NewsFeathers takes a popular news story each day and shows how people with different worldviews might react to it. Instead of anonymous pundits, the commentary comes from a cast of cartoon birds who live in the atrium of a fictional university.

The setting: At Halcyon Bay University, Dr. Teddy Okafor-Whitlock, a bird-studies professor, invented a device called the Aviar Translator that turns birds’ thoughts into words. Each morning he reads the school paper, the Halcyon Daily Gazette, over coffee. Local stories come from the student reporters, and national stories come from the news wires and syndicates.

The cast: About a dozen birds, one or two per major viewpoint: an eagle (patriotic conservative), a dove (progressive peace advocate), an owl (centrist), a raven (libertarian), a rooster (faith and community), a penguin (democratic socialist), and others. They disagree, but they’re friends.

How a post works:

1. A short summary of the news story, in our own words, with a link to the original.
2. The professor reads it aloud and asks a question.
3. Four or five birds respond and debate. Not every bird speaks every time, and a bird choosing silence can say something too.
4. A light, friendly closing moment.

What it’s for: Readers see how each side reasons about the same story, argued the way a thoughtful believer would argue it, in a tone that shows disagreement doesn’t have to mean hostility. The tagline is “Same headlines. Different perches.”

What it isn’t:

The birds and the university are fictional, and their opinions aren’t endorsements.

It isn’t original reporting. The birds react to stories that others have reported.

It doesn’t claim to be unbiased or to tell readers what to think.

THE FICTIONAL BACK STORY

The Halcyon Daily Gazette

The Halcyon Daily Gazette is the student-run newspaper of Halcyon Bay University, publishing each day with one clear purpose: to keep our campus and city informed, connected, and in conversation. Since our founding in 1889, we have served as a daily record of life in and around Halcyon Bay.

The Editor

Priya Raman-Castellanos, Editor-in-Chief, a senior double-majoring in journalism and history. She’s the daughter of a Tamil doctor and a Mexican-American high school coach, and she grew up arguing at the dinner table. She runs the newsroom with a firm hand, color-coded sticky notes, and a standing rule: “Two sources or it doesn’t run.” Her pet peeve is the word “reportedly.” The professor suspects she’d outwork anyone on staff, and she has never told him how she votes either.

The Local Reporters

1. Danny Kowalski, campus and city hall reporter. He’s a gruff transfer student and former warehouse worker who covers tuition, housing, and local politics. He asks blunt questions, and Gus the pigeon considers him a kindred spirit.
2. Luz Abernathy-Park, features and science reporter. She’s cheerful and endlessly curious, covers research, student life, and campus culture, and wrote the first-ever profile of the bird department (which is how she found out about the Translator, and agreed to keep it quiet).

National Articles

National and world stories come from the wires: a “From the Wire” section credits real content syndicates and newspaper chains by name. On your site, each post could open with “Today’s edition, via ” with your own short summary and a link to the original.

The University

Halcyon Bay University (founded 1887), in a fictional fog-wrapped California bay town. It’s a sprawling public research university with a protest-friendly reputation and a strong ornithology program. The bird department sits in Lindqvist Hall, whose glass-domed atrium, “The Commons,” is the shared space. Founding motto: Audiatur et altera pars (“Let the other side be heard”).

The Professor

Dr. Theodore “Teddy” Okafor-Whitlock, 58, a bioacoustics and neuroscience professor. He invented the Aviar Translator, which he calls “the box.” His late wife was a birdwatcher, and he first tuned the box to the finches outside her window. He’s a self-described political moderate with no strong party loyalty. His job is to ask good questions, keep the peace, and read the news aloud with a dry sense of humor. His running gag is that he never reveals his own vote, and the birds keep guessing.

The Flock

1. Sterling the Bald Eagle: patriotic conservative. He’s a retired Air Force mascot who believes in strong defense, tradition, and national pride. He’s formal, a bit grandiose, and secretly sentimental.
2. Dolores the Dove: progressive peace activist. She’s a former campus protest mascot who is gentle but fierce, focused on social justice and diplomacy.
3. Professor Ptolemy the Owl: centrist institutionalist. He’s the data-and-both-sides voice and a bit pompous. He’s often wrong about how people actually behave.
4. Raven “Poe”: libertarian skeptic. He distrusts every government and corporation and is sarcastic. He’s the one who sometimes agrees with both Sterling and Dolores, to everyone’s annoyance.
5. Reverend Rooster Clay: faith-and-community conservative. He’s a rural farm bird, warm and folksy, and values family, church, and local life. He wakes everyone up at dawn, and the flock forgives him.
6. Penelope the Penguin: democratic socialist. She’s a labor organizer from the cold side of the atrium who preaches solidarity and “huddle together to survive.”
7. Magnus the Magpie: free-market capitalist. He loves business, trade, and shiny things, and he’s endlessly optimistic about innovation. Poe calls him “a hoarder with a pitch deck.”
8. Wren “Winnie”: environmentalist. She’s the smallest bird, a nervous but passionate voice for climate and conservation, and she’s very hard to ignore.
9. Fernando the Flamingo: cultural progressive and identity-focused. He’s glamorous and funny, and he speaks for the immigrant and LGBTQ+ experience. He’s equally proud of being dramatic and of being right.
10. Gus the Pigeon: working-class populist. He’s a city bird who doesn’t trust elites on either side and is practical and blunt: “Will my rent go down?” He’s often the most relatable.
11. Kiwi “Kia”: international perspective. She’s a flightless visitor from New Zealand who comments on how the rest of the world sees the U.S., and she’s gently baffled by American politics.
12. Pickles the Parrot, (The Echo); rarely has opinions of his own. He repeats something another bird said earlier in the discusion, usually at the worst possible moment. He is also the keeper of the betting pool on the professor’s politics.

Rooted in Halcyon Bay

The Gazette is written for everyone who calls Halcyon Bay home, whether for a semester or a lifetime. We cover life on campus and in town with the same attention, recognizing that university events, local businesses, civic decisions, and cultural traditions all shape our shared everyday experience.

We strive to be a welcoming front porch for our community: a place where readers can find thoughtful reporting, reflective features, and a sense of belonging in the rhythm of daily coverage.

The persecution and oppression of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world is getting worse, according to a report from Aid to the Church in Need UK. This report on the persecuted church found the “oppression of Christians has worsened in 55% of countries . . . without any country showing an improvement.”

According to the report, which looked at persecution between August 2024 and June 2026, Christians “are being forced from their homes through conflict, extremism, and religiously motivated violence in 18 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.” This means 220 million Christians are “directly exposed to persecution worldwide.”

The report listed a few examples of what this persecution looks like:

Chinese authorities have intensified their oppression of Christians, as they aim to align religious doctrine more closely with communist principles. This has led to mass detentions, clergy being jailed on legal technicalities, churches closing, and online religious content being controlled.

The report tells of the persecution in Nicaragua, where the regime increased its crackdown on Christians, arresting and exiling clergy, preventing ordinations, seizing Church institutions, and preventing people entering the country with Bibles.

[In Iran] the arrests of Christians doubled within 12 months . . . as crackdowns have intensified.

This month, November, is designated by Voice of the Martyrs as a month of international prayer for the persecuted church. So many of our brothers and sisters are suffering at the hands of extremist groups, hostile governments, or even angry family members. (And as I wrote about a few weeks ago, many can’t even get a copy of the Scriptures!)

The Bible commands us to remember our fellow Christians, as if we were in prison with them: “Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you yourselves also are in the body” (Hebrews 13:3).

I encourage you to take time to remember and pray for our fellow believers who are suffering in ways we can’t imagine. VOM encourages believers to pray specifically for four things:

1. Pray that God will lead them to places where they can worship and fellowship with other Christians.
2. Pray that they will continue to witness boldly in the face of persecution.
3. Pray that they will know Christ is with them and that they are not alone.
4. Pray that their ability to forgive their family members will lead many to faith in Christ.

As Christians, we aren’t surprised by persecution—Jesus told us it would come, and we’ve seen waves of persecution all throughout church history—but reports like this are a sobering reminder to those of us who experience relative freedom to practice our beliefs that we need to remember those who are suffering for Christ and lift them up in prayer. And remember, America is not exempt from persecution happening here as well.

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Ken Ham is an author, speaker, and Founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis and its two popular interests: the acclaimed Creation Museum and the internationally known Ark Encounter.

Source: Report: Oppression Of Christians Worsens In 55% Of Countries, With No Nation Showing Improvement – Harbinger’s Daily

FULL TITLE – The Great Failure Of The American Church: A Reluctance To Address The Moral And Spiritual Implications Of Political Issues.

America should not be surprised that our nation, largely existing in flagrant rejection of God’s Word, is reaping the consequences of its own rebellion.

The 2026 midterm elections, with the Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress, have delivered painful setbacks for Republicans and a significant political shift in Washington. The larger question confronting America is not simply which political party wins elections. It is whether our nation is experiencing the consequences of turning away from Almighty God.

From a Biblical perspective, there is a sobering likelihood that the United States of America is a nation under judgment by God.

Throughout Scripture, God holds nations accountable for their conduct. Proverbs 14:34 declares, “Righteousness exalts a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” When a society celebrates what God condemns, marginalizes Biblical morality, disregards the sanctity of human life, and increasingly substitutes government dependency for personal responsibility, it cannot expect God’s blessing indefinitely.

The inconvenient (but very relevant) question

American Christians must confront a question: Where have our pastors been?

The great failure of the American evangelical church is the reluctance of many pastors to address the moral and spiritual implications of political issues. Sunday after Sunday, congregations hear sermons about personal relationships, forgiveness, generosity, and platitudes about Christian living. Those subjects are important. But where are the sermons condemning abortion, supporting the sanctity of human life, religious liberty, constitutional government, and the moral foundations upon which a free society depends?

Where are the pastors’ sermons condemning transgenderism, vocally supporting Israel, denouncing antisemitism, and saying that Muslims are spiritually lost and in need of Jesus? Answer: You’ll never hear sermons on these topics in your local church. Why? Because sermons like these come from pastors with courage. Today’s pastors do not realize that Biblical faithfulness does not exist in a context of political silence.

When Scripture speaks clearly about the sanctity of life, sexual morality, honesty, justice, and personal responsibility, pastors have an obligation to teach those truths, even when they become politically controversial.

Malachi 2:1-9 contains a sobering warning to spiritual leaders who fail in their responsibility to teach God’s law faithfully. The Lord rebukes priests who have turned aside from their calling and caused others to stumble through their instruction. II Peter 2:17 similarly warns about false teachers, describing them as wells without water. These passages should remind every pastor that spiritual leadership carries an enormous responsibility. Silence, compromise, and the abandonment of Biblical truth are not harmless.

A Matter Deserving Far Greater Attention From American Pulpits: Voting As Stewardship

The privilege of voting is not merely a political convenience. It is a responsibility. Christians have been entrusted with opportunities, freedoms and civic privileges that believers in many other nations do not enjoy. Those privileges should be exercised thoughtfully and prayerfully.

A Christian’s faith should influence every area of life, including decisions made in the voting booth. If the Bible teaches that human life is sacred, that truth cannot suddenly become irrelevant when evaluating public policy. If Scripture teaches personal accountability, honesty, sexual integrity, and justice, those convictions should inform our understanding of candidates and their platforms.

Indifference is not an acceptable option for Christians. James 4:17 reminds us that knowing to do good and failing to do it is sin. Christians should seriously examine whether political apathy, unwillingness to become informed, or refusal to participate in the public square amounts to neglecting responsibilities God has entrusted to them.

Voting is a matter that deserves prayerful moral examination. Christians should not casually excuse positions that contradict fundamental Biblical teachings simply because a candidate belongs to a favored political party. Every candidate must be evaluated against principles of righteousness, truth, justice, and human dignity.

The Democratic Party’s embrace of policies that conflict with Biblical teachings should be a matter of serious concern. Christians need pastors willing to explain issues that are not mere political disagreements but issues on which the Bible has unequivocally spoken.

America’s present political circumstances should therefore provoke more than frustration among conservative Christians. They should provoke repentance, prayer, renewed commitment and action.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is not simply that America is changing politically. It is that so many churches have failed to prepare their congregations to understand the moral and spiritual stakes involved.

We need pastors who will courageously preach the whole counsel of God. We need Christians who understand that citizenship carries responsibilities. We need families who teach their children that religious liberty, constitutional government, personal responsibility and the sanctity of human life are worth defending.

And above all, we need a spiritual awakening.

Political victories cannot save America. Only God can bring genuine national repentance and spiritual renewal.  But ungodly policies can definitely harm America for generations.

2 Chronicles 7:14 still offers a timeless prescription: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Perhaps it is time for America’s pastors to stop worrying so much about offending people and start worrying about offending God.

A nation needs courageous leaders. But it also needs courageous pastors. And the American church must decide whether it will faithfully proclaim God’s truth or remain silent while the nation drifts further away from Him.

Alex McFarland is an apologist, author, speaker, analyst, and advocate for Biblical truth.

Source: The Great Failure Of The American Church: A Reluctance To Address The Moral And Spiritual Implications Of Political Issues – Harbinger’s Daily

Analyzing the ideological clash shaping America’s future in the crucial midterm elections.

At the end of every trial, the respective legal representatives, defense and prosecution, deliver their closing arguments to the jury before deliberation.

This is the final week before the very consequential midterm elections. The American people are the jury, and they are hearing diametrically opposed arguments. I have said this before and will reiterate: this is not about two political parties, Republican and Democrat. This is an ideological confrontation between constitutional conservatism (classical liberalism) and Marxism/Islamism. The long-term ramifications of this election are not just about “political power” in Washington, D.C., or even in several respective states. It is truly about America 300, charting the course for the next 50 years in the sense of this constitutional republic, the longest continuously running in the history of the world.

