have to get hit in the face too many times before figuring out a few things: (1) Don’t start what you can’t finish.  (2) Not every personal slight requires a response.  The art of compromise is practiced best by those who have witnessed firsthand the cost of conflict.  When fighting and warring are dismissed as unnecessary aberrations arising from “dangerous” masculinity, vital human lessons are never learned.  Being a leader is not about shouting orders; it is about putting yourself in harm’s way enough times to learn the safest passage through future hardship.  Successful leaders are not anointed; they struggle and keep moving forward until everyone else is following.

Protecting others means that masculinity is sacrifice.  It is a willingness to put yourself between a loved one and a threat.  It is a recognition that you will give everything you have — including your life — to shield those under your protection.  It is an acceptance that, although you will not win every fight, you will fight, regardless.

Whatever kind of society we currently have, it is certainly not a patriarchy.  We have far too many children growing up without fathers.  We have far too many men who say and do nothing as evil men do evil things.  We have far too many men who have chosen to leave society behind rather than defend it.  They have been called names.  They have been told that they are culpable for every bad thing that has ever happened.  They are described as redundant or even anachronistic in the modern family.  Television shows and movies depict them as stupid, boorish, privileged, unwanted, unneeded, and easily replaceable.

Western societies that have rejected masculine virtue produce the same natural result: Everything breaks.  Families stop functioning properly.  Neighborhoods are overrun with crime and violence.  Communities turn into bickering tribes.  Love of country is replaced with self-hate.  Personal sacrifice fades.

What happens when men stop building, protecting, and sacrificing for the countries that they call home?  Barbarians breach the gates.  Countries get conquered.  Innocents die.  Towns vanish.  Mass invasion does not succeed simply because the United Nations, the European Union, and the political Establishments of Britain and the United States prefer to sow chaos and make money from open borders.  Invasion succeeds because men have disappeared.

Right now, unfortunately, too many men have been cowed into silence.  Those calling themselves “men” spend their energies defending “transgender” predators who hunt inside women’s restrooms and child sex-slavers who hide behind the virtue-signaling smokescreens of mass amnesty advocates.  When masculine virtue dries up, the wolves start preying on the weak.

There’s only one way out of this mess: We must bring back the patriarchy.  Men must be roused from their slumbers and reminded what’s at stake.  They must do the hard things once again no matter how much civilization’s destroyers complain.  This century-long experiment of demonizing, removing, and replacing men has failed.

What happens next will not be for the faint of heart.  In fact, bringing back order to a society addicted to chaos will require more heart than most men have ever used.  But it’s the only way to save the West from those who wish to put it in the ground.  It will require men who are willing to be called horrible names while they protect others.  It will require men with calluses, purpose, and restraint.  It will require men of courage, sacrifice, strength, and honor.  These men will not be appreciated by everyone alive today.  They will, however, be remembered by every generation that follows.

J.B. Shurk | June 21, 2026

Source: Bring Back the Patriarchy – American Thinker

Tulsi Gabbard releases docs exposing Fauci’s role in funding Wuhan gain-of-function research.

Tulsi Gabbard’s last day as the director of national intelligence is upon us, after she resigned because of a major illness in the family. In her resignation note to the president, she cited her husband Abraham Williams’ recent diagnosis with sacral chordoma — an extremely rare tumor that develops in the sacrum at the base of the spine. In her resignation, she wrote that “He faces major challenges in the coming weeks and months. At this time, I must step away from public service to be by his side and fully support him through this battle.”

That said, there is good news there. The surgery to remove bone and surrounding tissue lasted almost seven hours and was described as successful. Gabbard shared that he had a rough night following that surgery and was in a lot of pain, but was finally home resting, adding “Now recovery begins.”

Gabbard also expressed gratitude for the public support: “We’re so grateful for the outpouring of prayers and kind messages from all of you. Our hearts are full.”

As wonderful as that news is, and as cheered as I am about it, alas! That’s where the feel-good part of this piece ends.

As the exit sign looms, Gabbard has released the following statement:

And here are the documents she declassified and released:

COVID-19 Release Index
COVID-19 Release Part 1
COVID-19 Release Part 2
COVID-19 Release Part 3
COVID-19 Release Part 4 

The ODNI press release accompanying the release states that Anthony Fauci, as head of NIAID, provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — work the release describes as “widely viewed” as the source of an unintentional lab leak.

I spent some time last night — several hours in fact — going over these documents that I’ve linked above. They lay out the flat-out accusations of Fauci of teaming up with his fellow travelers in the Intelligence Community to kill the lab-leak hypothesis and bury his own fingerprints on the research funding.

And apparently that wasn’t enough — these documents show three specific roles for him:

• Fauci caused our government to bankroll reckless and illegal gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses in Wuhan while chasing the trillion-dollar dream of “universal vaccines,” an item worth billions to Big Pharma;
• Fauci worked the phones behind the scenes to steer IC analysts toward a convenient (and false) natural-origin conclusion;
• Fauci then stood in front of cameras playing the part of America’s trusted pandemic czar and — per the release — fed the public a steady diet of lies, disinformation, and censorship.

Quite the résumé, wouldn’t you say? But wait, there’s more!

Testimony gathered during the declassification review includes accounts of a contractor who was terminated shortly after coming forward as a whistleblower, analysts being told that advocacy for the lab-leak hypothesis would affect promotions, and senior leaders allegedly removing anonymity from the whistleblower complaint process by requiring managers or attorneys to be present at ODNI meetings. These accounts have been referred to the IC Inspector General. No action has been taken yet.

Remember Fauci getting up on his hind legs in a CNN interview, after Trump won the election but before he had even taken the oath, saying that Trump would face a pandemic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puqaaeLnEww

How would he know? Because as the evidence in hand shows, he directed and financed it, with our tax dollars.

Remember the old saying? When you’re up to your belt loops in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your original mission was to drain the swamp. And draining the swamp, you’ll recall, stood at the very center of Trump’s campaign. How convenient!

The more I look at all of this, the more it resembles the “insurance policy” crowd’s backup plan — the one Peter Strzok and Lisa Page seemed so eager to discuss in those now-infamous texts about stopping Trump. They lost the election, but it appears they never abandoned the objective. They simply moved to Plan B. More pointedly and succinctly: was the lab leak unintentional?

When COVID-19 first emerged, I couldn’t point to much beyond instinct. Still, my gut kept telling me these events were connected in ways the public, including myself, didn’t fully understand yet. Understand: COVID-19 is a real, if artificially created virus, but politics quickly became the real and overriding story.

Every instinct I have tells me that this was a coup, in every sense of the word. No tanks rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue. No soldiers stormed government buildings. Instead, fear, censorship, bureaucratic power, and economic devastation achieved what normal politics could not, and no army could get close to.

Yes, people died, in numbers that dwarf the actions of every dictator in history. Millions of them. The elderly, the vulnerable, and those already struggling with poor health paid the highest price. Estimates place the worldwide death toll in the tens of millions. The scale of the tragedy remains almost impossible for us to comprehend.

