President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order Wednesday barring schools from applying diversity, equity, and inclusion when administering discipline, Breitbart reported. The White House said this will make schools safer as outcomes will be based on student behavior.
The White House touted the changes in a preview of the order. "The Order requires new guidance to local and state educational agencies regarding school discipline, emphasizing compliance with Title VI protections against racial discrimination and preferencing," it said.
"It calls for appropriate action against educational agencies that fail to comply with Title VI by continuing to use racially preferential discipline practices," the document said. The order also demands further study to ensure "federal funds do not support racially preferential policies, including through nonprofit organizations, and proposing model discipline policies rooted in American values."
This order reverses former President Barack Obama's guidance on school discipline. The 2014 policy required schools to "equalize disciplinary rates by race" rather than focusing on the behavior of individual students.
According to the Federalist Society, Obama penned a "Dear Colleague" letter that used the threat of the federal government to urge schools to consider the "disparate impact" discipline has on racial minorities. It claimed that all disciplinary action should be color blind.
However, it then went on to recommend exactly the opposite in application. Schools were urged to examine the "disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race" before meting out any punishments.
Instead of behavior-based discipline, schools were forced to consider the racial makeup of the students getting caught. It claimed that "even if that policy is applied to students without regard to their race (i.e, there is no intentional discrimination), the policy might still violate federal law if it has a 'disparate impact,' i.e., a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race."
Although it was never proven, some believed that this philosophy led to Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz falling through the cracks, Fox News reported in 2018. After committing vandalism as a middle school student, Cruz was never criminally charged and may have been put into a diversionary program called PROMISE.
However, the school district was cagey about his involvement in it after the shooting. "I was repeatedly told that the Parkland shooter was never in the Promise Program I was asking questions about. Now it turns out that in fact he was," then-Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio said.
Trump's Executive Order, signed on Wednesday, was a step toward righting the wrong that Obama began, and then-President Joe Biden continued. Trump's executive assistant, Will Scharf, said the policy hindered proper discipline in schools.
"Basically, they focused on [Critical Race Theory] and diversity ideology, instead of actually just enforcing the rules in classrooms to ensure a safe learning environment," Scharf said. Eliminating the "disparate impact theory" is in line with Trump's effort ban all DEI.
"This is a theory that underlies a lot of the modern DEI and CRT-driven diversity culture. The basic idea is instructing your department and agencies to no longer rely on disparate impact theory as they're regulating, as they're issuing guidance, as they're making rules," Scharf went on.
"We want to focus on results, we want to focus on actual fairness, we want to focus on merit, not things like disparate impact theory and the whole sort-of diversity, equity and inclusion cult," Scharf said. This order will go a long way to restoring sanity with a single pen stroke.
The left believes that any outcomes unfavorable to racial minorities must be because of racism, and then they enact racist policies ostensibly to counter the effects. Thankfully, Trump is eliminating this philosophy from every corner of American life.
Sources say that Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were locked in a contentious debate over who should head the IRS, Newsmax reported. The sources say the tussle took place in the presence of President Donald Trump.
This sensational story was first published by the leftist news outlet Axios on Wednesday. The report allegedly came to the news outlet through "two witnesses and three sources who were briefed on the matter."
The two men were arguing about whether Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender or former acting Commissioner Gary Shapley should head up the IRS. This occurred at an Oval Office meeting on April 17, and witnesses likened it to a professional wrestling match, although there was no physical altercation.
"It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing," a witness claimed. Bessent actually has a net worth of about $520 million.
The report claimed that this was more than a fleeting exchange. "They were not physical in the Oval, but the president saw it, and then they carried it down the hall, and that's when they did it again," a witness said.
This would surely have angered Trump, especially considering the way a second witness described it as quite a spectacle. "It was quite a scene. It was loud. And I mean, loud," the source claimed.
When asked about the argument, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt admitted that "it's no secret President Trump has put together a team of people who are incredibly passionate about the issues impacting our country." Still, Leavitt tempered her sentiments with a truthful observation.
"Disagreements are a normal part of any healthy policy process. And ultimately, everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump," Leavitt said. The supposed manner of this disagreement plays into rumors of Musk's volatility.
Musk has locked horns with other administration officials, including Trade Adviser Peter Navarro, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. "Everyone thinks DOGE is great, but Elon's antics are just a bit much," a third administration official said about Musk's position as the outgoing head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Amid these reports, Trump has remained publicly supportive of Musk. "He’s an incredible… brilliant guy. He was a tremendous help both in the campaign and in what he's done with DOGE," Trump said when asked by reporters on Wednesday.
Trump noted that Musk's Tesla company has suffered financial losses because of his willingness to work with the president. He went on to praise Musk for his achievements at SpaceX, as well as his character.
