Category: Opinion & analysis
Homeowners’ associations weren’t supposed to replace civilization
Homeowners’ associations exploded across America beginning in the 1960s. No one describes HOAs as “popular,” and the horror stories of petty rules and bureaucratic neighbors are legion. Yet more Americans fight for the privilege of buying into them every year. The reason is simple: The HOA is the last legal mechanism Americans have to artificially recreate something the country once produced organically — a high-trust society.
People want neighborhoods where streets feel safe, houses stay maintained, and neighbors behave predictably. We call these places “high trust” because people do not expect those around them to violate basic standards. Doors remain unlocked, kids play outside, and property values rise. Americans once assumed this was the natural condition of ordinary life. It never was.
Everyone complains about HOAs, but they remain the only defense against the chaos modern culture produces.
High-trust societies are not accidental. They emerge only under specific cultural conditions. Trust forms when people can understand and predict the behavior of those around them. That requires a shared standard — how to act, how to maintain property, how to handle conflict. When those standards come from a common way of life, enforcement becomes minimal. People feel free not because they reject limits, but because the limits match their instincts and expectations.
Every social order requires maintenance, but the amount varies. When most residents share the same assumptions, small gestures keep the peace. A disapproving look from Mrs. Smith over an unkempt lawn prompts action. A loud party until 1 a.m. results in lost invitations until the offender corrects the behavior. Police rarely if ever enter the picture. The community polices itself through mutual judgment.
Several preconditions make this coordination possible. Residents must share standards so violations appear obvious. They must feel comfortable addressing those violations without fear of disproportionate or hostile reactions. And they must value the esteem of their neighbors enough to respond to correction. When those conditions collapse, norms collapse with them. As New York learned during the era of broken windows, one act of disorder invites the next.
American culture and government spent the last 60 years destroying those preconditions.
Academics and media stigmatized culturally cohesive neighborhoods, and government policies made them nearly impossible to maintain. Accusations of racism, sexism, or homophobia discourage the subtle social pressure that once corrected behavior. The informal network of mothers supervising neighborhood kids vanished as more women entered the corporate workforce. And as Robert Putnam documented, social trust deteriorates as diversity increases. Residents retreat into isolation, not engagement.
The HOA attempts to reconstruct a high-trust environment under conditions that no longer support it. Ownership, maintenance, and conduct move from cultural consensus to legal contract. Residents with widely different expectations sign binding agreements dictating noise levels, lawn care, parking, paint colors, and countless other micro-regulations. A formal board replaces Mrs. Smith’s frown. Fines replace gentle rebukes. Gates and walls replace the watchful eye of neighborhood moms.
What once came from community now comes from bureaucracy.
With home prices surging, families dedicate larger portions of their wealth to their houses. Few want to gamble on declining property values because their neighborhood slips into disorder. Everyone complains about HOAs, but they remain the only defense against the chaos modern culture produces. People enter hostile, artificial arrangements where neighbors behave like informants rather than partners — because the alternative threatens their largest investment.
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Blaze Media Illustration
This analysis is not about suburban frustration. The HOA reveals a far broader truth: Modern America replaced a high-trust society with a trustless system enforced by administrative power.
As cultural diversity rises, the ability of a population to form democratic consensus declines. Without shared standards, people cannot coordinate behavior through social pressure. To replicate the order once produced organically by culture, society must formalize more and more interactions under the judgment of third parties — courts, bureaucracies, and regulatory bodies. The state becomes the referee for disputes communities once handled themselves.
Litigiousness rises, contracts proliferate, and coercion replaces custom. The virtue of the people declines as they lose the skills required to maintain trust with their neighbors. Instead of resolving conflict directly, they appeal to ever-expanding authorities. No one learns how to build trust; they only learn how to report violations.
The HOA problem is not really about homeowners or housing costs. It is a window into how America reorganized itself. A nation once shaped by shared norms and informal enforcement now relies on legalistic frameworks to manage daily life. Americans sense the artificiality, but they see no alternative. They know something fundamental has changed. They know the culture that sustained high-trust communities no longer exists.
The HOA simply makes the loss unavoidable.
How Texas slammed the gate on Big Tech’s censorship stampede
Texas just sent a blunt message to Silicon Valley: You don’t get to censor Texans and then run home to California.
In a world where Big Tech routinely decides who may speak and who must be silenced, Defense Distributed v. YouTube, Google, and Alphabet has become a defining moment in the national fight over digital free expression. The shock isn’t the censorship at issue; it’s the fact that Big Tech — for once — lost.