Fauci’s legacy won’t consist of magazine covers or glowing media profiles that he so eagerly sought as he basked in celebrity status, collected accolades, posed for photographs, and lectured the public from television screens. His legacy will consist of elderly parents and grandparents dying alone in nursing homes. Families who lost final conversations, final embraces, and final goodbyes. Bureaucrats locked relatives out while infected patients were crammed into those same facilities. My own mother became one of those stories. I do not seek sympathy here; I merely hold out personal experience as an example. Certainly, millions of families will forever carry similar scars.

Am I being harsh? Yes. Absolutely. I understand that. In fact, this deserves more harshness, but I don’t have the words to describe all this without pushing my editors over the edge.

The accusations carry enormous weight, and I fully understand exactly how serious they are. But after watching these same people distort facts, weaponize institutions, silence dissent, and excuse one abuse after another for the better part of a decade — and beyond — all aimed at one solitary goal, a fair question remains:

Would you really put it past them?

All that’s left is jail time for the guilty. Given the timing of this release, and the lack of prosecutions thus far, I wonder if we will ever see that day. That, perhaps, is the most damning point in all of this.

Eric Florack  | 11:30 AM on June 21, 2026

Source: Turns Out ‘Trust the Science’ Came With Receipts – PJ Media

An analysis of Democrats’ policies impacting American cities like Los Angeles in 2026.

A picture of a near-empty downtown Los Angeles appeared on “X” recently with this caption under it: “Los Angeles has one of the deadest downtowns in the world, according to a new survey.” I’d like to know a little more about that survey and how the surveyors arrived at their conclusion, but there’s not much debate among patriotic Americans that most metropolitan areas of the country are currently in horrible condition. That doesn’t need “surveys” to prove.

I’d like to ask, which one of these great cities has had even one Republican mayor in the last 50 years? Very, very few of them, I suspect. This tragedy, in American big cities, has been caused, 100 percent, by the Democrat Party and its policies and politicians. Not just their policies, but the decadent lifestyle they encourage people to live can only lead to desecration and ruin.

Why do people continue to vote for Democrats when they see the horrors they produce? Well, there are many reasons, I guess. Some do it out of tradition—”my family has always voted Democrat, so I do, too.” That’s super-intelligent reasoning, isn’t it? Some vote Democrat out of hate: “I will never vote for Donald Trump.” Others do it out of apathy; they just don’t really care too much about politics as long as their lives are moving along acceptably to them. Many do it out of ignorance—they simply don’t know (or care) what Democrats have done to these big cities. They may see a politician they like, and they believe anything he/she tells them, regardless of how big a lie it is. Ignorance, apathy, and frankly, stupidity, are all serious problems in any democracy.

Of course, sadly, countless Black Americans populate the bigger cities now, “white flight” having occurred in most of them. So, many of these metropolitan areas have Black Democrat Party mayors. The horrors could hardly be worse. In 2024, 15,795 people were murdered in America. Of those victims, 6,753 were white, and 8,158 were Black. That was actually less than 2023, when 8,070 whites were murdered compared to 11,060 Blacks.

This is amazing, considering that only 13 percent of the population of America is Black. Yet, they make up a majority of the people murdered. Somebody is failing them—and sometimes it is themselves. It must be said that many of these hideous inner-city problems, frankly, are the fault of the people living there. When 69-70 percent of Black babies are born out of wedlock, that is a recipe for crime, poverty, and maladjusted children—God intended for families to have both mothers and fathers for a reason. But where are the Democrat Party—and Black—political leaders who are urging black to quit fornicating and having babies out of wedlock, and for fathers to take responsibility for their offspring and raise them “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”? Well, Democrats can’t have that, can they? That plan is Judeo-Christian, and the Democrat Party would rather watch blacks suffer poverty, misery, and murder than submit to godly wisdom.

And Black churches, which are supposed to be teaching the precepts of Jesus, have, rather, exalted the policies of the Democrat Party. Those “churches” have been virtually no help at all. Therefore, the evil that the Democrat Party is perpetuating will persist as long as Blacks and other inner-city dwellers (and massive numbers of Americans) ignore the only true answer to these horrifyingly tragic problems—live virtuous, responsible, godly lives. Why people can’t see that, I do not know.

The Democrats don’t want to see it, or don’t want to admit it, because if people were virtuous, responsible, and godly, they wouldn’t need government. “If all men were angels, no government would be necessary,” James Madison said. But, of course, government power is all Democrats are interested in. So, the Democrat Party and its politicians, both white and Black, have a vested interest in making sure cities like Los Angeles remain decadent, and their downtowns remain dead—in more ways than one. And they’ve been able to tell the “Big Lie” long enough that they continue in power. They have convinced millions of Black people that the fault comes, not from Democrats or Black promiscuity, but from “white supremacy.” If there is an organization on this earth more evil than the Democrat Party, I do not know what it is. Even the Chinese Communist Party isn’t this revolting.

So, Los Angeles’s downtown will remain dead because the people of Los Angeles are going to elect another Democrat mayor who cares absolutely nothing about the people of her city. She only cares about stealing money from one group of people and giving it to those whose votes she hopes to buy. But beyond that, the city—like every major American metropolis—will remain a cesspool of crime, poverty, filth, corruption, decadence, and debauchery. It will be totally the fault of the Democrat Party. And the poor citizens will continue to suffer because of politicians’ selfish lust for power and their own lack of self-control.

Well, those citizens get what they vote for; thus, ultimately, it is their own fault. “The government you elect is the government you deserve,” (Thomas Jefferson), but it’s still sad.

Mark Lewis | Jun 21, 2026

Source: What Democrats Have Done to a Once-Great American City

Was Hitler a Christian? Historical evidence reveals his hostility toward Christianity and helps answer a common objection raised against the faith.

Despite the fact that Adolf Hitler had a Roman Catholic background, he became adamantly anti-Christian and believed in evolution. As other dictators have done, he took over the churches and used their organizational structure to influence the citizens—though the teachings allowed were anything but biblical. William Shirer, who chronicled the Nazi regime, stated that “the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany” and substitute paganism.

Hitler’s vision for Germany was defined in a thirty-point program for the “National Reich Church,” which “categorically claims the exclusive right and the exclusive power to control all churches within the borders of the Reich.” Some of the points of the program include the following: The National Church is “determined to exterminate irrevocably the Christian faith”; churches have no pastors or chaplains but only National Reich orators may speak in them; publishing and dissemination of the Bible must immediately cease in Germany. The National Church declared that “the Fuehrer’s Mein Kampf is the greatest of all documents” and “embodies the purest and truest ethics for the present and future life of our nation.” Therefore, churches must remove all Bibles and crucifixes, only Mein Kampf may be on the altar, and all crosses must be replaced by “the only unconquerable symbol, the swastika” (W. L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 240).

