Stembridge News Digest

  • How a duct-taped banana exposed the death of beauty Sat, 30 Aug 2025 22:00:00 +0000


    Chances are that you've disagreed at least once with a family member, friend, or co-worker about what counts as "true" or "real" art.

    This usually plays out as a right vs. left divide. People on the right are often suspicious of art that pushes too far beyond familiar social boundaries. The left, on the other hand, embraces innovation and art that breaks with what's traditionally accepted. In reality, these attitudes share the same nontraditional view of art. The tension has been unfolding for the last 500 years. It's the story of modern art, born from a fundamentally disordered relationship to art itself.

    A modern art museum looks less like a celebration of art and more like a graveyard.

    Imagine you and a friend are on a trip, and you decide to visit the Guggenheim art museum. There, you both see "Comedian," a piece by artist Maurizio Cattelan that sold for $6 million at auction. Before you is a banana duct-taped to a wall — that's it.

    Unable to suspend disbelief, you say, "How is that art?"

    Your friend replies, "Art is subjective. Who are you to say this isn't art?"

    Simply all you can say is, "I cannot see beauty or skill in this."

    So your friend rejoins you in a vacuous, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But you wouldn’t understand. Anyway, this is a commentary. It’s about the concept of the artwork."

    Critics beat the "Comedian" to death not because of its unique absurdity but because of its recency. The Dadaist art movement has pulled stunts like this one for more than 100 years. It reminds me of the infamous "Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp: a urinal with a signature. It was exhibited 108 years ago.

    But how did we get here?

    To understand how we arrived at this predicament in Western art, we must examine our relationship to it, how we receive art, how we engage with it, and its history.

    A new understanding

    The modern period marks a departure from the pre-modern world (i.e., year 1500 A.D.). It's a turning point in history unlike any before. Everything changed, including the ways in which people perceive reality. Gone are the days of enchantment. Now we have rationality. A Faustian bargain was made.

    "What is art?"

    When someone asks that question, what immediately comes to mind? Most people think of painting, drawing, sculptures — things that belong in a museum. But this modern way of thinking about art is novel, foreign to people in the pre-modern world. Calling that era "pre-modern" is misleading because it makes up the vast majority of human history. The real anomaly is the modern period.

    Seen from this perspective, a modern art museum looks less like a celebration of art and more like a graveyard.

    For the ancient and medieval person, art was integrated into life itself — not separated from it. Art was less a noun than a verb, something one did. People didn't create art; they "art-ed" or were "art-ing." Art was a process of participation. Put simply: There was no distinction between "art" and "craft" as we think of it today.

    Modern people haven't abandoned this concept entirely, but it no longer sits at the forefront of how we think about art. It survives in words like "artisan," referring to bakers, tailors, and other craftsmen. It lingers in expressions like "the art of watchmaking" or "the art of conversation." Even commercial marketing borrows it. Products marketed as "artisan" purport to distinguish craftsmanship from mass-produced commodities.

    In the pre-modern world, everyday life was shaped by art. Daily clothes, a dining room table, the family home, the local church — from the lowliest object to the most sacred — all were made with care and beauty. On one level, this is easy to explain: Everything was handmade, and because possessions were less numerous, people valued and cared for them, passing them down through generations.

    RELATED: How modern art became a freak show — and why only God can fix it

    skynesher/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    Naturally, if you own something that long, you want it to be beautiful.

    But more fundamentally, all of these objects fit into the same pattern that we call "art": the gathering and ordering of particular items in a way that speaks to human perception. A finely crafted dining table binds a family together more than a folding card table ever could. The liturgical cup used for the Eucharist is fashioned from precious metals and decorated with deliberate symbols, while the wine glasses at the family table, though well made, are more austere.

    Each object bears an artfulness appropriate to its purpose, something obvious to the pre-modern mind.

    This older way of living with art is not completely lost on us today. It still exists, though less prominently and increasingly in decline. Yet one demotion of art is almost extinct in the modern world, surviving only in tight-knit communities, ethnic traditions, and older generations. It may not immediately register as "art" at first glance, but folk dances, dinner parties, storytelling, and other forms of social ritual are actually higher forms of art than material objects. They are art as shared life.

    Material art matters, too, but it mainly points us toward the deeper loss.

    A transformative transition

    One simple historical fact makes the difference clear: Pre-modern artists didn't sign their work.

    The transition to modernity was, as in so many areas of life, a pact with the devil. Technical mastery was gained, but the spiritual core was left void. The Enlightenment promised reason, science, and progress, so it seemed that humanity could finally cast off the shadow of the past and secure its future. But the human condition didn't change.

    What convenience gave with one hand, it robbed from the soul with the other.

    Industrialization, mass production, plastics, and now the digital age each dealt successive blows to our once-integrated relationship with art. In the pre-modern world, art was an integrated part of life. Modernity replaced this with self-consciousness. Art became not a relationship but a category. Crafts were dissected under the microscope of science, refined to new levels of technical brilliance. The results were often dazzling: new techniques, perspectives, and ways of depicting the world.

    But the cost was steep.

    As long as people exist, art will exist. But the toothpaste is out of the tube. There is no going back.

    This story unfolds in art history. By the late medieval era, traditional iconography, steeped in centuries of sacred meaning, was being reshaped by artists like Duccio and Giotto. The Renaissance largely abandoned these forms, with titans like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci leading the way. By the 1570s, El Greco was embedding sexually transgressive and even blasphemous subtleties into his work.

    This trajectory continued, sometimes slowly and other times all at once. But the pattern was clear: identity fragmented, transcendence severed, innovation pursued for its own sake. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the seeds had fully flowered. Soviet brutalism imposed tyranny through pattern and abstraction, while Dadaism dissolved meaning altogether until art and non-art were indistinguishable.

    The result? Today, we argue with friends about whether a banana duct-taped to a wall is "art." Art has become commentary on commentary, detached from human experience, and reduced to little more than propaganda.

    Today, modern art is defined by its fixation on individual idiosyncrasies. At its extreme, it becomes nothing more than the subjective whims of the isolated self disconnected from reality.

    What can be done?

    Does this mean that culture and beauty itself have reached their end? Thankfully not.

    As long as people exist, art will exist. But the toothpaste is out of the tube. There is no going back. We cannot rewind the clock to some imagined golden age. That sentiment is not only impractical, but it's impossible.

    We are where we find ourselves today because of the past, so such a return would lead us back to today. The path forward, then, must connect the present to the past, the new and the old, weaving together the modern and the pre-modern.

    The case of Tarkovsky

    One bridge across the divide is found in the work of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest directors and screenwriters of all time.

    Unbeknownst to him, his life was a crossroads: Raised in the Soviet Union under militant atheism and the revolutionary spirit of modernism, yet he was an Orthodox Christian, steeped in the traditions of the pre-modern world. His father was a poet, and his mother was a lover of literature. Tarkovsky was perfectly positioned to bring the old and new into dialogue.

    His art is a call to repentance, an offering and pleasing aroma to the Lord.

    Tarkovsky saw modernity clearly: "Man has, since the Enlightenment, dealt with things he should have ignored."

    The heart of Tarkovsky's vision was simple: art as prayer. He admitted that Dostoevsky — another Russian and Orthodox Christian who wrestled with the sacred and the existential — was the greatest artist. Tarkovsky wore this influence on his sleeve. His films probe life, death, suffering, and the search for the miraculous and meaning. He once wrote, “The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.”

    In his films, Tarkovsky magnifies the specific experiences of the individual, yet he always frames them in transcendence. He gathers the unique and lifts it upward. But he does not erase human subjectivity. Rather, he redeems it.

    As he put it:

    When I speak of the aspiration towards the beautiful, of the ideal as the ultimate aim of art, which grows from a yearning for that ideal, I am not for a moment suggesting that art should shun the "dirt" of the world. On the contrary! The artistic image is always a metonym, where one thing is substituted for another, the smaller for the greater. To tell of what is living, the artist uses something dead; to speak of the infinite, he shows the finite. Substitution ... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image.

    In this way, Tarkovsky reverses modernity's desecrations and successfully connects the modern and pre-modern. He uses the individual to orient us toward God, a spiritual transcendence of sorts. Where the modern world has made the holy profane, Tarkovsky, in a Christ-like reversal, makes the profane holy.