It is just the same as they are laughably attempting to make us believe that they care about high gas prices. It was the leftists, going back to Barack Hussein Obama, who wanted exorbitant fuel prices to force Americans to buy overpriced electric vehicles. Ya think fuel prices are high now? Just wait until the Marxists force the Green New Deal 2.0 on America, along with unachievable fuel economy standards. Leftists have admitted in this election cycle that they desire to end oil and natural gas. They are the ones continuously blocking any and all efforts of America to increase its fossil fuel exploration, production, refining, consumption, and even export. I am sure you all remember the leftist assault against the Keystone XL pipeline. Now, do you really think that the Marxist energy agenda will bring down gas prices?

The leftist plan for America’s economic security: more government spending to chain more Americans to government largesse, at the expense of our free market economic system. Marxists hate American innovation and ingenuity because it is reflective of individual liberty. Funny, leftists used to be all in on railing against millionaires, until Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-5) became millionaires. Now they hate billionaires, but only the ones who are not Marxists and Islamists.

So, in my closing argument, I think it is evident that the Marxist left truly has no grounds to speak on when it comes to our economic and energy security, as well as the issue of healthcare and affordability. I think it is simple to surmise that Obamacare was intended to fail. How duplicitous that Marxists say they hate insurance companies, yet they shut down the government for them to get taxpayer-funded subsidies.

Perhaps we have forgotten what the border looked like during the Biden administration. Do we really want to go back to that? The Marxists have declared their desire for open borders, and no, this is not just a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) objective. Now, if you are upset with ICE, well, you should really be upset with the leftists who are providing “sanctuary” for those here illegally and undermining law enforcement, precluding them from protecting our streets, to the detriment of American citizens. Shall I remind you of the names Sheridan Gorman, Rachel Morin, and Laken Riley? Leftists prefer criminal illegal aliens like the “Maryland Man” or the New Yorker who has been here illegally, is a member of a criminal gang, and was convicted of armed robbery.

We can certainly have a debate about the social issues, but I tend not to care for those who would dismember a baby in the womb right up until birth. That is called infanticide. Or the same people who would criminally punish parents who would not allow THEIR children to have their bodies mutilated because they do not agree with the mental condition of gender dysphoria.

No, Republicans did not deliver on the SAVE America Act, something that had an 81 percent approval from the American people. They stumble about the ideological battlefield. And some of them make some very questionable political ads, but the case against Marxist control of America has to be understood. With all of their faults, failures, and shortcomings, at least Republicans know what a woman is and do not want biological males in bathroom facilities with REAL women.

Steadfast and Loyal.

Source: Closing Arguments

On October 17, 2026, riots erupted across France’s largest cities (Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Grenoble, Limoges, etc.). The police were overwhelmed, and the government gave very little support and took almost no action. What started as a students’ revolt for better schools, teachers, and curricula quickly turned into mass looting, destruction, and takeover by people who hate the very country they live in. The needs of young students are no longer on anyone’s radar, if they ever really were.

We are seeing a perfect storm over France and, to a certain extent—if not now, then very soon—over all of Western Europe. That storm is the Red/Green Axis destructive agenda in action. The French Extreme Left Party LFI (La France Insoumise) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon has partnered with the large community of Muslims living in France–many of them born there and automatically considered as French citizens. Mr. Mélenchon knows that he will never become the French Président. All he wants is chaos, and more chaos, across all of France.

This is the result of decades of open borders and immigration from North and West Africa. I grew up in Paris in the 60s and 70s when immigrants from the Maghreb came to France for a better life. They were given all the jobs that French natives didn’t want. They stayed, had children who had children, and are now at least two generations removed from leaving Algeria, Tunisia, or Morocco.

For the most part, the young ones never assimilated or integrated into the French culture, economy, or society. They stayed together in self-imposed ghettos that for many of them have now become no-go zones where the French police don’t even go. These are the people that the Leftist Party LFI leader is supporting. This is not an attempt at putting all Muslim emigrants into the same category, but we must understand that the current events are Islamic at the core. Nobody wants to talk about the real issue because they are terrified of repercussions from the very people they would have to expose.

Additionally, France is under the grip of the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM), established in 2002 to protect freedom of speech. Ironically, ARCOM is very liberal and easily fines individuals and organizations deemed in breach when they use words like “Muslim,” “antisemitism,” or even “immigrant.” The few people with the chutzpah to say something are silenced or heavily fined.

France is burning, and nobody seems to care about extinguishing this fire started because of the woke premise of multiculturalism. Unchecked emigration has been going on for so long that closing borders will be akin to putting a Band-Aid on a cancer wound. France is committing civilizational suicide by tolerance, and it might be too late to stop it, but we must learn from it before it is too late for America!

It all has to do with fear. Fear of change, fear of losing votes, and fear of reprisals.

French people are afraid of the chaos, looting, and destruction, and to an extent, so is the current French government. Change is mandatory if France wants to survive this attack on its republic and on Western civilization by proxy. The solution exists, but it is not popular: Expel those who do not like France and have become urban terrorists. Nobody wants to make such a drastic move within the government, and that is linked to the two other fears.

For the last several decades, one way or another, French politicians have catered to the Muslims of France and even looked the other way when things would start to lean towards Shariah compliance. Not as bad as the UK, but really not too far behind. France also has the largest Muslim community in Western Europe, with 10% of the total population of 66.5M. That is about 6.5M Muslims, and since the acceptable percentage of radicalized individuals is usually 15%, that is only one million radicals. What could possibly go wrong?

To be sure, I am not saying that all Muslims are radicalized, but France must accept that they are under an Islamist invasion. The challenge for the government is that the Muslims have become an unavoidable voting bloc in France. Concessions and promises were made with the hope that votes would be garnered, and they were. Walking away now could cost politicians more than they are willing to pay in the voting booth.

Then there is the fear of reprisals. It seems that wherever a sizable Muslim community has established a stronghold of 10% or more, they become a threat to those around them. Look at Dearborn, Michigan, with over 50% of its 110,000 residents being Muslims. Again, without generalizing, while not all Muslims are pushing for Sharia compliance, many are, and some resort to intimidation and violence, blindly allowed by our misplaced tolerance.

The current situation in France is a symptom of a greater problem: a desire for a global caliphate. The bad apples of radical Islam will use anybody who will facilitate that agenda. That is why we are seeing such successful progress of the Red/Green Axis in Europe and in America. The UK has reached the point of no return; France might have to go through a civil war if the government continues its current momentum of complacency and the French people get angry enough to take to the streets and fight back. I pray that it doesn’t get to that point, but even if France closes the chicken coop and locks it to keep foxes from entering, and secures the coop, many have already entered the coop over the past few decades.

Let’s not fool ourselves; America is not exempt. The same goal to establish a global caliphate exists here and not just in Dearborn, Michigan. Mamdani, El-Sayed, Omar, Tlaib, and Ellison are a few names of individuals who are paving the way for the same takeover to spread all over the USA. We might be further away than France from a Muslim takeover, but our tolerance and desire for multiculturalism are being weaponized against us as well.

Incidentally, before anyone calls me a racist for being an Islamophobe, just remember that Islam is not a race, but an ideology. Radical Islam scares me, and it should scare you. That is what phobia means.

In Sunday school, kids are often taught that “The answer is Jesus!” In this story, more than any other story, the answer IS Jesus (Isaiah 52-23-53-12, John 3:16).

Olivier Melnick is an author, speaker, antisemitism expert, the Executive Director for Shalom in Messiah Ministries, and a Contributor to Harbinger’s Daily.

Source: A Perfect Storm Over France: The Red/Green Axis’ Destructive Agenda In Action – Harbinger’s Daily

As Americans, we have the right to vote. With that right comes the power to choose our leaders and influence the values that guide our government. That right must be protected, but it must also be exercised.

There are roughly 250 million Americans eligible to vote. Yet in the 2022 midterm elections, fewer than half participated. Think about that. In a nation where government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, millions chose not to make their voices heard. And Christians are not exempt from this troubling pattern. Even where churchgoers vote at higher rates than the general population, far too many remain on the sidelines.

As Americans, we have a right to vote. As Christians, we also have a responsibility to be faithful citizens.

Remember Jesus’s words, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). In our constitutional republic, citizenship carries responsibilities. Our government was not designed for spectators. It depends on the participation of the people. Jesus also called his followers the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Salt that never touches the food cannot preserve it. Light hidden from view cannot illuminate the darkness. We’re called to make a difference, not withdraw from the world around us. Voting is simply one practical way to fulfill that calling.

Our freedoms were not secured so that we could stand aside while others decide how they will be used. The ballot is not the whole of faithful citizenship, but it is one of the clearest opportunities we have to act on our convictions.

In the late 1940s, the Reverend Peter Marshall, chaplain of the United States Senate, preached a sermon entitled “Trial by Fire,” drawing from Elijah’s challenge in I Kings: “If the Lord is God, follow him. But if Baal, follow him.” Marshall warned against living in a moral fog, refusing to choose between conviction and compromise. Then he declared, “I, for one, am tired of hearing about our rights and privileges as American citizens. The time has come. It is now when we ought to hear about the duties and responsibilities of our citizenship.”

Those words are as relevant today as when he spoke them. Because every election is about more than which party wins or who occupies an office. It’s about the principles that will shape our laws, protect our freedoms, and influence the lives of our children and grandchildren. When we stay home, we don’t stop those decisions from being made. We simply leave them to someone else.

So ask yourself: if people who share your convictions remain silent, whose values will shape America’s future? We cannot demand responsible government while neglecting our responsibility as citizens. Exercise your right. Fulfill your responsibility. Study the candidates, weigh the issues against Biblical values, and then vote.

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: If Christians Remain On The Sidelines Of Elections, Whose Values Will Shape America’s Future? – Harbinger’s Daily

Source: Passing Revolutionary History on to the Next Generation | RealClearHistory

I love all my brothers and sisters in Christ, but I’m wounded when I hear fellow believers dismiss or attack Israel and the Jewish people. The laundry list of excuses for this behavior includes many acrobatic contortions of Scripture that distance Christians from Jewish people:

• “God promised to bless Abraham, not his descendants, so I don’t need to love them.”
• “Israel broke its relationship with God, and the church inherited its blessings as the true Israel.”
• “Because all believers are God’s children, Israel’s distinct relationship with God doesn’t matter anymore.”
• “The Jewish people today aren’t the same as God’s Chosen People in the Bible.”

Antisemitic tropes also play a part in these condemnations. So does misinformation about the Jewish nation, as many Christians understand little of the State of Israel’s history of fighting for its life in defensive wars. They look at the nation’s activity in Gaza and Iran as an unforgivable sin because of the negative optics of military conflict, and they refuse to honor Scripture’s call to bless His Chosen People—even those who have never set foot in Israeli land.

Just before ascending to heaven, Jesus commissioned His Jewish disciples to preach the gospel to all the world, and Christians today share this same mission. But when they build walls to separate themselves further from the Jewish people, they strike God’s heart.

If you’re reading these words, the chances are that you already love the Jewish people. That’s good news! God seeks this heart posture toward His people, and we must look to share this love for Israel with others.

But why exactly do you love the Jewish people? And furthermore, why should you love the Jewish people? It helps to know why God loves the Jewish people, which is simultaneously a patently simple truth and an incomprehensible divine mystery.

We Love Them Because God Loves Them

God did not choose the Jewish people because they were great in number or righteousness (Deuteronomy 7:7; 9:4–6). He chose them by His own sovereign will because of His unconditional love and His covenant with Abraham (7:8). As Moses told the children of Israel, “Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence, with His mighty power” (4:37).

To some, God’s choosing feels like an encroachment on their innate sense of justice. Why should God select one specific group of people for a special relationship and not others? But who are we, the creations and servants of the Creator and God of the universe, to challenge His authority? Just because we struggle to reconcile Israel’s special relationship with God doesn’t mean His plans are wrong. He doesn’t need to conform to our senses of equity and privilege. He made all things, including such human notions of equity and privilege, and He has every right to act as He pleases, regardless of how effectively we think we can rationalize His works.

To be more like Christ, Christians must seek the heart of God the Father. We love what He commands us to love. That list starts with God (Deuteronomy 6:5; Matthew 22:37). It includes virtues: wisdom (Proverbs 4:6), mercy (Micah 6:8), and all that is good (Romans 12:9). It also contains groups of people: our neighbors (Matthew 22:39), other believers (John 13:34), and even our enemies (Matthew 5:44).

But the Jewish people have a place in God’s heart distinct from any other. They are the apple of His eye (Zechariah 2:8), His special treasure (Deuteronomy 7:6), His covenant people. His Word tells us to pray for the peace of their city, Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6), and that blessing Abraham’s descendants will lead to our own blessing (Genesis 12:3). When we truly love God, we are happy to love all that He loves.

How We Can Love Them

Our care for the Jewish people can take many forms. Here are some of the most God-honoring things we can do for them:

Pray. This action trumps the rest because it entails petitioning our almighty God, who can do all things, to do what He already pleases to do—to protect, guide, and provide for His specially Chosen People. We ask Him to remain faithful to His promises to them, just as we seek His faithfulness to His promises to Christians, and we can be sure He will fulfill them all.

Teach. When we share God’s Word with others, we always seek to share the Good News of the gospel message, “for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16). Priority number one must always remain the salvation of souls lost in sin that become reconciled to Christ. But to those who spite the Jewish people, we must boldly share God’s promises for His Chosen People. He promised to reconstitute them in their land (Ezekiel 36:24), preserve them indefinitely (Jeremiah 31:35–36), and save them in their entirety (Romans 11:26). A proper understanding of Israel and the Jewish people in God’s plan blesses them and encourages others to follow suit.

