Stembridge News Digest

  • Ronald Reagan's 1984 Memorial Day speech observing interment of unknown Vietnam service member 'healed scars,' writer says Mon, 25 May 2026 18:00:00 +0000


    In his essay for We Are the Mighty, Stephen Ruiz declared that President Ronald Reagan's 1984 Memorial Day speech observing the interment of an unknown Vietnam service member at Arlington National Cemetery "healed scars."

    "We write no last chapters," Reagan told the crowd, Ruiz recalled. "We close no books. We put away no final memories. An end to America's involvement in Vietnam cannot come before we've achieved the fullest possible accounting of those missing in action."

    'The Vietnam Unknown never heard such cheers.'

    More from Ruiz's essay:

    A decade after the final U.S. troops left Vietnam on March 29, 1973, some service members who fought in Southeast Asia couldn’t forget the harsh treatment that fellow Americans heaped upon them. Some were spat on while others received the middle finger or were called “baby killers.” They served their country and were blamed for the United States not defeating the North Vietnamese.

    Reagan realized old wounds can’t go unattended. Two years after the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Reagan used his oratorical gifts to promote a better understanding of what Vietnam veterans endured.

    The president continued a tradition from past wars and awarded the Medal of Honor to the Vietnam Unknown. That nice moment was not enough for Reagan. He reached out to military families residing in a continual, painful limbo because of a loved one MIA. Reagan told them that a grateful nation understood their plight.

    "They live day and night with uncertainty, with an emptiness, with a void that we cannot fathom," Reagan said, Ruiz recalled.

    The author noted that Reagan's speech added references to President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address — and that volunteers read nearly 58,000 names on the Vietnam Veterans Wall in 1982 over the course of three days.

    Ruiz also noted that Reagan read from a newspaper article about a restaurant dinner former Marines shared and that a group of college students — "some of them likely still in diapers when the first U.S. troops arrived in Vietnam in 1965," Ruiz wrote — mingled with them, then applauded them as the veterans left the eatery.

    Ruiz remembered that Reagan, reading from the newspaper article, quoted one former Marine's response: “The whole week, it was worth it just for that."

    RELATED: Stories Behind the Stars: On a mission to honor every American who died in WWII

    "The Vietnam Unknown never heard such cheers," Ruiz added in his essay. "In so many ways, wars never end for those who knew someone MIA. So many unanswered questions remain, threatening to expose a deep sense of loss always lingering just below the surface."

    The author added that "in 1984, Reagan was acutely aware of that."

    In his speech, the president said of the unknown soldier, "About him we may well wonder, as others have: As a child, did he play on some street in a great American city? Or did he work beside his father on a farm out in America's heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children? Did he look expectantly to return to a bride?"

    In conclusion, Reagan noted, "Today, we simply say with pride, 'Thank you, dear son. May God cradle you in His loving arms.'"

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  • Thousands more American troops stationed in Middle East this Memorial Day as peace with Iran looms on the horizon Mon, 25 May 2026 16:30:00 +0000


    This Memorial Day, thousands more U.S. servicemen and -women than usual are stationed in the Middle East due to the ongoing tensions with Iran, even as recent developments suggest a peace agreement may be near.

    In late March, the New York Times reported that 50,000 U.S. troops were in the Middle East, an increase of about 10,000 from the 40,000 troops who are typically in the region. Many of those troops were stationed "at sea," the outlet noted.

    At the time, an additional 2,500 Marines, 2,500 sailors, and 2,000 Army soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division had just arrived. While the exact location of the Army paratroopers was not made public, they would be "within striking distance of Iran," the Times reported.

    It seems that little has changed in the weeks since. The Times reported on May 6 that the 50,000-strong U.S. forces remain "on standby in the region" as the delicate ceasefire with Iran hangs in the balance.

    As recently as May 11, Trump said the ceasefire is on "life support" after Iranian officials sent a proposal that Trump called a "piece of garbage."

    RELATED: Trump administration establishes ‘red, white, and blue dome’ to allow safe passage through Strait of Hormuz

    U.S. Navy/Getty Images

    When reached for comment, the War Department referred Blaze News to U.S. Central Command. A source familiar with the matter told Blaze News that for safety reasons, CENTCOM does not comment on troop movements or schedules.

    The four-to-six-week timetable President Donald Trump initially gave for the attacks on Iran has long since expired, but the president does not seem as focused on the protracted process as he is on the results.

    And his patience may be paying off.

    Over Memorial Day weekend, news of a possible peace deal began spreading online. While Trump has not divulged many details, he wrote on Sunday that "negotiations are proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner" and that America's "relationship with Iran is becoming a much more professional and productive one."

    Trump even teased that should a deal be reached, Iran may someday join the "Nations of the historic Abraham Accords." Still, he cautioned that the U.S. would not "rush into a deal in that time is on our side."

    Above all, Trump pledged that Iran will never have nuclear weapons and that any agreement he reaches with Iranian officials will be "THE EXACT OPPOSITE" of the "pallets of cash" deal former President Barack Obama made in 2016, quipping, "Unlike those before me who should have solved this problem many years ago, I don’t make bad deals!"

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  • Josh Howerton WARNS when Christians don't lead — ‘godless people will’ Mon, 25 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000


    While some believe that Christians should stay out of politics, Pastor Josh Howerton not only disagrees — he believes that they “have a spiritual responsibility to vote.”

    “What the Scriptures teach is that God has ordered the world in terms of three. God has established three institutions: the family, the church, and the state,” Howerton tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

    “In the same way that it would be morally wrong for a husband to refuse to lead his family, and it would be morally wrong for a pastor to refuse to lead his church, it would be morally wrong for the leaders of a nation to refuse to lead the nation,” he explains.

    “But this is what’s really important. We live in a constitutional republic. We do not live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional republic. In a constitutional republic ... the elected officials are representatives of the people,” he continues.