"When you see those rockets go up and come back and land in the same gantry, nobody else can do that but this man. So he's just an incredible person, and he's a friend of mine as a nice person too, as a very nice person," Trump said. Musk shared a clip of Trump's remarks on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 24, 2025
Musk has done great things for the nation and for Trump by providing support and guidance. Even if these reports are true about a disagreement, it doesn't take anything away from that fact. The leftist media will want to make the most of it just the same.
Ashley Biden is facing an IRS complaint after she failed to disclose donations to her charity from wealthy benefactors, including Meghan Markle.
Women’s Wellness Spa(ce), Biden's nonprofit, underreported its income by six figures, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Ashley Biden, a social worker who wrote about childhood trauma in an infamous diary, started the nonprofit to help women with mental health struggles.
The conservative National Legal and Policy Center flagged a $500,000 discrepancy in the group's IRS filings.
Despite reporting an income of $170,296 in 2023, Biden's charity received $250,000 grants from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Archewell Foundation and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Biden's non-profit began in 2023, while her father was still president, which has raised concerns to some about influence peddling.
"Ashley Biden’s failure to disclose to the IRS receiving $500,000 in grants in 2023 raises the question of what other contributions is she hiding," Paul Kamenar, a lawyer with the National Legal and Policy Center told the Washington Free Beacon.
An accountant for the charity told the Free Beacon that the most of the $500,000 was not distributed until 2024. But according to Kamenar, Biden's group is required to report donations when they are pledged, not when they are actually received.
Ashley Biden settled a $5,000 tax bill last year that dated to 2015. She is not the only member of her family with tax woes: her half-brother, Hunter, was facing prison after he pled guilty to evading taxes on over $1.4 million that he received from his international business deals.
President Biden wiped the slate clean with a controversial blanket pardon.
Ashley, the only child of Biden and his second wife Jill, was one of the only family members who did not receive a pardon from President Biden before he stepped down, the Free Beacon noted.
While Ashley Biden has received comparatively little publicity compared to Hunter Biden, the infamous theft of her diary led to scrutiny of her unusual family life. In the book, Biden wrote about "showers with dad" and being "sexualized" at a young age.
Ashley Biden's non-profit bills itself as a "trauma-informed wellness center," but the group's online presence is marginal outside of an Instagram account that has not posted anything since February.
The charity claims to offer guided meditation and psychotherapeutic treatments like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which Ashley Biden used after her half-brother Beau died from brain cancer.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An American woman in an American city trying to purchase American food from an American restaurant has been denied service.
For speaking English.
Alexandria Montgomery kept trying, explaining, "Don't tell me you can't take my order because you don't speak English."
To no avail.
She posted her video online, and columnist Todd Starnes opined, "It seems to me that anyone who moves to America and refuses to learn our language should be deported. Without a common language we can't have a sovereign nation nor can we order the delicious Cheesy Gordita Crunch."
The situation developed at a Taco Bell drive-through in Hialeah, Florida.
"Nobody here speaks English? Nobody in the back speaks English? So you can't take my order," Montgomery said.
The workers clearly understood much of what Montgomery said, but they responded in Spanish, and shaking their heads no.
"She doesn't want to help me because she don't speak English. But you know the menu. You work here, so you would know what I'm talking about if I say I want number six on the menu. You understand what I'm saying? Like, you just don't completely shut me out cuz you don't speak English, that's not fair," Montgomery told them.
The corporation later apologized and offered a gift card. The situation "does not meet our customer experience expectations."
She told a local reporter, "I understand everyone in Miami doesn't speak English, and that's fine, but if she was willing to work with me, I think the outcome would've been different."
Social media commenters suggested ICE will be investigating, and "This is wrong on every level."
"Devastating managerial miscalculation. Hired and scheduled too many people who don't speak English. Oops!" said another.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The governor of Illinois, a far-left extremist who is very confident of the influence he wields, has promised to fight President Donald Trump over El Salvador's custody of an El Salvadoran citizen who was determined likely to be an MS-13 gang member who was caught in an apparent human trafficking scandal and is known to have abused his wife.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a billionaire several times over, also promises to punish El Salvador, and is being ridiculed for his agenda.
A few of the snarky comments that appeared in response were documented by RedState.
For example, there was, "You are such a clown. Imagine believing you matter to [El Salvador President Nayib Bukele]."
And, "You are on the wrong side of history here, dude. No one agrees with you."
And, another noted Pritzker's state is "in shambles, but [he] is once again playing international warrior – threatening El Salvador like he's on a diplomatic mission."
Maybe, said one, he should "read the Logan act."
He also has revealed that his state possibly will boycott El Salvador.
The fight is over the Trump administration's deportation and El Salvador's present custody of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
He's suspected of being a member of the terror group MS-13, of being involved in human trafficking and abusing his wife. He was cleared for deportation by the judicial system, only he apparently wasn't at that time supposed to be deported to El Salvador.