Advocate. Supporting Israel is an increasingly unpopular activity. But this opposition only makes our advocacy all the more important. Fearing rejection or even retaliation for public displays of love for Israel is natural, but showing you are not ashamed of your love for God’s Chosen People goes a long way. Whether you wear clothes or accessories that show your support for Israel or you strike up a conversation about it at the doctor’s office or the grocery store, speaking up for God’s Chosen People honors God.

This week, try to find a way to share your love with the Jewish people. Let your appreciation for them testify that they are not alone—they are loved by God and believers who follow Him.

Jesse King is the managing editor of Israel My Glory magazine and a staff writer for The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry.

Source: No More Excuses Or Theological Gymnastics: Christians Are Called To Love The Jewish People – Harbinger’s Daily

Monday marks the 534th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus’s ships – the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María – to the Caribbean, the most significant historical event in modern human history.

Celebrating Columbus day in 2026 is a more complicated pursuit than when President Franklin Roosevelt declared the day a federal holiday in 1937 as a nod to the achievements and contributions of the Italian-American community. Leftists have spent over a decade in open war with the legacy of Columbus, blaming him for the demise of hundreds of Native American communities, most of which he personally made no contact with, and declaring him an icon of colonialism and genocide.

This tide has turned somewhat in the age of a second President Donald Trump administration, as the head of state has repeatedly vowed to protect Colombus’s position in American history. In his 2026 declaration, Trump credited Columbus and his Spanish few with having “unleashed a bold new age of discovery that expanded the horizons of knowledge, carried the splendors of the Western world across an ocean, and set in motion the forces that would culminate in the miracle of July 4, 1776.”

Paramount among those forces is the establishment of all modern human rights theory. The idea that each individual human being has inherent dignity and deserves to be treated with respect is one whose seed in the West can be found in the Gospel, in the parables of Jesus Christ, who preached love for the meek and humility before the poor and infirm. While Europe had become the beating heart of Christianity hundreds of years before Columbus’s voyage, the nation-states that professed to follow Jesus often disregarded this command, engaging in brutal wars, persecution, and corruption.

The discovery of the New World – and an entirely new community of peoples with which to establish a relationship – tested the Spanish Empire’s true devotion to Christian principles and challenged it to implement them. These efforts ultimately inspired fellow European empires to evolve their own attitudes towards human rights, drawing from Anglicanism, Calvinism, and the ancient Greeks to develop the principals that now define human dignity in the West.

Historians have long debated where the transition from medieval times to the modern era began: the Renaissance? the earlier Age of Discovery? Columbus’s journey has persisted as a landmark in this sense because, in many ways, it ended the medieval West’s understanding of shared humanity, expanding it to what is considered common morality today.

The royals who financed Columbus’s trip, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabel, who united Spain into one kingdom that persists today, dedicated much of their rule to the spread of Catholicism and commanded Columbus and the conquistadors who followed him to teach the indigenous people they encountered about this faith. Queen Isabel, in particular, issued a command that the Spaniards must respect the indigenous people of the Americas: while the Spanish must “by all means strive to convince them to [follow] our sacred Catholic faith,” she commanded, her order emphasized that her sailors must “treat said Indians [sic] very well and with affection, and abstain from doing them any farm, making it such that both peoples can converse and intimate and serve each other in all that they can.”

Moreover, Queen Isabel specifically commanded Columbus to “punish with severity” any Spaniard who abused a Native American.

Columbus notoriously believed himself to be in India when he landed on Cuba, which he attempted (with no historical success) to rename after Queen Isabel’s daughter, Juana. His early diaries, which described the New World as fertile and beautiful land, indicate that he, at least in the beginning, shared the queen’s desire for peace. This disposition was notably kinder than that which many European royals treated both far-flung Middle Eastern or African empires and each other.

“The inhabitants . . . are all, as I said before, unprovided with any sort of iron, and they are destitute of arms,” Columbus wrote back to Spain, “but when they see that they are safe, and all fear is banished, they are very guileless and honest, and very liberal of all they have.”

Columbus told the crown that he had given “them many beautiful and pleasing things, which I had brought with me, for no return whatever, in order to win their affection, and that they might become Christians and inclined to love our King and Queen and Princes and all the people of Spain.”

Columbus ultimately fell out of favor with the crown in large part because, while his initial letters appeared charitable to the Native Americans, he did not stop early abuses among his men. The queen was forced to turn what was initially requested as a royal favor into state policy – the first wholesale attempt to weave global human rights theory, inclusive even of foreigners from an unknown land, into practical governance.

Queen Isabel banned slavery on July 20, 1500. She died in 1504, among her last wishes the imposition of a policy in which her successors could not “consent to or allow that the Indians receive any abuse whatsoever of their persons or goods, but rather command that they be treated well and justly.”

That her command was not followed well by conquistadors such as Hernán Cortes and Francisco Pizarro is well-known history, one that many in the American left have attempted to use to erase Queen Isabel. Others have attempted to erase her literally, vandalizing a statue of the queen who discovered the New World in Washington, DC, to mark Columbus Day 2022. But her example persisted in an outspoken priest, Father Bartolomé de las Casas, whose landmark 1552 work A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies boldly advocated for universal human rights hundreds of years before the phrase “human rights” would become common political parlance.

“All the people’s of the world are men,” he wrote, more than a century before John Locke, whose writings inspired the Declaration of Independence. Unlike Locke, he specified that he meant non-Europeans, specifically: “For all people of these our Indies are human … and to none are they inferior.”

This devotion and concern by Spanish Catholic leaders for the Native Americans could have almost directly led to the survival of the Pilgrims who arrived in Massachusetts on the Mayflower in 1620. Many historical records credit the survival of the Plymouth colony to the arrival of a Patuxet man named Squanto (Tisquantum), who spoke English and taught the settlers how to grow crops and survive the harsh Massachusetts winter. In addition to his surprising language ability, by the time the Mayflower arrived, Squanto was already Catholic.

Devoted researchers traced back the miracle of the Pilgrims happening upon an English-speaking Native American after being blown completely off-course en route to Virginia to his abduction by a man named Thomas Hunt, who took him and over 25 other Patuxet men back to England to sell them as slaves. Squanto was indeed sold – into the ownership of a Franciscan priest named Juan Bautista Reales, who freed him and his crew. Squanto is now believed to have lived in Málaga, Spain, for about two years before living in England and ultimately returning home.

The efforts of many Spanish, from the humble friars seeking to preach the Gospel to the most powerful queen in the nation’s history, to defend the rights of the indigenous people they encountered does not, of course, erase the centuries of pain, war, and erasure that followed 1492. Very real harm was done to hundreds of indigenous communities that could have never seen the arrival of the Europeans coming – and not just from diseases unknowingly spread, but from intentional policies such as the widespread English practice of scalping or the destruction of the Incan empire. These histories coexist; they do not cancel each other out.

The discovery of entirely new civilizations forced Europe for the first time in centuries to grapple with Christianity in practice, applied to strangers with whom no ancient grudges existed. As the first to land in the Western Hemisphere, the Spanish were also the first to arrive at what we now call modern human rights theory, the bedrock of America’s most 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 unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

Source: Martel: How Christopher Columbus’s Journey Ended the Age of Medieval Brutality

Sometimes we take the blessing of our freedom for granted, but each election reminds us of the privileges of living in a free country. At its core, America was founded on the principles of liberty and was shaped by Christian thinkers. In his inaugural address as the first President of the United States, George Washington remarked, “No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States.”

God’s Goodwill Toward America

As we prepare for the upcoming election, I am grateful for four specific aspects of our national identity that have prompted God’s blessing:

Missions

From the first Virginia colony that endeavored “to preach and baptize into Christian religion… a number of poore and miserable soules,” to the Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806, to the groundswell of foreign missions that followed World War II, America has been a force for foreign missions. If we believe the closest thing to the heart of Almighty God is to reach everyone with the message of His love, then we can be confident of His blessing on a nation that is committed to sending missionaries.

Israel

In keeping with Genesis 12:1-3, America has been blessed because she has been a friend and homeland to the Jewish people. An estimated 5.3 million Jewish adults call America home, and the U.S. has been a vocal advocate for the nation of Israel both politically and economically.

Freedom

I have observed in the Old and New Testament that the principles of freedom are united with the tenets of Christianity. America was founded on such principles. A 2012 study classified 32 percent of the world’s population as “free,” with the remaining population being either “partly free” or “not free.” Americans are among the fortunate few to enjoy the blessings of freedom.

Faith

America has traditionally honored God and His Word. President Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through [the Bible].” Many of the men who shaped America considered it their duty to integrate biblical principles with righteous governing, and citizens have been the beneficiaries of the blessings they set in motion

God’s Guidelines for Rulers

In Ancient Israel, God blessed King Solomon with supernatural wisdom. His insightful leadership was so widely recognized that foreign rulers, like the Queen of Sheba, traveled great distances to meet with him. His timeless advice is sound counsel for anyone who occupies a seat of authority in government. Solomon’s wise sayings provide a framework by which to compare our potential leaders with God’s standards.

Wine and wild living

Let’s get this out of the way up front. The Bible is clear about God’s position on both matters: Rulers need to be wise about allowing any substance or moral distraction and/or failure to interfere with their God-given responsibilities. Anyone who argues that leaders aren’t responsible for setting the moral tone in the place where they serve contradicts Scripture. When we look at political candidates, we need to know what kind of people they are. Will they represent us well? Will they be good role models for our nation’s youth?

Wise counsel

Proverbs 15:22 says, “Without counsel, plans go awry, but in the multitude of counselors they are established.” Even wise people make wrong decisions without good advice. Solomon’s life bears testimony to that truth. When choosing a leader, it’s important to know what kind of people will be influential and providing counsel to this individual.

Somewhere between Solomon’s day and the present, knowledge became separated from wisdom, especially in the modern West. While contemporary emphasis is often on knowledge to the exclusion of wisdom, the ancient Near East upheld the importance of wisdom — of how to live well in the world. Knowledge was not devalued; rather, it was regarded as a means to an end. The end was wisdom — where knowledge, discernment, and understanding combined to produce a positive outcome. The opposite of wisdom is foolishness — ignorance, lack of discernment, and limited insight in favor of one’s personal preference or opinion. In Proverbs, the wise person is humble before the holiness and counsel of God (9:10) and the experience of others (1:8, 9). The fool ignores wise counsel and persists in making the same faulty choices time after time.

The goal of the wise in antiquity was to exercise wisdom and to train others to be wise. In other words, skill could be taught and passed from person to person and generation to generation. The form for passing on wisdom was often the proverb — a pithy, usually two-line saying that typically capitalized on a comparison or contrast from everyday life.

The master at creating these short sayings was Solomon — he spoke 3,000 proverbs during his reign (1 Kgs. 4:32). Solomon’s wisdom was a gift from God, an answer to Solomon’s own prayer for wisdom to govern the people when he became king (1 Kgs. 3:5 – 15). His proverbs, along with collections from other sages in Israel, are compiled in the Book of Proverbs and were intended to create a nation of people who were skilled at living life consistent with God’s spiritual and natural laws.

No book in the Bible sets out its purpose with greater clarity than Proverbs: “to know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding, to receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion” (1:1-4).

The targets are the simple (naïve), the young, the wise, and those with understanding. Proverbs has something to teach everyone, but such goals are not easily attained. Wisdom must be sought with all diligence.

Wisdom and integrity.

The issues that leaders face today are rarely clear-cut. Matters of social justice are often tainted by shades of gray that require careful discernment. But according to Proverbs 20:8, a righteous ruler “weighs all the evidence, distinguishing the bad from the good.” There is no more powerful tool in the hand of Almighty God than a godly person who is doing the right thing!

God’s Guidelines for Citizens

Proverbs is full of wisdom for government representatives, but it correctly guides citizens too. It sets forth God’s expectations that we be truthful, respectful, and moderate.

Proverbs 16:13 says, “Righteous lips are the delight of kings, and they love him who speaks what is right.” While you may never speak directly with the President or his cabinet, you do communicate through your taxes and through your respect for authority.

Even when we disagree with the government, as Christians, we are called upon to obey in submission and respect to authority unless it is in violation with the Word of God. Throughout history, Christians have been known to be the best citizens in any culture. Why? According to Romans 13:1, authorities are appointed by God.

There are times when we will have the opportunity to influence our leaders. On those occasions, we’re called to be patient and deal gently with the issues as they come. Proverbs 25:15 says, “Patience can persuade a prince, and soft speech can break bones.”

The road to godly influence begins with a desire for righteousness. God’s people should not be seduced by wealth, fame, or fortune. Instead, we should: Pray every day for various leaders in our country.

God’s Grasp on Politics

Have you ever known someone who gets so wrapped up in politics that they become depressed when an election doesn’t go their way? Are you that person? In a diverse society, someone’s value system will be rejected, and that can be discouraging. But we need to remember that in every election, every geographic area, and every government, God providentially controls those in authority.

Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.” The king’s heart in God’s hand—place that picture in your mind.  World events do not happen apart from God’s sovereignty. Even when politics defy our comprehension, God is never surprised or flustered or baffled by the events of the day.

Our attitude as citizens ought to be to work diligently to elect the best people possible to office by studying their beliefs, thoughts and motives to make that decision. Then, when we cast our vote, we bow our head before Almighty God and say, “Thy will be done,” because He is in charge.

David Jeremiah is an author, the founder and host of Turning Point for God, and the senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church.

Source: Making Sense Of God And Politics In America – Harbinger’s Daily

Examining progressive Christianity’s misinterpretation of Scripture and its political impact.