    “So in a constitutional republic, the voters are at the top of the org chart. So I think that’s something that I think a lot of well-meaning, but I’ll gently say, maybe a little naive, a lot of well-meaning but maybe naive Christians forget,” he adds.

    Howerton points to Romans 13, which instructs that God has established the governments and governing leaders in our constitutional republic.

    “If you are a voting Christian, God has placed you at this time, in this place, at the top of the constitutional republic org chart in which you find yourself,” he explains.

    “And so, I would gently say in the same way that if a man won’t lead his family, we messed up. If a pastor won’t lead his church, we messed up. If the Christian voters of a nation refuse to lead that nation and abdicate their spiritual responsibility to lead,” he says, adding, “I think we’re messing up.”

    And the reason it’s so important not to mess up is because “whatever God creates, Satan tries to co-opt.”

    “In Genesis 2 and 3, Adam refuses to lead his family ... so Satan does,” Howerton tells Stuckey.

    “In Revelation 2 and 3 ... you had some passive pastors who instead of leading their churches to repent of sin, they led their churches to tolerate sin. So they in their passivity, and Romans 2 and 3 literally say those churches became quote ‘a synagogue of Satan,’” he says.

    “In the same way, if spirit-filled godly people will not lead their nation by voting,” he continues, adding, “godless people will.”

    Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

    To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

  • This Memorial Day, these are some of the dead we remember Mon, 25 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000


    Memorial Day means different things to different Americans. For some, especially those whose losses remain fresh, no national holiday is required to preserve memory. Grief already structures daily life; the formal rituals of remembrance — flags, ceremonies, cemetery visits — may still offer recognition, but the dead are hardly absent.

    For others, the connection is more distant: a grandfather never met, a name on an old photograph, a relative spoken about only occasionally. The holiday can become less an occasion for immediate mourning than a meditation on inheritance and historical continuity.

    Memorial Day, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, exists because modern war produces anonymity at a scale human beings struggle to comprehend.

    Still other Americans may have no direct personal connection to war at all. For them, that distance is itself a kind of blessing. Memorial Day may register primarily as a feeling of generalized gratitude — gratitude for the country itself and for those who fought on its behalf.

    Yet the holiday’s deeper purpose is more specific and, in some ways, more demanding. Memorial Day asks us to remember individuals whose lives were interrupted by war, individuals with whom we may have nothing in common but our shared nation.

    In recent years, debates over immigration, national identity, and social cohesion have forced Americans to ask what citizenship actually means. Memorial Day offers one answer older and less ideological than many offered by contemporary politics: Citizenship implies obligations not only to the living, but to the dead. A nation becomes more than a marketplace or administrative zone when its citizens believe they owe remembrance to those whose lives became bound up with the country’s history.

    Memorial Day is one of our few remaining holidays that ask us to remember strangers. Not celebrities or family members or ideological allies, but ordinary people, fellow Americans whose lives were cut short by violence that history inevitably turns abstract.

    In an increasingly individualized society, that obligation can feel unfamiliar. Yet to remember our fellow citizens across distance, class, region, and even generations is to affirm that we belong to one another in ways deeper than convenience or self-interest.

    These are a few of the many Americans we remember today.

    James Robert Montgomery

    When Drew Gilpin Faust wrote about the Civil War’s culture of mourning in "This Republic of Suffering," she lingered over a bloodstained letter written by James Robert Montgomery, a 26-year-old Confederate signal corps soldier mortally wounded at Spotsylvania in 1864.

    A former law student from Mississippi, Montgomery spent his last moments taking pen to paper and — in labored but still elegant script — composing a farewell message to his father:

    “I write to you because I know you would be delighted to read a word from your dying son.”

    The word “delighted” now feels shocking. Yet, as Faust observed, Civil War Americans placed immense importance on the final words of the dying. Even in agony, Montgomery worried about consoling those at home.

    “I would like to rest in the grave yard with my dear mother and brothers but it’s a matter of minor importance,” he wrote, just before signing off as “your dying son.” “Let us all try to reunite in heaven.”

    His final resting place remains in Virginia.

    Bert Stiles

    Before World War II, Bert Stiles was a Colorado college student obsessed with becoming a writer. The son of a Denver electrician and a music teacher, he spent summers working as a junior forest ranger in Estes Park, experiences that became material for his short stories. While attending Colorado College, he wrote constantly — stories, poetry, newspaper features — and briefly embraced the pacifist sentiments common on American campuses before the war.

    In 1941, convinced he could become a serious writer, Stiles hitchhiked repeatedly to New York to meet literary agents who had shown interest in his work. He eventually found mentors willing to support him, and his stories soon began appearing in publications like the Saturday Evening Post.

    For many celebrated American writers, war became a harsh but formative education — the crucible from which emerged figures like Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and James Jones. Looking backward, it can almost seem like a foregone conclusion that their talent would survive long enough to become literature. But for every writer history remembers, there were others swallowed by the machinery of war before their lives had fully begun. History offers no exemption for promise.

    Stiles continued writing throughout his combat service, producing articles and journal entries while flying bombing missions over Germany with the Eighth Air Force. He completed a full combat tour in B-17 bombers, volunteered for a second tour flying P-51 Mustangs, and was killed in November 1944 during a dogfight south of Hanover. He was 23 years old.

    Henry T. Waskow

    War correspondent Ernie Pyle became famous during World War II not for writing about generals or battlefield strategy, but for documenting the emotional lives of ordinary American soldiers. His most enduring dispatch may have been his account of the death of Captain Henry T. Waskow during the Italian campaign in 1944.

    Pyle wrote:

    Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

    “After my own father, he came next,” a sergeant told me.

    Pyle described soldiers bringing Waskow’s body down a mountain trail by mule under moonlight alongside other dead men. One by one, exhausted infantrymen approached the body, lingering beside their captain in silence.

