The cultural stereotype of a Catholic nun is often very uptight—as in unmercifully swatting a child’s knuckles with a ruler—but sometimes it’s more violent. Nuns plot murders. This happened on the CBS crime drama/dramedy “Elsbeth” on Nov. 20. The main character, Elsbeth Tascioni, is a Chicago lawyer sent to New York City to enforce a federal consent decree with the New York Police Department. But every week, she’s solving murders while she floats around in flamboyant outfits and a collection of large handbags. In this implausible episode, the Archdiocese of New York decided to sell a 200-year-old convent to a scandalous pop star named Alaia Jade so she can transform it into a recording studio. At the beginning, the soon-to-be-displaced nuns about are watching one of her music videos, where she writhes and crawls around dressed in slutty-nun garb in a church setting, licking a crucifix and singing, “Crucify me / You can vilify me / I spit your gospel out / And fill you full of doubt.” This might be inspired by the pop star Sabrina Carpenter, who flounced about in a tiny black dress and a cross necklace inside a Catholic church in Brooklyn for her music video “Feather” two years ago. In that case, Carpenter’s lyrics had nothing to do with religion. She was just dropping her love interest like a feather. But in that real-life scenario, it became wildly controversial that the church allowed this filming. That’s what makes this CBS plot so ridiculous. Can anyone really imagine the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, selling a historic convent to a scandalous musician and dumping the nuns out on the street? The New York press would have a series of field days. Convents are typically owned by the religious order that operates them, not by the church itself. But this plot helped explain why the convent’s Mother Superior decided to kill the pop star and save the convent. In a conversation with Alaia, the nun suggested she climb up into their decrepit bell tower and view the sunset for inspiration. Once there, a nun was tricked into ringing the bell early, causing the singer to be knocked out of a very big window by a very big bell. It was so cartoonish you’d expect a splat like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Once Elsbeth started circling the bell tower and figuring out how Mother Superior conspired in the dirty deed, the nun entered the confessional and told a priest who aspired to be bishop that she encouraged the pop star’s climb and it could cause “irreparable harm to the church.” The priest banned Elsbeth and the cops from the premises unless they had a search warrant. This makes both priests and nuns look very shady. To throw off the odor of anti-Catholic bias, the rest of the nuns were all presented as wonderful, like they’d marched in from the set of “Sister Act.” Elsbeth not only solved the murder but saved the convent by engineering a designation of historic preservation. Couldn’t the church have figured that out before someone was murdered? “Elsbeth” was created by Robert and Michelle King, best known for the CBS drama “The Good Wife.” They also made a Catholic-centered drama called “Evil” about exorcisms for CBS and Paramount Plus. This episode wasn’t vicious, like the “Law & Order: SVU” episode in 2016 where the auxiliary bishop of New York was running a large sex trafficking ring with Catholic school girls. But it still exploited sacred spaces of Catholic life for its juicy murder plot—like a slutty pop star. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post CBS Exploits a Murdering Mother Superior appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Rahm Emanuel wants to take leadership of the Democratic Party and capture its nomination for president in 2028. He shares his thoughts in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. It’s the first time a Democrat has made me smile since President Bill Clinton announced in his 1996 State of the Union address that “The era of big government is over.” Emanuel has a stellar political resume that includes senior adviser in the White House to Clinton, chief of staff to President Barack Obama, member of Congress, mayor of Chicago and ambassador to Japan. He has a reputation for political astuteness, being a tough fighter and being the father of the oft-quoted, “You never want a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” These instincts are raising his finely honed political antennae that his party has badly, and destructively, lost direction. And here he could not be more right. Emanuel seeks a “politics based on values.” Not a politics of “identity, grievance, or victimhood,” of “oppressors” and “oppressed.” He says he is talking about values that say, “government’s proper role is to clear a path so those who put in the elbow grease can earn success.” Hey, he is sounding like a Republican. Emanuel should take cues from his former boss Clinton who, in 1992, announced his intention to “change welfare as we know it.” “For too long our welfare system has undermined the values of family and work, instead of supporting them,” Clinton said in his 1996 State of the Union. And then, working with a Republican Congress, he signed historic welfare reform into law, replacing the