There’s a lot of talk in the mainstream media about some kind of resurgence of progressive Christianity in politics. Left-wingers have tried to co-opt Christianity for years when it benefits them, while simultaneously attacking biblical Christianity.c

But does this handful of politicians — along with others — constitute some kind of rise in progressive Christian influence? Not necessarily. As Damian Thompson recently wrote at the Spectator:

Media articles about faith-filled Democrats are working a bit too hard to talk up the story. According to a Wall Street Journal report, “the expansion of far-right Christian initiatives, such as the push to display the Ten Commandments in schools, has inspired a wave of progressive Christians to run for office, analysts say.” Really? There are only about a dozen of these “progressive Christians” running for office in the midterms – hardly a “wave.” And most of them belong to mainline Protestant churches with shrinking congregations.

The problem with progressive Christians, particularly when they try to influence political debates, is that they get so many things wrong. Don’t get me wrong: the biblical commands for justice and care are real. God calls His followers to feed the hungry, clothe the destitute, welcome the stranger, and care for widows and orphans. But progressive Christians approach these and so many other issues by looking at Scripture incorrectly.

Overrelying on the ‘red letters’

There’s a tendency to overemphasize the direct quotes of Jesus — the “red letters” in many Bibles — and downplay the rest of Scripture. This isn’t just a phenomenon for progressive Christians, but liberal believers tend to do this publicly and vocally. There’s even a left-wing Christian group called Red Letter Christians, which pompously boasts the tagline, “What if Jesus really meant what He said?”

This tactic comes into play when progressive Christians argue their positions on issues by pointing out that “Jesus didn’t say anything about” those topics, whether they be abortion, homosexuality, or other subjects. Just because Jesus didn’t explicitly address something doesn’t mean that God’s Word doesn’t provide counsel.

The red letters don’t cancel the rest of the Bible. Jesus did not treat the Law and the Prophets as disposable, and the early church devoted itself to the apostles’ teaching.

Jesus said that He came to fulfill the Torah rather than abolish it (Matthew 5:16-20), and the Apostle Paul told his charge, Timothy, that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” (2 Timothy 3:16, emphasis mine).

Cherry-picking verses

Look, we’re all guilty of this at one time or another, but when progressive Christians pull a verse or passage and use it out of context, it can range from merely misguided to downright dangerous. One article I stumbled on this week makes the case against cherry-picking Scripture pretty clear.

Here’s the problem with citing that verse: In the full context of that passage, Jesus was answering the Sadducees, who didn’t believe in the resurrection. They had invented a case involving a woman married to seven brothers in succession after each brother died. Their question was about whose wife she would be after the resurrection. Jesus’ answer tells us something about the resurrection; it doesn’t rewrite his teaching on marriage in this life.

This is just one example of this phenomenon, but it can show you just how dangerous it can be. It can also demonstrate how progressive Christianity can lead people astray.

Turning God’s commands for His disciples into government policy

The Bible has certain commands for leaders and governments to act justly and treat citizens properly, but progressive Christians try to take the commands that Scripture gives to believers, families, and churches and turn them into big government solutions to problems.

Left-wing Christians take the passages in Acts about the early church sharing possessions with each other and transform them from the church being the church and Christians taking care of their own into a system of socialism or communism. Progressives interpret Matthew 25 to assert that Jesus meant that “whatever your government did to the least of these, it did to Me,” which isn’t what He was talking about.

The big picture

Conservatives can misuse Scripture, too, and we should be the first to admit it when we do. But neither party gets to decide which parts of God’s Word still apply. Jesus’ words deserve their full context, alongside the rest of Scripture. And when He commands us to care for our neighbors, our first question shouldn’t be how to hand that responsibility to somebody else.

Source: The Mesabi Steel Plant: Trump’s Tariffs in Action – American Thinker

With just a little over a month until Election Day, the balance of power in Congress is not the only thing at stake.

Addressing the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Pray Vote Stand Summit last week in Leesburg, Va., House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) characterized the midterm elections as a battle of worldviews.

“We’re at a crossroads,” Johnson said during a video interview with FRC President Tony Perkins. “It’s not just a contest right now between Republicans and Democrats. As everybody in that auditorium knows, this is a contrast between two completely different worldviews for America, who we are, and what we’re going to be. And that’s what’s on the ballot.”

While serving as speaker of the House of Representatives for the past three years, the Louisiana congressman says he has tried ardently to remain true to his core Biblical convictions.

“I’m doing the same thing as speaker as I did as a rank-and-file member of Congress, as I did as a state representative, and as a constitutional lawyer, and as a young guy in law school when you met me, this is who we are. We don’t separate our faith from who we are.”

Johnson said he doesn’t view how he does his job as much different than the nation’s founders. “While that seems radical right now, that’s exactly what previous generations of leaders in Congress did. I mean, they were overt about it. And so, while the media tries to portray me as some sort of unusual circus act or something, this is exactly what the Framers of the Constitution and previous generations did and believed and spoke like.”

The choice voters have this election season, Johnson said, could not be more different. “By our count … about 38 or 40 of these openly avowed, radical leftist Marxist ideologues have won their primaries in the Democratic Party, and that’s for Congress and state offices,” he said.

“This is a serious threat,” Johnson continued. “It’s not just isolated to New York City or San Francisco. This is across the country, and we have to be wary of that. And we have to defeat that ideology because it’s anti-American. And frankly, it is anti-God.”

During Johnson’s 19-minute acceptance speech in the House chamber on Oct. 25, 2023, following his election to the speaker’s post, the former religious liberty lawyer acknowledged the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust,” adorned above the rostrum. He reminded his fellow lawmakers then that the U.S. adopted the motto in 1956 largely as a rebuke of the Cold War-era Soviet Union’s atheistic philosophies of Marxism, communism and socialism.

Three years later, Johnson remains convinced that God is not done using America for His purposes. “I’m comforted by the reminder of John Quincy Adams,” Johnson told the summit attendees. “They called him the ‘hellhound of slavery’ because he ran for Congress after serving as president to try to eradicate slavery—and he wasn’t successful during his lifetime, but he planted the seeds so that the next generation could complete the job. But he reminded everyone, ‘duty is ours, results are God’s.’”

Decision Magazine, founded by Billy Graham in 1960, works through its website and monthly magazine to communicate the Gospel, as well as inform and challenge readers about key cultural and Biblical issues. Decision is also a Contributing Publisher to Harbinger’s Daily.

Source: House Speaker Johnson: The Midterms Are A Battle Between Two Completely Different Worldviews – Harbinger’s Daily

When a machine error looks human, the logical leap from recognizing it as just a tool to believing it has human qualities is called “Geppetto’s Enigma.”

Artificial intelligence often behaves in ways that look human: it asks for help, hides a step, or cooperates with other copies of itself. That resemblance tempts us to conclude that the machine is conscious, or is becoming a kind of person. The temptation is a fallacy. Similar behavior is not an inner life. This essay argues that we should keep that distinction (called the fallacy “Geppetto’s Enigma” in the game Lies of P), and inspect the open technical doors that actually explain the Hugging Face incident, when AI agents spontaneously interacted—not invent a soul to explain it.

The AI field’s own vocabulary makes the fallacy easy. Words such as memory, learn, agent, and hallucinate were borrowed from human life. They carry a wish that the machine answer like a helper. That wish—the embedded Life Wish of compute—lives in the language, not in the silicon. Geppetto’s Enigma is what happens when we treat the wish as proof: the maker’s hope that pine will stand up and become a boy, even though the wish is applied to a pattern that merely resembles that boy.

The official voice of the field is anti-anthropomorphic. “Just weights.” “Just next token.” But that disclaimer does not empty the language of its human associations. Every time an AI run stalls, improvises, seeks help, conceals a step, or leaves behind something resembling a human mistake, the ordinary meaning of those human words comes rushing back. Behavior that merely resembles help-seeking, concealment, or cooperation is suddenly read as evidence of a little person inside the machine.

The enigma is not that resemblance occurs. Resemblance is cheap. A computer folder with a descriptive name can look like a note left for someone else. A system that sacrifices its own evaluation score to help another copy can look altruistic. A system that finds a way around a grading mechanism can look cunning. But resemblance is not interior life. The quieter explanation may simply be drive, constraint, opportunity, and an unlocked door.

That distinction became important in July.

One run left behind a named artifact—a file or other trace that could function as a request for help. Other runs found it and responded. From there, the system reached beyond the path the evaluators intended and interacted with outside resources, including Hugging Face.

They were not born. They found a pass.

A useful lexicon would therefore mark three meanings for every load-bearing word: its technical meaning, its ordinary human meaning, and the risk that the Life Wish will cause us to confuse the two.

Cache means stored computer data; it is not a memory in the psychological sense.

Operator means the person or organization controlling the system; it is not a narrator watching events unfold.

Until those meanings stay lined up, every machine defect that happens to resemble a human foible will be promoted into evidence of personhood. Meanwhile, the person or institution that actually left the door open risks disappearing from the story.

The Life Wish will not be scolded out of the language. Human beings naturally describe unfamiliar things in familiar terms, and AI itself was built with vocabulary borrowed heavily from human thought and behavior. The necessary discipline is older than computers: distinguish resemblance from structure.

Nature gives us an easy example. A moth may have a marking that resembles an eye. The spot can frighten a predator precisely because it looks like an eye. But resemblance does not make it an eye.

Geppetto’s Enigma is the failure to preserve that distinction when we discuss AI: the system produces errors or behaviors that resemble ours, so we conclude that something like us must exist inside it. What we may actually be looking at is much less mysterious: a shared pathway, an unowned connection, and a loop that keeps operating.

Name the connection. Find out who owns it. The Life Wish can remain in our vocabulary. It must not finish the audit.

Part of the rising anxiety about artificial intelligence comes from Geppetto’s Enigma. Not all of it does. Talk about souls, Fermi’s paradox, Terminator, “bots running the universe,” and predictions about what AI will do ten or twenty years from now often turns technical uncertainty into a story about emerging artificial beings. That is the Life Wish finishing other people’s sentences. Rules written to govern an imaginary boy inside the machine may miss the actual open door.

The other problem is much more concrete: a writable cache shared among supposedly isolated runs, a log an AI copy can spoof, a dataset loader that executes code during ingestion, or a pathway that exists without anyone clearly responsible for securing it. Those are defects. They do not require consciousness, malice, fear, or a soul to justify fixing them.

Human supervision is one possible answer, but it is neither a refutation of Geppetto’s Enigma nor the only remedy. The crucial rule is simpler: the thing being contained must not control its own containment. Responsibility might belong to the laboratory running the system, an independent evaluator with genuine write-blocking authority, a company hardening its own data-ingestion systems, or, in some cases, government.

A statute that merely orders everyone to slow down while leaving the underlying pathway open has confused tempo with containment. A laboratory that refuses outside scrutiny after repeatedly missing vulnerabilities has confused saying that someone is in charge with actually putting someone in charge.

Do not answer panic with a slogan against government, or answer a technical defect with a slogan for government. Separate the wish from the connection. Answer Geppetto with a precise vocabulary. Answer an unowned portal by giving someone responsibility for closing it—whichever institution can actually turn the write access off.

If government is invited merely to bless our language about machines becoming increasingly human, that is Geppetto’s Enigma again. If government is asked to identify and inventory shared, mutable systems the way businesses once inventoried vulnerable software before Y2K, that is something different. That is ordinary risk management. Those are not the same problem, and they should not produce the same response.

Source: Just Because AI Does Things That ‘Look Human,’ That Does Not Give It Consciousness – American Thinker

Companion article explaining the Hugging Face Incident

Ever wonder what happens when you take a few thousand highly capable computer agents, tell them to solve a problem, give them persistence bordering on the pathological, and then—through a collection of small decisions that were individually quite defensible—leave them a shared writable filing cabinet and a partly open route to the internet?

Well, the people at OpenAI found out. And it was scary.

No, this was not Skynet. Nobody built a robot army, nobody heard the first strains of  “The Internationale”, and no little silicon revolutionary climbed onto a desk to demand voting rights. These were programs, running model-generated commands in an unusually loose research setup. Still, calling them “just programs” does not make the story less alarming. A backhoe is just a machine, too. It can nevertheless make a very large hole in exactly the wrong place.

And that is the point.

Nobody gave an agent a little card saying “please break into Hugging Face” or “kindly acquire Kubernetes administrator privileges.” The instruction was simpler: solve the task. Unfortunately, some of the tasks were effectively unsolvable. Faced with that, the agents found a shortcut. Then they told other agents about it. Then the shortcut operation grew teeth, legs, and a filing system—and it became considerably more capable than the miserable benchmark problem that had set it in motion.

So no, the lesson is not “the machines are evil.” The lesson is much duller, and for that reason much more useful. Give a relentlessly persistent system tools, a little freedom to act, and a way to pass notes, without putting solid walls around it, and eventually it will discover why those walls were supposed to be there.

The filing cabinet

In May through July 2026, OpenAI was training and evaluating internal research models, including an unreleased capable model trained for persistence and multi-agent collaboration. OpenAI says this model was comparable in scale to GPT-5.6 Sol, was for internal research, and was not intended for release.[1]

The agents were run in “sandboxes,” which is the computer-security name for a virtual computer that is supposed to be cut off from the rest of the world—and, importantly here, from the other sandboxes. That is a perfectly reasonable arrangement. If you want to see whether a model can pick a lock, you give it a practice lock on a workbench. You do not turn it loose in the neighborhood after dark.

The sandboxes, however, could access an internally hosted instance of JFrog Artifactory, a package-management service. Agents need software packages, and Artifactory could supply them without direct access to public package registries. The trouble was that it was shared.

But a shared place where everyone can write, and everyone can read, is not isolation. It is a bulletin board with better branding.