    One soldier looked down and muttered simply, "God damn it." Another stood over him for a moment before saying, “I sure am sorry, sir.”

    Then one man sat beside Waskow’s body, holding the dead captain’s hand silently for several minutes before gently straightening his shirt collar and rearranging the torn edges of his uniform around the wound.

    Thomas Joseph Fox Jr.

    After he was killed in action in 1970, Thomas Joseph Fox Jr. was remembered by friends as an easygoing Sacramento teenager who loved football, rock music, and cars.

    One fellow artilleryman later recalled Fox borrowing his Creedence Clearwater Revival tapes at a fire base near Chu Lai. Fox talked often about home. When his tour ended, he said, he wanted to spend weekends at William Land Park waxing and polishing his car while watching girls drive by.

    Another childhood friend remembered playing tackle football with Fox at East Portal Park just before he shipped out to Vietnam. After the game, Fox encouraged him to try out for the high school football team — a small moment the friend said he still carried with him more than 40 years later.

    One friend who enlisted alongside him later recalled escorting his body back to Sacramento by train.

    “I miss you, old friend,” he wrote decades later. “I think about you all the time.”

    Marvin Winston Murray

    Marvin Winston Murray had been in Vietnam less than two months when he died at 21.

    A high school classmate from New York City remembered practicing relay handoffs with Murray during track practice in New York.

    Years later, the memory still lingered with him. After unexpectedly encountering friends dressed for Murray’s funeral while home on military leave himself, he eventually visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to see Murray’s name etched into the black stone wall.

    “I’m going to get a rubbing,” he wrote decades later. “So I can frame it.”

    Dan Bullock

    Dan Bullock was only 15 years old when he was killed in the Vietnam War in 1969, likely the youngest American serviceman to die there. He had enlisted in the Marines at 14 after altering his birth certificate to appear older.

    Born in North Carolina and later raised in Brooklyn, Bullock talked about becoming a pilot, then a policeman, and finally a Marine. “Mostly he wanted to make his mark in life,” his father later said. “He wanted to be something.”

    Bullock arrived in Vietnam in May 1969 and was dead just 21 days later after an attack on An Hoa Combat Base. The Marines around him did not know his real age, but many sensed something unusual about him. One recalled years later: “He was younger, and he didn’t belong.”

    When a reporter visited the family’s home, they searched for his last letter home but couldn’t find it. The line his stepmother remembered poignantly captures a certain youthful bravado.

    “He said he was fine,” she recalled. “He said he didn’t have any holes in him.”

    Chance Phelps

    Chance Phelps was funny, outdoorsy, and always on the move — “the kind of person who had to be in the thick of things,” as his mother later put it.

    Raised partly in Wyoming and Colorado, Phelps loved football, hunting, fishing, and making people laugh. A former teammate remembered him as “kind of like a country boy,” always smiling and doing something goofy. Another friend later admitted that before Iraq, “I thought we were both invincible, that nothing could touch us.”

    After the attacks of Sept. 11, Phelps told his mother he felt compelled to serve.

    “I absolutely have to go,” he said. “I’ve got to do something.”

    Phelps was 19 when he was killed near Ramadi in April 2004, barely a month after arriving in Iraq. When Marines came to inform his mother in the middle of the night, she later recalled being struck most by one detail:

    “They were crying.”

    Unknown

    At Arlington National Cemetery, the remains of one unidentified American serviceman from World War I lies buried without a name. The tomb simply reads:

    “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”

    Memorial Day, like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, exists because modern war produces anonymity at a scale human beings struggle to comprehend. Each grave, each name carved into stone is an attempt to resist that anonymity, to point to an ordinary human life of infinite value.

    Today is our humble opportunity to come together as a country and proclaim: These people existed. They belonged to us. They should not disappear.

  • My father brought Memorial Day to the doorstep Mon, 25 May 2026 13:30:00 +0000


    As a boy in the early 1970s, I remember my father serving as a U.S. Navy Reserve chaplain in Atlanta. One of his duties was casualty notification, informing families that their loved one had been killed in military service, usually the Marines.

    In winter, he wore his Navy service dress blues while accompanying other officers into some of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods and housing projects. There were no cell phones, GPS systems, or easy ways to locate families quickly. The notifications were time-sensitive, and strangers in uniform were often met cautiously in neighborhoods already carrying more than their share of hardship. Some families hid at first because they thought the men approaching their doors were police officers.

    This Memorial Day, a nation pauses to remember the Americans who never took off the uniform.

    But my father carried a different burden: the worst message a family could hear.

    In addition to preaching from a pulpit, he ministered on doorsteps.

    He served for many years, eventually retiring with the rank of captain. But long before that, I watched him carry one of the hardest duties a chaplain could bear.

    Memorial Day means more to me because of that.

    Not all memorials are granite.

    Some are folded into flags handed to trembling families. Others hang quietly in framed photographs or rest beneath white crosses overlooking distant oceans. And some are so small that readers almost miss them in Scripture.

    One appears in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, Matthew records the lineage of Jesus carefully: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon.

    But when he arrives at Solomon, Matthew writes something unusual: “David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah” (Matthew 1:6).

    Bathsheba’s name is not mentioned. Her husband’s is.

    Uriah the Hittite.

    King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and arranged for Uriah to die in battle. Scripture does not sanitize David’s sin: “The thing that David had done displeased the Lord” (2 Samuel 11:27).

    David repented. God forgave him. But the consequences remained.

    Still, God preserved the name David tried to bury.

    Every Memorial Day, I think about that.

    Uriah has now been remembered for nearly 3,000 years, not because kings honored him properly. His own king had him killed. But God refused to let him disappear.

    And Uriah was not even an Israelite by birth. He was a Hittite. Yet he served honorably even when his king acted dishonorably toward him.