But he was, and that nation's president has said he won't be returned to the U.S., where he likely would end up going through another deportation process anyway.
The RedState report explained Pritzker told state agencies to review and possibly boycott any business with El Salvador.
He said, "The United States Constitution guarantees due process. We are witnessing Donald Trump erode our fundamental Constitutional rights in real time, and we must fight to restore the balance of power. The state of Illinois will stand up for the Rule of Law and do everything in our power (to) stop the Trump Administration from ripping apart our most basic rights."
RedState explained, "In short, Pritzker is drawing a line in the sand and shaking his meaty fist in defense of … a gangbanger."
The report also pointed out that Pritzker issued no call for "due process" "when January 6 protesters were denied due process."
Or how about Hamas terrorists who still are holding captives, a year and a half after their terror attack on Israel.
The report continued, "Pritzker, it should be noted, did not look into boycotting Mexico when Baltazar Perez-Estrada, who illegally entered the United States from that country, murdered his wife. She lived in Carol Stream, Illinois. Perez-Estrada stabbed her dozens of times and nearly decapitated her. Nor did he order a review of government business with Ecuador or Venezuela when two illegal aliens from those countries were arrested in connection with the murder of George Levin in the 'sanctuary' of Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood. Levin was found bound and killed in January."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Dick Durbin, will not seek reelection in 2026, as he announced his retirement Wednesday after 44 years in Congress.
"The decision of whether to run for reelection has not been easy. I truly love the job of being a United States senator," Durbin said in a video he posted on X.
"But in my heart, I know it's time to pass the torch. So, I am announcing today that I will not be seeking reelection at the end of my term."
"I have given more than half of my life to House and Senate congressional service, and I've always tried to stand up to power on behalf of the people of Illinois and our country," he continued.
"I am proud of what I have achieved and hope my record will speak for itself.
"But none of it would have been possible without my wife, Loretta; our children, Christine, Paul, and Jennifer; my energetic grandchildren; and my extended family, who stood with me and accepted the demands of my public career.
"I have been blessed to have them, as well as the best Senate staff anyone could ask for.
"Right now, the challenges facing our country are historic and unprecedented.
"The threats to our democracy and way of life are real, and I can assure you that I will do everything in my power to fight for Illinois and the future of our country every day of my remaining time in the Senate."
Durbin, 80, is the fourth Senate Democrat to announce their retirement this year.
"I have to be honest about this. There are good people in the wings, good people on the bench ready to serve, and they can fight this fight just as effectively as I can," Durbin told the New York Times.
"There comes a point where you have to face reality that this is the time to leave for me."
In 2018, Durbin claimed on NBC's "Meet the Press" that former President Barack Obama went eight years in office "without a major scandal."
"Under President Obama, eight years without an indictment, eight years without a major scandal," he said.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." – Ephesians 6:12
Decades ago when I was very young, my grandmother, Mary Kupelian, told me a haunting story I've wondered about ever since.
As I sat in the kitchen of her cozy little home in Bethesda, Maryland, eating her delicious homemade bread and talking about a frequent topic – the Armenian Genocide, which she and my dad (as a little boy) had barely survived – she shared with me the following enigma.
"The Turkish people are very hospitable people," she said with surprising warmth, seeing as they had murdered her husband and dozens of other members of her extended family, just a few of the 1.5 million Christian Armenians killed by the Turks during the first genocide of the 20th century. Grandmom knew the Turkish people well, not just from having grown up in southern Turkey, but from having returned several times to the "old country" later in life, during more quiescent times.
However, continuing her story, she intimated to me that the Muslim Turks lived under the spell of strange forces.
"They were very hospitable and would invite you in," she said. "But, if a distant signal was given – it sounded something like a trumpet – then they would instantly change, and would attempt to harm you. Yet if the signal sounded again, they would immediately switch back to normal."
"Even," she added by way of illustration, "if they had injured you after the first signal, as soon as the second signal sounded, they would bind up the very wounds they had inflicted on you."
As I said – a very, very strange tale, with overtones of "The Manchurian Candidate" and its post-hypnotic suggestions (remember the Queen of Diamonds?) triggering murderous, pre-programmed behavior.
That story, so pregnant with hidden significance, has remained gestating in my mind for all these decades since my grandmother matter-of-factly shared it with me over her kitchen table. It has piqued my interest especially in recent years, as I have endeavored in my writing to sort out and make some sense of a world so powerfully controlled by dark forces.
Since today, April 24, is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, let's delve into my grandmother's mystery story and see where it leads.
First, it's necessary that I briefly summarize my family's personal experience during this terrible period.