In a time when Americans are desperate for leaders willing to stand up to media and tech conglomerates, Texas showed what real resolve looks like.
Defense Distributed, a Texas company, committed the unpardonable offense of promoting the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Our videos and ads — some of them simply announcing court victories — were throttled, suppressed, or removed by YouTube and Google. None of this surprised us. These platforms built vast empires on controlling information and burying viewpoints that fall outside their ideology.
Texas prepared for this fight
The surprise is that Texas saw this coming and armed itself for the conflict. HB 20 — now Chapter 143A of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code — directly prohibits viewpoint-based censorship by major platforms. The law doesn’t hint, suggest, or politely advise. It states outright: Social media companies may not censor Texans for their viewpoints, and lawsuits brought under this chapter stay in Texas courts no matter what boilerplate corporate contracts say.
So when Defense Distributed filed suit, YouTube and Google reached for their favorite escape route: forum-selection clauses that force nearly every challenger into California courts, where Big Tech enjoys home-field advantage. It’s a delay tactic, a cost-inflation tactic, a shield against accountability — and it almost always works.
But Texas slammed that door shut before they reached it.
No escape
HB 20 doesn’t merely frown on these clauses; it voids them. The statute declares that any attempt to waive its protections violates Texas public policy — public policy the law describes as “of the highest importance.” The legislature anticipated Big Tech’s usual playbook and locked the gates years in advance.
The federal court recognized this. Judge Alan Albright ruled that transferring the case to California would directly undermine Texas’ strong public policy. Under federal law, courts cannot enforce a forum-selection clause that contradicts a state’s deeply rooted interests — especially when the legislature spells those interests out with the clarity found in HB 20.
Silicon Valley does not hear the word “no” very often. Big Tech’s money, influence, and political allies usually clear the path. But in a federal courtroom in the Lone Star State, Texas’ commitment to protecting its citizens from ideological censorship outweighed Silicon Valley’s customary dominance. The court refused to let YouTube and Google drag the case back to California.
The fight stayed in Texas — exactly where the legislature intended.
A national shift and a model for states
The timing matters. Americans now understand that Big Tech can shape elections, suppress dissent, and curate truth itself. HB 20 was mocked by the press, attacked by activists, and targeted by corporate lobbyists from the moment it passed. Yet today, it stands as one of the most potent legal tools in the country’s fight against digital censorship.
HB 20 is no longer just a statute; it is proof that a state with conviction can push back and win.
RELATED: Big Tech CEOs should leave policy to the politicians
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
This victory is more than a procedural ruling. It affirms that Big Tech’s era of unchallenged authority is not inevitable. Defense Distributed didn’t merely keep our lawsuit in Texas; we preserved the principle that powerful corporations cannot hide their censorship behind “terms of service” fine print.
Texas drew a line in the sand, and — for once — Silicon Valley stopped.
In a time when Americans are desperate for leaders willing to stand up to media and tech conglomerates, Texas showed what real resolve looks like. This ruling promises that citizens still have a fighting chance, that speech still matters, and that even the world’s largest corporations remain subject to the laws of a state determined to defend its people.
We built abundance and lost the thing that matters
We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.
We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt, or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.
You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.
What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.
Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.
We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.
When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.
The crisis beneath the headlines
It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.
Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.
You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.
We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.
So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.
The quiet return of meaning
And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.
The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.
Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.
RELATED: A nation without trust is a nation on borrowed time
Denis Novikov via iStock/Getty Images
Where renewal begins
We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.
Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.
These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.
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‘Chatbot Jesus’ is a digital fake — and churches are falling for it
Artificial intelligence now offers “Chatbot Jesus,” personalized prayers, AI-generated sermons, and even virtual pastors charging monthly fees. Some see these tools as a lifeline for shrinking congregations. Others claim they offer new ways to evangelize.
The church must speak plainly: We are not called to relevance. We are called to righteousness. Scripture commands believers to “test all things; hold fast what is good.”
People are not abandoning faith because the church lacks modern technology. They are leaving because they are starving for truth in an age of deception.
Technology itself is neither holy nor wicked. The printing press, radio, livestreaming, and Bible apps have all served ministry. AI that organizes calendars, translates languages, or answers simple questions is just another tool.
Crossing a biblical line
Trouble begins when technology imitates divinity. An app that invites people to “talk with Jesus” steps into territory Scripture reserves for the living God alone. Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice” (John 10:27). Only the Lord speaks with the authority of Matthew 24:35: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.”
No chatbot can make that claim.