    Memorial Day reminds us that service is vital.

    As America approaches 250 years as a nation, countless men and women have worn its uniform unto death. Some died heroically in combat. Others died through confusion, incompetence, training accidents, or the failures of leaders far from the battlefield.

    War has always mixed courage with tragedy, honor with human failure. But generation after generation, Americans still stepped forward, willing to bear costs most citizens pray they never personally face.

    Many of those never came home alive.

    My own sons are now about the age my father was when he knocked on those doors in a Navy uniform, carrying news no family ever wants to hear.

    Looking at my sons, I cannot imagine them carrying that burden repeatedly.

    Yet those moments marked my father for the rest of his ministry. His faith was forged in living rooms where stunned families learned someone they loved was not coming home.

    He carried both the duty of the nation and the ministry of the church into rooms shattered by grief.

    His grave marker bears both his rank and his calling, a reminder that he stood beside grieving families in their darkest hours.

    So this Memorial Day, a nation pauses to remember the Americans who never took off the uniform.

    But in that pause, if you served beside a military chaplain, remember them as well.

    Many spent their ministries carrying unbearable news to frightened families, fighting back tears while praying for those who could not, burying the dead, and offering words no one who hears them ever forgets:

    “On behalf of a grateful nation ...”

    History forgets names. Monuments weather. Politicians fail. But God does not forget.

    In the genealogy of Christ, God preserved the name of a faithful soldier. No service and no sacrifice poured out in duty escapes the sight of God.

    Not all memorials are granite. Some are written where time cannot erase them.

  • ‘For those who can’t’: Coast-to-coast motorcycle ride pays rolling tribute to veterans Mon, 25 May 2026 12:00:00 +0000


    More than 970 Americans honored our nation’s veterans this Memorial Day by participating in Run for the Wall, an annual 10-day coast-to-coast motorcycle ride from Ontario, California, to Washington, D.C.

    RFTW, which started in 1989, was organized by Vietnam veteran Gunnery Sergeant James “Gunny” Gregory and a small group of fellow veterans to raise awareness for prisoners of war and those missing in action. It is the largest and longest-running organized cross-country motorcycle ride.

    'It restores my faith in America and in humanity.'

    This year, riders departed from California on May 13 to take one of the RFTW’s three routes across the U.S. — Central, Midway, and Southern Routes — to reach the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in the nation’s capital on May 23, just a couple of days ahead of Memorial Day.

    A fourth drive, known as the Sandbox Route, took riders from D.C. to the Middle East Conflicts Wall Memorial in Marseilles, Illinois, to pay respect to younger generations of veterans who served during the Global War on Terror.

    As riders stop in cities along their routes, they are greeted by cheering locals who line the streets waving American flags. Gallup, New Mexico, a pitstop on the Central Route, hosts a large motorcycle parade through town, followed by a “Gathering of Veterans” ceremony and a dinner for the riders at Red Rock Park.

    RFTW’s motto is “We ride for those who can’t.”

    For each leg of the journey, riders honor the memory of a service member who was killed in action, missing, or held as a prisoner of war. They write the person’s name and branch of service in chalk on the ground and display a photo and a biography so others can stop by to pay their respects.

    RELATED: A Marine’s Memorial Day message: Don’t forget the price

    Image source: Run for the Wall

    At the front of the pack, they ride in a Missing Man Formation, which involves five motorcycles with an empty space where a sixth bike should be to symbolize the missing serviceman’s absence. The photos and bios of the service members are brought to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and placed at the panel where their name is inscribed.

    Ted “Boots” Kapner, the director of public relations for RFTW, told Blaze News that Memorial Day has taken on “a whole new meaning” for him since he started participating in the cross-country ride in 2017.

    Kapner, who hosts the RFTW podcast, explained that during the show, he will read the biographies of individuals whose names are inscribed on a memorial wall.

    “I feel like for every bio that I read on the podcast, I get to know them,” he stated, describing learning about their family and where they grew up. “I carry these bios with me and deliver them to the wall; it’s not just a barbecue and a celebration, it’s really a day of solemn remembrance.”

    RELATED: Gold Star grief never ends — remember the fallen this Memorial Day

    Image source: Run for the Wall

    Kapner described reaching the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., with his fellow riders as “a cascade of emotions.”

    “We’re all in tears, and we’re all there, arm in arm, supporting one another,” Kapner told Blaze News. “It’s a family. ... It restores my faith in America and in humanity.”

    “America is still a great nation, and it is our best hope. There comes a time when we all have to set aside our differences and know that we’re more alike than we are different,” he stated.

    Kapner encouraged Americans to take time on Memorial Day to remember those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.

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  • An anti-mosquito Iron Dome may be the next leap in pest-control tech Mon, 25 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000


    Move over, citronella oils and sound emitters. It's time to take mosquito repellant into the space age.

    When nets, spray, and anti-mosquito pills are just not working, one company says it is almost ready ship a mosquito defense system that seems like it should be fitted on the Death Star.

    'When used as directed, there is no risk to adults, children, babies, or pregnant women.'

    Just when technology seemingly couldn't get any crazier, the Photon Matrix is a new product hoping to ship to consumers worldwide this summer.

    Labeled the world's first portable laser mosquito defense system, the Photon Matrix Lab team says its light detection and ranging system combined with an electromechanical measuring instrument — called a galvanometer — is the answer to ridding one's back yard, cottage, or camping trip of mosquitoes.

    The company promises that its "precision laser striking system" delivers an automated and chemical-free way to zap mosquitoes out of the sky as soon as they are within range.

    The product works by shooting its laser at objects within an approximately 19-foot radius that are between 0.08 and 0.8 inches in size.

    The device cannot kill houseflies, roaches, wasps, or moths, because they are larger and faster than mosquitoes, the company says. Therefore, it is also allegedly safe for operation around bees or butterflies, which have different flight patterns that the machine does not recognize.