It was 100 years ago, and my dad, just a toddler then, along with his mother and baby sister were among thousands of Armenian Christians being herded into the Syrian Der Zor desert east of Aleppo to die. That's right, to die. Forced into such a miserable and dangerous trek, the plan was that exposure, hunger, thirst, bandits or marauding soldiers would get the job done, one way or the other. As for my father's father, a physician, he had already been forced into the Turkish army against his will to head a medical regiment to tend to the Turkish soldiers' injuries.
"One of my earliest recollections, I was not quite three years old at the time," my dad told me shortly before he died in 1988, was that "the wagon we were in had tipped over, my hand was broken and bloody, and mother was looking for my infant sister who had rolled away. The next thing I remember after that, mother was on a horse, holding my baby sister, and had me sitting behind her, saying, 'Hold on tight, or the Turks will get you!'"
The three of them rode off on horseback, ending up in Aleppo, one of the gateways to the desert deportation and certain death. Once there, my always-resourceful grandmother Mary bluffed her way into getting an audience with Aleppo's governor-general. Seeing as her Armenian doctor husband was in the service of the Turkish army – albeit by force – she played her one and only card, brazenly telling the governor general, "I demand my rights as the wife of a Turkish army officer!"
"What are those rights?"
"I want commissary privileges and two orderlies," she answered.
"Granted."
By thus boldly deceiving the not-too-bright Turkish politician, Mary avoided the unthinkable, saving not only her own life and those of her son and daughter, but also the lives of her husband's two brothers, whom she immediately deputized as orderlies. The group then succeeded in sneaking several other family members out of harm's way, and my grandmother kept them all from starving by obtaining food from the commissary. Thus was my family spared, although my father's infant sister was unable to survive the harshness of those times and died shortly thereafter. And my grandfather, Simeon Kupelian, was executed along with other Armenian doctors by a squadron of Turkish gunmen.
On finally returning to their beautiful home in Marash in southern Turkey a couple of years later, Mary and son Vahey, who was then about six, found it had been ransacked. Their fine tapestries had been pulled off the walls, ripped, and urinated on. Everything that could be carried out had been stolen, and everything else had been deliberately broken – even every last pane of glass in the French doors was broken, and the drawer handles all destroyed.
Eventually, they escaped – and made their way to America.
That was my father's side of the family. But on my mother's side, things were just as bad.
In 1909, my great-grandfather, a Protestant minister named Steelianos Leondiades, was traveling to the major Turkish city of Adana to attend a pastors' conference. Today, Incirlik Air Base, used by the U.S. Air Force, is five miles east of Adana. But then, under the Ottoman caliph, Abdul-Hamid II, ethnic cleansing was the order of the day. Here's how my maternal grandmother, Anna Paulson, daughter of Steelianos, told the story:
"Some of the Turkish officers came to the conference room and told all these ministers – there were 70 of them, ministers and laymen and a few wives: 'If you embrace the Islamic religion you will all be saved. If you don't, you will all be killed.'"
My great-grandfather, acting as a spokesman for the ministers' group, asked the Turks for 15 minutes so they could make their decision, according to my grandmother's account. During that time the ministers and their companions talked, read the Bible to each other, and prayed. In the end, none of them would renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam.
"And then," Anna recalled, "they were all killed.
"They were not even buried. They were all thrown down the ravine."
Ultimately, by the grace of God, both sides of my family made it to the Promised Land – America – and eventually my father met and married my mother, and that's how my brother, sister and I were blessed to come on the scene.
Now, back to my grandmother Mary's strange story …
Marauding hordes of 'Manchurian candidates'
Any thoughtful person, even without any particular knowledge of mind control, hypnosis or brainwashing, could offer a reasonable hypothesis as to what is being described by my grandmother: The actors are clearly people who have somehow been deeply programmed, and the "trumpet-like" signal is a trigger, a post-hypnotic suggestion initiating the pre-programmed behavior.
Interestingly, I mentioned this story to a close colleague of mine who lived in a country once part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. His response to my grandmother's scenario – where on signal, Turks turned on innocent people to kill them, but stopped midstream at the second signal and even resumed their hospitality to the point of patching up any injuries they had caused – was to recall his own time living among a Muslim population whose ancestors had lived for five centuries under Turkish rule.
"The people were extremely hospitable," he recalled, "but after living in the country for some time, I learned there was another dimension to how they generally perceived foreigners. I had the feeling that some of the most outwardly welcoming people could stab me in the back."
Encouraged that I might be on to something, I reached out to noted Islam scholar Andrew Bostom for help.
After doing a little research, Andrew called me back and said, enthusiastically, "Your grandmother is right!" The mysterious "trumpet-like signal" was a bugle, he informed me, leading me to a series of books and other contemporaneous genocide reports with additional details. A quick sampling:
There was this New York Times story from Sept. 25, 1915, quoting Dr. M. Simbad Gabriel, head of a U.S.-based Armenian organization:
The doctor said that greed, religion, and politics all combined to induce the Turks to massacre the Armenians. The Government was always behind every massacre, and the people were acting under orders.