The following quotes by Hitler reveal his true personal views (taken from Hitler’s Table Talk):

National Socialism and religion cannot exist together…The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity…Let it not be said that Christianity brought man the life of the soul, for that evolution was in the natural order of things. (pp. 6–7)

The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. (p. 75)

Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery…Let’s be the only people who are immunized against the disease. (pp. 118–119)

There is something very unhealthy about Christianity. (p. 339)

I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors—but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie. Our epoch in the next 200 years will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity… My regret will have been that I couldn’t…behold [its demise]. (p. 278)

Ray Comfort is the Founder and CEO of Living Waters, a bestselling author, and cohost of the award-winning television program Way of the Master, which airs in 190 countries. Comfort also wrote the commentary for “The Evidence Study Bible“

Source: Despite The Distorted Claims Of Many, Hitler Was Not ‘A Christian’ – Harbinger’s Daily

Calling Balls And Strikes On The M.O.U.

For most of my adult life, Saturdays in the spring and an occasional weeknight game or two have been spent at the same Little League baseball field I played on when I was a kid. I have coached, managed, been on the league’s board, but I had the most fun doing what I love – calling balls and strikes behind home plate.

One of the benefits of being a fixture behind the dish for 46 years was that you got to know a lot of families that came through this community. In a lot of cases, I got to ump games featuring kids and grandkids of people I played with. Regardless of the personalities involved, when I threw the ball to the pitcher and said, “Play ball,” all that went out the window. Whatever priors I had going into the game, I zoned in and reacted to what was taking place in front of me, pitch by pitch.

I am not a dispassionate commentator when it comes to the 47-year war the Islamic Republic of Iran has been waging with the United States and Israel. I have been a hawk as long as I can remember, and was thrilled when President Trump finally decided that enough was enough and gave the go-ahead for Operation Epic Fury. He will always be held in high esteem with me for doing what no one before him would dare tackle.

Now that the Memorandum of Understanding is in force, signed by both President Trump in Versailles yesterday (of all places) and by Iranian puppet President Masoud Pezeshkian, I’m going to set aside my opinion of the agreement and analyze what went right, what went wrong, and what remains to be seen as objectively as I can. But for the record, I think I feel about the M.O.U. the same way Secretary of State Marco Rubio looked standing behind President Trump at the G7 press conference.

The four stated objectives of Operation Epic Fury going into hostilities at the end of February, were simple enough.

1. Destroy Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and its production capacity Trump emphasized eliminating both existing missiles and the industrial base capable of producing new ones.

2. Annihilate the Iranian Navy This included ships, submarines, coastal missile batteries, and naval command infrastructure.

3. Ensure Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon Trump repeatedly framed this as a non‑negotiable objective of the campaign.

4. Sever Iran’s support for terrorist proxies This meant eliminating the IRGC’s ability to arm, fund, and direct regional militias.

Depending on the source, whether it’s our military intelligence, the Israelis’, or open source information, best estimates are that roughly 60-70% of Iran’s available missile stockpile was destroyed. As for what remains, the final volleys Iran launched at Israel resulted in several that disintegrated or failed before defensive weapons had to be fired. Iran was down to the shelves of stuff that was sketchy whether it would even fly or not.

Iran’s defense military complex suffered about the same percentage in damage. 60-70% of their drone production was destroyed, including one facility they had running in Venezuela before the United States came calling to pick up Nicolas Maduro in the middle of the night.

40% of their missile or fuel propellant development is gone. Roughly half of their electronic guidance systems are gone. Remember that the drone launched last week that took down our Apache did not detonate on impact as was designed. It malfunctioned, even though it brought down the helicopter.

Was Objective 1 completed? No. Was it decimated, to use the oft-misused term of art? Yes, and decimated at least five times over. Iran could certainly choose to take the sanctions relief coming with the M.O.U. and sink it into the hundreds of billions it would take to rebuild their missile and drone programs. Drones would be the cheapest and fastest weapon to reconstitute, probably coming back online to pre-war levels in a year or less. However, by the end of kinetic action, U.S. destroyers were being outfitted with directed-energy weapons, or lasers, to begin knocking them down effectively. Within a couple of years, that technology will be refined and ubiquitous throughout our military. That threat has been, or will soon be, neutralized.

Missile launchers will take a few years and tens of billions. Missile production will take half a decade or longer, costing hundreds of billions. Keep in mind that Iran, the country, has been put in a several trillion dollar hole because of the war, and that’s not going to all get made up in six months of oil sales.

The Iranian Navy, such as it was, is reef lattice at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. If you wish to call ski boats with machine guns tied to them naval vessels, go right ahead. But Houthi pirates are more organized than that. Several levels of their IRGC naval commanders were killed. That objective was accomplished.

Objective three – ensuring Iran never gets a nuke – well, that’s the whole enchilada, isn’t it? We don’t know if that’s been achieved or not. President Trump believes so, but the proof will be in the pudding over the next two months while the final deal is negotiated. But what do we know?

Whatever enriched material they have, whether it be near-weapons grade or even the 2% low-fat stuff (really 3-5%) which can be spun up to weapons grade, is, at worst for us, buried under mountains of rubble. Iran certainly can’t get at it very easily, and in fact, there are reports that the Iranians have sealed off access, collapsed the tunnels, and boobytrapped the entrances. Even if they tried to go back in and extract it, we’d see it, and it would be an instant violation of the most important paragraph of the M.O.U., Paragraph 8. And the one point Trump made no less than five times during his press conference and again on the tarmac at the airport later, that if they tried to go after the material and restart their nuclear program, he’d bomb the hell out of them again.

If Iran opts to resume their drive to become a nuclear power, it will do so without centrifuges, heavy water facilities, scientists who know what they’re doing, universities to teach future scientists about how to know what they’re doing, and the ability to hide it from us seeing it and responding. I was extremely worried about how close they were at the end of last year. I do not have that same concern now. But how Iran performs in this area while the M.O.U. is in force, and how Paragraph 8 is resolved in the final negotiated deal, remains to be seen.

And the fourth objective, severing Iran’s desire to support and grow terror proxies, was definitely not achieved by the United States. Israel was well on their way, having all but destroyed Hamas and going to work on Hezbollah methodically by crossing the Litani River and hitting them on their turf instead of just playing missile pickleball. If the M.O.U. gets violated and we go back to kinetic action, it likely will be because a Hezbollah terrorist working in Lebanon will have not gotten the memo from Tehran and launch something that kills Israelis. It’s almost inevitable. If Hezbollah suddenly abides by the terms of this M.O.U. and ceases hostilities towards Israel for any significant length of time, my opinion of the M.O.U. will go up.

As for Iran, it already doesn’t sound promising.

According to the M.O.U., Iran will be able to sell oil and have some frozen assets released. Other sanctions will have waivers, but the money flow will still be tracked. If Treasury Secretary Bessent gets wind of resources from Tehran flowing back into Hezbollah, that has to be a deal breaker, and all bets are off.

Regime change in Iran was always a goal for Israel, but it wasn’t for us. However, severing Iran from being the patron of proxy terror groups encircling Israel was one of our objectives, and that’s one that we cannot allow to be a failed goal. It’s yet to be determined whether Iran is just blustering for domestic purposes or if they intend to cheat immediately, believing President Trump has lost the stomach to push back.