    RELATED: This new laser farming technique could free us from pesticides — forever

    - YouTube

    With obvious safety concerns as the first question, this Chinese company out of Changzhou City, China, says if a large pet or human comes into the target zone, the device will automatically stop shooting.

    At the same time, the company claims the laser is very low power with extremely short pulse duration, so it would not cause burns even in the "extremely unlikely" event of direct skin exposure.

    The company wrote, "When used as directed, there is no risk to adults, children, babies, or pregnant women."

    RELATED: America's next-gen weapons face a down-to-earth foe: The elements

    Francisco J. Olmo/Europa Press/Getty Images

    The product is expected to ship in Q2-Q3 2026, which is listed as approximately July-August, currently priced at around $650 USD.

    It does require monthly cleaning; users are instructed to clean the laser's optical window to prevent dust buildup.

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  • Remembering America's first Army chaplain KIA: John Rosbrugh Mon, 25 May 2026 10:30:00 +0000


    Rev. John Rosbrugh, the first U.S. Army chaplain killed in battle, was bayoneted 239 years ago in the midst of the withdrawal from the Battle of Assunpink Creek in the Revolutionary War.

    In a 19th-century biography detailing the "life, labors, and death" of this "Clerical Martyr of the Revolution," Rev. John Clyde emphasizes at the outset, "Amid all the light thrown upon his career socially, ecclesiastically, and politically — by tradition and historical record — nothing but the good he did lived after him, whilst the evil was interred with his bones — so far as known no blot rests on his fair name."

    'Sabre slashes were made at his devoted head, three of which penetrated through the horsehair wig which he wore.'

    Rosbrugh belonged to a Scottish family that migrated in the early 18th century to Northern Ireland. With his older brother William, Rosbrugh eventually moved to the American Colonies, settling in New Jersey, where at the age of 19, he married a woman named Sarah, who would tragically perish along with their baby during childbirth.

    Although unable himself decades later to afford "that thorough education which was required of those who would enter the sacred office in his day," the aspiring Presbyterian minister studied theology at the College of New Jersey — now Princeton University — with the help of financial aid and graduated in 1761.

    Rosbrugh was ordained as a minister in 1764 at Greenwich Presbyterian Church in New Jersey.

    The minister, whose recognition and responsibilities exploded in subsequent years, married again, this time to Jane Ralston of the Allen Township Presbyterian Church. Rosbrugh and Jane ultimately had five children — the eldest, James, would later serve as a militia captain in the War of 1812.

    Long before his son would take up arms in defense of his country, Rosbrugh — "filled with the spirit of freedom" — decided to lead his congregants out of church and toward the battlefield.

    According to Clyde, Rosbrugh assembled his congregation, urged them to satisfy the Continental Army's request for reinforcements, quoted them Judges 5:23, and proposed that he join them as chaplain. The congregation was apparently keen to go — but only if he would be their commander. After some deliberation and receiving consent from his wife, Rosbrugh agreed.

    RELATED: The crown laughed at our Declaration — but America got the last word

    Gen. George Washington at the first Battle of Trenton. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

    After penning his last will and testament, the minister "put a musket to his shoulder and marched out to the highway, and all fell into line and followed" Rosbrugh to join General George Washington in Philadelphia.

    "The little boy James, rode the gray horse by his father's side till they passed over the brow of the hill, just east of their home, as we suppose," wrote Clyde. "Then the father took him from the horse, kissed him, and bade him go home to his mother, and be a good boy till he should return — he never saw his father's face again."

    In Philadelphia, Rosbrugh assumed, as he intended from the start, the role of company chaplain and was replaced as commander by Capt. John Hays. The previous year, the Continental Congress authorized one chaplain for each regiment of the Continental Army with pay equaling that of a captain.

    Rosbrugh's tenure as a chaplain in Washington's army was short-lived. Just days after the Battle of Trenton, where Washington — having just crossed the Delaware River — led a momentous victory against Hessian auxiliaries, the chaplain breathed his last.

    Clyde noted that there are varying accounts of how the chaplain perished but held that the most trustworthy version has that the chaplain — whose company partook in the Battle of Assunpink Creek — unwittingly lingered behind at the eponymous site of the Second Battle of Trenton while the patriot army withdrew.

    On Jan. 2, 1777, Rosbrugh tied up his horse outside a pub, then went inside for refreshments only to hear someone cry, "The Hessians are coming."

    The 63-year-old chaplain rushed outside to find that his horse had been stolen, then attempted to make his escape on foot, only to run into a small group of Hessians under the command of a British officer.

    Clyde explained what reportedly happened next:

    Seeing that further attempt at escape was useless, he surrendered himself a prisoner of war. Having done so, he offered to his captors his gold watch and money if they would spare his life for his family's sake. Notwithstanding these were taken, they immediately prepared to put him to death. Seeing this, he knelt down at the foot of a tree and, it is said, prayed for his enemies. Now seventeen bayonet thrusts were made at his body, and one bayonet was left broken off in his quivering frame. Sabre slashes were made at his devoted head, three of which penetrated through the horsehair wig which he wore.

    The stone monument erected in Rosburgh's memory at Hanover Academy in Trenton states, "Clerical Martyr of the Revolution[.] Moderator of the Presbytery of New Brunswick 1776[.] Chaplain 3d Battalion Northampton County PA Militia December 25, 1776[.] Bayoneted to death by Hessians in Trenton January 2, 1777."

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  • The knock that changes everything: Glenn Beck’s powerful reminder of Memorial Day’s true meaning Mon, 25 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000


    For many Americans, Memorial Day is nothing more than a welcome day off of work to kick back and relax and maybe host a backyard barbeque.

    But the true meaning of this holiday should stir deep gratitude and empathy in every American citizen. Memorial Day is set aside not for leisure but for reverence. It is about honoring and remembering the men and women of the armed forces who died while serving in the military.

