Day: April 10, 2026
#652 – Matt McCusker
Matt McCusker is a stand-up comedian, podcaster and writer. He is currently on tour and you can find him weekly on his podcast— “Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast”. Matt joins Theo to talk about his ruthless gardening practices, why he’s worried about young men looksmaxxing, and how he thinks he’ll do if he gets drafted.
GOP Senators: Nuke The Filibuster, Pass The SAVE America Act
Sen. Ron Johnson sees it as a kind of golden rule in dealing with nasty Dem politics: Do unto others before they do unto you.
Usha Vance Is Making Maternity Fashion Hot Again
Usha Vance is revolutionizing maternity fashion, not just with her pastel spring fits, but with how these ensembles showcase her love for her family.
How The Algorithm Stripped The Soul Out Of Songwriting
Instead of being consumed in its entirety, a song fragment must typically succeed on social media before listeners seek out the full track.
Canada Poised To Criminalize Christianity With Ban On Citing Biblical Truths
The only way to understand the purpose of Bill C-9 — and other Christian persecution in the West — is to frame it as a hostile pagan religion imposing its will.
The Left Threw Columbus Into The Harbor — Now Trump Is Putting Him Back
The Trump admin seems to grasp a truth that its predecessors too often ignored: America is neither an abstraction nor a mere economic zone.
A Time For Choosing
We are in a post-Christian era, no doubt. But in recent years the church has moved from simply being viewed as irrelevant to being viewed as dangerous and has come under active attack. I wrote about it Tuesday and again yesterday. In both instances I urged the church to repent its own participation in its own demise. The evidence keeps mounting of a church under attack – from within and from without.
The post A Time For Choosing appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
‘Eco-Socialism’ now! Inside Sunrise Movement’s ‘revolution’ playbook
Students have always enjoyed flaunting revolutionary politics — the posters, the slogans, the Che Guevara T-shirts.
Like gender fluidity and ultimate frisbee, these radical affectations often don’t survive graduation. It’s a tale as old as time: One day you’re shouting into a bullhorn; the next, you’re typing on Slack.
Members also earn ‘rays’ on a Sunrise patch as they progress through the ranks — a visible marker of participation and standing within the organization.
What does endure, however, is the sophisticated political machinery designed to harness this youthful fervor and put it into action.
‘Political revolution’
This week, watchdog group Defending Education published internal documents outlining a coordinated push for political upheaval from one of the country’s most visible youth activist organizations.
The Sunrise Movement is a 501(c)(4) environmental organization that describes itself as “a movement of young people fighting to stop the climate crisis.”
But slides leaked to Defending Education from a March 17, 2026, membership meeting reveal a highly structured and strategic operation calling for a “political revolution” and “structurally chang[ing] the foundations of this country” — language that goes well beyond climate advocacy.
The message is as simple as it is sobering: The goal is not reform, but replacement.
The revelation here is not the Sunrise Movement’s rhetoric. “Revolution” is already central to the group’s public-facing language; its homepage describes itself as part of a broader climate revolution. What the slides add is clarity: That “revolution” is not just metaphor, but a program laid out in concrete terms, from pressure campaigns and mass noncooperation to institutional targeting.
Defending Education
Path to a ‘New System’
The goal: “Eco-socialism, [a] multi-racial democracy, and Green New Deal legislation.”
A section titled “On the Road to Revolution” lays out a path to a “New System” — including passing Green New Deal policies and “ending the billionaire 2-party system.”
The slides also describe a strategy of “repolarizing” the country. One passage calls for “get[ting] majority of society out in the streets and an explosion in voting,” arguing that “we need to repolarize society” to move people away from what it describes as a “(corrupt) system” and toward a new one with “more democracy.”
Target: Hilton
The materials also outline how that shift is meant to occur in practice — through a sequence of escalating actions tied to specific campaigns.
It begins with a March 28 No Kings event and builds toward a May 1 national strike. In between: sustained pressure.
A slide titled “Hilton to May Day” points to coordinated economic disruption, including efforts to target “ICE enabler” Hilton Hotels over its alleged ties to immigration enforcement. Tactics listed include public boycotts, so-called “wide awake actions,” and coordinated booking and canceling of hotel reservations — designed to impose financial and reputational costs.