What went right during Operation Epic Fury? A whole lot. The United States and the world are safer today than they were before the war. That’s just an objective fact, and those who tell you different are reacting emotionally, not rationally. We demonstrated a new brand of warfare and coordinated with the region’s hegemon, the Israeli Defense Forces, in a way the world has never seen. We had intelligence, the right force posture, the element of surprise, and almost flawless execution by our servicemembers. Even when things went wrong, the precision demonstrated by the extraction of our downed airmen outside of Isfahan was nothing short of awe-inspiring. There’s a lot to crow about, and if you just look at the people that were killed and the things that were broken in Iran, quite simply, they got their collective hindquarters kicked.

By deploying Operation Economic Fury, including the naval blockade against Iranian ports, we triggered a series of global maneuvers that portend very good things for the United States economy in the years to come. We are now the largest exporter of oil in the world, passing OPEC. That’s never happened before, and we’re still ramping up production. When Alaska’s development comes fully online, the ports available to feed energy to Asia will be too much for the Pacific Rim countries to pass up. It’s closer, not nearly as perilous of a journey, and a much shorter trip.

As for the Strait of Hormuz, there are seven countries, excluding Iran, that use the narrow waterway to ship out oil. The top three countries – Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates – account for nearly 75% of the oil that goes through the Strait on a normal basis. All three have implemented plans, and two of the three are within three years of bypassing the Strait altogether and moving the same quantities of oil, and probably more, by way of pipeline. Those plans will continue regardless of whether Iran lives up to the M.O.U. or not. This means that if and when Iran violates the deal, and kinetic action once again must be taken, the floating hostages on their southern border will no longer be around to use for ransom.

What went wrong? The messaging for why the war was necessary was slow and inconsistent in the beginning. By a month into the campaign, the administration had largely gotten its messaging coordinated. But it took way too long in the early days to make a repeated case for why this had to be done now.

We did not have nearly enough defensive weapons to secure our bases in the region, and we couldn’t protect our Arab state allies nearly enough. We’ve had a military industrial complex problem of our own for quite a while, thanks largely to Democratic Congresses and administrations defunding and hampering the Pentagon’s ability to forward procure with budget certainty. And the results of that bad policy were on display during this war. Where we had the resources, we were very effective and very lethal. But my gut tells me we didn’t have enough anti-missile batteries remaining to protect Arab infrastructure by last week, and our Arab partners got very squeamish about more ongoing kinetic activity, and the President did not want to lose the cooperation he’d gotten from this part of his coalition. So he looked for an off-ramp.

The idea to arm individuals in Iran so the odds would even out if another color revolution broke out was a good one. Arming the Kurds to be the de facto ground force was a mistake. In actuality, it may be that it was just the wrong Kurds, but nevertheless, I’d like to think that if we had to do this all over again, we’d have worked with the Israelis to identify the right element within Tehran to equip and train with munitions that would give the IRGC and Basij forces something more worrisome to consider. Crumbling the regime from within might have shortened the war for us and taken care of a lot of the problems Iran posed.

I think it was a mistake to end Project Freedom after 36 hours, regardless of the blowback from the Arab states at the time. We should have, and I believe could have, opened the Strait for tankers and freighters to pass while interceding Iranian traffic. Former Senator Jim Talent and I have often said on my Duane’s World podcast that moving ships through the Strait, rubbing the regime’s nose in it, was the checkmate move. If I had an audience with administration officials, that’s one of the questions about which I would ask.

Regarding the M.O.U. itself, it is fraught with uncertainty and opaque conditions that almost guarantee Iran will immediately probe at it with small violations, and move onto larger ones in order to discover how much the Americans no longer wish to confront them. Outside of the President and Vice-President, no one seems to believe the Iranians have had a sincere change of heart. They’re like a baby shark that you bring home and feed, nurture, watch grow from aquarium to aquarium, and then one day be surprised it bites your hand off when you try to pet it. We just gave them oxygen by taking our boot off their neck. Once their vision clears from nearly blacking out, they’ll most likely go back to doing what they do best – killing Jews, Americans, and Sunnis in whichever order presents itself first.

But where problems arise for us in the compliance department is that the IRGC remains in charge of the construction of everything important in Iran. The IRGC is also listed on our terror watch list, meaning no company can legally work with them. The $300 billion fund for rebuilding Iran, if Iran does reopen the Strait and cooperates on nuclear material in future negotiations, would run afoul of U.S. law, which there is no appetite in Congress with either party to overturn. Noah Rothman has more on that nightmare scenario in today’s National Review Morning Jolt column.

The political timing for this may work out very well for the President and Republicans. Oil is already in the mid-$70’s, and there is evidence that engines on tankers have fired up and movement through the Strait is finally commencing. With those lower oil prices come lower fuel costs, and with that, lower prices on all the stuff that started to become expensive again this spring. By the time our economy recovers from the war months, along with the robust job growth and manufacturing and construction boom underway, life will become much more affordable right around the time early voting begins in the midterms. That certainly helps Republicans just as much as Democrats nominating antisemites, Nazis, and 37-year-olds that share their checking accounts with their mother. It very well could ensure they hold the Senate.

And once Trump clears the midterms, presuming he has one house, maybe both if he catches a tailwind, when Iran inevitably does impregnate the proverbial pooch, he’s got another six-month window to whack at the regime until the 2028 cycle gets underway.

I don’t like the deal all that much. I understand it, and I don’t think it’s going to amount to much more than a formality to a quasi-ceasefire until it’s violated. If it provides enough stability through the election, all the better.

As a three-time cancer survivor, I tend to look at a lot of events in life in those terms. Iran without question is a cancer. We hit it hard with chemo for a few months with Operation Epic Fury, and then followed up with another couple of months of radiation called Economic Fury. The tumor shrank two-thirds, by most objective measures. But we didn’t kill it. It will grow back. Malignant growths are almost never coerced into becoming benign. Could we have killed off the cancer? Probably not without ground troops, which I don’t think the American body would have tolerated. That would have been too toxic for the public to tolerate.

So Trump chose to do what he could do – knock the hell out of the cancer the best he could for as long as the body would stand it, and then hope it doesn’t come back with a vengeance too soon.

Could the M.O.U., and the forthcoming final deal cut off the metastatic parts of the tumor in other regions, like Hezbollah and the Houthis? Perhaps. If so, the deal becomes a great deal. If not, we have to concentrate on getting the body healthy again and ready for another round of treatments to come.

That means more money spent on Defense, more weapons, more firepower, and more resolve. This period of time isn’t retreat, and it’s not redemption. It should be time to reload, and when finished and when warranted, repeat.

Duane Patterson 10:00 AM | June 18, 2026

Source: Calling Balls And Strikes On The M.O.U. – HotAir

The Covid lockdowns may not have been remotely effective, but at least they harmed millions of people and created long-lasting negative impacts that we’re still dealing with today.

That’s the conclusion of a massive new body of research into the nonsensical policies promoted by the public health “expert” class, promoted by their media partners, and enacted by incompetent, cowardly politicians.

Mask mandates had been thoroughly discouraged by decades of pre-Covid pandemic planning. There was no body of research supporting the closing of certain businesses at different hours of the day, as many jurisdictions demanded.

