Category: The American Spectator
A Tim Walz Christmas
“A Tim Walz Christmas,” editorial cartoon by Tom Stiglich for The American Spectator on Dec. 10, 2025.
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Botoxic femininity? ‘Titanic’ star bashes ‘cartoon’-faced plastic surgery addicts
Our looks-obsessed, social-media-fueled culture is out of control — and it is causing more and more women to turn themselves into “cartoons.”
So says Hollywood star Kate Winslet, who unloaded on the subject in a recent interview with the Times.
‘It is f**king chaos out there.’
Carpet-bombed
Winslet, who rocketed to worldwide fame after starring in 1997’s “Titanic,” recalled enduring incessant scrutiny of her weight early in her career — at one point being described as “a little melted and poured into” a dress she wore at an awards show.
Still, the now-50-year-old said she never reacted to these barbs by getting surgery or taking weight-loss drugs, two approaches she feels are so common today that they have warped our idea of beauty.
Winslet added that her first reaction when seeing another woman with Botox or filler in her face is to think “No, not you! Why?”
But, Winslet continued, “No one’s listening because they’ve become obsessed with chasing an idea of perfection to get more likes on Instagram. It upsets me so much.”
Lip service
Nor is Winslet a fan of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.”
“Do they know what they are putting in [their bodies]?” she asked. “The disregard for one’s health is terrifying. It bothers me now more than ever. It is f**king chaos out there.”
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Photo by SC/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Winslet implied that while she gets why the Hollywood crowd is obsessed with appearances, what really bothers her is the thought of everyday people “who save up for Botox or the s**t they put in their lips.”
Character flaw
To illustrate her point, she told the Times about a BBC article she read about a car crash with a young woman.
“She looked like a cartoon,” Winslet scolded. “You do not actually know what that person looks like — from the eyebrows to mouth to lashes to hair, that young woman is scared to be herself. What idea of perfection are people aspiring to? I blame social media and its effect on mental health.”
To that end, she added that it has been “heartbreaking” to see people constantly looking at their phones.
“Nobody’s looking into the f**king world any more.”
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Photo by: Vince Bucci/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
While attempting to show that “life” is in one’s hands, Winslet remarked, “Some of the most beautiful women I know are over 70, and what upsets me is that young women have no concept of what being beautiful actually is.”
The interviewer noted that Winslet went out of her way to prove she “hasn’t got anything” in her face and even squeezed her hands to show creases around her veins.
Australia BANS key social media apps for kids under 16 — and platforms must enforce the rule
Australia will put the onus on social media platforms to limit access to children under 16 years old.
The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 amended Australia’s reigning online safety measures and gave social media companies time to age‐restrict their platforms and “take reasonable steps to prevent Australian under 16s from having account[s].”
‘No Australian will be compelled to use government identification.’
Officially taking effect on December 10, the ban includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, X, and YouTube’s general platform; YouTube Kids and WhatsApp do not meet the criteria for the ban.
Australia introduced its social media minimum-age framework that included a list of criteria that would result in a platform being banned for those under 16. This included if a platform’s sole purpose, or “significant purpose,” is to “enable online social interaction between two or more end‐users.”
Or if the service “allows end‐users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end‐users” and “allows end‐users to post material on the service” and “meets such other conditions (if any) as are set out in the legislative rules,” it will not be available for younger Australians.
The legislation can also specify certain platforms, or classes, to not include in the ban.
Social media platforms will be responsible for enforcement, and neither children nor their parents will face punishment should they gain access. Companies face fines of up to $32 million USD or just under $50 million in Australian dollars.
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Photo by DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images
The government further defined the requirements placed upon the platforms, adding that they must “take reasonable steps to prevent” those under 16 from having accounts.
The legislation also specified that “no Australian will be compelled to use government identification (including Digital ID) to prove their age online” and that platforms must offer reasonable alternatives to its users.
According to the BBC, other countries are hot on Australia’s tail in terms of implementing their own similar bans. This includes the French government, which has begun a parliamentary inquiry into banning children under 15 years old from social media, while also implementing a “digital curfew” for those between 15 and 18.
The Spanish government has also drafted a law that would require parental consent for children under 16 to access social media.
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Photo by DAVID GRAY/AFP via Getty Images
Ruling left-wing Labour Party official Anika Wells, who serves as Australia’s communications minister (and minister of sport), said that the ban is not “perfect” and is going to “look a bit untidy on the way through.”
“Big reforms always do,” she added.
Australians under 16 will still be able to access content that is available on a website without being logged in or being a member, as there is virtually no way to prevent that without restricting access to the internet entirely.
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‘You have to speak up’: Female powerlifter calls for gender testing after man wins ‘World’s Strongest Woman’
Powerlifter and strongman competitor Morgan Irons says gender testing and identification checks are necessary to keep women’s sports for women only.
Irons’ remarks came after a male athlete, Jammie Booker, recently defeated nine female competitors to win the coveted title of “World’s Strongest Woman” at the 2025 Official Strongman Games.