    His art is a call to repentance, an offering and pleasing aroma to the Lord.

    "The artist is always a servant and is perpetually trying to pay for the gift that has been given to him as if by miracle. Modern man, however, does not want to make any sacrifice, even though true affirmation of self can only be expressed in sacrifice," he once said.

    The way ahead

    What does this mean for us? It means embodying art in our daily lives.

    You don't need to be a professional artist. Do things deliberately and with care. A mother preparing a meal gathers the fruit of local soil into the higher good of uniting her family. A father telling a bedtime story practices one of the most ancient and enduring arts.

    But the key is purpose. When art is done for its own sake — or worse, for the sake of self — it collapses and is degraded. A meal made not to bind the family but only to satisfy hunger soon degenerates into the TV dinner. A story rushed through without care decays into mass-produced entertainment stripped of substance.

    If this is true of everyday arts, how much more of the fine arts? A painter who works only from private interiority — detached from a holy purpose — quickly drifts into solipsism, creating images disconnected from reality. An iconographer, by contrast, paints for veneration, anchoring a community's worship in something beyond themselves. One isolates; the other binds together. One closes in on the self; the other points beyond it.

    Art created for no other purpose than for the self is disconnected from all and devoid of any real power or meaning.

    There are signs of hope. Traditional religious communities, specifically liturgical Christian traditions (like the Orthodox Church), maintain and produce work of depth and beauty: the ritualistic, iconography, music, homiletics, and so on — all built around a sincere Christian framework. The Orthodox Arts Journal showcases this revival. And in addition to liturgical arts, it has begun integrating beauty into popular art forms like graphic novels, fairy tales, literature, and clothing.

    Revival, however, can't remain institutional. The hard work of beauty must be done in your own home and life.

    Modern technology allows anyone to become an artist in any field. But the burden of self-awareness requires you to carve out time and put in real effort. And it's not enough to create beauty yourself. You must also reject the cheap slop offered to you and choose real craftsmanship.

    The road is narrow and hard. But if you want to be delivered from the hell of modern art, go make a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord.

  • Justin Trudeau offered to save migrants from Trump; 8 years later Canadians are still paying the price Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:00:00 +0000


    On January 28, 2017, in the immediate aftermath of President Trump’s first travel ban, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sent out a tweet that would reverberate far beyond social media:

    To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. #WelcomeToCanada.”

    Migrants and asylum-seekers in the United States took Trudeau at his word, and within weeks, illegal crossings over the Quebec-New York border surged, centered on a rural stretch known as Roxham Road.

    The majority of the border-crossers are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian 'refugees.'

    The surge was driven by a quirk in the Safe Third Country Agreement, a treaty between Canada and the U.S. dating back to 2004. Under the deal, asylum-seekers are supposed to file their claims in the first safe country they arrive in.

    But the STCA applied only at official checkpoints. Those who walked across back roads like Roxham were exempt — and once on Canadian soil, they were entitled to have their cases heard. This loophole transformed Roxham into the busiest irregular crossing in the country.

    Invite revoked

    What began as symbolic anti-Trump signaling had become a full-blown crisis by the time Joe Biden took office in January 2021. Quebec’s shelters and reception centers filled beyond capacity, municipalities complained of mounting costs, and national polls showed Canadians increasingly skeptical of how the border was being managed.

    The issue also spilled across the border. Even as Biden faced criticism for presiding over border chaos in Texas and Arizona, his administration quietly pressed Ottawa to rein in irregular migration to the north. In March 2023, Trudeau and Biden announced an expanded Safe Third Country Agreement that closed the Roxham Road loophole, giving Canadian officials authority to turn back asylum-seekers anywhere along the border if caught within 14 days of entry.

    Smuggle session

    The irony was hard to miss: Washington was leaning on Canada to tighten a rural crossing in Quebec at the very moment its own southern border remained mired in crisis. Trudeau’s lofty promise of welcome had ended, six years later, in a deal to keep more people out.

    But Roxham Road is very much open today — thanks to organized crime groups making a tidy profit from smuggling people across the border.

    A recent investigation by Rebel News confirmed reports of rampant human trafficking after Churubusco, New York, resident Jerry Miller contacted the conservative news outlet about an escalation in activity at the border.

    According to Miller, the vast majority of those being surreptitiously moved across the border are from Haiti; any of them could well have come from Springfield, Ohio, where the Biden administration dumped thousands of Haitian “refugees.”

    Haitians head north

    Why are they heading north?

    Their motivation to come to Canada could certainly be linked to Trump’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status for more than 500,000 Haitians living in the U.S. A Rebel News reporter found Haitian ID cards at the scene, along with discarded backpacks, clothes, and food.

    In one night, a Rebel News reporter using an infrared camera caught 23 people crossing.

    Hunter Robare, who lives on the same street as Miller, described the situation. "It's every day."

    "It can be pretty nerve-racking," Robare added. "Just being at home and you have a group of people walking down the road; you don't know their intentions."

    RELATED: Blaze News investigates: Springfield sees lives saved, Haitian exodus thanks to Trump's deportation threats

    Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

    Legal increase

    Of course, this is just illegal immigration. Under Trudeau and continuing under Prime Minister Mark Carney, legal immigration increased at rates not seen in over a century.

    The combination of chronic illegal immigration and lax legal immigration is producing a potential economic catastrophe for Canada, prompting Alberta Immigration Minister Joseph Schow to demand that the federal government accurately assess the illegal immigrant population.

    “I’m not going to sugarcoat it: We believe there’s 500,000 illegal immigrants currently spread across Canada, and these individuals are benefiting from taxpayer-funded services,” said Schow.

    Meanwhile, more than eight years after Trudeau's fateful invitation, the human traffickers at Roxham Road continue to thrive.

  • They won’t admit it: Why Trump’s agenda is guided by a higher calling Sat, 30 Aug 2025 20:00:00 +0000

  • The genocide that isn’t: How Hamas turned lies into global outrage Sat, 30 Aug 2025 19:00:00 +0000


    Extraordinarily effective Hamas propaganda has delegitimized Israel’s right of self-defense by confirming for a world that scorns Israel that its demon is engaged in genocide. It is not, but the same cannot be said of Hamas — the aggressor that has largely avoided that opprobrium.

    According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 5.5 million Palestinians live in the Palestinian territories, principally the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The bureau estimates that in the last 12 months, Gaza’s population declined by 15,423 to 2,114,201. Meanwhile, “Palestine’s” total population grew by 1.17% in 2024 and is projected to grow by another 1.75% in 2025. According to the bureau, the principal factors in Gaza’s population decline were emigration, war casualties, and a declining birth rate.

    If leftists prevent Israel from fighting an aggressor who has pledged to destroy it, targets civilians, and takes and murders hostages, who is complicit in genocide?

    Though the Gaza Ministry of Health’s war casualty reports are statistically implausible and quietly rejected by the United Nations, the world’s media uncritically repeat the lies. Most recently, the media disseminated the ministry’s claim that war deaths exceed 60,000, reducing Gaza’s population by 10%. The actual comparison was to “projected growth”; 60,000 represents a 2.6% decline.

    Peddling lies

    Many outlets presented the ministry’s disinformation and malinformation as their objective reporting. For example, PBS explained:

    The ministry is staffed by medical professionals. The United Nations and other independent experts view its figures as the most reliable count of casualties. … Israel’s offensive has destroyed vast areas of Gaza, displaced around 90% of the population and caused a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, with experts warning of famine.

    The report added:

    Israel’s offensive and its blockade have also gutted Gaza’s health system, with several hospitals having shut down and others only partially functioning as they receive waves of war-wounded.

    Jaundiced by radical ideologies and anti-Semitism, and empowered by Hamas’ misdirection, at least 38 countries, the European Union’s second-ranking official, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, 14 members of Congress, and many others accuse Israel of genocide.

    If Goebbels had Hamas propagandists on his side, we might all be shouting “Heil Hitler!”

    In November, a U.N. special committee found Israel’s operations in Gaza “consistent” with genocide, including its alleged use of “starvation as weapon of war.” In July, the U.N. dishonestly announced that Gaza met two of the three criteria for famine. To reach that conclusion, the U.N., which has battered Israel for years, rigged the numbers.