"When the bugle blows in the morning," he said, "Turks rush fiercely to the work of killing the Christians and plundering them of their wealth. When it stops in the evening, or in two or three days, the shooting and stabbing stop just as suddenly then as it began. The people obey their orders like soldiers."
And there was Simon Payaslian, chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University:
At Friday prayers in the mosque, Muslims were encouraged to attack Armenians. After prayers let out, a bugle would sound from the minarets for the attack to begin, and then a bugle would sound for the attack to end.
And then there was, contained in Bostom's own book, "The Legacy of Jihad," this chilling account by Scottish historian Lord Kinross:
Each operation, between the bugle calls, followed a similar pattern. First the Turkish troops came into a town for the purpose of massacre; then came the Kurdish irregulars and tribesmen for the purpose of plunder. Finally came the holocaust, by fire and destruction, which spread, with the pursuit of the fugitives and mopping-up operations, throughout the lands and villages of the surrounding province. …
Cruelest and most ruinous of all were the massacres of Urfa, where the Armenian Christians numbered a third of the total population … When the bugle blast ended the day's operations, some three thousand refugees poured into the cathedral, hoping for sanctuary. But the next morning – a Sunday – a fanatic mob swarmed into the church in an orgy of slaughter, rifling its shrines with cries of "Call upon Christ to prove Himself a greater prophet than Mohammed." Then they amassed a large pile of straw matting, which they spread over the litter of corpses and set alight with thirty cans of petroleum. The woodwork of the gallery where a crowd of women and children crouched, wailing with terror, caught fire, and all perished in the flames.
Punctiliously at three-thirty in the afternoon the bugle blew once more, and the Moslem officials proceeded around the Armenian quarter to proclaim that the massacres were over … the total casualties in the town, including those slaughtered in the cathedral, amounted to eight thousand dead.
Superficially, one might conclude such narratives are depicting normal, albeit horribly brutal, military operations where soldiers are coordinated in their advances and retreats by bugle calls. But there's much more going on here.
"I've read accounts," Andrew Bostom assured me, "of a call to arms where Muslims would show up at residences – people who lived with neighbors for a decade or more – and engaged in indiscriminate slaughter."
Really? Living and sharing with your neighbors for years, borrowing hummus and olive oil when you ran short – and then suddenly turning on them in a frenzy of "indiscriminate slaughter"? Doesn't sound exactly normal to me.
Let's freeze-frame this whole bugle-massacre business for a minute, and shift our focus to another bizarre but disturbingly common phenomenon in today's Arab-Muslim world: so-called "honor killings."
A teenage girl – whose father, mother and brothers one would assume share a natural love, affection and protectiveness toward her – is observed walking down the street with a male non-relative, perhaps even holding hands with him.
In response, the girl is stabbed to death by her brother(s), or her mother or father, or all of them together – stabbed not just once, but often dozens of times in an orgy of slaughter, like the most deranged psychopath might commit. This fate is meted out to girls and young women for anything vaguely considered to have brought "shame" or "dishonor" upon a family. The poor girl's offense could be that she refused to enter into an arranged marriage, or was in a relationship that wasn't approved of by the family, or had dressed in a way deemed inappropriate. Even flirting, even failing to serve a meal on time, even being a rape victim, all have been the occasions of "honor killings."
"Amnesty International has reported on one case in which a husband murdered his wife based on a dream that she had betrayed him," reports National Geographic. "In Turkey, a young woman's throat was slit in the town square because a love ballad had been dedicated to her over the radio."
Such monstrous, bizarre and outrageously unjustified and unprovoked murders of innocent girls by their own family members occur at least 5,000 times annually according to the U.N., but that number is considered low due to underreporting. BBC reports that some victim-advocate organizations "suspect that more than 20,000 women are killed worldwide each year" via "honor killings."
Now, what do the bugle-signaled mass slaughters of the Armenian Genocide and today's Islamic "honor killings" – and, for that matter, the crucifixions and beheadings and burying-alive of Christian believers by ISIS zombies – have in common?
All demonstrate an extreme level of pre-programmed, murderous conditioning, to be called forth by a post-hypnotic suggestion – a bugle sound, a sister crossing some pre-set behavioral line, an encounter with a Christian holding fast to his or her faith.
How could such "Manchurian Candidate"-like conditioning possibly be accomplished, you might ask? Did somebody send teams of Russian scientists schooled in Pavlovian conditioning over to the Middle East to hypnotize millions of people in giant laboratories?