Defending Education
‘Dawn’ to ‘Dusk’
The slides also lay out what the group calls its internal “culture” — a set of guiding principles members are expected to adopt. The language reads less like loose organizing advice and more like a shared creed: “Nothing about us without us,” “Motivate the base, isolate the opposition,” and “It is our duty to fight for our freedom, it is our duty to win.” The effect is to define not just tactics, but a common vocabulary and moral framework for participants.
Another section details a tiered membership structure, with clearly defined ranks — “Dawn,” “Morning,” “High Noon,” “Afternoon,” and “Dusk” — each tied to specific benchmarks: recruiting new members, completing actions, attending meetings, and undergoing training. Advancement comes with increasing responsibilities, access, and internal status.
Members also earn “rays” on a Sunrise patch as they progress through the ranks — a visible marker of participation and standing within the organization. The structure resembles a formal pipeline, designed to scale participation and develop organizers over time.
‘Full Dictatorship’
The presentation outlines three possible futures, each portraying the current system as compromised and the stakes as existential — conditions that, in the materials’ framing, justify escalation.
The most extreme — “Full Dictatorship” — imagines Donald Trump consolidating power, using the military against opponents, and restricting speech.
The function is clear: Escalation isn’t optional. It’s required.
Defending Education
Defending Education
Defending Education, formerly Parents Defending Education, has focused on political activity in schools — curriculum, student protests, and institutional ties to advocacy groups.
Defending Education was founded in 2021 amid a surge of parental backlash to politicized curricula and school policies. The group uses public records requests, whistleblower tips, and document releases to surface what it describes as ideological activism inside education systems.
RELATED: Defending Education gives parents tools to fight leftist indoctrination
In recent years, it has zeroed in on the overlap between student organizing and outside advocacy groups — arguing that protests framed as grassroots are often supported and shaped by national networks. The Sunrise materials, it says, fit that pattern.
The Sunrise Movement has been linked to student walkouts, including protests tied to immigration enforcement. What the newly released slides add, Defending Education argues, is a clearer picture of how that organizing is structured and scaled.
“While calls for a ‘political revolution’ by left-wing activist groups are not unique, these coordinated plans to put economic and social pressure on universities … should raise serious concerns,” said Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education.
“Our academic institutions should be places of higher learning … not weaponized or punished to achieve a ‘structural change’ to the political foundations of this country.”
Defending Education
Pushing left
Founded in 2017, the Sunrise Movement helped drive the Green New Deal into the political mainstream through protests, sit-ins, and youth mobilization.
The Sunrise Movement operates as a decentralized network of local “hubs,” many based on college and high school campuses. That structure has allowed it to scale quickly — turning student energy into coordinated national campaigns.
Since its founding, the Sunrise Movement has proven itself an effective pressure group within Democrat politics, helping push climate policy from the margins to the center of the party’s agenda. Its early backing of the Green New Deal helped turn what was once a fringe proposal into a defining litmus test for progressive candidates.
The group also played a visible role during the 2020 election cycle, applying sustained pressure on Joe Biden and his campaign to adopt more aggressive climate positions. While not all of its demands were met, Sunrise and allied activists helped shape the administration’s climate framework — demonstrating that its model of protest plus pressure can move policy, not just headlines.
Its strategy has consistently blended electoral pressure with direct action. What the newly released slides suggest is a continuation of that model, but with a more explicit emphasis on escalation and institutional leverage.
For a generation told that it is inheriting a world on the brink, the climate is the cause. For groups like Sunrise Movement, the target is something more immediate: the system itself.
What emerges is not just a campaign for the planet, but a bid to reshape political power around a broader program of systemic change.
The moral imperative behind the rescues in Iran
U.S. Special Forces recently rescued a pair of downed airmen in Iran. As the stories begin to be disseminated, many in the audience — but sadly, not all in the West, or in America — will listen and read with awe, pride, and patriotism. Most will do so at least until the next exciting event comes along.
Where does the moral imperative of ‘no one is left behind’ come from?
The day after the rescue, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated President Donald Trump and the Americans who pulled off this daring, high-risk mission. Netanyahu said, in part:
All Israelis rejoice in the incredible rescue of a brave American pilot, by America’s dauntless warriors. This proves that when free societies muster their courage, and their resolve, they can confront seemingly insurmountable odds, and overcome the forces of darkness and terror. This rescue operation reinforces a sacred principle: No one is left behind.
The prime minister’s words were appropriate and inspiring. He stated, as have other early reporters, that the Israelis and Americans share “a sacred principle: No one is left behind.” But so far, has anyone — including Netanyahu — made an effort to convey what I suggest to be the single most important piece of information relevant to this — or to any — rescue mission?