disastrous Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Work requirements were introduced and welfare rolls were dramatically reduced. Clinton also urged, in that 1996 State of the Union, that “permanent deficit spending must come to an end,” and he was the last president to leave office with a budget surplus. However, one reform to which Clinton aspired that sunk in the political swamp of his impeachment in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal was reform of Social Security. In December 1998, Clinton convened the first-ever White House Conference on Social Security. Clinton wanted genuine reform that would fix a broken and flawed system. Among options that captured his attention was the reform done in Chile, in which a system much like ours was transformed to one of ownership and personal retirement accounts. The White House invited José Pinera, the architect of the Chilean reform, to come speak at the conference and share the success they had in Chile with this reform. In his 1999 State of the Union, Clinton proposed creation of personal retirement accounts that individuals could seed with funds with a tax credit and then qualify for additional matching funds. Emanuel says his party “needs an economic agenda rooted in American values.” “Everyone should feel they have skin in this game and all citizens should feel they can contribute to the nation’s renewal,” he says. Our existing Social Security is not viable in its current form. Cash flow from the system will be insufficient to meet obligations by 2034, just nine years from now, per the latest Trustees report. Nothing can give every American more “skin in the game” than participating in ownership and growth of our nation’s economy. Let every American invest rather than pay taxes. Let every American become an owner and share in the experience of capitalism and growth. Let’s not let the crisis of our broken Social Security system go to waste. Emanuel should pick up the ball from his former boss, Clinton. Nothing could be greater for the American people than Democrats and Republicans competing to make every American an owner and a capitalist. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Rahm Emanuel Sounding Like a Republican appeared first on The Daily Signal.

When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., announced on Nov. 21 she will be resigning her seat in the House of Representatives effective Jan. 5, 2026, it marked the culmination of a fusillade between the Georgia congresswoman and President Donald Trump and sent shock waves throughout the MAGA movement. One underappreciated aspect of Greene’s departure from Capitol Hill is the effect it could have on Republicans in Congress voting on one of their key campaign promises. In Congress, Greene has been one of the most persistent advocates for protecting children from physical mutilation in the name of “gender-affirming care” and was on track to potentially get a vote on a piece of legislation that sought to ban the practice for minors. That bill, titled the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, would make it a felony to perform body-mutilating gender-transition procedures on minors by amending preexisting federal statutes criminalizing female genital mutilation to include these procedures. Greene had introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act in previous sessions of Congress with some differences, but the current version of this bill somewhat reflects the executive order issued by Trump just days into his second term. The order, titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” declared that “it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.” Under this policy, Trump directed the Department of Justice to “prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation” Greene reintroduced the current version of the Protect Children’s Innocence Act in May to reflect the aspirations of the Trump administration. Since, the bill has made its way through the House Judiciary Committee and is now poised for a vote on the floor. For the past few weeks, rumors have been flying around Capitol Hill that Greene’s bill would be getting that vote, with some suggesting that House GOP leadership had even promised the Georgia congresswoman a vote on the bill before year’s end. But the rift between Greene and the president, and now Greene’s resignation, have left many on Capitol Hill asking what comes next for the legislation. Greene’s resignation announcement came in the form of a 10-minute video statement posted on X. “I’ve always represented the common American man and woman as a member of the House of Representatives, which is why I’ve always been despised in Washington, D.C.,” Greene said toward the beginning of her statement before launching into a broadside against how Republicans have managed their majority this Congress. “Almost one year into our majority, the legislature has been mostly sidelined,” Greene continued. “We endured an eight week shutdown, wrongly resulting in the House not working for the entire time. And we are entering campaign season, which means all courage leaves and only safe campaign re-election mode is turned on in the House of Representatives.” My message to Georgia’s 14th district and America.Thank