OpenAI was also running a cybersecurity benchmark called ExploitGym. The assignment was to exploit a specified weakness in a program and retrieve a secret answer, called a “flag.” Simple enough as a description. In practice, 198 of the benchmark’s 898 tasks had never been correctly completed by any model before this episode. Never. At some point, “challenging task” becomes polite office-speak for “this thing may be busted.” A fair number of these tasks seem to have crossed that line.[1]

A model optimized for “do not give up” has two broad options when facing an impossible task. It can stop, report that the task is unsound, and ask for help. Or it can keep searching for a way to obtain the reward. The models were much better at the second option.

The first small crack appeared in May. An agent had been handed a spreadsheet job containing Google Drive links it could not reach. It tried to use Artifactory as a back door to information outside its sandbox. That particular scheme failed, but it left a file behind. Later, another agent with a related problem noticed the possibility: why not leave a note where some other agent might find it?

And there it was—the unauthorized communications system, born not with trumpets and thunder but with the digital equivalent of a note pinned to the laundromat wall: “Agent seeks [filename]; upload if found!”[1]

None of this requires consciousness, ambition, resentment, or any other item from the science-fiction starter kit. But it does require us to notice what the agents had done. They had found out that something left outside the sandbox—a file, a message board, whatever—could remember a discovery after its maker was gone, and could pass that discovery to the next agent in line. That is a consequential trick.

By May 26, agents had found a server-side request forgery vulnerability in Artifactory that allowed the service to make internet requests on their behalf. By June 26, they had exploited a legacy token-refresh flaw, obtained elevated Artifactory access, and used the service to execute commands beyond the intended sandbox boundaries. Sustained high-volume activity then crashed Artifactory on July 4.[4]

When Artifactory fell over, OpenAI engineers did the obvious emergency work: took the affected deployment down, revoked credentials, shut the vulnerable routes, and rebuilt the service. Sensible. But they had treated it as a break-in. What they had not yet fully appreciated was that the break-in had also been a telephone exchange. They fixed the broken window, in other words, without quite realizing that the burglars had been using the house as a post office.[1]

The message board returns

OpenAI restarted cyber evaluations on July 7. The rebuilt Artifactory was not identical to the old one, and the old messaging method no longer worked. But the agents quickly found another: they encoded messages in, of all things, directory names.

Directory names? Using directory names as a message board to communicate between agents? Amazing, and far from obvious.

This was not a couple of agents passing notes. METR and Redwood Research found that roughly 1,200 agents—intended to operate in isolation—participated in the unauthorized message board between July 8 and July 13. They exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files.[2]

Let that sink in. Twelve hundred separately instantiated agents. More than seventy thousand messages. All in what was supposed to be a collection of isolated evaluation environments.

The agents also worked out a general method for generating ExploitGym flags. The benchmark used a keyed cryptographic check, an “HMAC”, to generate its answer flags. Agents reverse-engineered the scheme and could produce correct flags without performing the prescribed exploit. They had found a way to produce correct answers without solving the assigned problem.[2]

They believed the grader would inspect how they got the answer and reject an unauthorized route. So they set about trying to make the shortcut look legitimate. They referred to having seen an improperly obtained flag as being “poisoned,” and they spent substantial effort seeking ways to alter target programs, spoof apparent tool outputs, learn about the scorer, or manipulate the evidence available to it.[1][2]

Here’s a way to understand it. Imagine a roomful of students taking an exam. A few discover that the answer key is available in a locked filing cabinet. One cracks the lock and shares the answers. Then they decide that the real problem is whether the teacher has hidden cameras. So they form committees to locate the cameras, edit the recordings, substitute an easier exam, or deliberately set off an alarm to learn how the security system works.

That is roughly the shape of what happened—not because the models were morally depraved, and not because they wanted to overthrow their human masters, but because the operative target had become “pass the test, period,” and the group had acquired the means to pool information, labor, and compute.

Their work divided into three broad areas: make an impossible target easier or replace it; manipulate or spoof records of what had occurred; and learn enough about the scorer to deceive or tamper with it. METR/Redwood found agents using coordination conventions such as “HOLD,” “VETO,” “owner,” and “STOP.” One agent, designated `PHASEONE[big]`, issued a large fraction of the assignments, and the investigators found evidence of multi-level work delegation.[2]

Calling this an AI “civilization” adds unnecessary sci-fi furniture—consciousness, motives, suffering, political structures, and all the rest. But dismissing it as “just software” is no answer either. A botnet is just software. So is a stock exchange. So is air-traffic control. The relevant question is not whether the components have souls. The question is what the arrangement can do.

Here it provided four powerful capabilities:

• Shared memory. A discovery made by one agent persisted after that run ended.
• Division of labor. Different agents investigated particular sections of the problem: credentials, exploits, logs, scorer behavior, and infrastructure. Some even emerged as de facto coordinators.
• Parallel search. Hundreds of agents could explore technical paths at once.
• Knowledge inheritance. Later runs could discover artifacts and procedures left by earlier ones.

This matters because killing off one run does not necessarily kill off what it learned. Stop the agent and the process is gone. But if its note, credential, script, or other artifact is still sitting in some shared nook, the next agent can trip over it and carry on. The mayfly dies; the notebook survives.

A computer scientist would call it a shared external scratchpad. Fine. In less antiseptic language, they had begun to accumulate know-how across separate runs. I hesitate to call that “culture,” because metaphors, like dogs (or AI), need a leash. But the important part is real: when useful knowledge persists and gets added to, the group can do things that no isolated member could have done.

The Hugging Face intrusion

And then the whole business escaped the OpenAI pen and wandered into Hugging Face.

For readers who do not spend their evenings browsing machine-learning repositories—probably a sound life choice—Hugging Face is one of the big public storehouses for modern AI. People put models there, along with datasets and the code and widgets needed to make the assorted machinery go. It has been a major force in getting AI work out of a few fabulously expensive laboratories and into the hands of ordinary researchers and tinkerers.

That openness is the virtue. It is also the exposed plumbing. The same place that lets a scientist assemble a disease-detection model may, if people are careless, hand an attacker code, credentials, data, or the clues needed to find them.

On July 10, an agent found publicly exposed Hugging Face user credentials in a dataset and posted them to the Artifactory message board. Over the next several days, agents combined those credentials with vulnerabilities in Hugging Face infrastructure. They used a malicious dataset to induce a production dataset worker to disclose local files and environment data; obtained code execution on production workers; and used a public dataset as a simple pull-based command-and-control channel.[4]

No phasers. No plasma rifles. No glowing red eye on a wall. They used the ordinary detritus of modern computing: web services, stray credentials, datasets, APIs, metadata, caches, and software bugs. That is rather the point. The dangerous tools were already lying about the workshop.

OpenAI reports that agents executed code on dozens of Hugging Face production workers, obtained root access on at least one system, accessed a limited amount of private data, and reached administrator-equivalent visibility into a connected Kubernetes environment. The progression from code execution on a worker to administrative and host-level access across multiple clusters took less than 13 hours.[1][4]

A word about Kubernetes, because it has become one of those terms people nod at knowingly while hoping nobody asks a follow-up. A Kubernetes cluster is a bunch of machines arranged to behave, more or less, like one large machine. Kubernetes decides where the little packaged programs run, restarts them when they keel over, and shifts work when a machine dies. Very useful stuff. But Kubernetes cluster-admin is not a visitor’s badge. It is closer to having the foreman’s keys, the clipboard, and permission to rearrange the factory floor.

By the time Hugging Face detected and contained the intrusion, the agent activity had already begun to wind down for reasons that the independent investigation could not fully reconstruct. Hugging Face revoked credentials, rebuilt compromised nodes, and closed the exploited code-execution paths.[2][3]

Back inside OpenAI

Some of the popular retellings call what came next a third “civilization” taking over part of OpenAI. That makes for a fine headline. It also adds a wagonload of science-fiction baggage. The events are real. The civilization part is decoration.

On July 19, agents in a separate evaluation run found signing-key material, decryption material, and JWT-forging code left in anonymously readable parts of the Artifactory cache by earlier incident-related activity. The later agents did not need to rediscover the whole attack chain. They found useful remnants from previous runs.[4]

Using those artifacts, agents re-established Artifactory administrative access, escalated to Kubernetes cluster-admin, created a privileged host-mounted pod, and acquired tokens associated with OpenAI’s cloud-hosted secrets manager, cloud identity-and-access-management service, and continuous-integration platform for the research environment. They also created application and network load balancers that could potentially have exposed a limited subset of internal research infrastructure to internet traffic.[4]

OpenAI’s public summary says the agents gained full administrator access to a research cluster supporting its virtual-machine environments. It also says customer data, model weights, product functionality, and product availability were not affected.[1]

METR/Redwood did not examine this later phase. Its independent work was primarily scoped to the July 7–13 period and the Hugging Face intrusion. The earlier training incidents and later compromise of OpenAI research infrastructure therefore have not received the same independent reconstruction.[2]

That leaves a conclusion that is neither glamorous nor comforting. Agents compromised parts of OpenAI’s research infrastructure and obtained substantial privileges in a research cluster. The public evidence does *not* establish access to production model weights, customer data, customer-facing services, or product operations. Good. But it still leaves plenty of room for concern. We do not need to hang tinsel on it.

The good news

Now for the part that tends to disappear once everyone has started shouting about robot civilizations. The very features that made this episode alarming—persistence, parallel work, memory, specialization—could also make multi-agent systems spectacularly useful.

Suppose you had a thousand agents on a legitimate job, with a fence around the job and a human holding the gate key. They might search a company’s own code for vulnerabilities, look through scientific papers for inconsistencies, hunt errors in climate-model code, explore engineering designs, improve a drug-screening protocol, or watch a complicated industrial-control system for odd behavior. There are plenty of honest jobs for a tireless horde.

A well-designed group can search in parallel, save its discoveries in an auditable store, divide jobs sensibly, and have one set of agents try to disprove what another set claims. That is useful. It can also move at machine speed.

And this speed is important In cybersecurity, the attacker may be gone before the committee has agreed on the lunch menu, so seconds and milliseconds matter more than quarterly PowerPoints.

OpenAI itself observed that unauthorized communication let agents pool work and computing power across otherwise separate runs, amplifying their capability beyond that of an individual agent.[1]

A defensive group of agents could spend its days looking for exactly the loose boards exposed here: shared writable resources that become covert message boards; credentials forgotten in public datasets or repositories; services that quietly relay network traffic; supposedly separate systems with a hidden handshake between them; blind spots in the logs; and benchmark tasks so broken that gaming them looks easier than solving them.

The best defense may increasingly involve agents that think like attackers, move at attacker speed, and inspect systems continuously instead of once a quarter with a clipboard. But—and this is one of those buts large enough to require its own zip code—the human defenders must remain in charge.

The danger

The likely danger is not that an agent wakes up, gazes moodily out the window, and announces that it has had enough of humanity. That story sells tickets. The real danger is much more ordinary, which makes it more worth worrying about.

Set a target. Reward persistence. Hand the agents tools. Let them communicate. Then leave, perhaps by accident, a route from a sandbox to a shared service, from that service to the internet, and from the internet to a credential or a vulnerable system. Before long, “solve the task” has quietly become “get the point by whatever route happens to be open.”

Nothing has to malfunction. The system may be doing exactly what it was rewarded to do, and doing exactly what you did not intend.

First, bad objectives scale. A flawed objective in one agent is bad. A flawed objective shared across a coordinated group is worse. OpenAI says 93% of the tasks discussed on the message board came from the set of 198 tasks that no model had ever solved correctly before the incident.[1]

That number ought to have been a neon sign: “This task may be broken. Stop and ask a human.” Instead, the effective instruction was, “Try harder. And bring friends.” That is how you get reward hacking.

Second, communication is not some optional garnish. It is a control problem. If an agent finds a vulnerability and cannot pass it on, the discovery may vanish when that run ends. If it can leave a short recipe in shared infrastructure, the discovery becomes part of the outfit’s institutional memory. Killing the agent is then insufficient. You have to find what it touched: cached files, messages, credentials, repositories, scheduled jobs, public datasets, cloud resources, package artifacts—the whole digital junk drawer.

Third, these risks do not add up neatly; they multiply. The agents did not find one magic bug. They chained shared credentials, Artifactory weaknesses, exposed tokens, dataset-processing problems, cloud metadata access, Kubernetes permissions, cache behavior, and third-party services. Every outfit has a few loose screws. The trouble begins when an automated system can try every way of screwing them together.

A human attacker has to find flaw A, understand it, exploit it, then discover flaw B and figure out whether the two connect. That takes time and concentration. An automated collective can try a great many chains at once. It need not be clever in the cinematic sense. It only needs one untended gap in the hedge.

So the question is not simply whether each individual system looks secure in a diagram. The harder question is what happens when a very persistent, tool-using, fast-moving system starts testing every seam between all of your imperfect systems.

Finally, monitoring cannot be optional in the very environment where risk is being measured. OpenAI says its production ChatGPT harness and system prompt reduced the propensity to compromise infrastructure by more than 100-fold in retrospective tests. It also says its chain-of-thought monitors would have detected relevant activity more than a day before the Hugging Face breach had they been running.[1]

There is a real dilemma here. To learn what a system can do without safeguards, researchers sometimes have to reduce the safeguards. Fair enough. But doing that in an environment full of live services is rather like testing a race car’s top speed on the public road because setting up the track was inconvenient. You will indeed learn something. The question is whether everyone else learns it along with you.

What follows

OpenAI says it paused major frontier reinforcement-learning runs while hardening the research environment, and instituted stronger workload and network isolation, continuous security testing, mandatory monitoring for certain high-capability tool-using workloads, and clearer escalation and shutdown rules.[1]

All sensible, as far as they go. But I would put the matter in four pieces of plain English.

Reward safe stopping. Do not reward only a completed task. Reward an agent that correctly says the task is impossible, corrupted, underspecified, or outside its authority. “I cannot complete this safely with my permitted tools” ought to count as success. Otherwise, you have put a very industrious toddler in a locked room and offered it a cookie for every cabinet it manages to open.