The danger becomes obvious when apps offer simulated “conversations” with Judas or Satan. God forbids consulting spirits, mediums, or conjured voices (Leviticus 19:31; Deuteronomy 18:10-12). Why would the church encourage digital re-creations of what Scripture calls an abomination?
Convenience or relevance cannot override explicit biblical commands.
You can’t outsource the Holy Spirit
Some pastors now admit they use AI to help write sermons. Others market “avatar” versions of themselves. But ministry has never centered on polished prose. It has always centered on God’s power — His breath, His Spirit, His Word.
Paul wrote, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power” (1 Corinthians 2:4).
You cannot automate the power of God. You cannot outsource the voice of the Holy Spirit. You cannot download anointing.
A sermon is not literary content to be refined by software. It must be birthed in prayer, wrestled through in Scripture, and delivered in obedience. As Jesus said, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). That includes preaching.
Tech won’t save us
Axios reported that up to 15,000 churches may close this year and that 29% of Americans now claim no religion. That trend calls for actual spiritual renewal, not AI simulations of Jesus.
People are not abandoning faith because the church lacks modern technology. They are leaving because they are starving for truth in an age of deception. The early church grew because believers “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship … and fear came upon every soul” (Acts 2:42-43). They witnessed repentance, signs, wonders, and transformation — none of which machines can produce.
True revival begins where the early church began: holiness, unity, prayer, obedience, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
A distortion of Christ
False voices proclaiming truth are not new. The only novelty is that they are now automated. The central danger of “AI spirituality” is doctrinal corruption. What sources shape these chatbots? What ideology trains them? If systems learn from shallow teaching or progressive theology divorced from Scripture, they will preach a distorted Christ.
When AI “hallucinates” — and all current systems do — it can hand users outright lies.
Jesus warned, “Beware of false prophets … you will know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-16). Paul warned that if anyone preaches “any other gospel … let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). From Genesis onward, the devil has counterfeited God’s voice. AI can and will preach an “other gospel” if it draws from anything other than Scripture.
RELATED: God-tier AI? Why there’s no easy exit from the human condition
gremlin via iStock/Getty Images
Believers must remain discerning. “Do not be deceived” (1 Corinthians 15:33). “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit” (Colossians 2:8). Those who build their faith on machine-generated counsel risk building a house on sand rather than the Rock (Matthew 7:24-27).
A servant, not a shepherd
Tools can organize schedules and streamline communication. They can assist brainstorming. But preaching, prayer, prophecy, discipleship, deliverance, and counsel belong to the life of the Spirit — not the cold logic of machines.
Technology must remain a servant. It must never become a shepherd. Only the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, leads His people.
Jesus said, “I am the door of the sheep,” “I am the good shepherd,” and “I lay down My life for the sheep” (John 10). No AI pastor and no “Chatbot Jesus” can claim any of that.
Revival will not come from faster processors or stronger large language models. It will come when God’s people “humble themselves,” pray, seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways (2 Chronicles 7:14).
The world does not need a digital imitation of Jesus. It needs the real Jesus — the one who, as Hebrews 13:8 tells us, “is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
It’s not ‘racist’ to notice Somali fraud
Last week, my colleague Ryan Thorpe and I broke a story about widespread fraud committed by Somalis in Minnesota. Members of the state’s Somali community allegedly participated in complex schemes related to autism services, food programs, and housing, which prosecutors estimate have stolen billions of taxpayer dollars. Even worse, some of the cash has ended up in the hands of Al-Shabaab, a terrorist organization in Somalia.
The story quickly reached the White House. Within days, President Trump announced that he was revoking Temporary Protected Status for all Somali migrants in Minnesota.
Progressives have suggested that our reporting and the subsequent policy change were “racist.” While many of those indicted in these schemes are Somali, these critics argue, the federal government should not hold Minnesota’s Somali community corporately responsible for the actions of individuals.
Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis has a real problem, and it is about time that our government began facing it.
This criticism is superficially appealing, but it isn’t persuasive on closer inspection.
First, a description of the facts should not be measured as “racist or not racist,” but rather as “true or not true.” And in this case, the truth is that numerous members of a relatively small community participated in a scheme that stole billions in taxpayer funds. This is a legitimate consideration for American immigration policy, which is organized around nation of origin and, for more than 30 years, has favorably treated Somalis relative to other groups. It is more than fair to ask whether that policy has served the national interest. The fraud story suggests that the answer is “no.”
Second, the fact that Somalis are black is incidental. If Norwegian immigrants were perpetrating fraud at the same alleged scale and had the same employment and income statistics as Somalis, it would be perfectly reasonable to make the same criticism and enact the same policy response. It would not be “racist” against Norwegians to do so.