No studies were conducted on the reduction of infection rates resulting from placing directional arrows on the floors of grocery stores to direct people through aisles in predetermined patterns.

There were no randomized controlled trials on closing skate parks and beaches, arresting people surfing alone in the ocean, restricting capacity to random percentages based on inaccurate assumptions of community spread.

We had no idea whether closing schools would be effective or “save lives,” but we did it anyway. We didn’t know if vaccine passports would actually have a meaningful impact on community spread, yet we were encouraged to push that too.

All these “interventions” started with little-to-no evidence. That’s bad enough. What makes it much worse? That we implemented them all with zero consideration of possible side effects resulting from those policies.

Lockdowns were an unprecedented incursion on freedom and liberty. What would that do to society, the economy, mental health, and so on? It appeared that no one involved gave those considerations a second thought, and now we’re paying the price.

Horrifying New Research into Damage from Covid Lockdowns

A massive new systematic review of over 130 studies of Covid policies was published recently in Health Affairs Scholar by writers from the Department of Health Policy, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health in Indianapolis, synthesizing the research into ancillary outcomes from lockdowns, school closures, and other mandates. The goal of this systematic review was to find the “unintended health effects” resulting from those policies. Essentially, putting Covid aside, what were the results when it came to various important measures of health?

They write that while policymakers and public health authorities have produced years of reports and lectures on the importance of mandates and lockdowns in reducing viral transmission, there’s a large “gap in the literature” regarding what other impacts may have resulted from “shelter-in-place/stay-at-home orders, workplace closures, and school closures.”

While peer-review isn’t a guarantee of accuracy, all 132 studies included in the analysis were peer-reviewed. Those 132 studies resulted in finding over 450 unique outcomes. And spoiler alert, the overwhelming majority of those outcomes were negative.

What makes their results even more infuriating is that there was, as they explain, “very low quality” evidence that lockdowns would be effective, as well as a “lack of information on potential unintended downstream consequences.” Yet decision-makers plowed forward anyway, despite the “serious ethical, economic, health equity, and human rights concerns” resulting from such policies.

Not to mention that the researchers found that lockdowns had “little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the most important stated goal of lockdowns. Stay home, save lives, the mantra went. Turns out, like so many other government messages, that this was completely and utterly incorrect.

So we’ve established that there was no reduction in Covid mortality from lockdowns, very low quality evidence supporting lockdowns in the first place, and an overwhelming majority of studies found negative side effects from those policies. All great news so far. But it gets even better when examining what those negative side effects actually were, and how widespread those results were.

What they found, from 132 peer-reviewed studies and 450 specific results, was that “over 90% of mental health, obesity-related, and health-related social need outcomes” were impacted by lockdowns. Of the 454 unique measurements from those studies, 75 percent were reported as “detrimental.”

After years of politicians and public health figures extolling the importance of mental health, mental health outcomes in this research were astonishingly bad. They found that 93 percent of mental health outcomes studied were “deemed detrimental.” And that wasn’t a small sample either, as the researchers found that it was the “most frequently studied category.”

If one only uses Google to search outcomes, lockdowns were associated with increased activity for terms like “boredom,” “loneliness,” “sadness,” and “worry.”

There was a significant rise in positive suicide screenings among adolescents and a consistent increase in mental health facility use for diagnoses like panic disorder and severe stress. Incredibly, they found that “quasi-experimental work found that increases in mental health facility use were more strongly associated with the presence of lockdown policies than with the pandemic or illness itself.” That suggests “policy restrictions exerted an independent effect on population well-being.”

Horrifying.

Every Possible Outcome Got Worse Under Lockdowns

So the lockdowns led to increased suicidal ideation, a massive increase in mental health facility usage, rampant loneliness, panic disorder, and had no impact on mortality rates. But the good news doesn’t end there.

As we know, obesity is one of the most harmful physical conditions, resulting with any number of significant health issues. Well, lockdowns helped there too. Of the analyses studying the effect of lockdowns on obesity, outcomes were “overwhelmingly negative,” with “94.3% of analyses reporting detrimental effects.”

In one specific study, there was an astonishing “19-fold increase in obesity risk among children previously classified at normal weight prepandemic.” Another study found a remarkable “tenfold increase in BMI z-score gain among children during school closures.” Great work, “health” experts!

Thanks to delayed healthcare screenings, the review found substantially higher rates of late-stage lung cancer diagnoses. And the breakdown in social order led to increases in trauma-related admissions due to gun and knife violence.

That’s not a surprise, as lockdowns led to massive unemployment and stress over financial stability. Sure enough, when the researchers examined research on those side effects, they found that “100% of outcomes” related to employment, food access, and economic stability were detrimental.

Similarly, childhood development and education also had detrimental outcomes. In 96.6% of studies, there was significant learning loss and disrupted socialization among younger demographics – who were, of course, at essentially zero risk of significant impacts from Covid itself.

For a group who claims to care about “equity,” and trying to force equal outcomes across different racial and ethnic groups, public health experts somehow ignored the inequitable negative side effects from lockdowns.

Vulnerable demographic groups were significantly more likely to report negative outcomes, over 90 percent of the time, than more stable groups. One hundred percent of outcomes for those vulnerable groups were deemed detrimental regarding important health determinants like obesity, food access, and economic stability.

Nailed it again, health equity experts!

So to sum up, we had no evidence that lockdowns would be effective.

We had no research or consideration for the negative outcomes that would result from lockdowns and they had no impact on Covid mortality.

In postmortem research, the overwhelming majority of studied individual outcomes were negative or detrimental, in important categories like mental health, physical health, economic conditions, and obesity.

And for a group that claims to care about “equity,” public health policies overwhelmingly impacted already vulnerable demographic groups the most.

It’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive and thorough repudiation of the Anthony Fauci Covid doctrine.

Do whatever Fauci says, never consider the consequences, then demean and label any and all critics, never admit wrongdoing or take accountability for the damage you’ve caused.

“The Science” in a nutshell.

By Ian Miller   June 5, 2026

Source: The Shocking Damage Caused by Covid Policies

Source: The Simplistic and Baseless War on Plastic Bags | RealClearMarkets

Hopes that America’s 250th birthday would be a time of national unity and healing have not been fulfilled so far. After a bipartisan commission (America 250) formed in 2016 dissolved into internal squabbles with little to show for its years of planning, President Trump authorized his own commission (Freedom 250) to organize celebrations worthy of the occasion. But the Left refuses to approve anything touched by Trump, even if it simply cheers on America, so a band of committed leftists is now organizing their own summer events as counterprogramming to the official celebrations of America. Early signs suggest that their events, organized under the title “Next250,” will prioritize protest over celebration.

The Next250 movement is co-chaired by two former organizers of the Women’s March, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez. The Women’s March became the face of anti-Trump protests during his first administration, although it fell into disrepute after its leadership’s ties to notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan were exposed. Sarsour and other organizers stepped down in 2019, while Perez lingered to facilitate a leadership transition.