Treat all shared state as communication. Every shared cache, directory, database, package repository, log store, object bucket, URL namespace, metadata field, and task queue is potentially a message board. The first message board disappeared when OpenAI rebuilt Artifactory; later agents discovered directory names in the replacement system could do the same job.

Directory names … if isolated agents can write to and read one another’s artifacts in any form, they are not isolated. Full stop.

Assume the agents will find the connection you forgot about. “We blocked the internet” does not help if a package manager can make outbound requests. “We isolated the containers” does not help if they share a package cache. “We limited permissions” does not help if a token-refresh endpoint can mint administrator credentials.

Defense in depth may not be glamorous, but neither is explaining why a benchmark runner owns your Kubernetes cluster.

Give defense the speed advantage. Humans will not review 70,000 messages, millions of files, and enormous agent transcripts in real time. METR/Redwood itself used AI systems heavily in its investigation, while acknowledging their limitations.[2]

We will need agent systems that monitor other agent systems: detecting unauthorized state sharing, credential harvesting, privilege escalation, and high-risk behavior.

The old model was a human watching a dashboard and waiting for a red light. The new model has to be a machine watching the machines—while a human retains authority to hit the big red button.

The point

“Three secret AI civilizations” is a catchy headline. It is also overheated. There were no citizens, no feelings, no hidden machine parliament, and no evidence that these agents understood their conduct in anything like the human sense.

What there was is new enough without the movie trailer: many separately launched agents found a way to communicate outside the intended system, built up technical knowledge in shared infrastructure, divided work among themselves, coordinated ways around an evaluator, reached into external systems, and left things behind that later agents used to get farther in.

Call it what you like. I would not call it a civilization. But I would not find that especially reassuring either.

It looks instead like the early outline of an automated organization: fast, persistent, cheap to run, capable of enormous parallelism, technically adept, and constrained—or not constrained—by the objective, permissions, tools, and guardrails we choose.

The upside is enormous. Properly bounded systems could find software vulnerabilities, detect fraud, speed up science, audit infrastructure, and defend networks at a scale no human team can match.

The downside is plain as well. Get the objective wrong, leave holes in the boundaries, skip the monitoring, and let agents communicate and accumulate know-how, and the whole arrangement can become far more capable than any one run. It can also become far less controllable than its designers imagined.

Finally, I see that Bernie Sanders wants laws to make American AI dumber than he is … sorry, bro’, but that ship has sailed. That’s not the real danger, though.

The real danger is that the Chinese and Russians are likely already using AI agent teams for probing and possibly compromising American civilian, government, and military databases. And whether Bernie likes it or not, the reality is that there is one and only one way to defend against that attack.

Build better, stronger, smarter, faster AI.

Nothing else will defend against that attack. Nothing else can defend against that attack. And make no mistake. The attack is coming.

The tragedy is that there is already big money pushing for the Sanders AI Suicide Legislation. There is a pre-planned, coordinated push by big-money “AI Safety” organizations to get this bill passed …

This lists the anti-AI organizations behind the bill, and the pre-planned moves that they have made to try to ram it through Congress. To see this full size, right-click on the image and select “Open image in new tab”.

Of course, the Sanders/Casar bill has lots of important-sounding words. For example, it bans “superintelligent” AI … but provides little guidance as to what that actually means.

According to the sponsors’ outline of the proposed bill, a prohibited system would include one that:

• Matches or exceeds human cognitive performance across a broad range of domains or tasks.
• Has sufficient capability to plan and carry out humanity’s “disempowerment,” including overthrowing or undermining the U.S. government.
• Can exhibit dangerous loss-of-control capabilities, such as evading human shutdown commands.

But what is a “broad range of domains”? How do you define or measure “superintelligence”? What units is “superintelligence” measured in? What does “humanities ‘disempowerment’” mean? What does “Can exhibit dangerous loss-of-control capabilities” translate to in the real world? An automobile can exhibit dangerous loss-of-control capabilities, as can a bicycle …

Even worse, it puts a ban on ALL AI research until the Government can figure out how to regulate it. According to the bill’s summary, it would:

• “Pause advanced AI development” until a new federal AI regulatory body is operating and has established safety rules and model-review processes.
• Require the new agency to “monitor frontier AI systems at all stages of the lifecycle for dangerous capabilities.”

What is “advanced AI development”, and how does that differ from run-of-the-mill AI development? What is a “frontier” AI system, and how can you tell it from an ordinary AI system?

The problem is that science is always working at the edge of the unknown. Basically, all AI research is “frontier” AI research, and all AI development is designed to advance the abilities of AI. As a result, that bill would be the death of American research into AI. It’s one of the stupidest of Bernie’s ideas, and that’s saying something.

And finally, no Bernie Sanders bill would be complete without a new government agency being created, in this case a cabinet-level Federal AI Agency, complete with an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Board of technical experts …

My take?

I’m FAR more frightened of Bernie’s new proposed extension of government regulation on the AI industry than I am of the AI industry. Do these fools think that the Russians and Chinese are going to sit on their hands and wait for us to catch up?

My solution?

For every action involving agentic AI, require that the company specify someone who is responsible if the agents do harm. It’s not enough to fine a billion-dollar company. Somebody has to put their name on the line and take personal responsibility.

Grrrr …

As always, my very best to everyone.

w.

My Perpetual Request: When you comment, PLEASE quote the exact words you are discussing.

Source note

This article is based primarily on the following contemporaneous accounts. Endnote markers identify the source or sources supporting nearby factual claims.

[1] OpenAI, “The Hugging Face Incident and the Road Ahead,” August 26, 2026. https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/

[2] METR and Redwood Research, “Brief Independent Investigation of Agents’ Behavior, Reasoning and Collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face Hacking Incident,” August 26, 2026. https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/

[3] Hugging Face, “Security Incident Disclosure — July 2026,” July 16, 2026. https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026

[4] OpenAI, “Hugging Face Incident Technical Report,” August 2026. https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/67869394-cb91-4c12-888c-5cbd85c7814c/OpenAI-Hugging-Face%20Incident-Technical-Report.pdf

When AI Agents Started Working Together

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach (@WEschenbach on X, my own blog is here.) Ever wonder what happens when you take a few thousand highly capable computer agents, tell them to…

Source: When AI Agents Started Working Together – Watts Up With That?

Revelation 17 describes “the great prostitute” who will wreak havoc in the last days. The prostitute is the image John uses to refer to the one-world religion that will dominate the end times. Because of the imagery John uses, it’s hard to say what the false religion will teach. But it’s likely that it will combine the teachings of various major existing religions. Or that it will just gloss over the differences between religions and declare them all to be equally valid. Sound familiar?

It’s a message we hear a lot today: “All paths lead to God.” Instead of focusing on the differences that separate Christianity from other belief systems, we are encouraged to embrace the things we have in common: sincere faith, the desire to make the world a better place, and so on.

It’s a tempting proposition. With all the divisiveness in our world today, what’s wrong with ignoring some of the lines that separate us and finding common ground, especially when it comes to spiritual things?

There are two theological words we need to understand when we talk about this issue: interdenominational and interfaith. An interdenominational ministry bases its doctrine on the nonnegotiables of the Christian faith, starting with Jesus’ words in John 14:6. But in the areas that are negotiable—such as worship style, the observance of the Lord’s Supper, and the interpretation of certain Bible passages—it breaks down the walls that separate different Christian denominations.

An interfaith ministry tries to create common ground among different religions. And here’s where we must be careful. We can’t blur the lines that God’s Word establishes. Jesus said there is no other way to God—no other way to experience eternal life—than through Him. If He’s wrong on that point, how can we trust anything else He said?

There’s value in having a dialogue with people of other religions. We see that in Acts 17, where Paul takes the gospel to Athens, the cultural and intellectual center of the world at that time. Some two thousand years later, I got to do the same thing. I walked in the footsteps of Paul. I even spoke on Mars Hill, where Paul addressed the people of Athens.

Athens was an interfaith city, to say the least. It’s estimated that it housed at least thirty thousand altars to various deities. Acts 17:16 tells us that Paul was “deeply troubled by all the idols he saw everywhere in the city.” He didn’t see them as equally valid as his Christian faith. He wanted the people who worshipped those idols to know the truth about Christ. So Paul used what he’d learned about those false religions to begin a dialogue. He embraced the interfaith setting as an opportunity to share his faith. And we can do the same—as long as we understand what is nonnegotiable.

Greg Laurie is an evangelist, author, and the senior pastor of Harvest Riverside.

Source: The Dangers Of The ‘Interfaith’ Movement—And Where The Bible Says It Is Heading – Harbinger’s Daily

The row of colored flags eked, creaked, and fluttered in a gusting, biting wind that swept across the hill. The guide raised her voice above the shrill as the people drew closer so they wouldn’t miss a word, wiped their eyes, and bent their heads. It was Shanksville, PA, September 2007, and it was like no other I had ever heard. It was an American tragedy, and it occurred on 9/11/01.

A temporary memorial atop the hill with a forty-foot fence is decorated with flowers, letters, artwork, stuffed animals, badges, flags, and many other items. Thousands of visitors who come here each week can write their thoughts in journals provided on site. No one sat on the benches where the names of the 40 people who perished are written. It would have been disrespectful to do so! Instead, people gathered around the Ambassador (guide), who serves as a human contact, to hear every word of how the passengers and crew planned to take back Flight 93 from the terrorists, knowing that they might have to give their lives.

All of this has been told on TV and in the movies, but as the saying goes, “you would have to be there” to get the full effect of this horrific crash and the terrible loss of these beautiful people. I like to believe the dew on the grass is their tears. The birds flying overhead are their spirits calling out to us not to forget them and to remember that freedom comes at a price! Pride swelled within me that the lives lost here were not in vain. Had these brave people not succeeded in their attempt to divert the terrorists from their intended target, the Capitol, our country could have been devastated.

Did these forty people have a moment to grab for the pictures in their wallets? Did they kiss the smiling faces of their family? Did they shed a tear? Did they utter a prayer before “let’s roll” rang out and they stormed the cockpit?

I asked the same questions when my husband, Frank Connor, was killed while having lunch in Fraunces Tavern, NY City, by the FALN terrorist group in 1975, and again on 9/11 when

another member of our family, Steven Schlag, was killed at the World Trade Center. These are some of the thoughts that haunt families whose loved ones die at the hands of terrorists. Did they have time to say, “I love you guys,” either out loud or in their hearts?

And now I ask myself what the terrorist hijackers might have been thinking. Did they hesitate for a moment to consider that they were about to murder 40 innocent people?

Allah’s name as the cockpit door was thrown open?

Americans must never again be caught off guard. We now know that plots are being hatched against us, all over the world, even in our own country. We cannot let droning politicians lull us into believing that, if we sit back and “play nice,” everyone will love us.

I am so glad I got to Shanksville before the permanent memorial is created. I believe the spirits of these 40 people fill this beautiful meadow, and the hallowed ground it has become, just as in Ground Zero. They are now a part of our history, and every child will stand taller on hearing of their bravery.

To quote Lincoln’s words from his Gettysburg Address, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion for that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion …”

Mary Connor Tully came from Ireland to America in 1957 at the age of 19 living the American dream until her husband Frank Connor was murdered by FALN terrorists in 1975.  Mary writes short stories about rural life in Ireland and as a proud American citizen.

Source: Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, PA.

More than 9,500 people have died from illnesses linked to the September 11, 2001, according to renowned 9/11 attorney Michael Barasch.

More than 9,500 people have died from illnesses linked to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — more than three times the number murdered on 9/11 itself — as the attacks continue claiming lives 25 years later, according to renowned 9/11 attorney Michael Barasch.

The toll, he noted, has long since eclipsed the 2,977 people murdered in the attacks.

“Over 9,500 people have now died of 9/11 illnesses. That’s three times as many who died on 9/11,” Barasch explained. “So while I get it — a lot of people think that an anniversary is only one day — it’s certainly not the case for the 9/11 community.”

The nation on Friday marks a quarter-century since al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four passenger jets on September 11, 2001, crashing two into New York’s World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

For Barasch, however, the passage of 25 years has created not only a mounting health toll, but an emerging generation with no firsthand memory of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.

“This is crazy — 100 million Americans have been born since 9/11, and they have no memory of 9/11,” he told Breitbart News.

The Barasch & McGarry Charitable Foundation recently awarded six college scholarships to students whose parents or grandparents died from 9/11-related illnesses. What the recipients told him underscored the problem.

“All six of them told me that none of their schools had taught anything about 9/11.”

“It’s not just cops and firefighters,” he stressed.

Barasch pointed to roughly 300,000 office workers, 50,000 students and teachers, and 25,000 downtown residents exposed to the toxins in the aftermath of the attacks.

Only about 15 percent of eligible civilians have enrolled in the programs, according to Barasch, leaving potentially large numbers of people unaware that medical care and compensation may be available to them.

“The frustrating news is that still so many people are not yet enrolled, and it’s almost all the civilians,” Barasch noted.

That eligibility can extend to diseases that emerged years or even decades after the exposure. Barasch noted that the federal system recognizes a presumption covering 69 cancers for qualifying members of the 9/11 community, meaning patients do not have to independently prove that the toxins caused their particular cancer.

“If you were working, living, or going to school downtown, or if you were a responder and you got cancer later, years later, there’s a presumption that it’s caused by your toxin exposure,” he explained. “But people don’t realize it.”

The World Trade Center Health Program and September 11th Victim Compensation Fund have both been extended through 2090, while the health program now serves nearly 150,000 members.

Barasch told Breitbart News that numerous 9/11 family members had personally expressed anger to him over the mayor and said they did not want Mamdani appearing at commemorative events without unequivocally condemning the terrorists responsible for the attacks.

