Category: Conservative Review
Woman Who Gave Birth at 62 Via IVF Accused of Committing Fraud to Get More Children
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Texas House Democrat: Current district not ‘viable’ if Supreme Court upholds new map
Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas) said Sunday that her current district will not be “viable” if the Supreme Court upholds a new congressional map. “If these new, very partisan, racially based, gerrymandered maps go forward, that makes the 32nd Congressional District — it swings it 46 points, it doesn’t really make it a viable seat,” Johnson…
Rubio on Ukraine peace talks: ‘Probably the most productive and meaningful meetings so far’
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that recent Russia-Ukraine war peace talks were “meaningful” and “productive.” “So, it is in my personal view that we’ve had probably the most productive and meaningful meetings so far in this entire process since we’ve been involved, from the beginning,” Rubio said in Geneva. “We have a very…
Sen. John Fetterman Counters Dem Strategist James Carville’s Grand Political Agenda With Three-Word Plan
‘You don’t change the rules if you didn’t win’
Scott Bessent Tells Kristen Welker When Americans Should See Lower Prices
‘Some are going to come down in weeks’
Hamas floods the feeds to sway clueless Westerners
As President Donald Trump toured Israel and the region celebrating his newly brokered Gaza ceasefire agreement last month, several Israeli families received unexpected video calls from their loved ones still held captive in Gaza.
After more than two years without information, many suddenly found themselves staring at the faces they feared they might never see again. “I love you! I can’t wait to see you already!” cried one shocked mother.
In a post-truth environment, Hamas has learned how to set the terms of debate, frame Israeli actions, and pressure global institutions.
Behind each hostage stood a Hamas militant in a green headband and full face covering. Before release, the militant gave a command in broken Hebrew: “Post this on social media. Put this in the news.”
It was a scene both surreal and deliberate. For Hamas, the call was not simply a gesture ahead of a ceasefire. It was the final stroke in a propaganda campaign the group has refined into a core battlefield strategy.
Across the war, Hamas moved far beyond the low-tech, grainy videos of earlier terror groups, like al-Qaeda 25 years ago. Borrowing lessons from Russia, China, Iran, and ISIS, it adopted a multi-platform media operation built on drone footage, high-definition body cameras, Telegram networks, curated databases, and a constellation of Instagram influencers.
The goal was simple: Demoralize Israelis, energize supporters, and sway public opinion abroad — especially in the United States and Europe, where diplomatic pressure could yield concessions no battlefield victory could deliver.
Instagram combatants
Influencers became frontline assets. Saleh Aljafarawi, a 27-year-old Instagram personality, chronicled rubble tours and took selfie videos with children and activists, overlaying them with music to evoke sympathy. His content racked up millions of views.
Motaz Azaiza, another influencer, surged to more than 16 million Instagram followers while documenting scenes on the ground and conducting street interviews. A graphic video credited to him — viewed more than 100 million times and widely disputed — showed what appeared to be bleeding toddlers pulled from wreckage.
Hamas-aligned Telegram channels such as Gaza Now and Al Aqsa TV amplified their posts around the clock. Western media outlets often ran these images uncritically, including allegedly starving children later shown to have congenital conditions unrelated to the conflict.
But the visual blitz was only one part of the strategy. Hamas understood that controlling the premises of the debate mattered as much as controlling the images. That is why organizations such as the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs relied heavily on casualty numbers supplied by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. Those tallies — widely framed as disproportionately civilian — drove international diplomatic pressure on Israel and fueled student protests across American campuses.
‘Broadcast the images’
A recently declassified memo from Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar revealed the strategic logic behind the group’s media doctrine. Mixed among military instructions were orders to create “heart-breaking scenes of shocking devastation,” including directives for “stepping on soldiers’ heads” and “slaughtering people by knife.” Body-camera footage from the Oct. 7 massacre reflected that intent.
To execute the strategy, Sinwar empowered a spokesman known as Abu Obaidah, who was killed in an Israel Defense Forces strike last year. Under his direction, Hamas expanded its propaganda arm from roughly 400 operatives during the 2014 conflict to more than 1,500. Every battalion and brigade gained its own deputy commander for propaganda, each trained in field filming, livestreaming, and rapid editing inside decentralized “war rooms.”
One category of production featured Israeli hostages forced to deliver scripted messages from tunnel captivity, urging Israelis to protest their government. These videos were released with trilingual subtitles and high-end visual effects. They accelerated domestic pressure inside Israel to accept a deal on terms favorable to Hamas.