Further, Somalis have enormously high unemployment rates, and federal law enforcement has long considered Minneapolis’ Little Mogadishu neighborhood a hot spot for terrorism recruitment. We should condemn that behavior without regard to skin color.
The underlying question — which, until now, Americans have been loath to address directly — is that of different behaviors and outcomes between different groups. Americans tend to avoid this question, rely on euphemisms, and let these distinctions remain implied rather than spoken aloud. Yet it seems increasingly untenable to maintain this Anglo-American courtesy when the left has spent decades insisting that we conceptualize our national life in terms of group identity.
The reality is that different groups have different cultural characteristics. The national culture of Somalia is different from the national culture of Norway. Somalis and Norwegians therefore tend to think differently, behave differently, and organize themselves differently, which leads to different group outcomes. Norwegians in Minnesota behave similarly to Norwegians in Norway; Somalis in Minnesota behave similarly to Somalis in Somalia. Many cultural patterns from Somalia — particularly clan networks, informal economies, and distrust of state institutions — travel with the diaspora and have shown up in Minnesota as well. In the absence of strong assimilation pressures, the fraud networks aren’t so surprising; they reflect the extension of Somali institutional norms into a new environment with weak enforcement and poorly designed incentives.
The beauty of America is that we had a system that thoughtfully balanced individual and group considerations. We recognized that all men, whatever their background, have a natural right to life, liberty, property, and equal treatment under the law. We also recognized that group averages can be a basis for judgment — especially in immigration, where they can help determine which potential immigrant groups are most suitable and advantageous for America.
RELATED: Chip Roy’s immigration blitz hits the lawless left and the squish right
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
These principles are in tension but not in contradiction. As a sociological matter, a policy of equal rights for all individuals will result in unequal outcomes among groups. This is not a sign of injustice per se. It is an inevitability. No two groups are the same, and therefore, no two groups will have the same outcomes in a system of individual liberty and equality.
The firestorm around the Somali fraud story was so intense precisely because it forced this question into the spotlight. For decades, America has given Somali immigrants special privileges through TPS. We have expected Somalis to play by the rules, contribute to the country, and assimilate into the culture. Some individuals have certainly done so, but as the fraud story suggests, many others have not. A rational government would amend its policies accordingly.
We can see the same process playing out in other parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, mass immigration from incompatible cultures is creating a civilizational crisis. Rather than replicate the policies of our sister country, we should accept reality and adopt a more thoughtful policy, which recognizes cultural norms as a reasonable measure of capacity to assimilate and to contribute.
The president should stand firm. Little Mogadishu in Minneapolis has a real problem, and it is about time that our government began facing it.
Editor’s note: This article appeared originally on Substack.
Joe Rogan gets the aliens wrong — and the danger right
Joe Rogan wants the truth — the truth that’s “out there,” the one Mulder and Scully chased for 11 seasons and two movies. According to filmmaker Dan Farah, who visited Rogan’s podcast last week to promote his documentary “The Age of Disclosure,” that moment has arrived. Farah claims to have firsthand testimony from government officials, with “years of receipts,” showing the federal government spent more than $1 trillion trying to reverse-engineer alien technology.
A trillion dollars! That’s enough to fund several more DEI directors at Harvard.
Demonic influence is not a science-fiction plot. It’s a timely warning: Reconcile with God through Christ, the true and only source of wisdom — not ‘from out there,’ but from above.
Farah insists this program involved “thousands of ordinary people,” the kind who sit next to you at your kid’s baseball game. Apparently half of Little League moonlights in Area 51 while parents compare batting averages. You’re just not in the inner circle.
The surprising part? Rogan and Farah talk as if the existence of nonhuman intelligences would be a revelation. They’re eager for someone — anyone — to tell them we’re not alone.
Christians knew
But Christians have never needed the Pentagon’s confirmation. We have always known nonhuman intelligences exist.
Start with God: infinite, eternal, unchangeable mind. All intelligence comes from Him, because unintelligent matter cannot, after any number of billions of years, spontaneously generate intelligent minds. Zero intelligence multiplied forever remains zero.
Then consider the finite nonhuman intelligences scripture describes: angels and demons. No need for wormholes, gray abductions, or Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard attempting to open a Crowleyan portal in Pasadena during the 1940s.
“Close encounters” sound exactly like old accounts of demonic encounters: gray, genderless beings with dark, soulless eyes examining humans in sterile rooms. And for creatures supposedly traveling across eons, their décor could use work. Not a single family photo from last summer’s reunion on Alpha Centauri.