Of course not. But Pavlov did not invent "Pavlovian conditioning." He just recognized the pre-existing principle and codified it into a psychological-physiological theory. Cruel, predatory, psychopathic (conscienceless) people have always seemed to understand how to program and control others in this way.
For example, African warlords have been notorious for recruiting and creating (i.e., programming) child soldiers, often turning kidnapped children into the most brutal and unhesitating killers of all. One common conversion technique: Force a child to kill a family member or friend. ("Shoot your friend in the head, or I'll cut off your hand right now.") If the child shoots his friend, he's converted – usually for life, since the searing guilt of what he has done prevents him from ever going back to any other life.
We have all observed ISIS and other jihadist groups using virtually the same techniques to recruit and condition young children to become cold-blooded killers.
A similar technique is common in gang initiations all over America. To join, you must commit a crime (slash a stranger in the face with a knife, even commit murder) before you can become a member – which assures, both legally and psychologically, that there's almost no way out for you.
It's doubtful many gang leaders, African warlords or jihad recruiters have taken any courses on hypnosis, brainwashing or "Pavlovian conditioning," yet the dark knowledge of controlling and programming others is something human predators always figure out and exploit.
What about the ISIS conversions from the West we've seen over the last few years – all those young men and women from the U.S. and Europe, persuaded by cool jihad recruitment websites to leave the freest nations on earth and head to the Middle East to become cannon fodder or sex slaves? Such recruiting is not difficult to accomplish.
Enraged young people who have been abandoned, betrayed or exploited (or who believe they have been), full of fury and desire for vengeance, who have lost everything and feel they have nothing more to lose – such as these are easy prey for recruitment pitches promising fulfillment, identity, "family," adventure, glory and revenge.
In the case of jihad groups, in addition to all the standard benefits of gang membership, recruits are also assured they are the chosen of God, superior to all other people in the world (except fellow Muslim brothers and sisters) and are going to help establish a glorious Islamic paradise here on earth – plus they get to slaughter all the vile infidels who get in their way. (And the males are promised lots of hot women, both now and in the next life.)
You see, whether it's ISIS, al-Qaida, Boko Haram, the Al Nusra Front or other modern-day jihadists, or their Turkish predecessors in the Ottoman Caliphate a century ago; whether, for that matter, it's the Christian-hating automatons of North Korea or in other communist nations throughout the world – when it comes to those who persecute Christians, we are looking at people firmly in the grip of exceedingly dark forces. And since darkness cannot stand the light – it burns – they feel compelled to attempt to put it out. Yet they cannot. For although the persecutors enslave, they are the true slaves; though they imprison, they are the real prisoners; though they kill, they are the ones spiritually dying.
Remembering
So today the whole world commemorates the Turkish genocide of the Armenians.
Well, except for Turkey. After a century of denial, Turkey has never even acknowledged that this monstrous genocide of a million-and-a-half Christians ever occurred.
Unfortunately, there's a grave danger in failing to come clean – and that is, the great crime is likely to be repeated.
Consider what Adolf Hitler wrote in this Aug. 22, 1939, document, which was entered into evidence in the Nuremberg Trials. After you read his absolutely horrendous plans, pay special attention to the last sentence, in which Hitler reveals why he's so sure he can get away with committing genocide while pulling off what he calls the "redistribution of the world":
My decision to attack Poland was arrived at last spring. Originally, I feared that the political constellation would compel me to strike simultaneously at England, Russia, France, and Poland. Even this risk would have had to be taken.
Ever since the autumn of 1938, and because I realized that Japan would not join us unconditionally and that Mussolini is threatened by that nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince, I decided to go with Stalin.
In the last analysis, there are only three great statesmen in the world, Stalin, I, and Mussolini. Mussolini is the weakest, for he has been unable to break the power of either the crown or the church. Stalin and I are the only ones who envisage the future and nothing but the future. Accordingly, I shall in a few weeks stretch out my hand to Stalin at the common German-Russian frontier and undertake the redistribution of the world with him.
Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter – with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.
I have issued the command – and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad – that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
That was 1939. Just a few years earlier, in the early '30s, much of the world regarded Hitler and his gathering movement as a joke. Some journalists "burst out laughing at his shrill voice and jerky hand movements and refused to take him seriously," writes Andrew Nagorski in his 2012 book, "Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power."
In our time, we have had ISIS, which Barack Obama infamously sized up as the "jayvee team" a few months before it blitzkrieged its way across large parts of the Middle East. ISIS has been, in fact, frequently compared to the Hitler machine of the early 1930s, maniacal and growing, but not yet a massive world power with fearsome weapons.
And just to bring things full circle, consider the primary role model for caliphate-wannabes like ISIS. No, it's not Hitler, even though ISIS and Hitler share an infinite hatred for Jews. Rather, it's the world's previous Sunni Islamic caliphate – namely, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, whose martyrdom of 1.5 million Armenian Christians is being remembered today.