    On July 27, the World Health Organization warned that “malnutrition is on a dangerous trajectory in the Gaza Strip,” with 74 malnutrition-related deaths so far in 2025, most occurring in July. According to the WHO, “The crisis remains entirely preventable. Deliberate blocking and delay of large-scale food, health, and humanitarian aid has cost many lives.”

    But just one week later, a U.N. agency reported that Palestinian mobs and terrorists are stealing 89% of aid shipments. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee added that “Hamas made half a billion dollars last year stealing food [and] selling it on the black market in order to finance their activities.”

    Rigging stats

    On August 22, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a partnership of 25 organizations including U.N. agencies, announced that “reasonable evidence” exists of famine in Gaza since August 15. An Israeli response observed that “the declaration was issued not only without evidence that would justify it under the IPC’s own criteria, but also in contradiction to more recent data that was publicly available.” Although the IPC report cited the interception of aid, it justified that as the “desperation” of residents.

    Other studies (including the U.N.’s) have not found widespread famine, a deliberate starvation strategy, or systematic attacks by Israel on civilians. Severe pre-existing medical conditions cause most deaths attributed to malnutrition.

    RELATED: Why does the mainstream media keep blaming Israel for Gaza’s humanitarian crisis?

    Photo by Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini/Anadolu via Getty Images

    Hamas propaganda deceives with pictures that are staged, taken in other countries, taken years ago, or taken of children with genetic defects. It also promotes fabricated claims of Israeli attacks on Gazans seeking aid, including the untrue tale of a Gazan boy allegedly killed by the IDF at an aid distribution site.

    Except for an approximately three-month blockade, Israel has facilitated aid. It warns civilians of pending attacks, set up hundreds of food distribution centers and aid packages, and supports airdrops of up to 130 tons of food per day. Last month, Israel announced additional actions, including lengthy combat pauses to coordinate aid delivery with the U.N. and other organizations.

    The U.N. charter guarantees the “inherent” right of defense. The U.N. Genocide Convention defines “genocide” as killing “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” If Israel wanted to destroy the Palestinian people, it would have done so.

    Instead, the claimed dead, including Hamas’ human shields and those executed by Hamas, total under 1.1% of Gaza’s population, which continues to grow. According to West Point’s John Spencer, the leading expert on urban warfare, no military has ever done more than Israel to avoid civilian casualties. Israel’s increasingly precise targeting of combatants has achieved a lower civilian death rate than most wars over the last 100 years.

    Double standards for Hamas

    The Hamas charter states that Israel must be “obliterated” and that “Moslems must fight Jews and kill them.” Hamas targeted civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, and has launched thousands of rocket attacks since then.

    If leftists and anti-Semites prevent Israel and Jews from fighting an aggressor who has pledged to destroy them, targets civilians, and takes and murders hostages, precisely who is complicit in genocide?

    Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

  • Where’s the outrage?! This whistleblower's vaccine injury lawsuit demands national attention Sat, 30 Aug 2025 18:00:00 +0000


    In 2021, Deborah Conrad, a physician assistant from Rochester, New York, was fired from her role at Rochester Regional Health’s United Memorial Medical Center.

    Deborah’s crime?

    Doing her job.

    When she noticed adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination in her patients, she reported it to VAERS — the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Federal regulations, including Emergency Use Authorization requirements for COVID-19 vaccines like Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, mandate that health care providers report specific adverse events to VAERS.

    But when Deborah fulfilled her lawful duty, she was terminated.

    Today, she is neck-deep in a landmark False Claims Act lawsuit against her former employer, challenging institutional suppression of reporting. Her case has thankfully reached the discovery phase, where evidence will be gathered to expose potential violations and seek justice for her retaliatory dismissal.

    On a recent episode of “Back to the People,” Nicole Shanahan sat down with Deborah to hear a story that demands national attention.

    In December 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccines hit the market, but they were initially reserved for high-risk individuals, especially the elderly, as that was considered the most vulnerable group.

    Deborah immediately began noticing that several of her geriatric patients experienced deadly falls shortly after receiving the vaccine. “They would pass out and fall, hit their head, develop brain bleeds, strokes, acute mental status changes, heart attacks, sudden heart failure. I mean, the list just goes on and on, and the proximity to which they received the vaccine and then the onset of these symptoms often was within sometimes minutes to overnight,” she tells Nicole.

    She explains that she and the staff at United Memorial Medical Center “did not receive any education about any possible side effects or what to do if [they] saw them happening,” nor were they trained to use the VAERS system, despite it being a legal requirement. Even their formal training ignored vaccine side effects.

    “We are basically told they are safe and effective and to memorize the childhood vaccine schedule and that's it. And so it's ingrained in us from our training to never look at vaccines in any negative light,” she says.

    Not knowing what to do about the obvious issues she was seeing in her patients, Deborah set out to find answers. “I went online and found the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and read all about it and taught myself how to file reports. … I then went and volunteered to be the reporting liaison and the educator for our system,” she says.

    Initially, Deborah was rewarded for her above-and-beyond efforts. She was even “nominated by the New York State Society of Physician Assistance to sit on the board for professional misconduct for the state.”

    But then things took a sharp turn.

    Even though it required hours of her time to dig into medical records, take calls back from the CDC, and fill out pages of information for each case, Deborah continued to faithfully file VAERS reports for the sake of her patients and the millions of people across the country taking the vaccine.

    “I've probably filed … close to 300 reports. I certainly think I am the person in the country that has filed the most VAERS reports at this point — really,” she says.

    Sadly, none of Deborah’s reports have resulted in her patients receiving compensation — even the most well-documented and clear-cut cases.

    Over time, Deborah started getting pushback from superiors who accused her of being anti-vaccine. They pelted her with questions, like “How do you know this is due to the COVID vaccine?” even though VAERS requires medical providers to report serious side effects that accompany vaccine administration, even if they think the events are unrelated.

    “We're just mandatory reporters, as we are in child abuse situations, right? We're not there to judge who's abusing the child or determine that. That's not our job,” says Deborah.

    But even though she explained the legal requirements and stressed the pre-eminence of patient safety to her supervisors, “the gaslighting just kept continuing.” They repeatedly labeled her “an anti-vaxxer” and told her to “toe the company line.”

    But Deborah didn’t ease up. Having no support in the hospital, she began filing reports on her days off for both her own patients and the patients of other staff members, all while continuing to pressure supervisors to put a system in place.

    One of her supervisors eventually elevated her concerns to higher-ups at Rochester Regional Health. “That's when the suppression really started,” says Deborah. Her VAERS reports were silently audited, and she was reprimanded for “over-reporting,” even though every report she filed matched “the exact criteria on VAERS.”

    As a punishment, her supervisors limited the number of reports Deborah could file to just her own patients. When she demanded confirmation that other staff members were filing VAERs reports for their own patients, reminding her supervisors that failing to do so was “committing fraud,” she was met with resistance.

    “They basically said, ‘It's not your business,”’ she recounts.

    “And I said, ‘No, it is my business. … This is a criminal problem here — like you are billing for these vaccines, you are saying you are completing VAERS reports and you're not, and if I know about it and I do nothing about it, then I'm just as guilty.”’

    When it was clear that she would get no support from her supervisors, Deborah contacted the CDC, the FDA, the New York State Department of Health, and the New York State accrediting body and was finally able to get some legal help. She even went public with her concerns.

    If anything, this only expedited her termination. After months of being called an anti-vaxxer, accused of spreading vaccine misinformation, and receiving threats to file a petition for her license removal, Deborah was surrounded by HR reps from Rochester Regional Health during the middle of her shift on October 6, 2021, and fired.

    “I wasn't allowed to get my things,” she says.

    “My health insurance was canceled. I couldn't apply for unemployment. They even fought me in being able to get my benefit time off that they owed me.”

    Today, Rochester Regional Health is claiming the corporation fired Deborah for refusing to get the vaccine, which was required for medical staff, but its case is shaky, as she was in the process of obtaining “a valid and approved religious exemption” when she was fired.

    Thankfully, with her case now in the discovery phase and strong evidence of institutional suppression, Deborah has a promising chance of proving that her termination was retaliatory for her whistleblowing efforts to uphold patient safety.

    To hear the most shocking details and stories from inside Deborah’s hospital, watch the full interview above.

    Want more from Nicole Shanahan?