‘He basically said he really hoped that I would be at this next competition …’
In an exclusive interview with Fearless, Irons said that not only does Booker have an obvious and unfair advantage, but he allegedly has been trash-talking female competitors in their own sport.
Irons said she had been messaging with Booker in a sort of mentor role, offering advice and generic chatter, before their communications soured.
“I generally just try to be a positive person, and that’s what I got initially from Jammie in the beginning,” Irons explained with a smile. She said Booker had left positive remarks on her videos, telling her she is amazing and offering congratulations.
“But then it quickly just turned really sour,” Irons said, recalling that she started to realize something strange about Booker. “I realized that, ‘OK, this isn’t all adding up to me,’ and I had already had questions myself.”
When she decided to discuss this with people around her, Irons said she was advised not to say anything to avoid looking foolish or “like a bigot” if she was wrong.
Following up on her suspicions, Irons said she checked to see what Booker was doing from time to time in terms of competitions. It was then that she learned Booker had reportedly taken a hard turn and leaned into the idea of unabashedly beating women at their own game.
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“Jammie had some brazen words for me and some other athletes along the way,” Irons revealed. She alleged that Booker was verbally letting it be known that he wanted to beat the other women — and beat them soundly.
“He basically said he really hoped that I would be at this next competition so that he could beat me and beat all the other top women in the sport, currently,” Irons explained. “And I just find that odd. You know, you’re less than a year in, and what do you want to do? You want to go after the women at the top?”
Fearless reached out to Booker to confirm whether or not he had made these or similar remarks or expressed any hostility toward his competitors. He did not respond.
Negative remarks did not just allegedly come from Booker. But as has become typical with women who don’t wish to compete against men, Irons said she received a flurry of sarcastic comments on her social media videos like “work harder.”
This would, of course, require Irons to somehow overcome biology itself.
The comments are “just … it’s a slap in the face,” Irons said.
Photo by GAIZKA IROZ/AFP via Getty Images
While Booker was promptly stripped of his title of strongest woman, Irons urged that this should be the last time this sort of situation should be allowed to happen, advocating medical testing.
The athlete firmly rejected the idea that there would be “genital checks” to confirm sex, a method Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) once said would result from barring men from women’s sports. Instead, Irons championed cheek swabs for a DNA test and having to provide identification.
While she recognized that many states allow for one’s gender to be legally changed, Irons laughed that it is still shocking that every time she enters a competition, there is no ID check.
Irons relayed that it is essential to protect women’s sports, not just for now but for athletes in the future.
“You have to speak up. You just have to. Not even just for yourself, but for the next generation of women,” she said. “We’ve sat back and we’ve let this happen for so long, and that’s why we’re in the situation that we’re in. … It is women’s fault in a way that we’ve let it get to this point.”
Remarking on the entirety of the situation, former national champion gymnast Jennifer Sey has cemented herself in the position that there can be zero tolerance for the idea that men can compete in women’s sports.
She stated to Fearless that the blame should be put on the men who want to crush women in their own athletics.
“The gall to enter a competition for women to be the strongest woman in the world as a dude. Like, the arrogance and the dismissiveness of actual women required to do that — it’s just disgusting. It’s gross,” she added.
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Americans priced out while foreigners pour in: Trump admin report slams Biden for spike in rental costs
The Trump administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development blames rising housing and rental prices on the surge in immigration under Biden.
HUD published the “Worst Case Housing Needs: 2025 Report to Congress” in November, a biennial report that analyzes problems impacting low-income renting families. It defines renters with worst-case needs as those who do not receive government housing assistance and spend more than half of their income on rent or live in severely inadequate conditions, or both.
‘The unchecked illegal immigration and open borders policies allowed by the Biden administration continue to put significant strain on housing, pricing out American families.’
HUD argued that the uptick in immigration caused increases in housing demand and, in turn, prices.
“Between 2021 and 2024, the foreign-born population of the United States increased by more than six million — the largest such increase over such a short period in American history. The foreign-born population now stands at more than 53 million individuals, making up the highest share of the American population in history,” HUD reported.
The department stated that the country’s foreign-born population has grown by 20 million since 2000, representing a 40% increase.
In some regions of the U.S., such as California and New York, immigrants account for up to 100% of the rental growth and over 50% of all owner-occupied growth, HUD added. Nationwide, immigration accounts for two-thirds of rental demand growth, according to the department.
The median monthly housing cost for renters in 2021 was $1,184, increasing nearly 17.5% to $1,391 in 2023, according to the report.
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“The growth in households attributable to noncitizens was 13% between 2019 and 2023, compared to 7% between 2015 and 2019. This further demonstrates that noncitizen households are playing an increasing role in the household growth that is straining the affordable housing supply,” the report read.
HUD’s report cited several other contributing factors to the affordable rental crisis, including demand-side housing subsidies and the decline in marriage.
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President Donald Trump, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner told Fox News Digital, “The unchecked illegal immigration and open borders policies allowed by the Biden administration continue to put significant strain on housing, pricing out American families.”
“These policies have plagued America’s housing market, but in President Trump, Americans finally have a leader fighting to restore sanity to American immigration policy,” he added.