During the January 2025 exchange, Hamas choreographed the release events with precision. Operatives filmed every moment with high-definition lenses as hostages were paraded before Red Cross representatives and instructed to wave to crowds. Slogans appeared in Arabic, Hebrew, and English — some tailored to Israeli politics (“we are the day after”), others crafted for Western activists (“Palestine — the victory of the oppressed”).
Iran funds roughly $480 million annually in state propaganda efforts through its IRIB broadcaster. It is reasonable to assume Hamas directs a significant share of its estimated $2 billion budget into communications.
RELATED: The genocide that isn’t: How Hamas turned lies into global outrage
Photo by ZAIN JAAFAR/AFP via Getty Images
Perception shapes policy
The investment has paid off. A Quinnipiac poll found that half of Americans — and 77% of Democratic voters — believe Israel committed a “genocide” in Gaza. A Cygnal survey shows Israel at -21 net favorability among voters younger than 55. Younger Americans, who consume more social media, are almost three times more likely than older voters to view Hamas favorably.
Substance remains another story. A majority of Americans — 56% — oppose or remain ambivalent toward the two-state plan frequently cited by foreign governments and activist groups.
But perception is shaping policy. Hamas has become a dominant force in the narrative battle, feeding imagery, statistics, and talking points directly into Western media ecosystems. In a post-truth environment, the group has learned how to set the terms of debate, frame Israeli actions, and pressure global institutions.
Israel and its allies cannot afford to treat communications as an afterthought. Effective messaging is a force multiplier — not a cosmetic accessory. It frames the battlefield, shapes public opinion, and constrains diplomatic options.
The war showed that Hamas understands this. It is time its opponents understood it too.
‘Something has gone terribly wrong’: Marriage is in ‘disastrous’ decline — perhaps because of women
The marriage rate has been in decline for decades, dropping from 10.6 per 1,000 people in 1980 to 6.1 in 2023. Last year, American adults were less likely to be married than at nearly any other time since the Census Bureau began logging marital status in 1940, with married couples heading only 47.1% of U.S. households.
The apparent aversion to marriage is bad news for American children, who perform better in school and are far less likely to end up in prison or depressed when raised by married parents, as well as for American adults who tend to see better health outcomes, be happier, and live longer when espoused.
‘Devaluing marriage and motherhood has consequences.’
Recent Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the University of Michigan suggests that this decline may continue — especially if young women’s growing resistance to marriage goes unremedied.
Whereas 20 years prior, 80% of 12th graders said that they were most likely to choose marriage in the long run, only 67% of 12th graders polled in 2023 indicated that they want to get married someday. Another 24% said they don’t know if they’ll get married, up from 16% in 1993.
This drop appears to have been largely driven by shifting views among girls.
In 1993, 83% of girls and 76% of boys said that they wanted to get married. In 2023, only 61% of girls said they wanted to get married — a drop of 22% — while 74% of boys indicated they wanted to ultimately tie the knot.
RELATED: Family or fallout — experts assess the threats now facing the nuclear family
Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images
Pew indicated that there was also a precipitous drop in the percentage of 12th graders who indicated they wanted to have kids if they marry.
Whereas in 1993, 82% said they wanted to have kids, in 2023, only 73% indicated they wanted to welcome new life into this world. Even more dramatically, the percentage of those who said they would “very likely” want to have kids if married dropped from 64% in 1993 to 48% in 2023.
“It’s almost like decades of devaluing marriage and motherhood has consequences,” wrote the Alabama Policy Institute.
Katy Faust, founder of the children’s advocacy group Them Before Us, stated, “More than almost anything else trending, this terrifies me. Because of the nature of our bodies women have historically pursued marriage more. What kind of disastrous, antihuman messaging are young women being flooded with to return these kinds of results?”
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Photo by Lambert/Getty Images
Dr. Brad Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, said the anti-nuptial trend among young women and adolescent girls was “disastrous.”
Wilcox underscored that this trend reflects a particularly raw deal for women, highlighting a recent YouGov survey of U.S. women, ages 25 to 55, fielded by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute, which found that married women with children are:
- more likely (19%) to report being “very happy” than both unmarried women with children (13%) and unmarried women without children (10%);
- more likely (47%) to report that life has felt enjoyable most or all of the time in the past 30 days than both unmarried women with children (40%) and unmarried women without children (34%);
- less likely (11%) to report being lonely most or all of the time in the past 30 days than both unmarried women with children (23%) and unmarried women without children (20%);
- more likely (51%) to receive physical affection than both unmarried women with children (29%) and unmarried women without children (17%); and
- more likely (28%) to report their lives have a clear sense of purpose than both unmarried women with children (25%) and unmarried women without children (16%).
Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said of the Pew report, “Something has gone terribly wrong.”
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Ex-teacher accused of paying students for sex, loading them up with booze and drugs finds out her fate
A Missouri woman who was accused of paying students for sex and giving them alcohol and drugs while she was a substitute teacher just learned where she’ll be spending the next decade.
Carissa Smith, 31, was arrested last November and indicted on a host of charges including two counts of sexual trafficking of a child under the age of 18, nine counts of statutory rape, two counts of statutory sodomy, three counts of sexual contact with a student, and one count of patronizing prostitution from a victim 14 years and younger.
‘Very disturbing and distressing information.’
Investigators indicated the incidents occurred from August 2023 to September 2024.
According to the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office, victims alleged that Smith — who began regularly working as a substitute teacher at Dixon Middle School in August 2022 then worked at Dixon High School from 2023 until her resignation in August 2024 — “would offer money, marijuana and/or alcohol to students in return for sex or to allow her to perform oral sex.”
The probable cause statement indicated that Smith paid one victim at least $100 to engage in sexual activities with her. Authorities noted further that Smith urged one minor victim not to discuss their encounters with anyone else.
Court documents reviewed by USA Today indicated that Smith also involved her husband, informing him that one victim had a compromising video and was blackmailing her. The husband allegedly threatened more than one minor with a baseball bat.
The affidavit reviewed by People magazine indicated that after hearing a rumor about a video circulating in the community that allegedly showed the substitute teacher performing a sexual act with one of her students, Smith’s brother-in-law caught her in bed with an underage student.
RELATED: Former teacher sentenced to 132 years in prison for horrific abuse of her two stepsons
Photo by Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun Staff
Victims claimed that Smith would have sex with them at her house as well as other locations, including on roadsides.
The day after Smith’s Nov. 12, 2024, arrest, Dixon R-I School District Superintendent Travis Bohrer revealed to parents that the district had received a report of possible misconduct by Smith earlier in the year from at least one student and had notified the relevant authorities.
Bohrer noted, “This is very disturbing and distressing information for everyone in our school community.”
While out on bond, Smith was arrested again in September and charged with tampering with a witness after court documents say she was caught at the home of one of her victims, the sheriff’s office confirmed to USA Today.
The former teacher’s $250,000 bond was revoked on Sept. 10.
“The defendant was ordered to have no contact with any victim in this case,” noted prosecuting attorney Jeffrey Thomas. “The defendant has failed to follow a course of good conduct.”
Smith pleaded guilty to lesser charges of two counts of sexual contact with a student and one count of first degree endangering the welfare of a child/sexual conduct on Sept. 17, reported KRCG-TV, and faced as many as 12 years in prison.
Smith instead received a sentence Wednesday of 10 years behind bars, the station said in a separate story.
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The right must choose: Fight the real war, or cosplay revolution online
Is principled conservatism dead? And would that even be good?
Robert P. George’s resignation from the board of the Heritage Foundation last week suggests a deeper shift inside the conservative world. George is one of the most respected conservative intellectuals alive — a Princeton professor who built the James Madison Program and shaped a generation of natural-law scholarship. His departure, prompted by how Heritage President Kevin Roberts handled Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, exposes a widening fracture on the right about what conservatism is and what it should defend.
The first lesson conservatives should recover: Reason and faith are not optional in the public square.
I have watched this tension escalate since what some have called Charlie Kirk’s “martyrdom.” Voices from what garden-variety conservatives call “the far right,” what liberals lump together as “the right,” and what Antifa brands “fascist” are pushing for influence inside the movement. Some insist these agitators are leftist plants sent to fracture the right. Others believe God allows the intentions of every heart to be revealed.
Whatever the explanation, the attacks now directed at George follow a predictable pattern: an “OK, Boomer” dismissal of a man who has spent his life defending the unborn, natural marriage, and the created order.
Full disclosure: When I was a graduate student studying natural law at Arizona State University, George took time to meet with me and guide my work. Later as a tenured professor, I became a fellow in the very program he founded. One of my own undergraduate professors — the great ethicist Jeffrie Murphy — said George’s work compelled him to rethink everything.