Science breaks the UFO narrative
Yet Rogan and Farah ask us to imagine intelligent beings evolving hundreds of light-years away, building starships, crossing the void, and arriving here to perform intergalactic medical internships while mutilating cattle on the weekends. The story collapses under basic science.
First, the materialist timeline breaks the theory. On the materialist view, the universe hasn’t existed long enough for an advanced civilization to evolve millions of years ahead of us. Life, according to that timeline, barely had enough time to form at all. The standard narrative demands amino acids to mix into proteins struck by lightning, producing a single cell that survives and evolves — a process requiring vast time and even more credulity.
After mocking intelligent design, Richard Dawkins famously speculated that life on earth might have been seeded by aliens from a more advanced civilization. That explanation is still intelligent design, just with extra steps. Where did those aliens come from? An even older alien civilization, of course.
Second, interstellar travel requires absurd time spans. From the nearest star system, the trip would take tens of thousands of years. Wormholes won’t help. They can move particles, not starships. Even if the grays enjoy long lives, this demands millennia of travel with no sign of civilizational collapse, boredom, or mutiny.
Third, space debris makes large spacecraft nearly impossible. Only needle-thin craft could survive without being obliterated by debris. At near-light speeds, even tiny collisions would be catastrophic. Current dreams of laser-sail propulsion can only accelerate gram-scale probes to a fraction of light speed. They cannot carry bodies — especially not the grays of rural Oregon fame.
Once you eliminate the impossible under materialism, what remains?
Start by clearing out hoaxes, attention-seeking stunts, lies, and simple misidentifications. During an ordinary Southwest flight, I once thought I saw the classic cigar-shaped alien vessel Erich von Däniken loves to describe. A slight bank changed the angle of light. It was an American Airlines jet.
What remains looks far more like demonic activity than extraterrestrial biology.
Beware the occult instinct
The strangest feature of UFO mythology is the insistence that these beings are benevolent and wiser than we are. Hence Farah’s claim that the U.S. government spent trillions trying to reverse-engineer their technology. Yet if these creatures were truly advanced and benevolent, why make us run a trillion-dollar scavenger hunt? Why not offer the owner’s manual? Strange manners for enlightened space travelers.
This is where the old religious instinct surfaces. The script about “inter-dimensional watchers” helping humanity tracks perfectly with occult traditions. Talk about portals for nonhuman intelligences is simply updated language for communicating with demons.
RELATED: Pentagon psyop exposed: Military reportedly cooked up tales of alien technology in weapons cover-up
Jacob Wackerhausen via iStock/Getty Images
Humans have chased that temptation since the beginning. Scripture alone forbids contacting spirits. Every other religion, philosophy, and esoteric school has sought “nonhuman intelligences” for hidden wisdom. The Bible warns this practice is idolatrous and dangerous because these spirits are malevolent, rebellious, and deceptive.
Eden sets the pattern: The serpent cast doubt on God’s word and promised greater wisdom. Humanity has listened to similar offers ever since.
Modern UFO mythology blends effortlessly with New Age fantasies about “ascended masters” and “star beings.” They promise secret knowledge, cosmic clubs, and spiritual advancement — with a credit card bonus of 50,000 light-year miles after your first payment.
Should we be surprised that governments attempt to communicate with “nonhuman intelligences”? Ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Canaan tried the same. The New Testament describes demoniacs opposing the gospel. And modern reports often note that alien encounters stop when the name of Christ is invoked. Demons flee; extraterrestrials supposedly mastering physics do not.
Angels obey God’s commands. They don’t stage UFO conferences or probe farmers after midnight.
The real disclosure we need
Joe Rogan has shown increased interest in Christianity in recent months. Yet he also loves to describe DMT trips in which he meets “nonhuman intelligences” promising hidden wisdom. He wonders if government officials meet the same beings. His soul sits at the center of a very old conflict.
Demonic influence is not a science-fiction plot. It’s a timely warning: Reconcile with God through Christ, the true and only source of wisdom — not “from out there,” but from above. God reveals His way plainly. No secrets required.
Judges break the law to stop Trump from enforcing it
Nearly 30 years ago, Congress recognized that the country could not litigate its way out of an immigration crisis.
As part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, bipartisan majorities created expedited removal for anyone who failed to prove two years of physical presence in the United States. Anticipating a cottage industry of defense attorneys forcing the government to prove duration of unlawful stay, Congress also stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to review expedited removal orders.
At some point, the executive must defend not only its own authority but Congress’ authority to restrain the courts.
Three decades passed with little enforcement. Now, after that long dormancy, federal judges have begun reviewing cases they have no statutory authority to hear and are attempting to block President Trump from using expedited removal nationwide.