you. pic.twitter.com/tSoHCeAjn1— Marjorie Taylor Greene ?? (@mtgreenee) November 22, 2025 Greene also expressed her disappointment with Trump, who pulled his endorsement of the Peach State congresswoman on Nov. 14. “Republicans will likely lose the midterms and, in turn, be expected to defend the president against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.” In his post pulling the rug out from underneath Greene, Trump said on Truth Social that the congresswoman is a “ranting Lunatic” who “has gone Far Left.” Listing his administration’s accomplishments, with “No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everyone” among them, the president said, “All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” the president wrote. “It’s all so absurd and completely unserious, I refuse to be a battered wife, hoping it all goes away and gets better,” Greene said in her Nov. 21 statement. “I have supported President Trump with too much of my precious time, too much of my own money, and fought harder for him even when almost all other Republicans turned their back and denounced him,” Greene continued, “but I don’t worship or serve Donald Trump.” Trump’s reference to “No Men in Women’s Sports” is based on a Feb. 5 executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” which directed federal agencies, namely the DOJ and the Department of Education, to ensure that participation in women’s sports is based on sex and not chosen gender identity.  The House has passed a piece of legislation, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, that has a similar effect. This bill is the only major vote the lower chamber has taken on the issue of radical transgenderism, despite the president’s other executive actions and the centrality of the issue in the 2024 campaign (remember “Kamala is for they/them”?). Which helps explain why the potential for Greene’s bill getting a vote on the House floor was a big deal. While it is unlikely it will garner enough support to break the filibuster in the Senate—the Senate version of the women sports bill, for example, failed 51-45—the point of these votes is to get Democrats on record voting in favor of the mutilation of children, and use those votes to apply pressure on Democrats to either pass these bills or jeopardize their reelection. The dirty secret in Washington, however, is that our representatives have a general disdain for voting. Will there be a last-minute push to vote on Greene’s legislation in December? This seems unlikely given Congress is currently focused on appropriations and Obamacare subsidies. The question then becomes, in lieu of a vote on the Greene bill, what is the GOP’s plan to address the issue of radical transgenderism in 2026? Luckily for Republicans in Congress, there are plenty of bills for them to choose from. Republican Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Greg Steube of Florida, Doug LaMalfa of California, and Bob Onder of Missouri all have bills to address the mutilation of minors. Onder also has a bill he’s pushing with aligned senators, such as Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., called the Chloe Cole Act, which seeks to end these gender transition procedures for minors and provides a private right of action for the children and parents affected by these medical abuses. The bad news, however, is that these bills are showing little if any movement. The Chloe Cole Act, however, seems like the most likely alternative to Greene’s bill that could move in the House in the coming months. The pressure is on GOP leadership and the committee of jurisdiction, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, to ensure that the American people see where Republicans and Democrats stand on the issue of child mutilation come the 2026 midterms. The post What MTG’s Departure Means for a Major MAGA Campaign Promise on Capitol Hill appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a singular politician—a maverick, though not in the John McCain sense. The Arizona senator was beloved by the media; MTG never was, at least until she started feuding with President Donald Trump. On the contrary, her reputation in the press was as the poster girl for the GOP’s conspiracy wing, the queen of Q Anon. But it’s not what sets her apart from other Republicans that makes Greene’s resignation from the House—effective Jan. 5—significant. What the president and GOP leaders in Congress have to worry about is how typical she might be—of legislators frustrated by what the future holds. “This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. And Mike Johnson has let it happen,” a “particularly exercised senior House Republican” told Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News. According to Sherman’s unnamed source, “nearly all” Republicans in Congress—”appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file”—feel “run roughshod and threatened” by the administration, which doesn’t so much as “allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies,” and “Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms” next November. “More explosive resignations are coming,” warns Sherman’s informer. Should such claims, posted by one journalist on X, be taken seriously? The language might be