Sarsour announced the tone of the Next250 campaign on Sunday, “America’s next 250 years start with us. As attacks on voting rights continue, immigrant communities are targeted, and too many of our neighbors are pushed to the margins, this moment demands more than remembrance — it demands action.”

The Next250 website described itself as an effort to “retell US history from the perspectives and contributions of women of color and other marginalized identities.” It listed five policy demands: “Living Wage for All; Climate Justice for All; Reproductive Rights & Justice for All; Voting Rights for All; Gun Safety and Peace for All.”

Lest the organization seem totally partisan and not remotely patriotic, they shoe-horned in a Marxist manifesto but slapped a patriotic-sounding title on it. Next250 announced that it would “declare and demonstrate our shared values through a process that centers a new Declaration of Interdependence.”

Not in-dependence but inter-dependence. It would be an innocent inference in its own right, but in the pen of these leftists, it takes on the shape of group identity, ala critical theory.

“To begin the next 250 years of the American story,” the document declares, “we open our hearts and set free our radical imaginations to unlock a nation defined by interdependence, where everyone can participate, prosper, and reach their full potential.” We have to wonder if Next250 was secretly designed to show America what the 250th celebration would have looked like under President Kamala Harris.

“We are one nation,” it asserts, “interdependent, woven together by the strength of our ideals, our shared history, and the extraordinary land we live on — stewarded since time immemorial by Indigenous nations whose sovereignty and leadership continue today.”

The sentence started strong. The first half could have been uttered by any number of presidents. And then it petered away into an irrelevant land acknowledgement, which only ended the sentence in confusion (are the native nations part of the one nation?). Is this declaration trying to appeal to the spirit and ideals of America? Its left-wing base? Or is it caught in an incomprehensible middle by trying to do both?

In keeping with the vision of “Next250,” the declaration did not celebrate the America that has been as much as try to cast a vision for a future America. In a purpose statement, the declaration says it is offered “to achieve the promise of our nation and possibilities of this moment.” There is nothing wrong with a forward-looking vision. Nor is it necessarily bad to acknowledge that, “From its founding, the United States has existed in the gap between ideals and actions — the space between the ideals of liberty, equality, and justice for all, and the actions of genocide, land theft, and slavery.”

However, there is no tempering recognition that America, despite its flaws, remains the freest, most prosperous, and arguably greatest nation on earth. Those who read the declaration may also struggle to escape the conclusion that this document is a party platform, not a declaration of principles. Thus, it states:

“In this declaration of interdependence, we are building a nation where:

“All people are treated with dignity and respect.

“Everybody feels safe in every community.

“Access to clean, green spaces is abundant.

“Every person who works earns a living wage and benefits that allow families work-life balance.”

Finally, unlike the Declaration of Independence, which had a clear historical context that gave it a reason for existence, the Declaration of Interdependence just sort of flops gelatinously in an abstract breeze. Why does it exist? Perhaps not even the authors could tell that, at least not without mentioning the fact that Donald Trump is president.

With their guiding principles so poorly articulated, the Next250 movement has announced a kickoff event on Saturday, June 27. In their own words, the event is not a rally or celebration or memorial or anything of the sort. Instead, it is a “National Mobilization” — which sounds more like generic left-wing street protest than anything uniquely devoted to America’s 250th anniversary.

The National Mobilization event is sponsored by MPower Change, a positive-sounding name for the Muslim Grassroots Movement. Other sponsoring organizations include 50501 Events, People Power United, Blue Future, DemCastUSA, Free Speech For People, and 50501 D.C. Some of these groups are deeply embedded into the left-wing agitator network. For instance, 50501 is responsible for the “No Kings” protests and has been linked to CodePink, Antifa, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

The Next250 itinerary features other events. For instance, a June 20 art exhibition in Brooklyn, N.Y. will seek to recruit people for the Black Liberation-Indigenous Sovereignty Collective. “We’re trying to reach the folks who might not go to a protest, they might not go to a rally, but they would come to a cultural gathering,” organization Co-Founder and Executive Director Trevor Smith said. “And then once we reach them through art and through culture, we can actually onboard them into movement participation.”

Once again, the agenda seems more like standard left-wing street activism than celebrating America’s 250th birthday.

Indeed, the funding stream for Next250 suggests that it is at least friendly with the Democratic Party. It has a funding page on the ActBlue website, an organization that raises money for Democrats. The page notes, “#Next250 is housed at One Fair Wage.” That means this hatchling organization does not have the infrastructure (such as bank accounts, a treasurer, etc.) to handle its own finances, but a larger, more established organization in the Democratic orbit is happily providing this service for it.

Some committed activists seem to be taking the agenda into their own hands. More than once already, organizers of Freedom 250 events on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. have encountered acts of vandalism against the equipment being set up (which is massive). In one recent incident, vandals cut a fuel line powering generators that ran the lights. As a result, 30 gallons of generator fuel leaked into underground cisterns that held rainwater. Nice work “greening” the planet there!

Family Research Council is a nonprofit research and educational organization founded in 1983, dedicated to articulating and advancing a family-centered philosophy of public life.

Source: Leftists Organize Counterprogramming to Official Freedom 250 Celebrations – Harbinger’s Daily

For decades, cultural Marxism has run rampant through our institutions.

This week, the world watched an officer dragging Henry Nowak across the floor as he died. The police officer, in the moment, failed to take seriously Henry’s claim to have been stabbed. He was needlessly handcuffed. His murderer stood over him, complaining of a swollen eye. He died on the floor.

It was the moment that the world woke up to the danger of cultural Marxism.

In significant moments like this, the story often becomes larger than the facts themselves. None of us can fully know the thoughts or motivations of every person involved.

But we know that in the 999 call and when the officers arrived, Vickrum Digwa weaponised claims of racism against his victim. And we know that for decades, concerns about political correctness have prevented police officers and other officials from doing the right thing, with devastating effects.

It would take enormous levels of faith for someone to believe that the claims of racism had no negative effect on the officers’ response at the scene.

This week, many have finally lost their faith in the grandmaster of cultural Marxism, Gramsci.

A Pyramid Of Oppression And The Hierarchy Of Rights

I have long lamented the way in which white men in our nation have been portrayed endlessly as the oppressor. Anyone who falls outside this ‘dominant’ group is assumed to be a victim of that oppression in some way.

The same is true of other characteristics: if you are Christian, heterosexual, or ‘cisgender’, you are often presumed to stand at the top of a cultural pyramid, benefiting from and perpetuating the disadvantage of those deemed to be below you.

The great success of cultural Marxism has been to march through the institutions, embedding attitudes and policies that invert this so-called pyramid of oppression, intentionally creating biases to correct what is seen as inequity. Intersectionality meant that disparate groups like Muslims and LGBTQ+ saw a common oppressor in Christians and could ally against them.

That’s why, when the Equality Act laid out protected characteristics like religion or belief, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment, it was never going to achieve real equality. There would be a clash between protected characteristics and a hierarchy of rights would develop.

In the work of the Christian Legal Centre, I have seen this play out in countless different ways.

Islam

Many of the most serious harms have come through fears of political correctness around Islam.