    To enjoy more of Nicole's compelling blend of empathy, curiosity, and enlightenment, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

  • It's been a year since Kennedy and Trump joined forces. Here are MAHA's top 3 wins. Sat, 30 Aug 2025 16:30:00 +0000

  • MS-13 associate Kilmar Abrego Garcia urges Obama judge to silence DHS, DOJ officials Sat, 30 Aug 2025 15:30:00 +0000


    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested MS-13 associate Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Monday and set the stage for his deportation to Uganda.

    Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to Blaze News, "President Trump is not going to allow this illegal alien, who is an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator, to terrorize American citizens any longer."

    'The media's sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart.'

    But Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland — a judge former President Barack Obama nominated — swiftly intervened to prevent the removal of the Salvadoran national. Xinis told the Trump administration it was "absolutely forbidden" from deporting Garcia, then issued a temporary restraining order to this effect.

    On Thursday, the MS-13 associate asked a different Obama judge to prevent Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and all of the officials in their respective agencies from discussing his sordid history.

    "Since Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was released from pretrial custody last Friday, officials from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security — and even the White House — have attacked Mr. Abrego in the media in numerous highly prejudicial, inflammatory, and false statements," Garcia's attorneys noted in the request to U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, an Obama-nominated judge who sought Abrego's release in July.

    Garcia and his legal team were especially prickled by the suggestion that he is "a known MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, wife beater, and child predator."

    While Garcia's attorneys complained that such claims were "baseless," it's clear the Trump administration did not create the allegations out of whole cloth.

    RELATED: Exclusive: ICE targets illegal alien who allegedly assaulted a pregnant woman

    Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    Justice Department attorneys indicated earlier this year that in March 2019, Garcia was summoned to appear in removal proceedings. During a bond hearing, ICE stated that a confidential informant flagged Garcia as an active member of MS-13. The illegal alien's bond was denied with the court reportedly finding "that Abrego Garcia was a danger to the community."

    When Garcia appealed that decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, an immigration judge determined in April 2019 that "the determination that the Respondent is a gang member appears to be trustworthy and is supported by other evidence in the record."

    As with Garcia's MS-13 link, the domestic abuser claim also did not appear out of thin air.

    Garcia's wife, Jennifer Vasquez, sought domestic violence protective orders against him in 2020 and 2021. Vasquez alleged in her 2021 protective order petition that Garcia punched her, ripped off her shirt, and both scratched and bruised her.

    The human trafficking allegation that Garcia wants DHS and DOJ officials to refrain from publicly mentioning is fleshed out in his federal grand jury indictment which accuses him of conspiracy to transport aliens and unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens.

    The indictment alleges that Garcia conspired to bring illegal aliens — adults and children alike — into the U.S. from countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador, and elsewhere from 2016 until this year. He allegedly made over 100 trips over the course of this alleged human smuggling campaign.

    "Over the course of the conspiracy, the co-conspirators knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands of undocumented aliens who had no known authorization to be present in the United States, and many of whom were MS-13 member and associates," said the indictment.

    RELATED: Homeland Security plays games while deportations fall flat

    Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

    As for the "child predator" allegation, Bondi told reporters in June that one of Garcia's alleged co-conspirators claimed that he not only "abused undocumented alien females" who were "under his control while transporting them throughout our country" but allegedly "solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor."

    Bondi, Noem, and the White House's repeated references to these and other skeletons in Garcia's closet evidently infuriated him, but Garcia's attorneys said in their Thursday request that the "pièce de resistance" was the DHS' repost of this White House meme:

    Garcia's attorneys claimed in the request that "if the government is allowed to continue in this way, it will taint any conceivable jury pool by exposing the entire country to irrelevant, prejudicial, and false claims about Mr. Abrego."

    His attorneys asked for a gag order prohibiting all DHS and DOJ officials involved in Garcia's case — and all officials in their supervisory chain — "from making extrajudicial comments that pose a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing this proceeding."

    A DHS official told the Hill, "If Kilmar Abrego Garcia did not want to be mentioned by the Secretary of Homeland Security, then he should have not entered our country illegally and committed heinous crimes."

    The DHS official continued, "Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend this criminal illegal MS-13 gang member who is an alleged human trafficker, domestic abuser, and child predator. The media's sympathetic narrative about this criminal illegal alien has completely fallen apart, yet they continue to peddle his sob story."

    The Hill indicated that the DOJ declined to comment.

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  • 3 Senate races that could flip the balance of power: 'This is a wake-up call' Sat, 30 Aug 2025 15:30:00 +0000


    With the 2026 primaries fast approaching, there are three U.S. Senate seats onlookers should keep an eye on.

    Republicans are currently enjoying a supermajority after sweeping the 2024 elections, controlling the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

    The freshman senator narrowly won his seat in 2020 by just one point.

    After November, Republicans flipped four seats: Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Montana. These victories flipped the Senate and put Republicans in a comfortable 53-seat majority while Democrats fell back to just 47 seats.

    Although the GOP has a healthy majority, there are some more potential pick-up opportunities — and losses — for Republicans going into next year's primaries.

    RELATED: Exclusive: GOP lawmaker introduces bill barring illegal aliens from 'sabotaged' census

    Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images

    One of the most contentious Senate races will be for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff's seat in Georgia. Several prominent challengers have emerged in recent months, most notably with Republican Rep. Mike Collins throwing his hat in the race back in July. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has also been floated as a potential candidate, but she has not formally moved to run for the seat.

    The freshman senator narrowly won his seat in 2020 by just one point against Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue. Given this razor-thin margin, Republicans have set their sights on taking back Ossoff's seat, and early polling suggests it's within reach.

    The Cook Political Report currently rates Ossoff's seat as a toss-up, and some polls mirror this rating. In a hypothetical race between Ossoff and Collins, the Democratic incumbent has polled with an average three-point advantage, according to RealClearPolitics. Another recent poll shows Collins trailing Ossoff by just one point, according to findings from TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics.

    RELATED: Republican senator relishes 'cray-cray' Mamdani's success: 'We've gotten lucky'

    Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images

    Another pick-up opportunity for Republicans emerged in Michigan after Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced his retirement in January. Several Democratic candidates, like Rep. Haley Stevens and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, have since launched their own campaign bids, but the future nominee will inevitably have to put up a fight against Republican challengers.

    Former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers is considered the frontrunner among the GOP candidates in the Michigan Senate race. Rogers previously ran and narrowly lost against Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024, but he has since relaunched his Senate campaign with the hopes of flipping the swing-state seat.

    Slotkin managed to defeat Rogers by just 0.3% in November, signaling the support behind the Republican challenger. Earlier in the year, Rogers was polling several points ahead of his Democratic counterparts, and Cook Political Report has rated the Senate seat a toss-up.

    RELATED: Ex-Clinton adviser warns Democrats of dire midterm season: 'Elections have consequences'

    Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

    Although Republicans are poised to potentially flip some seats, there may be some warning signs in the Midwest.

    Republican Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) reportedly will not seek re-election in 2026, leaving a vacancy in the deep-red state. The Cook Political Report has rated the seat as leaning Republican, and the GOP has maintained a prominent presence in Iowa at both the local and national level.

    Despite the success Republicans have enjoyed in the Hawkeye State, Democrats have begun to secure their own electoral victories. Most recently, Democrat Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch for an open state Senate seat, flipping the GOP's supermajority for the first time in three years.

    Steve Deace, a native Iowan and host of "The Steve Deace Show" on BlazeTV, told Blaze News that this swing in favor of Democrats is taking place because Iowans are not energized by any Republican candidates they have to choose from.

    "There are danger signs, because if it can happen in Woodbury County, Iowa, this can happen anywhere in America," Deace said.

    "Our people are just not motivated, by and large, to vote for the Republican Party brand as a brand anymore. So you’ve got to prove to them you’re worth their time and effort for them to show up, and I think that this is a wake-up call for the next midterm."

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  • What if time moves backward? Why 'African time' clashes with Western systems Sat, 30 Aug 2025 15:00:00 +0000


    Language, religion, and culture can be barriers that prevent people from different backgrounds from understanding one another. But time — the ongoing flow of moments from the past, through the present, and into the future — is something that unites us in its universality, right?

    Not necessarily.

    It turns out that time is also subject to interpretation.