So-called far-right critics now claim George will debate and even co-author books with Cornel West, with his ties to Louis Farrakhan, but refuses to work with people “to his right.” The charge — absurd on its face — is that he is some kind of “controlled dissenter,” a token conservative tolerated by the Ivy League so long as he stays within its boundaries. From there, the speculation drifts into unfounded theories about motives and self-preservation.
George does not need me to defend him. His life’s work refutes these claims. He has never backed away from his convictions. He has never trimmed the truth to curry favor with elite institutions. He debates West because he believes reason still matters, because he believes truth can be argued in public, and because he believes even fierce disagreement does not require abandoning basic human dignity. He refuses to compromise an inch while treating his interlocutors as human beings.
That shouldn’t be so difficult to understand.
In fact, that’s the first lesson conservatives should recover: Reason and faith are not optional in the public square. They are the foundation for honest argument, and honest argument is the only way a free people can persuade and be persuaded. If we descend into conspiracy theorizing, rage, or tribal loyalty as our primary modes of engagement, we abandon the very tools that made conservatism coherent.
Here is George’s warning: Don’t become postmodernists. Don’t imitate the left’s racial essentialism or identity politics. Don’t throw out reason because some Enlightenment thinkers misused it. If you want to rethink every narrative you’ve heard, fine — do it with reason, not with the power-dialectic that dominates progressive thought.
But principles alone are not enough. Being principled does not mean being naïve. Conservatives once understood strategy and tactics — long-term goals paired with immediate steps that move us toward them. I believe the United States should acknowledge the kingship of Jesus Christ. Presidents from both parties once referred to America as a Christian nation. If that is true, then we must engage publicly, argue publicly, and fight publicly for that idea of ordered liberty.
That means getting into the trenches. It means refuting Marxism and atheism clearly and without apology. It means being innocent as doves and wise as serpents, fighting to win without surrendering either virtue.
RELATED: Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and the war for the conservative soul
Photo by Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images
What we cannot become is principled losers. The enemy welcomes our gentlemanly retreats. The progressive movement wants more than policy wins; it wants to redefine the human person, the family, and the moral order itself. A party that endorses abortion at any point, supports the mutilation of healthy children, and treats scripture as hate speech leaves no moral ambiguity about which side a Christian or natural-law conservative should support.
Read George’s arguments against liberalism. Read his defense of natural law. If you disagree with him, he will debate you — he always has. But you can learn from him that a revival of natural law and natural theology is essential right now. That requires teaching the truths in Romans 1 and learning from Acts how to speak across cultures and ideologies.
We are in a spiritual war. The weapons are spiritual, but the fight is real. The stakes are real. The consequences are real.
It is far better to be fighting through the mud of Mordor than fat, complacent, and conquered in the Shire.
Why real Christianity terrifies the elites — and they’re right to worry
Much like gas-station sushi, David Brooks is hard to stomach at the best of times.
But his latest New York Times essay is the kind that makes you reach for the sick bag. He opens with the usual routine: an exasperated sigh, a long, self-important pause, and the unmistakable air of a man convinced he has cracked the cosmos — again.
A hidden faith saves no one, a timid faith shapes nothing, and a faith that folds under pressure is closer to cheap furniture than conviction.
He quotes a Czech priest, hints at deep wells of wisdom, and then meanders toward the real purpose of the piece: explaining, with mild exasperation, why Christians are once again disappointing him. This is nothing new. It’s a ritual at this point — a complaint that returns like spam you swore you unsubscribed from.
To be fair, Brooks isn’t stupid. He knows how to spin a story, how to climb onto the moral high ground without looking like he’s climbing, and how to crown himself the lone voice of reason in an age he insists is losing its mind.
But there is no missing the tone that hangs over almost every line he writes about believing Americans: a thin mist of condescension, settling somewhere between pastoral concern and a parent-teacher conference. He talks about everyday Christians the way a pretentious barista talks about someone ordering regular coffee — uncultured, embarrassing, and in need of enlightenment. And the tone, more than any point he makes, gives him away instantly.
Brooks claims to fear “rigid” or “pharisaical” Christianity. Yet the only certainties that radiate from his essay are his own. He divides the world into two armies — Christian nationalists on one side and “exhausted” secular humanists on the other — and then steps forward as the lone oracle who claims to see a path out of the fog.
Christians who vote for borders, who cherish the nation that shaped their churches, or who think culture is worth defending are waved off with his familiar, weary flick of the wrist. They’re told they practice a “debauched” version of the faith.