Over the line
On November 22, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit refused the Justice Department’s request for a stay in Make the Road New York v. Noem. The case challenges Trump’s policy expanding expedited removal to illegal aliens apprehended anywhere in the country, provided they cannot prove two years of continuous presence. Administrations since the 1990s ignored the statute and limited expedited removal to aliens caught at or near the border.
A district judge, despite clear statutory limits, reviewed the case and issued an injunction against most uses of expedited removal. That move set the stage for this week’s order from the D.C. Circuit — another step in a long pattern of courts seizing authority Congress explicitly withheld.
A watershed moment
The Supreme Court recently upheld the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly remove alien gang members. That ruling helped, but it cannot resolve the broader problem: Most illegal entrants do not fall into the “enemy combatant” category. If every non-gang-member can exhaust layer after layer of due process after invading our country, immigration enforcement collapses under its own weight.
But the central issue in this dispute is not due process at all. The decisive point is that IRAIRA explicitly authorizes expedited removal anywhere in the country and explicitly bars the federal courts from issuing “declaratory, injunctive, or other equitable relief” in any action challenging an expedited removal order.
The lone exception applies to aliens who can prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that they possess a lawful right to remain — such as a granted asylum application. Even then, Congress set a firm 60-day window to bring such a claim. The plaintiffs in this case missed that deadline.
This challenge does not implicate the validity of an executive action. It represents a double violation of statute: courts ignoring the law that authorizes expedited removal and ignoring the law that strips them of jurisdiction to review it. Congress anticipated this exact scenario and barred it.
What Congress must do
Congress holds plenary authority over immigration and total authority over the structure and jurisdiction of federal courts. Only adjudication of a specific case lies beyond congressional reach. As Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Patchak v. Zinke, “When Congress strips federal courts of jurisdiction, it exercises a valid legislative power no less than when it lays taxes, coins money, declares war, or invokes any other power that the Constitution grants it.”
If judges can decide every political question, define the scope of their own power, override Congress’ limits, and bind the executive even when Congress lawfully precludes them from hearing a case, the separation of powers collapses. At some point, the executive must defend not only its own authority but Congress’ authority to restrain the courts.
RELATED: The imperial judiciary strikes back
Photo by ClassicStock/Getty Images
Just say ‘no’
Many of us have called for broader statutes stripping courts of jurisdiction over deportation. But that effort means nothing if judges can simply declare those statutes unconstitutional. Judicial supremacism has no end when the executive enforces judicial usurpation against itself.
That dynamic played out again last week. A federal judge ruled that ICE may not arrest illegal aliens solely for being in the country unlawfully unless agents obtain a warrant or prove a specific flight risk — an order that contradicts decades of law. In another case, Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes in California certified a class granting relief to migrants who “have entered or will enter the United States without inspection” as well as those not initially detained after crossing the border.
A government that treats judicial decrees as binding even when Congress denies jurisdiction invites a permanent veto from judges over immigration enforcement. It won’t stop until the president simply says no.
A nation without trust is a nation on borrowed time
Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.
It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.
When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.
I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.
The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.
What triggers the Bubba effect
We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.
When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.
This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.
A country cracking from the inside
This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.
When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.
The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.
The dangers of a faithless system
A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.
History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.
The question is what — and when.
The responsibility now belongs to us
In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.
The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.
How to respond without breaking ourselves
Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.
Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.
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Photo by Karla Ann Cote/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.
It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.
Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.
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‘Conspiracy theory’ is just media code for ‘we hope this never comes out’
Here are the basic rules.
First: If the corporate left-wing press doesn’t like a claim, it invariably becomes a “right-wing conspiracy theory,” usually with the tag “without evidence.” The evidence may exist. It may even sit in plain sight — but the press decides what counts.
The ruling class wants your trust back. It hasn’t done the first thing to deserve it.
Second: Some claims get taken seriously no matter what. Those become “allegations.” Allegations quickly morph into “fact.”
Take the recent example of Democrats who alleged on X that President Trump spent Thanksgiving in 2017 with Jeffrey Epstein. The story collapsed in minutes — presidents don’t slip away unnoticed on major holidays to meet notorious sex criminals — but the claim still got ample attention. Point it in the right direction, and it gets a hearing. Point it at the wrong people, and it gets the back of the hand.
Sharon Waxman’s recent column at the Wrap follows the script. The former Washington Post correspondent was shocked to discover the Epstein emails prove that “conspiracy theorists were right.” She writes as if she uncovered some long-lost truth.