    “What if I told you that for many African societies, the concept of the future doesn't exist and that instead of time moving forwards, time actually moves backwards,” said Instagram user @mumbipoetry in a viral August 18 post.

    Quoting Kenyan philosopher John Mbiti, she says, “time is a two-dimensional phenomenon with a long past, vibrant present, and virtually no future,” where the present encompasses “the now, the recent past, and the immediate future,” while “the vast endless past [is] where all events eventually go on to live forever.” But because “time is made up of events” and must be “experienced in order to be real,” the future “cannot constitute part of time” because it has neither events nor experience to legitimize it.

    A year isn’t measured by Earth’s rotations around the sun; it’s measured by events. “A year is only over when those four seasons have taken place, so a year could take 365 days, 390 days — it doesn’t matter,” she explained, contrasting it with the Western world’s concept of time, where it’s treated as a “commodity” that can be “spent, saved, wasted, or lost.”

    This two-dimensional understanding of time is why many African languages “don’t have a word to describe the distant future,” she explains.

    The African notion of time is a real head-scratcher for Westerners, who are constantly preoccupied with thoughts of the future.

    This difference, says BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre, is “so radical it makes cooperation basically impossible.”

    Could this dismissal of the future be one of the reasons why much of Africa continues to face significant economic and social challenges? Could it be evidence that our two worldviews are incompatible?

    “If you do not have a future, how do you understand planning for something? How do you understand a lower time preference that would allow you to build civilization? How do you understand denying yourself today so that you can thrive tomorrow?” Auron asks.

    Having no concept or language for the future has sprawling implications that impact the individual person and the entire civilization, he explains. From contracts that establish future obligations to time zones, delivery schedules, and business deals, how does anyone thrive if their notion of time is that it only exists once an event takes place?

    “People who do not have a word to describe this phenomenon [of the future] are going to have a very, very hard time working inside our system, adopting our customs, and they're going to lose out in the larger global economic picture — the geopolitical picture,” says Auron, pointing out that liberals often whine that this view is “imperialistic.”

    “Yes, it is Western-centric. It is ‘racist’ to the extent that it favors people of European descent who understand the world in this way,” he adds. “But that's also why it works.”

    “Maybe it's the way [Africans] want to live, but it will fall behind people who have a different conception of reality, a different understanding of time. Again, you don't have to hate people or make fun of people … because they have this different understanding, but you definitely need to factor that in when you're deciding who should be in your country and whether or not your system can be applied to other people.”

    To hear more of Auron’s analysis, watch the episode above.

    Want more from Auron MacIntyre?

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  • Inside the billion-dollar pipeline funding the deep state Sat, 30 Aug 2025 13:30:00 +0000


    In a column earlier this month, I argued the deep state is no longer deniable, thanks to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. I outlined the structural design of the deep state as revealed by two recent declassifications: Gabbard’s ODNI report and the Durham annex released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

    These documents expose a transnational apparatus of intelligence agencies, media platforms, think tanks, and NGOs operating as a parallel government.

    The deep state is funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

    But institutions are only part of the story. This web of influence is made possible by people — and by money. This follow-up to the first piece traces the key operatives and financial networks fueling the deep state’s most consequential manipulations, including the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

    Architects and operatives

    At the top of the intelligence pyramid sits John Brennan, President Obama’s CIA director and one of the principal architects of the manipulated 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment.

    James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence, signed off on that same ICA and later joined 50 other former officials in concluding the Hunter Biden laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” ahead of the 2020 election. The timing, once again, served a political objective.

    James Comey, then FBI director, presided over Crossfire Hurricane. According to the Durham annex, he also allowed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server to collapse after it became entangled with “sensitive intelligence” revealing her plan to tie President Donald Trump to Russia.

    That plan, as documented in the annex, originated with Hillary Clinton herself and was personally pushed by President Obama. Her campaign, through law firm Perkins Coie, hired Fusion GPS, which commissioned the now-debunked Steele dossier — a document used to justify surveillance warrants on Trump associates.

    Several individuals orbiting the Clinton operation have remained influential. Jake Sullivan, who served as President Biden’s national security adviser, was a foreign policy aide to Clinton during her 2016 campaign. He was named in 2021 as a figure involved in circulating the collusion narrative, and his presence in successive Democratic administrations suggests institutional continuity.

    Andrew McCabe, then the FBI’s deputy director, approved the use of FISA warrants derived from unverified sources. His connection to the internal “insurance policy” discussion — described in a 2016 text by FBI official Peter Strzok to colleague Lisa Page — underscores the Bureau’s political posture during that election cycle.

    The list of political enablers is long but revealing:

    Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who, as a former representative from California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee at the time and publicly promoted the collusion narrative while having access to intelligence that contradicted it.

    Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), both members of the “Gang of Eight” with oversight of intelligence operations, advanced the same narrative despite receiving classified briefings.

    Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, exchanged encrypted text messages with a Russian lobbyist in efforts to speak with Christopher Steele.

    These were not passive recipients of flawed intelligence. They were participants in its amplification.

    The funding networks behind the machine

    The deep state’s operations are not possible without financing — much of it indirect, routed through a nexus of private foundations, quasi-governmental entities, and federal agencies.

    George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appear throughout the Durham annex. In one instance, Open Society Foundations documents were intercepted by foreign intelligence and used to track coordination between NGOs and the Clinton campaign’s anti-Trump strategy.

    This system was not designed for transparency but for control.

    Soros has also been a principal funder of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which ran a project during the Trump administration called the Moscow Project, dedicated to promoting the Russia collusion narrative.

    The Tides Foundation and Arabella Advisors both specialize in “dark money” donor-advised funds that obscure the source and destination of political funding. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the biggest donor to the Arabella Advisors by far, which routed $127 million through Arabella’s network in 2020 alone and nearly $500 million in total.

    The MacArthur Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation also financed many of the think tanks named in the Durham annex, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

    Federal funding pipelines

    Parallel to the private networks are government-funded influence operations, often justified under the guise of “democracy promotion” or counter-disinformation initiatives.

    USAID directed $270 million to Soros-affiliated organizations for overseas “democracy” programs, a significant portion of which has reverberated back into domestic influence campaigns.

    The State Department funds the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-governmental organization with a $315 million annual budget and ties to narrative engineering projects.

    The Department of Homeland Security underwrote entities involved in online censorship programs targeting American citizens.

    RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

    Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    The Pentagon, from 2020 to 2024, awarded over $2.4 trillion to private contractors — many with domestic intelligence capabilities. It also directed $1.4 billion to select think tanks since 2019.

    According to public records compiled by DataRepublican, these tax-funded flows often support the very actors shaping U.S. political discourse and global perception campaigns.

    Not just domestic — but global

    What these disclosures confirm is that the deep state is not a theory. It is a documented structure — funded by elite donors, shielded by bureaucracies, and perpetuated by operatives who drift between public office and private influence without accountability.

    This system was not designed for transparency but for control. It launders narratives, neutralizes opposition, and overrides democratic will by leveraging the very institutions meant to protect it.

    With the Durham annex and the ODNI report, we now see the network's architecture and its actors — names, agencies, funding trails — all laid bare. What remains is the task of dismantling it before its next iteration takes shape.

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  • 'Eddington' unmasked: Another slick, sick joke on American moviegoers Sat, 30 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000


    Director Ari Aster ’s "Eddington," which has inspired more heated discussion than it ticket sales, drops us unpleasantly back into an America at the peak of COVID-19 hysteria.

    Our putative protagonist is Joe Cross, well-intentioned but beleaguered sheriff of the small desert outpost of Eddington, New Mexico.

    Aster's previous films resolve with satanic forces claiming victory over well-meaning innocents just trying to grapple coherently with temptation and strife.

    Already burdened with a psychologically fragile wife (Emma Stone) and a live-in, conspiracy-obsessed mother-in-law (Deirdre O'Connell), Cross must now keep the peace for a populace bitterly divided over masks, social distancing, and business closures, while facing down BLM riots. His downtime doomscrolling (remember the black squares on Instagram?) offers no relief.

    Six-feet showdown

    Cross himself is COVID-skeptical, to the say the least, which puts him at odds with Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the kind of slimy, fake, media-savvy politico who could give California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) a run for his money.