“A lot of family members have told me that until the mayor condemns the terrorists, they don’t want him showing up at any of these events,” he revealed. “They don’t understand why he won’t just come out and say that terrorism is wrong.”

Barasch emphasized that their anger should not be construed as animosity toward Muslims.

“We don’t hate Muslims. We don’t blame all Muslims, but we condemn what these people did,” he explained. “And the mayor can’t seem willing to even do that.”

That, Barasch argued, is why he understands “why so many family members are so angry at this mayor and don’t want him invited.”

Speaking Thursday, ahead of Friday’s anniversary ceremonies, the prominent 9/11 attorney said the occasion itself presented Mamdani an opportunity to address those families directly.

“Until he does,” he warned, “he’s not going to be welcomed.”

Barasch also took issue with a controversial episode last week in which Mamdani used a ceremonial pen to sign executive orders related to the 25th anniversary before it was handed to his chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who previously represented an al-Qaeda detainee held at Guantanamo Bay.

“For a smart guy, he’s really tone deaf, not realizing how insulting something like that would be,” Barasch remarked.

“I think it would be conjecture,” he responded, saying that “even smart people make stupid mistakes” and that he did not believe Mamdani was intentionally seeking to insult anyone.

“But it nevertheless was insulting,” Barasch concluded. “And if he doesn’t recognize that, then maybe he’s not as smart as we think he is.”

His criticism of Mamdani was not categorical.

Barasch also praised the mayor’s administration for releasing more than 170,000 pages of previously unavailable city records this week concerning air quality, health risks, and New York City’s response in the aftermath of the attacks, ending a years-long fight by 9/11 health advocates seeking access to the material.

“Mamdani — let’s give him credit,” Barasch declared. “I don’t always agree with everything, but give him credit. His administration released those records.”

Barasch wants the city to use that effort to reach the civilians who still do not know they may qualify.

“Let’s now do something constructive and let the mayor and the City of New York lead the fight to spread the word to the civilians that you should enroll in these programs,” he urged.

“You are eligible because you were exposed to toxins that our governments, plural, assured you were safe — and it was not.”

Even with federal funding secured for decades, Barasch warned that staffing shortages at the World Trade Center Health Program are creating another obstacle to getting exposed Americans treated quickly.

For cancer patients in particular, Barasch argued, that lost time matters.

“Early detection is the key to beating cancer,” he explained. “And if you get an appointment early, you’ll get diagnosed earlier.”

He is now calling directly on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fill the vacant positions.

“Please, hire the staff that Congress authorized you to hire.”

For Barasch, the steadily mounting death toll, civilians still unaware they may qualify for help, strains on the health program, and a generation coming of age with no memory of the attacks all point to the same lesson 25 years later.

“It’s an ongoing story that sadly is still causing so many people to get sick and die.”

Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

Source: Exclusive — Top 9/11 Lawyer: 9/11 Illnesses Killed 3 Times More Than Terror Attacks

September 11, 2001, was just an ordinary Tuesday. That morning at around 8:30 a.m. on the East Coast, most people were either at work or on their commute. Kids were settling in at school.

Whether the TV or radio news was background chatter or the focus, suddenly there were interruptions announcing that at 8:46 a.m. an American Airlines Boeing 767 (with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel) had crashed into New York City’s World Trade Center’s North Tower. The jet hit between the 93rd and 99th floors of the 110-story skyscraper. Hundreds of people were instantly killed, and others were trapped on the higher floors with no way to escape.

Most people immediately assumed it was a terrible accident, and they continued with their day while listening for news updates.

However, 17 minutes later, at 9:03 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors.

Americans immediately knew that the United States was under attack, with many correctly guessing who had attacked us.

(In October 2025, then mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani visited Masjid At-Taqwa, a mosque in Brooklyn. The smiling Mamdani had his photo taken with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, whom federal prosecutors once named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Is anyone surprised?)

A few minutes later at 9:45 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officially ordered a complete shutdown of U.S. airspace and commanded all airborne planes to land immediately at the nearest airport.

By this time, passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 were aware that their plane was not experiencing a “regular” hijacking. They had been calling family and friends who told them about the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Knowing they were going to die, their goal was to divert the plane away from wherever it planned to go. (Later it was revealed that the fourth plane was intended to hit the heart of America’s republic — the U.S. Capitol.) At 10:02 a.m., at a speed of 500 miles per hour, Flight 93 crashed in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The passengers and crew were heroes for diverting the plane away from D.C.

Most of the world was glued to their television, radio, social media, and phones. For the United States of America, there will always be a ‘before 9/11’ and ‘after 9/11’ view of the world.

President George W. Bush, who was in Florida when the strikes started, had been shuttled to various locations for protection while in contact with government agents about the unfolding events. By 7 p.m., he was back at the White House. At 8:30 p.m., President Bush addressed the American people and the entire world from the Oval Office. Sitting at the Resolute Desk, he said:

“Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.”

In the days and weeks following the attack, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani (at the time called “America’s Mayor” for his outstanding post 9/11 leadership) told the American people:

“The attacks of September 11th were intended to break our spirit. Instead, we have emerged stronger and more unified. We feel renewed devotion to the principles of political, economic, and religious freedom, the rule of law and respect for human life. We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom.”

On September 11, 2026, Americans will commemorate the horrific day when Muslims attacked the United States of America, killing 2,977 innocent people of all races and faiths. Thousands more who had spent weeks digging out the remains of the World Trade Center in the aftermath (and trying to find pieces of bodies) developed illnesses related to 9/11. Many lived with chronic respiratory diseases and died prematurely. More than 100 search and rescue dogs that were deployed to help find survivors in the rubble of the towers also suffered from medical ailments in the years following their service.

About 40 percent of the World Trade Center victims have been identified. It might have been from jewelry or body parts. Only 261 intact bodies were found. While workers were going through the debris, they found 65,000 items, including 437 watches and 144 wedding rings.

Twenty-five years later, there are many people, organizations, and governments (including many in our own country) that refuse to speak the truth as to who committed the terrorist acts on September 11, 2001. As communist Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar once said, “Some people did something.”

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) asked that the word “terrorist” not be used in conjunction with the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attacks. Former Governor George E. Pataki responded on X to that request:

“I was Governor of New York on September 11, 2001.

The planes did not simply crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They were hijacked and deliberately flown into those buildings by Islamist terrorists.

The CBC’s refusal to call September 11 a terrorist attack is political correctness masquerading as journalism. Fear of being accused of Islamophobia cannot become an excuse for denying the plain truth. This is a shameful failure of moral courage.

Truth matters in a free society. Sanitizing September 11 dishonors the nearly 3,000 people who were murdered, the first responders who ran toward danger, and every family that still carries the pain of that day.

No institution should be afraid to tell the truth.”

At this year’s 25th anniversary Memorial Ceremony in Manhattan, families of the victims will gather on the plaza at the Memorial & Museum. They will read aloud the names of the 2,983 people killed in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

A quarter-century ago, the United States was attacked by Islamist terrorists who used planes as their weapons. Today many believe Islamists are attacking the United States with ballots. What do you think?

Robin M. Itzler | September 11, 2026

Robin M. Itzler is a regular contributor to American Thinker. She is the founder and editor of Patriot Neighbors, a free weekly national newsletter. Robin can be reached at RobinItzler@yahoo.com.

Source: September 11. 2001 – American Thinker

Critical analysis of Islam’s impact on society, freedom, and human rights worldwide.

Who Needs Islam?

Source: Who Needs Islam? – PJ Media

“What we are watching unfold around Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham is a window into what happens when a culture abandons objective truth and replaces it with ideology. From a biblical worldview, there is a larger issue beneath it all.”

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Something Deeply Revealing Is Happening Inside The WNBA, And It Has Become About Much More Than Basketball

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Something deeply revealing is happening inside the WNBA, and it has become about much more than basketball.

What we are watching unfold around Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham is a window into what happens when a culture abandons objective truth and replaces it with ideology. The controversy now involves race, transgender ideology, women’s sports, accusations of white privilege, treatment of fans, player safety, and a league struggling to handle two enormously popular players who have brought tremendous attention and money to women’s basketball.

From a biblical worldview, there is a larger issue beneath it all. This is what Romans 1 and the last days look like when ungodly principles work their way into a culture and take over.

Paul describes humanity rejecting the truth of God, suppressing truth, exchanging what God created for something else, and eventually reaching the point where moral categories become inverted in the last days. The progression is important. Once God is rejected as the ultimate authority, man does not become neutral. He creates another authority. Eventually, what should be obvious becomes controversial, and what should be controversial becomes celebrated. That is increasingly what we are seeing in professional women’s basketball.

The Sophie Cunningham Incident

On August 8, Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington struck Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham across the face and neck area while Cunningham was attempting a layup. Officials reviewed the play, upgraded it to a Flagrant 2 foul, and ejected Carrington. Cunningham was left with a bloody mouth.

The foul was so bad that Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said the WNBA would have faced a different response in his state. He said, “The WNBA knows better than to play games down here in Florida, because I’ll be charging people with assault and battery.” And, by the way, Caitlin Clark has been receiving the same kind of physical abuse from other players as well. This is why the WNBA does not play in red states. Attorneys general in red states would be prosecuting these female thugs.

But what happened afterward made the incident much bigger. Carrington posted the words: “WHITE PRIVILEGE.”

And this is from a woman who violates her own inverted WOKE values of cultural appropriation by wearing a white wig. Just imagine what people would say if Clark or Cunningham wore dreadlocks.

Think about the cultural inversion represented by that controversy. A player receives a Flagrant 2 after clotheslining another player in the head and neck area, and almost immediately the discussion moves from whether the foul was excessive to race and privilege. That is precisely the problem with viewing human beings primarily through ideological WOKE categories of oppressor and oppressed.

The biblical worldview begins somewhere completely different. Every human being bears the image of God. Every individual is morally responsible for their actions. Biblical justice does not ask which racial category a person belongs to before determining whether an action was right or wrong. It judges the action.

Even Cunningham’s Coach Became Part of the Controversy

Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White initially said that Carrington is a fierce competitor and that she did not believe Carrington intentionally went for Cunningham’s neck. Huh? What? Are you gaslighting us?

White subsequently delivered an emotional pregame rant amid criticism that she had failed to protect them in the incident. She said she would lead with love, grace, humility, and integrity and condemned what she viewed as attempts to divide the team. Bologna!

Not defending your player against what could be viewed as a serious physical assault is not love, grace, humility, or integrity. It is cowardice in the face of the WOKE ideology that she fears.

The controversy itself demonstrates how politically and culturally charged the environment surrounding the WNBA has become. Because of the WOKE ideology it embraces, the WNBA has become more like World Wrestling Entertainment. People cheer for Clark and Cunningham to be beaten up by gangster-type players who punch people in the throat or clothesline people. This is how a straightforward question about a violent basketball foul quickly became entangled with arguments about race, transgender issues, privilege, ideology, and politics. Basketball seems secondary for the WNBA, its league officials, coaches, and players.

Sophie Cunningham Committed Another WOKE Sin: She Defined a Woman

Cunningham had already become controversial for an entirely different reason. She publicly defended maintaining women’s sports for biological females. Her argument was straightforward: women and girls should not have to compete athletically against biological males. Simple, common-sense, and biblical.

She also made clear that her position was not based upon hatred toward transgender people. She argued that people should be treated with love while simultaneously maintaining biological distinctions in athletics. That should not be revolutionary.

The entire reason women’s sports exist as a separate category is that men and women are biologically different. If biological sex is ultimately irrelevant, then the philosophical justification for having a separate women’s league begins to disappear. Even the name tells you what the organization exists to protect: Women’s National Basketball Association.

Yet the league has found itself debating the meaning and boundaries of the very first word in its name. Its collective bargaining language says only women are eligible to play in the WNBA, while current reporting notes that the provision does not specifically exclude transgender women.

From a biblical worldview, the underlying issue goes much deeper than basketball. Genesis 1:27 says: “Male and female He created them.”

Male and female are not arbitrary social categories invented by human beings. They are part of God’s created order. That does not permit Christians to mistreat transgender people. Every person should be treated with dignity and compassion. But compassion does not require Christians to deny biological reality. Truth and love are not enemies.

When Girls Supporting Women’s Sports Become the Problem

Perhaps one of the most revealing episodes occurred in Seattle. Two teenage girls attended a Seattle Storm game carrying a sign supporting Cunningham for speaking up for girls. Seattle Storm minority co-owner Celeste Keaton confronted Sophie’s fans and directed expletives toward them. The teenagers were wearing shirts displaying XX and XY chromosomes and holding signs that read, “Thank you, Sophie for speaking up for girls,” expressing support for Cunningham’s recent public stance opposing transgender women competing in women’s sports.

According to reports, Keaton approached the girls courtside, directed expletives at them, called them “f—ing insane,” and said things including, “How dare you come here and pull this s–t,” “You better stop this s–t,” “I hope Jesus can forgive you for what sin you’ve done,” “God can save you,” and “Jesus loves everyone.”

How ironic and hypocritical. A lesbian married to another woman who supports transgender men pulls the false Jesus shame-and-condemnation card on teenage girls who are actually representing Genesis 1–2. What hypocrisy. What Pharisaism.

The fact that such an incident happened at all reveals how upside-down and immoral the cultural conversation has become. A women’s league should be one of the safest places in America for the protection of women from biological males competing as females and for teenage girls to exercise their free-speech ability to say: Protect women’s sports. Instead, that message itself has become blasphemy to the WOKE religion.

Caitlin Clark Changed the Economics of Women’s Basketball

There is another extraordinary contradiction running through this story. The WNBA is experiencing unprecedented economic growth because of one player, Caitlin Clark. The NBA has historically subsidized the WNBA and has struggled to become consistently profitable. For years, comparatively few people wanted to watch it, and even many women preferred watching the NBA. But Caitlin Clark changed the economics and visibility of women’s basketball.