    Two years ago, Glenn Beck delivered an unforgettable message that is worth revisiting on this important day.

    - YouTube

    Glenn starts by telling a common story that only the parents of fallen soldiers will truly understand.

    “If you will, try to imagine this in the first person, through the eyes of someone I'm about to describe,” he begins.

    “Your son has been in the United States Marine Corps for what seems like forever now. … What begins as extreme worry and then turns to panic, then helplessness, then all time seems to stop. It's as if you're stranded in the loneliest cold of winter, with no daylight to help tell you the passage of time. It's just you, your worry, and no end in sight,” he narrates.

    Unbeknownst to you, your beloved son suddenly falls in combat. This immediately sets a precise military protocol in motion.

    “This is what's happening behind the scenes,” says Glenn. “First a death notification. It has to be executed within eight hours. A discreet attempt to locate you, the next of kin, is initiated so the officers chosen to deliver the notification arrive at the right place at the right time.”

    “Three individuals are typically chosen to arrive at your home: an officer at least one rank higher than the deceased, a chaplain, and someone capable of delivering medical help should the next of kin pass out or worse,” he continues.

    The parent, already sensing the gut-wrenching news, listens in horror as the officer delivers the following message: “The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 26. The commandant and the Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.”

    “This is the nightmare that thousands have had to endure, thousands fear could happen to them at any time,” says Glenn.

    “312 parents experienced what I just described in 2003 alone; in 2007, 847 military men and women died in combat; in 2008, 352; in 2009, 346 — and the list and the numbers go on and on,” he recounts.

    This Memorial Day, as we gather with friends and family, Glenn hopes that we will take time to remember the true meaning of this somber holiday.

    “I'm not trying to be a downer here, but there is a sacredness to Memorial Day that most of us just cannot understand,” he says.

    Glenn concludes by reading John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

    “This weekend, remember the honor, the love of country, the families. Together they represent the absolute best of all of us.”

    To hear Glenn deliver this touching monologue, watch the video above.

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  • CS Lewis: Angry atheist surprised by God Sun, 24 May 2026 20:00:00 +0000


    Before he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Christian writers, C.S. Lewis was a committed atheist who regarded religion with suspicion, irritation, and eventually contempt.

    Christianity seemed to him a relic of humanity’s intellectual childhood — a comforting story for people unable to face reality without divine reassurance.

    ‘Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about “man’s search for God.” ... To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.’

    Return to sender

    Lewis’ loss of faith began early. Though raised in a nominally Christian household in Belfast, his childhood belief collapsed after the death of his mother from cancer when he was just 9 years old.

    “With my mother’s death,” he later wrote in his memoir, “Surprised by Joy,” “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life.”

    Prayer seemed useless. God, if He existed at all, appeared absent and indifferent. Lewis later compared the experience to writing letters to someone who never replied.

    As he grew older, his atheism hardened. Immersed in classical literature, philosophy, and modern rationalism, Lewis came to regard Christianity as one mythology among many — no more objectively true than the pagan stories he admired in ancient texts.

    At Oxford, he became known among friends as a “foul-mouthed and riotously amusing atheist.” The horrors of the First World War only deepened his disbelief. After surviving trench warfare and seeing death at close range, Lewis later remarked with grim pride: “I never sank so low as to pray.”

    Yet even at the height of his atheism, cracks had begun to appear.

    Deeper longing

    Lewis found himself haunted by experiences that materialism could not easily explain: sudden moments of longing triggered by music, poetry, memory, or beauty. Reading certain books or encountering particular images awakened in him what he later described as an intense, almost painful desire for something beyond ordinary experience.

    “An unsatisfied desire,” he wrote, “which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy.”

    If human beings consistently longed for something no earthly experience could fully satisfy, what did that suggest? Hunger points to food. Thirst points to water. Why should this deeper longing exist at all if reality were ultimately meaningless?

    Lewis slowly began to suspect that the longing was not accidental. Just as hunger points to food and thirst to water, this deeper want revealed something essential about human beings. As he would write in “Mere Christianity,” “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

    He also found that his outrage at injustice itself suggested a moral framework that preceded humanity.

    “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust?”

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    Washington Post/Getty Images

    Kicking and screaming

    Lewis did not move suddenly from atheism to Christianity. He resisted all the way, considering himself “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

    “Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God,’” he wrote. “To me, as I then was, they might as well have talked about the mouse’s search for the cat.”

    Eventually, the chase ended. But having acknowledged God’s existence, Christianity itself remained a stumbling block.

    Lewis loved mythology deeply and still regarded the Gospels as one myth among many. The breakthrough came largely through conversations with friends, including J.R.R. Tolkien, who challenged his assumption that myth and truth were opposites.

    Christianity, Tolkien argued, was the “true myth”: the story toward which humanity’s myths and legends had always pointed, but one that had entered actual history.

    The truth of myth

    The idea struck Lewis with enormous force.

    Themes that echoed through pagan mythology — sacrifice, death, resurrection, redemption — were not evidence that Christianity was fabricated, Lewis came to believe. They were signs that humanity had been reaching toward the same truth all along.

    Soon afterward, while riding in the sidecar of his brother’s motorcycle on the way to a zoo, Lewis realized the final barrier had fallen. “When we set out,” he wrote in “Surprised by Joy,” “I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”

    That belief shaped the rest of his life, which he would devote to helping make Christianity intellectually serious and imaginatively alive for millions of readers.

  • Pastors are using AI to write sermons — and it’s destroying the church Sun, 24 May 2026 18:00:00 +0000


    AI is infiltrating the church, and most Christians have no idea.

    A recent Barna study found that while only 1 in 10 pastors (12%) were comfortable using AI to write sermons, 2 in 5 (43%) believed it was OK to use AI to research and prepare for a sermon.