Turner stated that in 2025, HUD has supported one million homebuyers, including through first-time buyer and refinancing programs. He has called on the Federal Reserve to cut rates to continue the momentum toward affordability.
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Christian students are pushing back — and universities are cracking
As one of the last conservative Christians serving as a tenured philosophy professor at a public university, I’ve had a front-row seat to the intellectual circus that critical theory and intersectionality have unleashed on higher education. I call it out on X and Substack. Professors from ASU’s Barrett Honors College and English Department have attacked me for doing so, calling me a “joke” and a “sloppy thinker.” This is the abuse anyone receives for defending God’s word.
But something new — and encouraging — is happening.
Christian students are speaking up. They are filing complaints. They openly quote Scripture in their assignments. And in this case, the university backed down.
Students are calling it out, too.
Last week at the University of Oklahoma, two instructors were removed for blatant viewpoint discrimination against a Christian student. If even 5% of cases like this see daylight, the DEI structure will start to crack within the academic year. If the polls are right, 97% of faculty identify as left or far left. What we see now — open disdain for Scripture — is not an anomaly. It’s the visible edge of a worldview that has captured entire campuses.
Beneath the surface sits the full intersectional framework, built on one central assumption: Christianity is the axle around which oppression supposedly turns.
The assignment that exposed the bias
The student’s psychology assignment was simple: a 650-word response to a study about gender norms and bullying among middle-schoolers.
She wrote: “Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth.”
She grounded her argument in Genesis, explained God’s creation of male and female, and correctly defined ezer kenegdo as “a helper equal to man.”
In short, she used: Scripture, theology, linguistic analysis, and a historical ethical framework. That is a well-reasoned paper in the humanities. Except when the worldview is Christian.
The instructor’s response?
“Your reaction paper contradicts itself, uses personal ideology over empirical evidence, and is at times offensive.”
And then the tell: “Every major psychological, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric association acknowledges that sex and gender is neither binary nor fixed.”
This is false. No serious biology text claims human sex is nonbinary. Disorders of development exist, but disorders do not replace design.
The deeper problem stood out like a vegan at a Texas barbecue: The Bible does not count as evidence. Even if the rubric justified deductions, dismissing Scripture as “personal ideology” exposed the bias.
Quote Judith Butler or Michel Foucault, and the academy nods solemnly. Quote the Bible, and you lose points.
The modern university’s dogma is simple: The Bible is never admissible. Everything else is.
Christians have known this for decades and quietly self-censored to protect their grades and academic futures. Which raises the question: How did we arrive here?
How we got here
Hostility toward Christianity did not appear overnight. It grew slowly through deliberate gatekeeping. Hiring committees screened out conservatives, shaping departments where 90%-97% of faculty became ideological clones. Administrators learned to view biblical faith as bigotry. DEI offices began to enforce viewpoint discrimination while denying it.
Fair hiring does not produce a 97% monoculture. That is ideological capture.
Christians allowed it because they confused niceness with faithfulness. Niceness — a word that never appears in Scripture — is fear disguised as virtue. It keeps people quiet so they can stay liked.
The left used a strategy straight from Marx, who took it straight from the enemy (“devil,” meaning accuser): Accuse Christians of oppression; rewrite history so the West is defined by its sins, never its virtues; demonize Scripture and its adherents; and weaponize shame to silence dissent.
It worked — for a time. The spell is breaking.
No neutrality
Many Christians assumed universities were neutral. They aren’t. They never were.
Every institution aligns with one of two cities: “the City of God” and “the City of Man.”
The City of Man controls the universities. This is not hyperbole. Romans 1 describes it plainly.
Those who reject God do not become neutral observers. They become evangelists for a rival religion. That rival religion has doctrines:
- The Bible is oppressive.
- Christianity is harmful.
- Gender is unlimited.
- Identity is self-created.
- The highest good is “authenticity.”
- The greatest sin is disagreement.
A new orthodoxy rules the campus, and the Oklahoma student violated it — praise God that she did.
Something has changed
Christian students are not taking the abuse quietly any more. They are speaking up. They are filing complaints. They are quoting Scripture openly in their assignments. And in this case, the university backed down. The instructors were removed.
Even on a left-dominated campus, viewpoint discrimination remains illegal — even if DEI treats it as sacred ritual.
If this continues, the monopoly may begin to break — maybe even by spring break.
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Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
What you can do
As someone inside the system, here is my advice.
Follow those speaking publicly. We are few, but we are here — and we are not silent.
Equip your children. They will face hostility. They will be mocked. They will be graded down unless they can respond intelligently. Ask pointed questions on campus tours. Get administrators on record renouncing DEI discrimination — then hold them to it.
Consider alternatives. Trade schools, Christian colleges, apprenticeships, online programs — all viable. Many offer a serious education without forcing students through gender theory with Judith Butler 101. Seek professors who teach the great works with a biblical foundation.
Speak boldly. The gospel is not a whisper. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel,” the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”
Christian students are rediscovering that courage. It is long past time the rest of us did, too.
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