Hardly.
Waxman’s column is less revelation than admission: For years, the people who run newsrooms turned a blind eye to the obvious. Donald Trump wasn’t the big fish in those files. Their sources were.
The Epstein email cache runs more than 20,000 documents. Nothing in it should shock any honest observer. The messages show politicians, financiers, academics, diplomats, think-tankers, and media figures seeking introductions, favors, and even dating advice from a convicted sex offender.
Some wanted Epstein’s contacts. Others wanted his money. Some wrote to him while serving in public office. This is not rumor. It is record.
And yes, Epstein talked a lot about Trump, which should surprise no one. They ran in the same social circles. They were friends until they fell out.
Waxman’s piece matters because of what it shows about her profession. Reporters are oddly incurious creatures. They love the line: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. In practice, the checking stops the moment a story threatens the wrong interests. Then skepticism fades. The questions stop. The story dies.
Epstein proved this in real time. His 2008 sweetheart deal with the feds should have made him untouchable. Instead, it signaled that he was protected.
After that deal, Epstein did not retreat. He didn’t slink off into the shadows. He worked the same world that lectures the rest of us about “norms” and “Our Democracy.™” He gave the very married Larry Summers advice on how to seduce a colleague who happened to be the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Chinese Communist Party. He dined with Bill Gates. He hung out with Ehud Barak and ex-Prince Andrew.
Americans saw this and reached the obvious conclusion: rules for the public, exemptions for the powerful.
Say that aloud, though, and the press rolled their eyes and muttered “conspiracy theory.” The famous rule about checking every claim never applied to Cabinet officials, donors, university presidents, or tech titans until the obscenities were too outrageous to let pass.
The press know their own history. They know the government lies. They know institutions close ranks. They know networks protect themselves.
They know about the Tuskegee experiments and MK Ultra and the Gulf of Tonkin sham. They watched the Wuhan “lab leak” go from preposterous to plausible. “You will own nothing” and the “Great Reset” aren’t right-wing fever dreams — they’re actual publications.
But when a live case of elite protection appeared in Jeffrey Epstein, suddenly none of this counted. Suddenly it was unthinkable — not in their circles, not involving their friends, not touching their institutions.
Waxman’s column accidentally exposes the pattern: Our establishment manufactures ignorance and then uses that ignorance as proof that nothing is wrong.
Remember the 2017 Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity? The same experts who drone on about “no evidence of widespread fraud” attacked the commission for probing “unsupported claims” — while states withheld the data needed to determine the truth. When a system blocks audits and then declares itself clean, it isn’t proving confidence. It is proving fear.
That is how Epstein was protected. Not through lack of evidence, but lack of curiosity. Evidence didn’t vanish. Inquiry did. And anyone who noticed was treated as the problem.
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Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images
But trust isn’t owed. Trust is earned.
And the people who demand it have done the most to destroy it. The loss of trust didn’t come from memes or bots. It came from watching Jeffrey Epstein remain welcome among the same people who so archly declare that “democracy dies in darkness.” It came from watching the press spend more time policing public suspicion than scrutinizing powerful friends. It came from institutions that treat questions as insults.
Now Sharon Waxman tells us the “conspiracy theorists” were right.
Gee, thanks, Sharon. Better late than never, I guess.
America didn’t need that revelation. The country has seen it time and again, as the “conspiracy theorists” turn out to be right. The only people who pretended otherwise were the people paid to find the truth.
The ruling class wants your trust back. It hasn’t done the first thing to deserve it.
Big Tech CEOs should leave policy to the politicians
President Donald Trump’s latest comments on semiconductor exports sounded almost conciliatory — until they weren’t. Speaking recently on “60 Minutes,” the president said he would let Nvidia “deal with China” but drew a bright red line: Beijing could buy chips, just not the “most advanced” ones. The message was calibrated for maximum effect: permissive enough to please markets, hawkish enough to claim toughness. Nvidia’s stock jumped immediately — but China did not get what it wanted.
Days later, in a Financial Times interview, Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, warned that if the U.S. blocked his company from selling more of its advanced chips to China, it would “lose” the AI race. The argument was astonishing in its candor: Cut us off, Beijing wins.
As grateful as America should be for breathtaking innovations, an irreconcilable tension exists between national interest and fiduciary duty.
The comparison between a president sounding measured and a CEO trying to sound indispensable captures a dangerous inversion of power. Nvidia has become more than America’s most valuable company. It’s attempting to become its policymaker, shaping the boundaries of what Washington thinks possible in its competition with China.
To understand how one company reached that position, it helps to revisit what happened in Washington just days before Trump met Xi Jinping in South Korea.