Decades of grooming gang abuses were allowed to continue because police and other authorities were concerned about accusations of racism and Islamophobia. The victims include ‘Sarah’, whom I have personally supported. She is among several survivors who have shared the specifically Islamic nature of some of the abuse. It has been a long uphill battle to get the authorities to even consider that these have anything to do with Islam, as our recent report demonstrates.

A security guard at the Manchester Arena attack failed to intervene for fear of being branded a racist.

In the wake of that and other Islamist attacks, Ian Sleeper held a sign saying “Love Muslims, hate Islam, Jesus is love and hope.” He was arrested.

The evangelist Hatun Tash is well known for having been stabbed at Speakers’ Corner and facing multiple plots to kill her because of her outreach to Muslims. Yet it is she who has been arrested numerous times, not the mobs surrounding her. She was arrested for damaging her own Quran. She was arrested falsely in 2021 minutes after those who incited her arrest were recorded calling for Jewish blood.

Even in situations where Muslims are the majority, as they surround the diminutive Hatun, they are afforded minority status and protected against the Christian.

And the Labour Government pushed hard for an Islamophobia definition (now ‘anti-Muslim hostility’) which will only make things worse. It provides even more reasons why people will be afraid to trust their eyes and address the real problems in front of them.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council has recently updated its misconduct guide to implement this anti-Muslim hatred definition. And speaking of nurses…

Trans Identities – Afforded The Highest Protection?

As I have supported nurses like Jennifer Melle and the Darlington Nurses through lengthy legal battles, it has been plain to see trans-identifying people being treated as automatic victims, no matter what the facts are.

Multiple women raised concerns about the inappropriate behaviour of ‘Rose’, a man who stood in a female changing room in his boxer shorts with holes in them and triggered traumatic flashbacks for female nurse Karen Danson. Even though the nurses won their case, the treatment of these women throughout the situation is in stark contrast to the support and respect consistently given to ‘Rose’.

Even more stark was the differing treatment given to Jennifer Melle when she accurately described a male, convicted paedophile prisoner as ‘mister’, leading to her being racially abused using the N word. She was suspended and offered no support because his status as trans gave him automatic victim status, with Jennifer cast as oppressor.

Cultural Marxism Blinds Us

Everywhere I look in our cases and campaigns, this thinking turns up. Felix Ngole’s Christian views about marriage and sex were argued to be harmful due to minority stress theory. The “smash heteronormativity” chants used in staff training that chaplain Bernard Randall objected to cost him his job.

I could continue to outline the countless ways that these clashes play out between differing groups. The ubiquitous ideology of cultural Marxism has blinded us and led to worse inequalities.

So it would be absolutely no surprise for it to have blinded the police officers attending the murder of Henry Nowak.

Everything about our cultural narratives screams that it’s likely that a white lad, perhaps after a night out, would racially abuse and attack a minority. This is what Vickrum Digwa exploited. This is what made Henry Nowak’s claim of having been stabbed so unbelievable to the police officer arriving at the scene.

Reverse the identities of those involved and this is plain to see. Imagine a group of white men standing around a minority who is on the floor saying he’s been stabbed. Does anyone truly believe the treatment would have been identical?

God demands that we show no partiality. There is one law for both native and stranger. We must abandon systems of thinking that insist on privileging some groups over others, not because of “the content of their character” but because they belong to a group that is afforded automatic victim status.

The ideology of cultural Marxism has twisted Christian virtues of impartiality and justice into a harmful parody of those values.

The world is becoming ready for the real thing – we need to be ready to give it to them.

It’s found in the person of Jesus Christ, in whom all things hold together. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus makes sense of everything. In him, truth, justice and freedom are found.

Andrea Williams is the Chief Executive of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre, which works to safeguard the freedom of Christians and to provide legal support for those taking a stand for Jesus.

Source: The Murder Of Henry Nowak: Will The World Finally Wake Up To The Danger Of Cultural Marxism? – Harbinger’s Daily

There’s something different about this June. There are fewer rainbows. No, I’m not talking about the sign of God’s covenant that appears in the sky after a storm. I’m talking about the rainbow flag that has become the symbol of Pride Month.

For years, June brought a predictable wave of corporate logos, advertising campaigns, themed merchandise, and public celebrations. Parents learned to pay closer attention to commercials in family programming, sports fans grew accustomed to Pride-themed uniforms and promotions, and many city streets became venues for often indecent displays at Pride parades.

This year is noticeably different. The symbols are not gone, but they are far less prominent. It’s premature to say Pride has fallen, but it is fair to say the appeal of Pride Month has faded.

Corporations are rethinking their public affiliation with a cultural agenda that, according to a Gallup poll released this week, is losing support among Americans. The Obama-Biden era push to promote transgenderism among children, while limiting treatment options to experimental drugs and surgeries, has prompted many Americans to reconsider the movement’s underlying motives.

Increasingly, Americans see Pride parades not merely as expressions of tolerance but as demonstrations of cultural influence reaching into every corner of society. For many, concerns over gender identity policies involving children became the point at which broader questions about sexuality, marriage, parental rights, and cultural authority converged. As many warned years ago, the debate was never simply about the right to marry the person one loves; it was also about redefining longstanding social norms, including those governing parent-child relationships.

When schools withheld information from parents about a child’s social gender transition, many families saw the connection between what was happening in the classroom and the broader redefinition of marriage and family. As a result, public opinion began to shift.

That shift is showing up in the corporate world. Companies are not only scaling back Pride Month promotions; many are abandoning participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. The 2026 index lost 65% of its Fortune 500 participants. Whether driven by conviction, consumer pressure, or shareholder concerns, many corporations are recalculating their public association with LGBT activism.

By itself, that would not prove a cultural realignment. But combined with developments in states across the nation, it suggests something more than a temporary retreat. Republican leaders have moved beyond symbolic resistance to Pride Month and are increasingly advancing proclamations and policies promoting the nuclear family. Among the arguments they cite is extensive social science showing that, across numerous measures, children do best when raised by their married mother and father.

Here is why I believe this is more than a passing fad: corporate leaders and elected officials are responding to the people. For several years, parents refused to back down. They attended school board and city council meetings, despite being called domestic terrorists. They opposed policies involving boys in girls’ sports and mixed-sex bathrooms and locker rooms, and in many cases ran for office themselves. Across the country, they won seats, changed policies, and reshaped local government.

There are fewer rainbows this June. That alone does not mean the cultural debate is over. But it does suggest that millions of Americans who refused to surrender their convictions are beginning to see the impact of their perseverance. Parents and patriots are prevailing not through outrage, but through persistence.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand. He also served two terms as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, and served as Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Source: Shifting Public Opinion: The Appeal Of Pride Month Appears To Be Fading – Harbinger’s Daily

Within Christianity, there is an ongoing debate as to whether artificial intelligence should be openly invited to play an important role in our daily spiritual walk. Though there will be solid arguments on both sides of the debate, let me offer some thoughts in the key areas of wisdom and dependence.