    Watching the first half of this movie in 2025 is enjoyably cathartic. Even the audience at the screening I saw — in an art-house theater in liberal Chicago — cringed at the movie's virtue-signaling adults and their brainwashed teens. The biggest laugh came when a father, having just been subjected to a rant from his son about "white abolition," blurts out, “Are you f***ing re****ed? YOU’RE white!”

    I doubt I have to remind anyone that only a few years ago, these reactions would have been very different.

    Truther or dare

    From our vantage point in 2025, Cross seems to be the most levelheaded man in town, a flawed but decent public servant trying to make sense of a world gone mad. Finally, we think, a belated but nonetheless welcome jab at the liberal delusions that held sway in our country for the last decade.

    That's when Aster pulls the rug out from under us. Our hero makes a series of choices that progress from foolhardy to downright evil, choices he ends up paying for in the most grotesque way possible. We, in turn, are punished for daring to identify with Cross. It's as if Aster wants to leave us not merely disillusioned but utterly humiliated.

    Pascal's ostensible villain also falls away to reveal a much more formidable nemesis: the powerful corporation behind the development of Eddington's much-contested "SolidGoldMagikarp Data Center." These shadowy Big Tech overlords seem to validate every paranoid imagining of the online fringes, right and left: jetting in hooded, well-trained shock troops to carry out false-flag "Antifa" attacks and thwart populist dissent, distracting a divided and confused public from the very real threat they represent.

    RELATED: 'Eddington': Portrait of COVID-era craziness wrings laughs from peak wokeness

    Eric Charbonneau/A24 via Getty Images

    Jabber jibber

    Now … some critics may believe that this is the main message of the film. That the struggle is Them vs. Us. The real villains are the faceless "Eyes Wide Shut" cabal of world controllers who send out their minions to subvert the will of the people. “Smart viewers understand this,” the critics will say.

    Well, I’m a smart viewer, and I don’t care about that. Maybe it is Them vs. Us in real life, but in Hollywood, and to Ari Aster, and to the audience in the theater on both sides of the aisle, the message of "Eddington" is clear: You can't win.

    Aster's previous films, "Beau Is Afraid," "Midsommar," and "Hereditary," all resolve with satanic forces claiming victory over well-meaning innocents just trying to grapple coherently with temptation and strife. No one is held accountable for the perpetration of this violence; there is no justice or righteous retribution.

    "Eddington" turns out to be just another variation of this story, this time using COVID instead of the supernatural to torture its characters. The question we should ask is who benefits from this nihilistic message?

    Certainly not the audience. Joe Cross and the people of Eddington may be stuck where they are, helpless before the whims of their sadistic creator, but there's nothing keeping us in town. None of us would want to live in Aster World; maybe it's time we admitted it's not even a nice place to visit.

  • America last: Is Big Tech hiding jobs from US citizens to hire cheaper foreign labor from India and China? Sat, 30 Aug 2025 10:30:00 +0000


    Reports indicate that the American tech job market is slowing down significantly, making it increasingly more difficult for qualified individuals to find employment. However, a team of technology professionals contends that jobs are out there; they are just not being advertised to American talent.

    The Economic Policy Institute found that the top 30 H-1B employers hired 34,000 new foreign workers in 2022, yet laid off at least 85,000 between 2022 and early 2023, further fueling concerns that companies are booting Americans for foreign nationals to keep wages lower.

    'We were shocked to discover these discriminatory practices are still widespread across major American companies today, keeping Americans out of jobs in their own country.'

    Indian nationals accounted for roughly 71% of H-1B workers in 2024, while Chinese nationals ranked second, with 12%. Indian and Chinese nationals also represent the largest groups of foreign-born STEM workers, according to the American Immigration Council.

    The background

    Reports like this sparked action from fed-up tech workers who decided to establish Jobs.Now, an online job board featuring a list of positions sourced from "legally mandated PERM labor market test locations" in newspaper classified advertisements.

    PERM is a permanent labor certification issued by the Department of Labor, allowing employers to hire foreign talent to work in the United States. This certification sets workers on a path to receive a green card. Many of these candidates are already working for the employer on temporary visas, such as the H-1B or the Optional Practical Training programs.

    The tech workers were driven to start the online job board after Apple and Facebook settled worker discrimination lawsuits with the Department of Justice.

    In 2021, Facebook agreed to pay $4.75 million in civil penalties and up to $9.5 million to eligible victims after it was accused of “routinely” refusing to “recruit, consider, or hire U.S. workers” for positions it had reserved for temporary visa holders.

    Similarly, in 2023, Apple agreed to pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and establish an $18.25 million back pay fund for victims after the DOJ claimed the company “illegally discriminated in hiring and recruitment against U.S. citizens and certain non-U.S. citizens.”

    RELATED: The real labor crisis? Too many visas, not too few workers

    Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

    “We were shocked to discover these discriminatory practices are still widespread across major American companies today, keeping Americans out of jobs in their own country,” Jobs.Now told Blaze News. “We started Jobs.Now to fight against these illegal practices and help Americans find good jobs.”

    Sneaky tactics

    Jobs.Now warned that some companies — particularly those seeking to fill engineering, data science, finance, accounting, and biotechnology positions — will try to hide opportunities from American workers to favor their existing H-1B employee and provide lower wages.

    Under PERM laws, a company seeking to hire a foreign national must demonstrate "that there are not sufficient U.S. workers able, willing, qualified, and available to accept the job opportunity in the area of intended employment and that employment of the foreign worker will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers."

    To demonstrate this, the employer must advertise the position in two Sunday newspapers and select three additional recruitment steps, which can include advertising the position at job fairs, the employer's website, an online job board, and on radio and television, among other options.

    'Jobs.Now highlights those ads, but that doesn't mean the company is running a new search. It's just about meeting the compliance rules.’

    The employer can hire a foreign national via the PERM process only if there are no other minimally qualified U.S. citizens or existing green card holders available.

    "As a result, they put ads in newspapers with obscure application methods aiming to hide the listing from Americans, so they will not receive applications and will be able to sponsor their preferred immigrant candidate for a green card to fill the job," Jobs.Now told Blaze News.

    Jobs.Now explained that it has found some job postings that feature "hidden" characteristics — including "not being posted on the company website, not being posted on mainstream job boards, and requiring email or paper mail applications" — that could result in fewer American applicants.

    Jobs.Now has also highlighted postings that refer individuals to send their applications to immigration professionals and law firms, rather than human resources workers.

    "To maintain business continuity, or the wage arbitrage of hiring lower-paid immigrant workers, companies prefer to keep these existing employees rather than seek American citizens as required for permanent roles," Jobs.Now stated. "They commonly treat PERM labor market tests as compliance exercises where they fill out paperwork, rather than actual hiring processes. As a result, they often direct applications to immigration professionals or law firms rather than ordinary recruiters."

    RELATED: Microsoft rejects idea that company is replacing American workers with foreign labor after massive layoffs

    Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

    Clashing views

    While Jobs.Now highlights the labor market tests as being treated as mere formalities rather than genuine efforts to recruit American workers, recruiter Mark Fabela affirmed that these postings are meant to satisfy regulatory requirements and are "not about launching a broad hiring campaign." Though, perspectives differ on whether this complies with the law.

    "Instead, it's about documenting for the Department of Labor that no qualified U.S. workers stepped forward during the recruitment phase. That's why you see the mandated postings in newspapers and other outlets," Fabela told Blaze News. "Jobs.Now highlights those ads, but that doesn't mean the company is running a new search. It's just about meeting the compliance rules."

    "By the time these ads appear, the role is often already filled by someone, usually an H-1B worker the company is already employing," he said, dismissing Jobs.Now's claim that the posts aimed to hide jobs from Americans.

    ‘Only after no US worker can be found will the PERM application be approved. Whether the foreign worker is already performing the job is immaterial.’

    However, other experts challenge Fabela's perspective, asserting that the law requires genuine efforts to hire Americans, even through the labor market tests posted in the newspaper.

    “Employers must conduct good-faith recruitment of U.S. workers and offer that position to any qualified and willing U.S. applicant,” Dr. Ron Hira, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Howard University, told Blaze News. “Only after no U.S. worker can be found will the PERM application be approved. Whether the foreign worker is already performing the job is immaterial.”

    Hira called the law “crystal clear” but noted that even the DOL “has been guilty of administrative malpractice in enforcing PERM regulations.”

    RELATED: AI, global power, and the end of human jobs — are we ready?

    Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

    “For the past few decades, DOL has turned a blind eye to rampant employer discrimination against U.S. workers in the PERM recruitment process,” he explained. “Everyone, including DOL, knows that discrimination is more common than not in PERM applications.”

    The DOL admitted in a 2020 report that the PERM program “relentlessly has employers not complying with the qualifying criteria.” It also stated that it has “limited authority over the H-1B program as it can only deny incomplete and obviously inaccurate applications and conduct complaint-based investigations, challenges in protecting the welfare of the nation’s workforce.”

    “Therefore, the PERM and H-1B programs remain highly susceptible to fraud,” the DOL concluded.

    Hira called for Americans to petition the Trump administration “to start enforcing the plain language of the law.”

    ‘Americans don't have a real shot at these jobs; they were already displaced long ago when the employer hired the worker on a temporary visa.’

    Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, echoed Hira's concerns about enforcement failures, calling the PERM process “a charade.”

    “The reality is that nearly all of these employers already have a foreign worker in the job and are just seeking to check off the boxes that the law requires,” Vaughan told Blaze News. “Americans don't have a real shot at these jobs; they were already displaced long ago when the employer hired the worker on a temporary visa.”

    Congress fueled some of these issues by adjusting the eligibility criteria for green cards to more closely align with those for temporary visas, Vaughan explained.

    “That means there are more temporary workers now seeking to get green cards to stay permanently, and they are willing to work for less money on that promise. However, they have a long wait for the green cards, and the employers don't want to have to consider Americans for these jobs, since they promised them to the foreign workers, and they can get away with paying them less,” Vaughan stated.

    Concerning any “good faith” efforts to find Americans to fill these positions, Vaughan reasoned that there is “little enforcement of the requirement” because employers have found ways to circumvent rules.

    Fabela acknowledges that issues exist within the current process, including a lack of modernization with the print newspaper ad requirement. He also noted that some job requirements are so "overly narrow" that they "effectively match one candidate's resume." The most concerning issue is "wage-level manipulation," according to Fabela.

    "Bad actors will write dumbed-down job descriptions in a way that understates the role's actual skill level. That allows them to pay experienced candidates significantly less while still clearing the prevailing wage test," Fabela told Blaze News.

    Jobs.Now also highlighted issues with the manipulation of the "overly broad" prevailing wage standard, which "allows companies to slot jobs into categories that could include far less advanced roles, which have lower wage standards."

    America First reforms

    Amid an uncertain tech job market and ongoing criticisms of the PERM process, advocates like Jobs.Now are pushing for reforms to address the root problems and restore priority to American workers.

    Jobs.Now is calling for changes to H-1B and PERM regulations, as well as the cancellation of the OPT visa program, to open more job opportunities to American workers, including entry-level recent college graduates.

    ‘We think the regulations must be changed so that labor market tests give American citizens the right they deserve to be considered first for jobs in America, rather than the formality they are currently treated as.’

    Companies should also be required to prove that there are no qualified American candidates available for a position before issuing an H-1B visa, Jobs.Now stated.

    The tech workers behind the job board website are advocating for companies to be required to post all labor market tests on their website’s career page, accept digital applications, and post on high-traffic job boards like LinkedIn or Indeed, rather than newspaper classifieds.

    RELATED: America last? Foreign workers fill jobs while Americans are left out

    Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    “In short, we think the regulations must be changed so that labor market tests give American citizens the right they deserve to be considered first for jobs in America, rather than the formality they are currently treated as,” Jobs.Now told Blaze News.

    Fabela agrees that the H-1B program is flawed and in need of reform to prevent abuse. However, he noted that he is “unapologetically pro-H-1B," expressing concern that China would win the tech race “without firing a shot” if the U.S. closes the door on foreign talent.

    The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has vowed to clamp down on employment bias by increasing investigations, compliance checks, and litigation.

    “The EEOC is putting employers and other covered entities on notice: If you are part of the pipeline contributing to our immigration crisis or abusing our legal immigration system via illegal preferences against American workers, you must stop,” EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas stated in March.

    “The EEOC is here to protect all workers from unlawful national origin discrimination, including American workers,” Lucas remarked.

    The DOL did not respond to a request for comment.

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  • Missing 12-year-old was killed by alligators — and records show horrific prior conviction against his mother Sat, 30 Aug 2025 09:30:00 +0000


    Louisiana residents are horrified by the discovery of the remains of a missing 12-year-old who was reportedly killed by alligators, but previous allegations against his mother make the case even more disturbing.

    The remains of Bryan Vasquez were found by a volunteer of the United Cajun Navy with the aid of a thermal drone after a massive search that lasted for 12 days. The boy had been reported missing from his home in the Michoud neighborhood of New Orleans.

    He was suffering from a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, retinal hemorrhages, fractured ankles, and fractured legs as well as a punctured lung.

    Volunteer Jon Gusanders said in a press conference Thursday that he saw a "violent movement under the water's surface" that led him to find the body in a lagoon.

    "I've never seen anything like that," he said, "and I hope to never see anything like that again."

    He said that two alligators, one about 11 feet long and the other about 6 feet long, were holding the boy's body underwater before they were spooked by the drone.

    Gusanders said that he used the drone to distract the alligators from recovery efforts since they kept returning to the boy's body and pushing it deeper into the lagoon.

    A coroner found that the boy died from blunt force trauma and drowning in the alligator attack.

    "We did everything we could to protect his body, to protect his honor, while the NOPD got their boat out to successfully recover him," he added.

    The boy had been missing since Aug. 14 after he slipped out of a window. A neighbor's security camera appeared to capture him in him walking by in a diaper.

    Police have obtained a search warrant in the case and confiscated the woman's cell phone in the investigation.

    On Thursday, WDSU reported disturbing details in a conviction against Hilda Vasquez, the mother of the child. In 2013, the boy was rushed to the hospital when only 3 months old because he was vomiting blood and had stopped breathing.

    His mother said that they were watching television when the boy began screaming as if "someone was squeezing him."

    Doctors said the boy was the victim of child abuse after noting that he was suffering from a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, retinal hemorrhages, fractured ankles, and fractured legs as well as a punctured lung.

    RELATED: Family of 10-year-old girl allegedly tortured to death says CPS ignored dozens of warnings

    The mother was sentenced to five years for child abuse but later received probation. She was eventually able to regain custody of the child.

    While she described the boy as autistic and nonverbal, a report from the Department of Children and Family Services in 2021 said that his disability had been classified as "traumatic brain injury (non-accidental)."

    A representative for the Vasquez family released a statement blaming domestic abuse for the previous conviction.

    "All I can say is that as a community advocate for this community, I know for a fact in Hilda's past she was a victim of domestic violence," Cristiane Rosales-Fajardo said. "I know that in her past she has done everything to protect her children and that her child was living with her at the time he walked out of the house. All four of her children was living with her, so if the state and DCFS believe she is a danger, then that means they failed him again."

    Fajardo has also opened a GoFundMe account to raise funds for the family.

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  • Chatbots calling the shots? Prime minister’s recent AI confession forebodes a brave new world of governance Sat, 30 Aug 2025 09:00:00 +0000


    In their co-authored best seller “Dark Future,” Glenn Beck and Justin Haskins predicted a day when global leaders would rely on artificial intelligence to help them govern nations.

    Just two years after the book’s publication, their premonition has already come true. Earlier this month, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson admitted in an interview with the Swedish business newspaper “Dagens Industri” that he frequently uses AI tools, such as ChatGPT and LeChat, to seek "second opinions" on policy decisions.

    Before proposing or enacting a new policy, Kristersson asks AI chatbots questions like, “What have others done? Should we think the complete opposite?” says Haskins, adding that the PM also utilizes AI platforms to conduct research and bounce ideas around.

    But it’s not just him. “In the interview, he says … his colleagues in the legislature are also doing this exact same thing. They're using AI as sort of an adviser,” he tells Glenn.

    While Kristersson swears up and down that he doesn't blindly follow ChatGPT’s advice or share sensitive information with the database, there are still “huge problems” with his reliance on AI.

    Haskins believes Sweden isn’t actually the first country to use artificial intelligence in governance; it is just the first to admit it. “I guarantee that American politicians are using it all the time,” he says, warning that “this is going to be a huge problem moving forward.”