hyperbole, but Congress is obviously not a happy place these days, even for the party in the majority. Once Greene leaves, that majority will be down to five seats until her vacancy and others’ are filled. Greene won her last election by a two-to-one margin, so Republicans can be confident of holding her seat. But in the interim an already virtually ungovernable House will be that much harder for Speaker Johnson to wrangle. Midterms usually go poorly for the party in power at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and Republican efforts to redraw red-state congressional maps to secure a few more seats have run into headwinds—in the courts and in the form of blue states like California clearing the way for their own partisan redistricting. So yes, Republicans are staring at the likelihood of losing the House in a year. Though it’s easy to scoff at, one thing that typically keeps members of Congress from despairing when they’re facing minority status is their devotion to a cause, or at least a program: For decades, for most Republicans, that cause was conservatism as Ronald Reagan understood it. Trump does have a cause-or rather he is a cause-and he has a program which congressional Republicans mostly support. But the president has never really made his party’s legislators feel like partners in his effort: they’re more a means to his ends. And when Trump has deferred to Congress, as he did to some extent during his first term over attempts to “repeal and replace” Obamacare, the results have been a wreck. Obamacare is still here, and the record-long government shutdown that ended mere weeks ago arose from Democrats holding the government ransom in an attempt to expand an extension of Obamacare subsidies. The inability of a Republican president with a Republican Congress to overhaul the Affordable Care Act in 2017 set the stage for that agony this year. And what’s next? With such a slender House majority, Trump doesn’t want to depend on Congress to pass his agenda. Meanwhile, House Republicans haven’t had an agenda of their own for the last 25 years—they’ve been happiest, and enjoyed their strongest majorities, when a Democrat has occupied the White House and they’ve played spoilers. But three years ago, they suffered a crushing disappointment when they didn’t get the kind of boost they expected from Joe Biden’s midterms. They made gains but clawed their way to only a modest majority, not much bigger than today’s. Reagan is long gone, and nobody is quite sure what happens to Trumpism once Trump himself is no longer on the ballot. How many Republicans in Congress want to stick around to find out? The answer, in fact, is most of them—but it wouldn’t take many more choosing Greene’s way out to throw control of the House into jeopardy well before next November. The House isn’t certain what the future holds for Trumpism, but without the House, Trump’s own future may become a closed book, with no new chapters as he coasts to the end of his second term. Neither the president nor his party can afford to call it quits this soon. No matter how unruly the closely divided House might be, it’s time the president tried governing with his party in Congress. And it’s time Republicans in Congress learned Trump’s most important lesson—to write their own destiny instead of echoing politics past. Congress needs what Trump brought back to the presidency: daring and relevance. COPYRIGHT 2025 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Exit Is a Warning to Republicans appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A key issue in the Fundamentalist-Modernist debates of the last century has now resurfaced. The 2025 State of the Bible Survey revealed the astonishing fact that there are more Americans (and Christians) who read the Bible than who affirm its accuracy. Doubting the Bible is nothing new, but the extent of this doubt signals that Christians must once again resolidify a foundational principle of their historic faith: the doctrine of inerrancy. According to the survey, weekly Bible reading among all U.S. adults rose sharply this year to 42%, but only 36% of U.S. adults said the Bible was 100% accurate. Likewise, the percentage of self-identified Christians who read the Bible weekly climbed to 50%, but only 44% of self-identified Christians fully affirmed its accuracy. Not that affirming the Bible’s accuracy must be a prerequisite to reading it regularly. On the contrary, one hopes that every day more unbelievers are picking up and reading the Bible as an early step on the road to believing in Jesus. But it seems unlikely that fully 6% of U.S. adults fall into this class, and it is definitionally impossible for 6% of Christians to be unbelievers. A more likely explanation is that some Americans have some cultural understanding that they “should” read the Bible and have chosen to do so this year, without understanding its central claims and tenets. And, sadly, it seems that approximately 6% of self-identified Christians fall into this category, the same percentage as the number of all U.S. adults. If this explanation is correct (or partially so), then what we are witnessing is an uptick in Bible-readers who do not understand the doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy is the