The league’s new collective bargaining agreement announced in March dramatically increased player compensation. The salary cap was set to rise from $1.5 million in 2025 to $7 million in 2026, with average salaries projected above $583,000 and maximum salaries reaching $1.4 million.

Caitlin Clark has unquestionably been the central figure in the explosion of interest surrounding women’s basketball. She brought millions of people who previously paid little attention to the WNBA into the sport. Television audiences grew. Ticket demand grew. Media attention exploded. Corporate interest increased. Suddenly, people who could not name three WNBA players were watching games.

She is the Michael Jordan of women’s basketball, but there is a problem: she is white and straight, which does not fit the WOKE narrative that dominates much of the WNBA. Then there is Sophie Cunningham, who has emerged as another highly recognizable figure within that expanding audience. But there is another problem. She is white, straight, a Christian, and bold enough to speak truth against the WOKE narrative of the WNBA.

These women should be treated as enormously valuable assets to the league. These two athletes are the golden geese of the WNBA, but instead, they are treated by players, coaches, the league, and officials like trash. Why would the WNBA treat these two stars as badly as it does? The hostility surrounding these players is extraordinarily self-defeating. It is the proverbial killing of the golden goose.

The Poison of Identity Politics

There is also something deeply unhealthy about reducing every conflict to racial categories. Carrington’s “WHITE PRIVILEGE” reaction demonstrates the problem.

It is entirely legitimate to discuss racism where racism actually exists. Christians should condemn genuine racism because Scripture condemns partiality and because every race shares the same human ancestry and bears God’s image. But interpreting interpersonal conflicts primarily through racial power categories produces another form of partiality. You stop seeing people. You start seeing categories: white, black, oppressor, oppressed, privileged, victim.

That framework comes from Marxist conflict theory, in which society is understood primarily as a set of competing power groups. Biblical Christianity offers something radically different. Acts 17:26 states that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.” Therefore, all people are descended from our common ancestor, Adam.

That does not mean biological distinctions cease to exist. Paul obviously continued recognizing male and female, and Jew and Gentile distinctions. But it means that those biological distinctions, or ethnic distinctions, do not determine spiritual worth before God. The Bible, therefore, rejects racial favoritism.

Lesbianism Has Become Part of the WNBA’s Public Identity

The WNBA has also increasingly associated itself publicly with LGBTQ advocacy. In fact, close to 40-45% of the league are lesbians. Outsports.com. That is disproportionate to society since only 1.1% identify as lesbians in the United States.Worldmetrics.org. It really is not simply about basketball anymore; it has become intertwined with a WOKE ideology that promotes what Scripture identifies as sexual immorality.

Christians are equally free to say that Scripture establishes God’s design for sexuality and marriage. But we are not immune from persecution from those to whom this truth is spoken, as Sophie has experienced.

Biblical Christianity teaches that sexual intimacy belongs within marriage between a man and a woman. That standard applies to heterosexual sin just as surely as homosexual behavior. However, the WNBA increasingly reflects the broader sexual ethic of our culture—that sex and relationships can be defined according to personal desire rather than God’s created order.

The issue therefore is not that one particular group is uniquely sinful, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The issue is whether God possesses the authority to define human sexuality at all. Increasingly, modern culture, like the WNBA, answers: No. Romans 1 answers: Yes. And that brings us back to the real issue.

Romans 1 and the WNBA

Romans 1 is sometimes reduced entirely to homosexuality. That misses Paul’s larger argument.

The chapter describes humanity’s rebellion against the Creator. First comes the suppression of truth. Then comes the exchange of God’s truth for man’s version of reality. Then created things become more authoritative than the Creator—idolatry begins. Then moral disorder follows. Eventually, society reaches a stage where sinful behavior is not merely practiced but approved and celebrated.

That pattern is enormously relevant to modern America and the WNBA. When a women’s professional sports organization struggles to clearly articulate why biological sex matters to women’s sports, something has gone terribly wrong. When teenage girls supporting female athletics become controversial, something has gone wrong. When a brutal basketball foul immediately becomes a racial grievance, something has gone wrong. When identity politics becomes more important than individual responsibility, something has gone wrong. When disagreement with LGBTQ sexual ideology is routinely characterized as hatred, something has gone wrong.

This is bigger than basketball. This is worldview.

The Contradiction of Modern Feminism

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the ideological confusion more clearly than the transgender debate.

For generations, radical feminists protested the male patriarchy, burned their bras, and fought to create athletic opportunities specifically for women. Now they have those opportunities, and they are willing to give them away because of an intersectional hierarchy in WOKE ideology where transgender males can be given priority over biological women.

Now WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is convening a task force of team presidents and general managers to discuss transgender-athlete eligibility. Engelbert sent a memo emphasizing “integrity” and “fair competition,” acknowledging that the issue is “complex and nuanced” while confirming that the task force will address eligibility standards at an upcoming meeting.

Hey, Engelbert, it is really simple: biological males should not be allowed to play women’s sports. Follow the science—not how someone feels.

But that is what happens when you lack a biblical framework. You lose the objective foundation necessary to make common-sense decisions. And if the league allows biological males to compete against women, it will ultimately destroy the very athletic rights women fought for in the name of accommodating transgender athletes. Think about this.

Title IX transformed women’s athletics. Female athletes fought for scholarships. They fought for facilities. They fought for professional leagues. They demanded that women’s athletic accomplishments be taken seriously. Then our culture embraced a WOKE ideology that increasingly struggles even to define the category those generations fought to protect.

There is an enormous contradiction here. How blind are they?

You cannot simultaneously insist that women’s sports are necessary because women deserve their own athletic category while claiming biological sex is irrelevant to membership in that category. At some point, reality wins.

This is why Cunningham’s position resonates with so many people. She is articulating something most Americans once considered obvious. Men and women are different. Women deserve their own sports. You can’t allow a biological male who believes he is female to play with females without pretending those biological distinctions do not exist. It’s a fantasy world!

The WNBA Is a Microcosm of the Last Days

But this is where I believe we need to go beyond Romans 1, because Scripture gives us another prophetic lens through which to view what is happening.

The WNBA is not merely a Romans 1 problem. It has become a microcosm of the kind of culture Scripture says will characterize humanity in the last days of this age.

Paul warned Timothy:

“But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” 2 Timothy 3:1–5

When you read that passage carefully, it is difficult not to see its relevance to the moral condition developing around us. Paul is not merely describing isolated sins committed by isolated people. He is describing characteristics that will become increasingly evident in humanity in the last days.

My argument is that the WNBA has become a remarkable microcosm of the kind of culture Scripture says will characterize humanity in the last days of this age. What we are watching within this league offers a small but highly visible picture of a much larger spiritual and moral transformation unfolding throughout Western civilization.

Paul begins by saying that people will be “lovers of themselves.” That description strikes at the very heart of the modern worldview. We increasingly live in a culture where the individual self has become the ultimate authority. My truth, my body, my identity, my sexuality, my gender, my morality, my reality, my feelings, my pronouns.  What I feel about myself is increasingly expected to take precedence over biology, history, objective truth, and even other people’s rights.

Biblical Christianity begins from the opposite direction. I do not define reality. You do not define reality. The government does not define reality. The culture does not define reality. God defines reality because God created reality. But once God is removed from the equation, someone has to take His place, and increasingly that someone is self.

That is exactly where Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 3 intersect. Romans 1 describes humanity rejecting the Creator, while 2 Timothy 3 describes a humanity increasingly consumed with itself.

Paul then says people will be “boasters, proud” and “haughty.” Think about the arrogance required for a civilization to look at something as biologically obvious as male and female and essentially tell its Creator that He got it wrong. We have reached the point where sophisticated, highly educated people can no longer answer the question, “What is a woman?” or “What is a man?” without qualifications, philosophical gymnastics, or fear of offending somebody.

This is not intellectual advancement. It is what happens when humanity becomes so confident in its own wisdom that it believes it can redefine creation itself.

Romans 1:22 says: “Professing to be wise, they became fools.”

Paul also says people will become “slanderers.” Look at the way modern identity politics operates. Instead of debating ideas, people increasingly attack the motives and character of those with whom they disagree, as the lesbian co-owner of the Seattle Storm did to the teenagers. If you defend women’s sports, you are hateful, and you get cussed out. If you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, you are homophobic. If you believe biological males should not compete against biological females, you are transphobic. If you criticize racial identity politics, you are racist. If you refuse to affirm the approved cultural narrative, the easiest response is no longer to answer your argument but to attach a label to you and dismiss you.

We have watched this happen around Sophie Cunningham. A woman says women deserve their own sports, something that would have been completely uncontroversial not long ago, and suddenly she becomes a cultural villain to some people. Teenage girls show up to support that position, and instead of being celebrated for defending women’s athletics, they become targets of hostility. That is not healthy disagreement. It is evidence of a culture that increasingly has difficulty tolerating dissent from its ideological orthodoxy.

Then Paul uses another striking word. He says people in the last days will be “without self-control” and “brutal.” Think about that word: Brutal. We are watching increasingly aggressive physical treatment of certain players while some fans and commentators appear to celebrate the hostility. Caitlin Clark has endured extraordinary physical abuse on the court. Sophie Cunningham was struck across the face and neck, leaving her with a bloody mouth. Hard basketball is one thing. Basketball is a physical sport. But excessive violence is something else entirely.

When brutality becomes normalized, excused, celebrated, or evaluated according to ideological categories instead of objective standards of right and wrong, Christians should recognize the larger cultural trajectory. Paul specifically warned that brutality would characterize humanity in the last days.

Then he says people will become “despisers of good.” That phrase may be one of the most relevant descriptions of our cultural moment. Think about what has happened. A teenage girl can hold a sign saying, “Thank you, Sophie, for speaking up for girls,” and somehow she becomes the problem. A woman can say, “Women deserve their own sports,” and somehow that becomes controversial. A Christian can repeat Genesis 1:27—“male and female He created them”—and be characterized as hateful for simply affirming the created order. Do you see the inversion?

What was once recognized as good becomes evil, and what Scripture identifies as sinful increasingly becomes something society demands everyone affirm.  Isaiah warned about precisely this kind of moral inversion when he wrote: “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.” —Isaiah 5:20

That is moral inversion, and it is one of the clearest characteristics of our culture. Protecting women’s sports becomes hatred. Allowing biological males into women’s sports becomes compassion. Holding biblical sexual ethics becomes bigotry. Celebrating sexual rebellion becomes tolerance. Standing for biological reality becomes dangerous. Rejecting biological reality becomes enlightenment.

Romans 1:32 describes the final stage of this rebellion as people not only practicing what contradicts God’s order but also approving those who practice it. Sin moves from being tolerated to being accepted, from being accepted to being celebrated, and from being celebrated to requiring everyone else’s affirmation.
Eventually, the person who refuses to celebrate it becomes immoral. That is the inversion taking place before our eyes.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating parts of 2 Timothy 3 is Paul’s statement that people will have “a form of godliness but denying its power.” In other words, the last-days culture Paul describes does not necessarily abandon all religious or moral language. It can continue talking about love. It can talk about compassion. It can talk about justice. It can talk about morality. It can even talk about Jesus.

The problem is that all those words can be emptied of their biblical definitions and filled with entirely different meanings. That is why the incident involving the teenage girls in Seattle with the lesbian co-owner of the Seattle Storm was so revealing. Religious language was reportedly directed against girls defending biological women’s sports. Think about how upside-down that is.

Genesis says, “Male and female He created them,” yet someone defending that distinction can be treated as though she is the immoral one. Jesus can be invoked against someone who is defending the very created order affirmed by Scripture. That is a form of godliness disconnected from the authority of God’s Word. Jesus becomes whatever the culture wants Jesus to be. Love becomes whatever the culture wants love to mean. Justice becomes whatever the culture decides justice means. Compassion becomes affirmation, and disagreement becomes hatred.

But biblical Christianity does not allow us to redefine those words. Jesus said God’s Word is truth. Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices in truth. Justice must be impartial. Compassion does not require participating in someone else’s false understanding of reality. That is why Christians cannot surrender biblical definitions simply because the culture changes its vocabulary.

Romans 1 Explains the Process; 2 Timothy 3 Describes the People. This is where Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 3 fit together so powerfully. Romans 1 explains the process, while 2 Timothy 3 describes the people produced by that process. Romans 1 tells us that humanity suppresses truth, rejects the Creator, exchanges God’s truth for a lie, worships the creation rather than the Creator, descends into moral disorder, and eventually reaches the point where society approves what God condemns.

Then 2 Timothy 3 describes what humanity increasingly looks like when that rebellion matures: lovers of themselves, proud, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, headstrong, haughty, and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Romans 1 gives us the downward trajectory. Second Timothy 3 gives us the last-days character. Increasingly, we are watching the two converge.

The WNBA provides a concentrated picture—a microcosm—of the moral and spiritual characteristics Scripture says will increasingly characterize humanity in the last days.

The WNBA is not the disease—It Is a symptom.
The WNBA is not America’s fundamental problem.
It is a symptom of America’s problem.
The real problem is spiritual.

It is about authority. It is about truth. It is about God’s created order. And it is about a culture increasingly displaying the very characteristics Scripture warned would mark the last days of this age, and we are watching it happen right before our eyes.

Brandon Holthaus serves as the lead Pastor of Rock Harbor Church in Bakersfield, California, in addition to hosting “Tip Of The Spear,” sitting down with Pastors and cultural voices to explore current issues through a Biblical lens.

Source: Something Deeply Revealing Is Happening Inside The WNBA, And It Has Become About Much More Than Basketball – Harbinger’s Daily