  • License plate readers or surveillance? The number of AI cameras in the US is shocking Sun, 24 May 2026 16:30:00 +0000


    Cities are starting to reject the idea of having surveillance cameras that promise to curb crime, but there's a long way to go.

    In fact, the largest surveillance company in the United States says it's under attack from activists who want to defund the police.

    'Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack.'

    Citizens can now view a comprehensive map of Automated License Plate Recognition cameras that are popping up in cities all along the coastline and the Great Lakes region.

    As it stands, there are almost 100,000 of these cameras in place in the United States. According to DeFlock Maps, the exact number is just north of 97,000, with a vast majority of them (80,000+) coming from one company: Flock Safety.

    This tech and surveillance company out of Atlanta has about 1,500 employees and has been steadily building its network that promises a decrease in crime in communities that implement its systems.

    On its website, Flock cites that it is trusted by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, providing examples like a 56% reduction in year-over-year crime in one California city and a 52% reduction in robberies in Cobb County, Georgia.

    These solar-powered, AI-backed cameras are meant to operate as part of a complex grid of connected devices that allow police agencies to tap into surveillance inside stores, parking lots, and city streets to identify suspects and the cars they are driving; all to allegedly solve crimes.

    However, some cities have rejected the service on grounds of citizen privacy.

    RELATED: Meta's Ray-Bans allegedly record your private moments — as contractors watch it all

    Hyoung Chang/Denver Post

    In addition to Bend, Oregon, where a comprehensive report about the surveillance capabilities appeared on CNet, Charlottesville and Staunton, Virginia, both ended their contracts with Flock and both received an email from the company that was described as "pouting."

    "That email was sent to every client that they had, including us," Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis said. "I looked at it and just, honestly, chalked it up to an unprofessional email from a venting CEO. I just ignored it, I'll be honest," he told Cville Right Now.

    Staunton Police Chief Jim Williams shared the email he received from Flock CEO Garrett Langley, which claimed the company was under "attack" from activists.

    "Flock, and the law enforcement agencies we partner with, are under coordinated attack. The attacks aren't new. You've been dealing with this for forever, and we've been dealing with this since our founding," Langley wrote.

    The CEO continued, saying the same activist groups "who want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness" were behind critical YouTube videos and misleading headlines.

    The letter, dated December 8, 2025, received a response from Williams four days later, which read:

    "As far as your assertion that we are current[y under attack, I do not believe that this is so. ... What we are seeing here is a group of local citizens who are raising concerns that we could be potentially surveilling private citizens, residents, and visitors and using the data for nefarious purposes."

    Just a week later, Staunton announced it was terminating its contract with Flock.

    RELATED: 'Everything on the internet is fake': Social media marketers reveal that most online trends are fabricated

    One of the organizations Langley may be referring to is the ACLU, which said last August that Flock was building a "dangerous nationwide mass-surveillance infrastructure."

    However, the ACLU's main concern was that the resources were being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement against illegal immigrants.

    Still, Langley is consistently stating that voting Flock out of jurisdictions will hinder the prevention of gun crime. The CEO cited a Mississippi city that allegedly saw violent crime decrease by 79% and homicide by 90% in one year.

    Langley wrote on X, "When the loudest voices tell you to vote Flock out of your community, ask yourself: are they also the ones outraged by gun violence when a shooting occurs, or in this case 12?"

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  • Avalon’s 'Testify to Love' rebranded as LGBTQ anthem Sun, 24 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000


    BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey grew up listening to the Christian music group Avalon, whose song “Testify to Love” had become an anthem for Christians all over the country.

    However, not even religious music is safe from the LGBTQ community.

    “Here’s some bad news. Now, we are being told retroactively that ‘Testify to Love’ by the CCM band Avalon is actually an anthem of queer love,” Stuckey explains.

    “I am not joking that this is now an LGBTQ-affirming anthem,” she says.


    Former member Melissa Greene wrote in a substack post on the topic: “'Testify to Love' drops today, originally recorded by Avalon, re-recorded by Michael Passons, Ty Herndon, and me. On Wednesday, we shot the music video. At the end of it, the three of us looked at each other, proud, and ultimately saying LOVE is for everyone.”

    “She went on to talk about, in her Substack, her collaborator on the track, Passons, another former Avalon member who was removed from the group after he identified as gay many years ago,” Stuckey explains.

    “In 2020, Passons appeared on an episode of a podcast and said that his bandmates visited his home and told him he was no longer allowed to be in the group because he was homosexual,” she continues.

    While Greene now regrets viewing “some love as acceptable” and others as not acceptable, Stuckey explains that actually, some love is unacceptable.

    “If you are talking about a grown-up loving a child in a way that is inappropriate, that kind of love is unacceptable. I’m not even making the comparison of pedophilia to LGBTQ right now. That’s not the point. I’m just saying that in principle, like you understand, the logic that some love isn’t acceptable actually does hold water,” she says.

    Greene also wrote that Passons “never needed to be redeemed.”

    “Uh-oh,” Stuckey comments.

    “This phenomenon of believing that we are actually nicer than God, that we’re wiser than God, that we’re more compassionate than Him, that Romans 1 is too mean, that Genesis 1:27 is too cruel, that 1 Corinthians 6 is just too harsh, that passages that positively affirm the holiness of marriage between one man and one woman and the exclusive holiness of sexual activity within that marriage between one man and one woman,” she says, “it’s just too much to bear.”

    “The truth is that we are not nicer than God. We don’t know better than Him. We’re not more compassionate than Him. And if something to us seems wrong or seems cruel or seems confusing when we go to the word of God, the problem is not with God,” she continues.

    “It’s not with His word. It’s with us,” she adds.

    Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

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  • The timeless truths behind the Declaration of Independence Sun, 24 May 2026 13:30:00 +0000


    As we approach the 250th anniversary of the American founding, it’s important to point out that the Declaration of Independence does not begin with politics. Before it speaks of rights, consent, or government, it makes a claim about the structure of reality itself.

    The rights it asserts are not the product of historical circumstance or collective will. They are grounded in a prior truth: that human beings are created by God.

    The Declaration’s appeal to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” is not ornamental or rhetorical — it is the foundation on which its entire argument rests. The founders believed they were obligated to explain to mankind the reasons for their separation, and those reasons started with God and His law.

    The Declaration of Independence is precisely that: a declaration of independence. It is not a confession of faith, a catechism, or a constitution.

    With this foundation, we can then proceed to the Declaration’s most famous sentence — “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Though it is often treated as a moral flourish or a proto-democratic slogan, it is in fact a tightly ordered philosophical claim that proceeds in three stages, each dependent on the one before it.

    First, it makes an epistemological assertion: These truths are “self-evident.” They are not established by deduction, tradition, or positive law, but are known by reflecting on the observable world. Truths about God, human beings, and the good must be knowable if human beings are to be responsible for ordering their lives and laws accordingly.

    To deny that such truths can be known is not merely to revise political theory, but to undermine moral accountability itself.

    Second, the Declaration makes a metaphysical claim: Human beings are created and therefore possess a given nature. Equality is not asserted as a political preference but affirmed as a consequence of creation. It follows from the reality of a shared human nature, which exists because God created it. Human equality is intelligible only if there is something real that human beings equally are.

    Third, the Declaration draws an ethical conclusion: Because human beings are created in this way, they are endowed with rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) that no just government may rightly violate. To say that human beings are created by God is to say that they possess a given nature grounded in divine intention, not in change, appetite, or contingency.

    This sequence is as decisive as it is brilliant. Remove any part of it and the argument collapses. Without a grounding in self-evident truths, claims about rights become matters of opinion or will. Without creation, equality loses its grounding in nature and becomes a political assertion to be enforced rather than an a priori truth. Without both, liberty ceases to be a moral claim and becomes a grant of the state for licentiousness. What remains is a thinner conception of freedom — one incapable of sustaining either justice or joy.

    The assumptions that creation is intelligible, that God is knowable, and that human beings are responsible for acknowledging both stand at the foundation of the American experiment. They are the stress points at which its coherence either holds or fails.

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    OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP/Getty Images

    At this point, the Christian reader may be tempted to object that the Declaration does not go far enough. It speaks of God as Creator but says nothing of Christ. It appeals to natural theology but makes no reference to revealed religion. Does it leave us stranded with a Deistic account of God or a thin moralism that cannot sustain the claims it makes?

    The concern is understandable, especially when the Declaration is contrasted with documents such as the Solemn League and Covenant that explicitly confessed allegiance to Christ the King. Yet this objection rests on a misunderstanding of both the Declaration’s purpose and the relation between natural and revealed religion.

    The Declaration of Independence is precisely that: a declaration of independence. It is not a confession of faith, a catechism, or a constitution.

    It has a specific and limited purpose: to justify political separation from Great Britain by appealing to truths binding on all human beings as such. The absence of explicit Christological language does not indicate theological indifference, but a focus on the specific political question at hand.

    It is also worth remembering that many of the founders likely assumed that explicitly Christian commitments would find expression elsewhere. Nearly every state constitution in the founding era contained explicit Christian language, often including affirmations of Christianity or requirements that officeholders affirm specific Protestant beliefs.

    The Declaration was never intended to bear the full theological weight of American public life on its own. It establishes a common foundation; it does not exhaust the moral or religious commitments of the people who affirmed it.

    Just as Romans 1 demonstrates there is a clear general revelation that shows the reality of universal sin and then explains our need for Christ, the Declaration’s three-fold assertion of knowability, God, and what is good provides a basis for the path to salvation.

    This points to a second consideration: The Declaration’s appeal to natural theology is not compatible with every religious or philosophical system. The Declaration’s affirmation of God the Creator excludes belief systems that deny God the Creator.

    It presupposes that God is distinct from the world, that the world is created rather than eternal, and that human beings possess a knowable nature grounded in that act of creation. Natural theology, in this view, is neither trivial nor thin; it is full and clear. It tells us a great deal about God, about ourselves, and about the moral order.

    RELATED: How to fix the woke teacher problem

    H. Rick Bamman/Pioneer Press/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

    At the same time, natural theology is not redemptive revelation. Scripture does not merely restate natural truths more clearly or add moral instruction where reason falters. It answers a question that natural theology cannot answer on its own: how a just and holy God redeems sinners who suppress the truth they ought to know.

    The founders were well aware of this distinction. The Bible was the most frequently cited book in their writings, and most took for granted that Christianity answered the question of redemption. Yet they also recognized that this answer could not be imposed by civil authority without corrupting both church and state.

    They had no interest in adjudicating disputes among Protestants, much less between Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Declaration’s silence on these matters reflects not skepticism about Christian truth, but a judgment about political competence.

    In this light, the Declaration’s appeal to natural theology appears not as a theological retreat, but as a principled boundary. It affirms all that reason can and must know about God and human nature, while leaving the work of redemption where it belongs: in the proclamation of the gospel and the ministry of the church.

    The coherence of the American experiment depends on honoring both truths. Confuse them, and politics becomes a counterfeit religion. Separate them rightly, and both church and state are free to pursue their proper ends. This can serve as a call back to American Christians to remember the need for evangelical work if they hope for lasting positive change in America.

    Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the American Mind.

  • From ‘one guy, one gun’ to foreign plots: Glenn Beck exposes the terrifying evolution of assassination attempts against Trump Sun, 24 May 2026 09:00:00 +0000


    In the past, assassination attempts against a president were fairly simple, Glenn Beck says.

    “It looked like one guy, one gun.”

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