No evidence needed. Brooks’ opinion is treated as its own proof.
His description of these believers always follows the same script. They are angry, dangerous, and obsessed with power. They clutch their creed like a makeshift weapon, ready to wallop anyone who wanders too close.
In his telling, they never act from devotion, duty, or gratitude. They never look around their communities and see an America they love slipping away. They never mourn the millions taken before they drew a breath, the cracking of our shared foundation, or the slow burial of the sacred.
Instead, Brooks tells us they operate from “threat more than hope,” as if the country’s cultural decay were some far-fetched tale told for effect, rather than something families watch unfold every day in their schools, in their cities, and on their screens.
Brooks then pivots to his preferred theological register: the poetry of longing. He praises yearning, doubts, desires, and pilgrimages — all worthwhile themes.
But he uses them the way an interior decorator uses throw pillows: scattered for mood, never for structure. His spiritual reflections float past in soft, airy phrases that never touch the ground. This isn’t the faith of the Gospels, anchored in sacrifice and truth. It’s faith as fragrance — atomized cosmetic, evaporating faster than one of his metaphors. It asks nothing, risks nothing, and confronts nothing, which may be why Brooks finds it so comforting.
RELATED: Exposing the great lie about ‘MAGA Christianity’ — and the truth elites hate
jokerpro/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Throughout his essay, Brooks holds up a small circle of “wise people” as models of the faith America needs — Tomas Halík, Rowan Williams, and a handful of theologians who speak in clichés and move through the world like contemplative shadows. Their calm inspires him. Their pluralism delights him. Brooks treats their quietism as the apex of Christian maturity, as if the holiest life is lived at arm’s length, murmuring about mystery while the roof caves in.
What he never admits is what these figures actually represent: a brand of Christianity that thrives in seminar rooms, academic conferences, and anemic interfaith panels — spaces far removed from the daily battles most Christians face. Halík writes beautifully about longing. Rowan Williams writes elegantly about humility. But neither man spent his life in the trenches defending children from ideological capture in schools, or standing up to governments intent on shredding the family, or speaking plainly about sin in a culture that now calls sin a civil right.
Brooks misreads their vocation as the universal Christian posture when it is, at best, one posture among many.
The heart of the essay is its barely disguised contempt for ordinary Christians who believe their faith should shape the societies they inhabit. This is the point he never states outright but gestures toward with every paragraph.
Faith, to Brooks, is primarily personal, private, and utterly toothless. The moment it concerns the fate of a nation or the moral trajectory of a culture, he calls it nationalism. If a Christian speaks of stricter immigration policies, he hears xenophobia. If a parent protects his child from the cultural free-for-all, he calls it regression.
Brooks leans heavily on the aforementioned Czech priest and philosopher, Tomáš Halík, as if Halík were handing him a permission slip for a diluted Christianity. Halík writes movingly about interior struggle and authentic witness, ideas rooted in his years serving an underground church under communist rule.
But Brooks treats Halík’s reflections on the inner life as a blanket command for Christians to withdraw from the outer one. Halík speaks of sincerity; Brooks hears surrender. Halík points to the vast, ungraspable side of faith; Brooks converts it into a polite memo urging believers to stay in their lane.
And so Brooks gets the entire lesson backward. Halík survived a regime that tried to erase Christianity from public life. He never argued for Christians to silence themselves or retreat from cultural battles. Yet Brooks uses him as cover to criticize anyone who won’t float along with the cultural current.
What Brooks never admits is that what he calls “Christian nationalism” is not the fringe menace he imagines. For many believers, it is simply the instinct to guard the faith that built their communities. It isn’t a hunger for domination, but a love for the inheritance passed down to them. It isn’t outright hostility toward outsiders but gratitude for the civilization that formed them.
Brooks conveniently sidesteps all of this and builds a caricature he can berate, warning of a “creeping fascism” that lives entirely in his own mind.
The self-anointed sage wants Christians to trade their armor for aroma, to swap vigilance for vague platitudes, and to follow his favorite tastemakers into a future where faith survives only behind closed doors.
But Christians know better. A hidden faith saves no one, a timid faith shapes nothing, and a faith that folds under pressure is closer to cheap furniture than conviction. Brooks will disagree, naturally. He always does.
As so many times before, the smug sexagenarian takes a swing at American Christians. And once again, he misses the target by a mile.