Where does the moral imperative of “no one is left behind” come from?
It comes directly from the Book of Genesis. There we read — no less than four times — that God created man in His own image.
In these passages, mankind is said to bear the Imago Dei, the image of God. This means that the individual person, regardless of status, wealth, merit, or demerit, possesses inherent value and dignity. That is why in the West — where the Jewish and Christian scriptures historically were foundational — our rock-solid commitment has been to ensure “no one is left behind.”
If one doubts this assertion, look no further than the military traditions in the non-West — though some in the non-West have adopted Western military values (if not civil values in certain cases), particularly in the Far East.
The reality has been, historically, that outside of the West where the cultural understanding of the Imago Dei was foundational, individual persons were valued only insofar as they were of some use to the community, society, or the state.
In the military context, it was perhaps not surprising that in the Korean conflict, the Soviet military placed rescue as a low priority for its MiG-15 pilots.
Among the many danger signs in the West for decades has been the adoption and implementation by governments of ideas and practices grossly antithetical to the scripture-based teachings of individual dignity, which flow from the image of God in man — from abortion and euthanasia to the depriving of liberty of conscience and freedom of religion.
RELATED: I saw the sky light up over Dubai. The real shock came next.
AFP/Getty Images
The neo-Marxist-based diversity and cancel culture movements have contributed their share to this destructive trend.
So while most once-traditional markers of the West are losing ground, the “sacred principle” expressed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, for now, remains compelling among certain Western militaries, especially America and Israel.
This no-one-left-behind principle was prominently displayed in the air for the first time during the Korean conflict, by which time technological advances made combat rescue a realistic option. The foremost technological advance for this mission was the same type of aircraft that rescued our two Airmen in Iran — the helicopter.
During World War II, as my mentor, friend, and noted air power historian Dr. Earl H. Tilford Jr. wrote, “An aircrew member downed behind enemy lines was virtually certain of capture or death.” But in Korea, a few years later, the young U.S. Air Force’s Air Rescue Service demonstrated with employment of its H-5 and H-19 helicopters and SA-16 amphibian fixed-wing aircraft that combat air rescue was viable.
It was also in Korea that the Air Rescue motto and the Rescue culture were born. Every Rescue member understood that should the unthinkable happen to a U.S. or U.N. airman, and he was forced to leave his aircraft over enemy territory or the adversary’s waters, Rescue crews would risk their lives to fulfill their motto, “That Others May Live.”
But to return to the moral imperative once more. As I wrote in 2020:
In one rescue attempt in December 1969, a total of 336 sorties were flown in support of one F-4 navigator downed near Tchepone, Laos. One pararescueman died, several others were wounded. Of 10 helicopters damaged in the operation, five never flew again. As [Tilford] wrote, “Yet no one asked if the life of one man was worth all the effort.” The question was unnecessary.
The question was not required because the Western culture of the day — though it was beginning to fade — affirmed the inherent dignity of the individual, created in the image of God.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
‘Completely evil’ man sentenced to decades in prison for tying up and raping elderly woman in Ohio
A man convicted for raping an elderly woman and tying her up will spend decades in prison after Ohio police were able to find one thumbprint from the crime scene.
Columbus police said they were called to the Eastmoor neighborhood on Jan. 13 on reports of a rape.
‘This is the nightmare every woman fears. I cannot think of a worse set of facts.’
The 87-year-old woman told police that she awoke to find a man in all black and wearing a ski mask standing over her. He raped her and then tied her up before leaving her in her kitchen.
It took her about three hours to free herself, and then she discovered that he had stolen her car from a detached garage.
Detectives said they were able to identify a suspect through a thumbprint that was found on a bottle of disinfectant wipes. The suspect lived only a few blocks away from the victim.
They arrested 31-year-old Miguel Rodriguez Rolon two days later.
Family members of the victim said she used a walker to get to the court stand and testified against Rolon.
He was found guilty in March of two counts of rape, one count of kidnapping, and one count of aggravated burglary. He was sentenced to at least 84 years in prison.
Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Chris Brown excoriated Rolon and called his crime “completely evil” during sentencing.
“It is completely evil to rape an 87-year-old woman. This is the nightmare every woman fears. I cannot think of a worse set of facts,” Brown said. “You’re the reason we build prisons in this country.”
Her family said she still faces a long rehabilitation process, but they are happy that justice was served in the case.
Rolon will also have to register as a Tier III sex offender.
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