Nvidia called it a GPU Technology Conference. Yet the event felt less like a developer’s conference and more like a tech-bro-meets-MAGA jamboree: free swag and a booming video hymn to American genius — from Thomas Edison to Donald J. Trump. Huang, leather jacket gleaming, strode out like a preacher to proclaim that the age of reindustrialization had arrived.
The D.C. version of GTC was not the San Jose GTC tech insiders have come to know. For the first time, Nvidia brought a full-blown edition of its developers’ confab to the capital, a strategic choice. The company does not merely want to sit at the table where policy is made — it wants to own it.
After hours of Super Bowl-style buildup — financiers whispering, tech CEOs hinting — attendees were herded into a dimly lit hall, where Huang unveiled a cascade of partnerships. The headline act that made sleeves roll up on both the policy bench and the brokerage floor was the Vera Rubin Superchip, billed as made in America and spoken of with the gravity reserved for national monuments.
It’s a dazzling feat of engineering: silicon that can be waved before a crowd as proof that America can still design, assemble, and scale. Expected to debut next year, the chip is music to policy wonks’ ears, a gleaming symbol of reindustrialization, and perhaps a psychological hedge against the fragility of Taiwan. For investors, it’s manna. As robots increasingly take charge, building chips in the U.S. will keep the supply chain close to home and safeguard companies against the whims of geopolitics.
Then, with the applause fading, an undercurrent of tension lingered, one that perhaps only the wonks could fully register. After that opening montage, capped by Jensen’s almost rhetorical question, “Was that video amazing?” the subtext became harder to ignore. And when he closed his remarks by thanking the audience “for your service and for making America great again,” it was impossible not to think of what the financiers were murmuring on the next stage over.
“Nvidia will — or should — ship more GPUs to China.” “Jensen’s flying straight to Korea after GTC to meet Trump.” “A deal’s coming.”
Those were among the refrains traded by figures like Cantor Fitzgerald’s C.J. Muse and Altimeter Capital’s Brad Gerstner. All this, of course, is contrary to the prevailing consensus among China-watchers that the notion of rendering Beijing dependent on Nvidia’s chips is fantasy. Cultivating indigenous capability by acquiring American technology by legal or illicit means has long been Beijing’s modus operandi.
Huang knows this. Still, his company has long worked to blunt export controls and push China-specific versions of its flagship Blackwell chip, the so-called B20. It’s a familiar playbook: First came the H100, then its “export-compliant” cousins, the H800 and H20. Each time, Washington tightens the rules; each time, Nvidia finds a workaround. But this must stop.
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Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images
The dilemma is simple but corrosive. As grateful as America should be for breathtaking innovations, an irreconcilable tension exists between national interest and fiduciary duty. Huang may sound bullish on “betting on America,” but the reality is starker: If his company could power the AI revolutions of both superpowers at once, it would add trillions to its market cap. He is pragmatic and coldly arithmetic. Build the best chips, profit from ubiquity. You don’t get where he is without knowing your math.
At GTC, I saw the divide play out in miniature. As Altimeter’s Brad Gerstner floated the idea that “logic is on the side of letting Nvidia compete with China,” I turned to a biotech researcher. Blunt and unamused, he said: “Bulls**t.” He went on to explain that, in his field especially, China’s ascent has been a wholesale rejection of the “make China dependent” fantasy. He wasn’t wrong: Under Xi Jinping, the Made in China 2025 agenda has rendered such dependency theories delusional.
Huang tries to thread the needle gracefully, extolling U.S. manufacturing while signaling an embrace of Chinese developers. As an American, it’s hard not to be charmed by his all-American chip. As a realist, however, one leaves with questions no press release can answer. In a way, the release of this patriot-approved superchip was meant to suggest, “See, now we can sell some Blackwells to China.” As charmed as one can be, the answer is still no.
One could have told the Roosevelt administration that cutting Germany off from nuclear materials would stifle innovation. Yet we did exactly that during the Manhattan Project. And we won. It may not sound like it, but this is the same choice we face today — only this race has even greater implications for the future of civilization.
The goal can’t be attempting to trap Beijing in “dependency.” The stakes are too high. The most prudent approach is to focus on surpassing them in innovation while closing loopholes that let Beijing do what it has mastered: Learn from us, then try to replace us.
Jensen Huang has every right to fight for his company’s profits. But foreign policy shouldn’t run on a corporate playbook. The U.S. needs innovators — not influencers — setting the terms of technological rivalry.
Editor’s note: A version of article appeared originally at the American Mind.