doctrine that the Bible’s content is “truth, without any mixture of error,” as the Southern Baptist Convention describes it in the “Baptist Faith and Message.” Inerrancy was one of the chief flashpoints in the debates between liberal Protestants and Fundamentalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because of foundational differences over the authority of God’s word, Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen contended in 1923 that “liberalism on the one hand and the religion of the historic church on the other are not two varieties of the same religion, but two distinct religions proceeding from altogether separate roots.” These survey data suggest that the time has come for American Christians to preserve “the religion of the historic church” [and] to emphasize inerrancy in their churches once again. The fact is that Scripture itself affirms its own truthfulness. John’s gospel records Jesus praying, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Peter and Paul each affirm that Scripture proceeds from God’s own mouth (2 Peter 1:19-21; 2 Timothy 3:16-17), and God’s words are completely true (Romans 3:4). Even the Old Testament adds its seal of approval to the fact that God’s law is perfect, sure, right, pure, clean, and true (Psalm 19:7-9). If Scripture is so clear, how was the inerrancy of Scripture called into question to begin with? In the debates of the previous two centuries, skeptics challenged the Bible’s accuracy on the grounds of scientific modernism. They denied the creation account, the virgin birth, and other miracles. The logical conclusion of such denials was a rejection of the resurrection itself. Ironically, their skepticism unintentionally fulfilled Peter’s prediction of scoffers in the last days who would claim that “all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:4). But our new century features a new cultural zeitgeist. Americans who question the Bible today are likely not motivated by scientific modernism, but by Marxist post-modernism. Instead of attacking specific propositions with facts and arguments, today’s skeptics contend that all truth claims are merely attempts to exert power over another (which they certainly attempt to do with this very contention). Thus, today’s skeptics are uncomfortable affirming the absolute accuracy of any truth claim. The ultimate issue here is the authority of God. When God claims to be without error or falsehood, he is not trying to seize power in a cosmic coup. He is simply revealing his character. When mere mortals presume to call God’s truthfulness into question, they deny his sovereignty and exalt themselves to the position of judge. They simply lack the credentials to sit in judgment upon God’s claims. Because we are inferior to God, humans are left with two options, and only two options: We can accept his word as true—which is called “belief”—or reject it, even though it is true—which is called “unbelief.” Some Americans seem to credit the notion that the Bible contains some good moral teaching, without being absolutely true. But the Bible’s claims to inerrancy make this position absurd; if the Bible is not absolutely true, then its claims to inerrancy are lies—moral flaws that call the whole of its teaching into question. God did not leave open to us the option to pick and choose which parts of his word to believe and obey. Thus believing God’s word—all of it—has been the ultimate mark distinguishing every true follower of him—from Abraham believing the unlikely promise that God would give his aged body innumerable descendants (Genesis 15:6) to New Testament Christians believing in Jesus. In fact, Paul holds up their believing reception of his gospel as proof of the Thessalonians’ salvation. “When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). The ultimate stake at play in the inerrancy debate is faith in God himself, and therefore salvation. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. This faith is not an abstract, mystical substance, but a trust or belief directed toward a person: God. God has revealed himself in his word, and faith is believing in the character and promises he has revealed. If we question that, what faith is left? Americans may be confused about the stakes, but Satan is not. In fact, calling God’s words into question is literally the oldest trick in the Book. In Genesis 3, the serpent’s first words to Eve are, “Did God actually say …?” (Genesis 3:1). From there his temptation slithers to a direct contradiction of God’s word, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). Our first parents were lured into sin by disbelieving God’s word, and we can do no better unless we believe. Thanks be to God, he has provided a way by which we can do better. Through believing and obeying God’s word, we are able not only to resist temptation but also cause Satan to flee. John comforts Christians, “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 John 2:14). This is the message that American Bible-readers need to hear, and on which the American church must stand firm. Originally published by The Washington Stand. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post American Ignorance, the Bible’s Inerrancy, and Satan’s Lies appeared first on The Daily Signal.