    Glenn, who regularly uses artificial intelligence as a tool, says that Kristersson’s AI usage isn't necessarily a problem in and of itself.

    The real concern, he says, is “what comes next.”

    Glenn foresees a day when AI is valued above and trusted more than human intuition, intelligence, and experience. “That's when you've lost control,” he warns.

    “That's exactly right,” says Haskins, “and how do you argue against something's decision when that something is smarter than literally everybody in the room?”

    “And it’s learned how to lie,” adds Glenn.

    Haskins agrees, noting that current AI systems “lie all the time.” It’s not uncommon for users to report that various AI systems make up information, invent sources, and skew hard data.

    “It's feeding you what it thinks you want to hear,” says Glenn.

    While it’s true that human beings are also capable of lying and manipulation, artificial intelligence is a far greater threat because it can “manipulate huge parts of the population all at the same time,” says Haskins.

    Further, “[AI] doesn't necessarily have the same goals that a human would have. As it continues to grow, it's going to have its own motive, and it may just be for self-survival,” adds Glenn.

    “That's the world that we're already living in. … It's not hypothetical,” sighs Haskins.

    To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.

    Want more from Glenn Beck?

    To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

  • Why Republican victories keep delivering Democratic policies Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:30:00 +0000


    Conservatives often imagine that winning statewide elections means gaining control over the machinery of government. But this is wrong — and dangerously so. For far too long, red states have confused the two. The assumption that political victory automatically confers political authority is one of the chief falsehoods circulating on the right. It is the reason Republican states often look like Democrat ones, only with different bumper stickers.

    This is an uncomfortable but necessary message for conservatives to hear: Red states are facing a major crisis of governance.

    Red states have built conservative brands on progressive machinery.

    The State Leadership Initiative’s new “Index Report” lays out the evidence in extensive detail. By the most basic measures of lean, accountable, and ideologically grounded government, red states are failing. Many of the policies their representatives are voting for and their governors are signing into law are profoundly out of step with the wishes of voters. Bureaucracies are bloated, universities multiply administrators faster than scholars, schools have fewer teachers than administrators, New York-style regulations pile up in red states like Texas, and seven of the 10 most federally dependent states wear the Republican label.

    The key takeaway is not just that red states are doing poorly — it is that red states are almost indistinguishable from blue states on the metrics that matter.

    This is not conservative governance. It is branding atop the chassis of managerial progressivism. Governors may cut a ribbon, sign a bill, or post a slogan, but beneath the surface, the operating code of their states is indistinguishable from California’s.

    How can this be the case?

    The bureaucratic cartel

    The deeper reason for this unfortunate reality is explored in the State Leadership Initiative’s second major publication, the “Shadow Government Report.” It shows how state bureaucracies have been colonized — quietly, methodically — by a cartel of national associations and professional guilds no voter ever approved. These groups wield more influence over daily governance than most state legislatures, yet they are invisible to the public, untethered from electoral accountability, and drenched in progressive orthodoxy.

    These associations are neither think tanks nor trade associations in the old sense. Yet they wield massive powers: They write standards, provide training, host conferences, and broker grants. These guilds credential personnel and tell agencies what “best practice” means.

    Because legislators rarely read the fine print in the legislation they pass, the blueprints crafted by these associations become the law of the land by default. When the public wonders why every state suddenly adopts the same jargon, the same metrics, and the same “tool kits” on climate, equity, and inclusion, the answer is almost always because the same group of associations decided it.

    The depth of ideological capture in these associations is astounding. The examples border on parody. The National Association of State Treasurers insists that environmental, social, and governance investing is a fiduciary duty and trains treasurers in diversity, equity, and inclusion.

    The National Association of Medicaid Directors declares equity — not health outcomes — the “foundational principle” of Medicaid reform and pushes race-based service priorities.

    The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials maintains that “structural racism” is a public health emergency and coordinates messaging on abortion, climate, and even online speech with the White House.

    The National Association of State Procurement Officials encourages states to embed race- and gender-based scoring rubrics into contracting, turning neutral bidding into an ideological loyalty test.

    The National Governors Association, which is supposedly a bipartisan forum of executives, functions as a relay for the left, peddling DEI and ESG tool kits like a traveling salesman.

    These examples are far from exhaustive.

    National associations operate outside democratic oversight while having a greater influence over shaping state policy than most legislatures. They are the Trojan horses of managerial progressivism. While legislators debate property-tax rates or curriculum, these associations push a suite of prepackaged policies — procurement guidelines, Medicaid waivers, regulatory thresholds — that heavily favor the status quo.

    Protecting progressives

    Civil service rules protect progressive careerists from political oversight. University boards rubber-stamp DEI because accreditation bodies — another arm of the cartel — say so. Procurement officers copy and paste National Association of State Procurement Officials templates. Medicaid directors take their orders from the National Association of Medicaid Directors rather than the governor.

    The bureaucrats Republican governors inherit have been trained in association doctrine, are credentialed by association certifications, and are acculturated in association conferences. Even the vocabulary their agencies use — “resilience,” “inclusion,” “climate readiness,” “public-private partnership” — is imported from slide decks in Washington, D.C.

    Our adversaries built the shadow government that now runs the states. The only question is whether conservatives will summon the courage to challenge it.

    You may elect a conservative governor. But if his health agency still sends staff to Association of State and Territorial Health Officials trainings, his Medicaid office still uses National Association of Medicaid Directors templates, and his treasury department still follows the National Association of State Treasurers guidelines, the day-to-day governance is leftist by default.

    Even if personnel are swapped out, the new trainees will be accepting “best practices,” model regulation, and training seminars from supposedly neutral industry experts. But this neutrality is a farce.

    The result is a peculiar kind of political theater. Voters think they have chosen a government. Governors think they are in command. But the machinery hums along, indifferent to election returns and guided by national bodies whose values are taken from the faculty lounge and the federal bureaucracy. It is government by autopilot — and the autopilot was programmed by the left.

    Rooting out the cartel

    The cartel of leftist national associations needs to be dealt with in order for red states to prosper. The remedy is not tinkering around the edges but an aggressive structural overhaul.

    First, states must begin by auditing and restricting association membership. Every agency should disclose its dues, trainings, grant pipelines, and template adoptions. Sunshine is a good disinfectant.

    Second, agencies should be barred from importing association policies without legislative approval. If a procurement office wants to adopt National Association of State Procurement Officials rubrics, let it defend that choice in front of elected representatives in open hearings.

    Third, association-led DEI trainings should be prohibited outright; they are not professional development but bureaucratic catechism.

    Fourth, rival associations must be built, as the State Financial Officers Foundation has already done, to provide training and credentials aligned with republican self-government.

    Finally, and most importantly, political leadership must penetrate the bureaucracy — more appointed positions, stronger sunset rules, and the restructuring of state agencies that resist accountability.

    Some will protest that this sounds radical. It is not — it is the work of self-government. The radicalism lies in the present arrangement, in which anonymous guilds in a faraway capital dictate to sovereign states what their procurement contracts should look like or what principles guide their Medicaid systems. The radicalism lies in states whose constitutions enshrine republican rule yet whose daily operations are outsourced to entities their people cannot name.

    This reform in red states is not optional if conservatives mean to govern.

    Changing the machinery

    The Index reveals the failures; the Shadow Government Report reveals the cause. Paired together, they teach a crucial lesson: Red states have built conservative brands on progressive machinery. They talk like Jefferson but regulate like Albany. They thump their chests about liberty while paying dues to organizations that smuggle equity quotas into their hiring manuals.

    RELATED: The deep state is no longer deniable — thanks to Tulsi Gabbard

    Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

    To continue on this path is to win hollow victories, mistaking campaign slogans for statecraft. It is to send governors into battle armed with speeches while the other side controls the maps, the supply lines, and the ammunition. The work ahead is not to shout louder but to actually govern — to tear down the scaffolding of association rules and build institutions that are faithful to the people they’re supposed to serve. Until that is done, every red state risks being a blue state in disguise.

    Governance is not automatic. It is not the inevitable byproduct of winning elections. It is the patient, disciplined, steady construction of institutions aligned with the people’s will. Our adversaries have known this for decades. They built the shadow government that now runs the states. The only question left is whether conservatives will summon the courage to challenge it.

    Editor's note: This article was published originally at the American Mind.

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