'We had forgotten theology and the Bible'
Just as there are little-understood mysteries of evil, such as that crystallized in my grandmother's story, so are there other mysteries – from God – secretly at work in people who are in His grip.
Richard Wurmbrand, the heroic Romanian evangelical pastor, spent 14-and-a-half years in a Romanian prison suffering starvation and torture for the crime of boldly preaching the Gospel of Christ in what was then a brutally repressive communist nation. When, two years after his final release from captivity, Wurmbrand testified in May 1966 before the U.S. Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee, he stripped to the waist to reveal 18 deep wounds covering his torso, the result of years of unspeakable abuse.
And yet, as Wurmbrand proclaims in his classic book, "Tortured for Christ," he and his fellow Christian prisoners well understood that the communists, especially those who imprisoned and tortured them, "knew not what they did." He recognized deeply that his persecutors were all programmed "Manchurian candidates" – brainwashed slaves of "principalities and powers," of "rulers of the darkness of this world" and "spiritual wickedness in high places."
Until he died at age 91 in 2001, Wurmbrand's message, one faithfully carried forward by the international ministry he founded, Voice of the Martyrs, has always been: "Hate the evil systems, but love your persecutors. Love their souls, and try to win them for Christ."
With striking compassion for his jailers, in "Tortured for Christ" Wurmbrand writes:
The enormous amount of drunkenness in Communist countries exposes the longing for a more meaningful life, which communism cannot give. The average Russian is a deep, big-hearted, generous person. Communism is shallow and superficial. He seeks the deep life and, finding it nowhere else, he seeks it in alcohol. He expresses in alcoholism his horror about the brutal and deceitful life he must live. For a few moments alcohol sets him free, as truth would set him free forever if he could know it.
So genuine was Wurmbrand's concern for the souls of his tormentors that, over the years, quite a few of them were converted to the Christian faith, ending up in prison with him – and glad for it!
Contemplate, if you can, Wurmbrand's last act before leaving Romania after years of living 30 feet underground in a communist prison – no sunshine, no fresh air, always hungry, treated brutally and sadistically day after day, year after year.
"In December 1965," writes Wurmbrand, "my family and I were allowed to leave Romania":
My last deed before leaving was to go to the grave of the colonel who had given the order for my arrest and who had ordered my years of torture. I placed a flower on his grave. By doing this I dedicated myself to bringing the joys of Christ that I have to the communists who are so empty spiritually.
I hate the communist system but I love the men. I hate the sin but I love the sinner. I love the communists with all of my heart. Communists can kill Christians but they cannot kill their love toward even those who killed them. I have not the slightest bitterness or resentment against the communists or my torturers.
How is such an attitude possible? Says Wurmbrand:
I have seen Christians in communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold – and praying with fervor for the communists. This is humanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ, which was poured out in our hearts.
Finally, in words reminiscent of some of the early Christian martyrs of the First Century, Richard Wurmbrand shares with the reader the presence of God he experienced in his filthy prison cell:
God is "the Truth." The Bible is the "truth about the Truth." Theology is the "truth about the truth about the Truth." Christian people live in these many truths about the Truth, and, because of them, have not "the Truth." Hungry, beaten, and drugged, we had forgotten theology and the Bible. We had forgotten the "truths about the Truth," therefore we lived in "the Truth." It is written, "The Son of man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him" (Matthew 24:44). We could not think anymore. In our darkest hours of torture, the Son of Man came to us, making the prison walls shine like diamonds and filling the cells with light. Somewhere, far away, were the torturers below us in the sphere of the body. But the spirit rejoiced in the Lord. We would not have given up this joy for that of kingly palaces.
President Trump is restarting student loan collections for those in default, reversing a COVID-era policy that Trump himself enacted and which was later embraced by President Biden.
The federal government will start collecting on defaulted loans on May 5, ending a five-year pause that started during the pandemic.
After a 30-day warning, the government will start garnishing wages.
“Going forward, the Department of Education, in conjunction with the Department of Treasury, will shepherd the student loan program responsibly and according to the law, which means helping borrowers return to repayment — both for the sake of their own financial health and our nation’s economic outlook,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
The Trump administration's reversal will immediately impact the 5 million borrowers in default - but the number is expected to rise to nearly 10 million since only 40% of borrowers are up to date on their payments.
Trump initially paused student loan payments during his first term, at the start of the COVID pandemic, but Biden extended the policy and went further by eliminating debts altogether.
Biden's campaign pledge of sweeping debt forgiveness ran into roadblocks in court, forcing his administration to devise legal workarounds. The initiative was widely condemned by Republicans as a form of political patronage that would be paid for by taxpayers, but Biden proudly touted his efforts to sidestep the law.
“The Supreme Court blocked it,” Biden said. “But that didn’t stop me.”