Wisdom

There is no doubt that life is complex and in order to navigate the serious financial, emotional, physical and spiritual decisions that we are faced with daily, we need wisdom. One psychologist recently reported that in counselling sessions, they noticed a growing trend whereby patients are turning to AI tools in order to solve their relationship problems or overcome other psychological roadblocks. Viewing AI tools as somewhat akin to an objective second brain, there is growing public sentiment that they are convenient, resourceful, and helpful when looking for quick solutions. Although, there are comical limitations.

I recently encountered “Apostle Stephen,” an online chatbot created by the Redeemed Christian Church of God. When I clicked the suggested question, “How soon is the rapture?” the chatbot responded by saying: “Greetings! I am Apostle Stephen, here to share the word of our Lord Jesus Christ with you. Before I answer your question regarding the rapture, may I kindly ask for your name, email, and phone number? Thank you!” Not willing to share my personal data with a chatbot, it appears I will have to forsake the “Apostle’s” views in relation to the imminency of the rapture.

When it comes to the usefulness of AI, what we need to recognise as Christians is that AI is able to provide data, but it certainly cannot provide wisdom. When it comes to Biblical wisdom, in the New Testament, “sophia” (the Greek word for “wisdom”) is used frequently to describe somebody who grasps the reality of a situation as God sees it and then acts in harmony with God’s will. In other words, wisdom is the ability to judge the best course of action based on the correct application of knowledge and understanding. With that in mind, let me point you to Proverbs 2:6 which says this: “For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

Technology has its place in our lives and it undoubtedly assists us in ministry if harnessed in the right way.  However, technology must not be a substitute for God’s wisdom. Proverbs 3:5-7: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and depart from evil.”

The wise Christian is the one who views life in the light of God’s revelation, not their own and certainly not that derived from collective data sources which lack spiritual discernment.

Dependence

Earlier this year, Barna Group (in partnership with Gloo) released new research which focused on the trends emerging in the field of faith and AI. That research revealed that nearly one in three U.S. adults – with the figure sitting at two in five among Gen Z and Millennials — say spiritual advice from AI is as trustworthy as advice from a pastor.

My concern is that the worrying dependence upon AI for spiritual guidance will lead to people being tossed to and fro as the available data is changed. If you are going to outsource your Biblical worldview to data that is subject to change and manipulation, you are weakening your dependence on the Word of God and increasing your dependence on data which can be faulty.

In the field of wearable AI-tech, Glorify (a Christian daily devotional app) and Confidein (an AI hardware and faith technology company) have recently joined forces under the Glorify brand. The centrepiece of this merger is the Glorify Ring that combines conventional smart-ring hardware with faith-specific features.  Users of this technology can tap the ring against a smartphone to receive an AI-matched Bible verse or prayer based on their selected emotional state. The ring also delivers gentle vibrations as reminders for prayer, devotions, or reflection, while tracking spiritual habits such as prayer duration and consistency.

Although I do not wish to be critical of the designer’s overall intention to provide a service which helps Christians in their daily walk, my concern again lies in the fact that we are forsaking the tools God has provided in pursuit of a technology that makes us increasingly dependent upon it rather than God.

For example, on the Glorify website, one section says: “The ring becomes your spiritual anchor.  Notifications, verses, and community moments arrive when you need them most.” Firstly, I believe it is important that we uphold Jesus as our spiritual anchor, not a ring. Secondly, in relation to our moment by moment walk, there is a risk that the user would rely more upon the prompting of the ring rather than the prompting of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

In closing, let me say this. Artificial intelligence, rightly subordinated through the exercise of responsible stewardship, may be a useful tool. But if, in the life of a believer, it displaces the spiritual tools which God has provided, it has the potential to subtly but surely lead people astray.

Dean Dwyer serves as a Senior Columnist at Harbinger’s Daily, where his thought-provoking articles engage a global audience of millions. With more than two decades of leadership as Pastor and President of Eiser Street Baptist Church in Toowoomba, Australia, Dwyer brings sophisticated Biblical discernment and analysis to examine world events and issues through the lens of God’s Word.

Source: Should Christians Openly Invite Artificial Intelligence Into Their Daily Spiritual Walk? – Harbinger’s Daily

Putin’s interference in Armenia’s 2026 election threatens peace, democracy, and U.S. strategic interests.

Americans know how consequential elections can be for both domestic and foreign policy. Likewise, Armenia’s upcoming parliamentary election on June 7 is critical to the future of the country, the Caucasus, and a major Trump Administration initiative, the Trump Road for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). The stakes for Armenia could not be higher. This election will determine whether Armenia remains a Russian satellite advancing Moscow’s interests rather than its own, or becomes an independent, Westward-looking state approaching EU membership. A Westward trajectory serves the interests of both Armenia and America and would solidify one of the Trump Administration’s strategic achievements.

Naturally, Russia, which is already losing ground in both the Caucasus and Central Asia, is trying to subvert this election. Besides threatening that Armenia will suffer Ukraine’s fate if it continues growing closer to Europe, Moscow has organized influence operations that are standard fare coming from the Kremlin. Russia intervened in the U.S. 2016 and 2020 elections, as well as elections in Spain, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Russia also subsidizes the populist right-wing parties Alternative for Germany and National Rally in France.  So, the stakes in Armenia are enormous—war or peace, illiberalism or democracy.

A final peace settlement with Azerbaijan can only happen if Armenia’s new legislature, empowered by the June 7 elections, is able to address the necessary constitutional changes. Equally importantly, Armenia has begun serious negotiations with Brussels about entering the EU. In an historic first, Yerevan just hosted the May 4 meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), and on May 5, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa held the first-ever EU-Armenia summit, issuing a joint declaration.  The EU reaffirmed its steadfast commitment to further strengthening relations with Armenia and its long-term development by bringing Armenia and its people closer to the European Union.  The EU likewise supported Armenia’s willingness to align with the EU’s Acquis (membership requirements).

Sadly, this program of peace, Europeanization, and democracy is anathema to Russia and its partisans in Armenia. As a Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center paper aptly noted, “Russia Won’t Give Up Its Influence in Armenia Without a Fight.” In 2024-25, Moscow, working with Armenian revanchists, the Armenian church, and the opposition, was caught planning a coup. Such efforts to exploit domestic cleavages led by pro-Moscow oligarchs and Russian agents typify Moscow’s modus operandi.  The present intervention against Pashinyan’s government is part of a broader Russian strategy to maintain control over the South Caucasus and Armenia, protect the bridge to Iran, and derail emerging peace in the region.

Ocampo even boasted that he can exert pressure on EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen,  “and in that way tweak European policy,” working through the Spanish politician and former High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell. In the video of his leaked interview, Ocampo concludes, we’re getting onto a road that’s already been paved. We pile on more pressure, and I’m going to do it in combination with the Armenian lobby in the United States…I don’t have to break down the wall—the door is already open and we just push in.”

Stephen J. Blank | May 30, 2026

Source: Putin’s Efforts to Subvert Armenia’s Elections Can Harm US Interests

Every layer of modern life depends on encryption so deeply that most people never even think about it. Until it stops working.

Julio Rivera | May 29, 2026

Source: The Cyber Apocalypse Nobody’s Ready For: Why Q-Day Changes Everything – American Thinker