By the time he left office, Biden had forgiven $175 billion in student loans. His initial, more ambitious program to forgive $20,000 per borrower was blocked by the Supreme Court.
The student loan moratorium technically ended in 2023, but Biden gave borrowers a one-year grace period that lasted through the 2024 election cycle.
While Trump's critics accuse him of being cruel, Education Secretary Linda McMahon says the status quo was unfair to taxpayers - and it did no favors for borrowers who were given false hopes of forgiveness.
“President Biden never had the authority to forgive student loans across the board, as the Supreme Court held in 2023,” McMahon wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
“But for political gain, he dangled the carrot of loan forgiveness in front of young voters, among other things by keeping in place a temporary Covid-era deferment program.”
The reversal is also necessary to put America's fiscal house in order, the administration says. The Education Department noted that nearly one quarter of all loans could soon be in default after years of leniency.
Michelle Obama made an appearance with her husband Barack at an Italian restaurant.
The outing comes after months of speculation that the couple was headed for divorce, as Michelle failed to show up at major events.
The former president and his wife were filmed waving to an adoring crowd of diners at Osteria Mozza, where main courses range in price from $34 to $175.
The restaurant is in Washington D.C.'s fashionable Georgetown neighborhood, just a short distance from Obama's mansion in Kalorama.
Barack Obama was previously spotted dining there by himself in January, fueling rumors of a marital rift. His dinner date with Michelle is the first time they have been seen together in months.
The speculation started brewing after Michelle Obama failed to appear at two major state events in January: Jimmy Carter's funeral and President Trump's second inauguration.
Barack Obama appeared to respond to public speculation by sharing a gushing birthday tribute to his wife just days before Trump was sworn in. The post included a photo of the Obamas holding hands awkwardly across a dining table.
Barack Obama also acknowledged recently on a podcast that their marriage needed some work after years spent in public life.
His wife broke her silence on a recent podcast appearance with actress Sophia Bush, in which Michelle Obama, an outspoken feminist, complained about society's assumptions.
"That's the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with disappointing people," she said.
"So much so that this year people were, you know, they couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing," she added.
"That this couldn't be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right?"
Even as she denied rumors of marital trouble, the Former First Lady made clear that she is enjoying new freedom.
“Now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of, ‘Who do I truly want to be every day?’ And that changes,” she said. “So, who do I want to have a lunch with? How long do I want to stay in a place? Do I want to travel? If a girlfriend calls and says, ‘Let’s go here,’ I can say ‘Yes! I can.’ And I’m trying to do that more and more.”
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A federal judge has canceled a Joe Biden-era rule that required businesses to promote abortion.
The rule, perpetrated by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Biden, demanded that employers provide abortion-related leave and other practices that violated the beliefs of a multitude of business operators and owners.
A report in the Washington Stand explained the impact of the ruling from Daniel Traynor, a Trump appointee to the District Court of North Dakota, is that 9,000 Catholic businesses now do not have to grant abortion leave and other practices contrary to their beliefs.
The EEOC under Biden, who promoted abortion in a multitude of ways throughout his presidency, had issued rules creating a new meaning to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act so that abortion was promoted.
"The actual language of the PWFA requires protections for 'pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,'" the report explained. Biden expanded that to say, "current pregnancy, past pregnancy, potential pregnancy, lactation (including breastfeeding and pumping), use of birth control, menstruation, infertility and fertility treatments, endometriosis, miscarriage, stillbirth, or having or choosing not to have an abortion, among other conditions."
The report said that move "effectively reversed the pro-life effect of the law, and the explicit inclusion of fertility treatments also ran afoul of the religious convictions of some Catholics."
The challenge was brought by the Catholic Diocese of Bismarck and the Catholic Benefits Association representing 9,000 Catholic businesses. They charged it violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Traynor granted a preliminary injunction last year and now has made that permanent.
In his ruling, he concluded, "The CBA is likely to succeed on the merits of the RFRA violation claim because the law forces members to choose between expressing sincerely held beliefs and compliance. This harm is irreparable and upholding constitutional rights always weighs in favor of the public interest and an injunction. The agency should have known it would not be allowed to force individuals to violate sincerely held religious beliefs."
Other cases also had challenged Biden's agenda.
The Washington Stand commented, "The entire scenario serves as a reminder of the Biden administration's troubling record of anti-Catholic bias. As ironic as it may seem, political appointees of the nation's second Catholic president distorted the meaning of a pro-life law to require employers to subsidize abortion and other practices objectionable to Catholics. These actions were not only lawless but fruitless, as they provoked Catholics to challenge the rule in court, where they easily won. But what else could we expect from an administration whose suspicion of Catholics ran so deep that they installed undercover agents in Catholic parishes to spy on their worship services?"