This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** America spent two decades trying to “fix” masculinity. It nearly broke the country — and the guys who complained the loudest about it turned out to be the ones with the least ability to fix it. America needs manly men — not men who are afraid of their masculinity, and not men who only talk about it. Let me back up. In 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers published “The War Against Boys,” documenting how American schools had begun treating normal male behavior as something to be diagnosed and medicated. A seven-year-old was suspended for pointing a pencil like a gun at his friend. A boy in California was punished for running during recess and nearly suspended for jumping over a bench. Schools banned tag and dodgeball. Boys were five times more likely to be expelled from preschool than girls and accounted for 70% of suspensions — not for anything dangerous, but for roughhousing, defiance, and being loud. Instead of addressing the gap, institutions doubled down, remaking classrooms around female learning styles. They criminalized the “bad guy” play that men have channeled into building civilizations since the dawn of time. Almost nobody listened to Sommers, or they mocked her. For over a decade, the project to dismantle masculinity stayed contained in academia, slowly working its way through education policy like a parasite. Then it broke containment. By 2015, the national psychedelic trip we now refer to as “wokeism” was reaching its crescendo, and men — specifically straight, traditional men — were its favorite target. “Toxic masculinity” migrated from academic journals to Thanksgiving dinner. “Men are trash” became something people said at brunch without flinching. “Mansplaining” entered the lexicon. Gillette released an ad lecturing its own customers about the sins of manhood. No razors, just shame. Hollywood gender-swapped “Ghostbusters” and sidelined Luke Skywalker for a new female lead. In 2019, the American Psychological Association issued guidelines pathologizing “traditional masculinity” as harmful. The message from every direction was the same: Manhood was broken, and women would fix it. I had a front row seat as a columnist for Playboy, the most famous men’s magazine in the world, from 2015 to 2017 — the exact moment it stopped knowing how to talk to men. The organization was paralyzed by fear and overrun with young liberal women and gay men, which rendered it incapable of meeting the moment. Everything about the brand signaled apology. Playboy should have held the line. It was a wide-open lane. Instead, it followed every other men’s magazine in the same direction: less for the man’s man, more for the gay man and queer woman. Had it doubled down on unapologetically speaking to red-blooded American men, it could have led a renaissance. Instead, it chose surrender. And in the space created when the culture forced men to be small, scummy opportunists filled the void. We got the Tates. The Sneakos. Parodies of men. Guys who are what a teenager thinks masculinity looks like when he doesn’t have a good father: flashy Rolexes, rented Lamborghinis, and endless talk. Talk, talk, talk. The guys who screamed loudest about the feminization of America were engaged in an inherently feminine activity. They were podcasting. They were sitting behind desks and running their mouths. And when you put men in a space that’s fundamentally about talking, their conflict becomes female-coded: reputational attacks, betrayal narratives, emotional manipulation, hissy fits. In real life, male interaction is moderated by the threat of getting punched in the face. Online, that’s gone. So the most effective tactics are the ones women use. These guys didn’t fight the feminization of culture. They became it. I feel privileged to have known men who stormed the beaches at Normandy, who fought in the South Pacific, who came home and never spoke of it. Real men don’t whine about sacrifice. They make it. And I feel sorry for younger generations who haven’t known men like that — men who felt proud to serve, who understood trade-offs, who didn’t see the world in black and white. Young men are desperate for identity, and if you don’t give them Captain America, Ted Williams, and George Washington, they’ll find Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate. Jordan Peterson identified this collapse in meaning early; it makes young men terrifyingly easy to radicalize. And now these same guys — the ones who spent years raging about how pussified America is, the longhouse, the feminization of men, soy boys, turning the frogs gay — are now having hissy fits because America is actually being masculine. Militarily masculine. The real deal. And they’re whining about how they feel betrayed. “We’re not dying for Israel.” You’re not dying for anyone, buddy! You’re not dying for America. You’re not dying for anything except your subscriber count. You spent years cosplaying as warriors, and the moment actual sacrifice entered the conversation, you folded like every other fraud who has ever confused talking with doing. Compare the Biden-era Army recruitment ad, an animated spot about a soldier raised by two moms marching in a pride parade, with what’s coming out of the Pentagon now. A Special Forces trainer deadlifting 500 pounds: “Stronger people are harder to kill.” Soldiers on a firing range: “We train until we can’t get it wrong.” Enlistment is at a 15-year high. When you stop apologizing for what the military is and start showing men what it demands, they show up. That’s what real masculinity looks like when it’s not being run through the filter of “how is this going to make Karen feel?” The culture is shifting everywhere, thanks in part to comedian Joe Rogan, who held the line and built a parallel comedy establishment that is unapologetically masculine, irreverent, and enormous. Bud Light — the brand that nearly destroyed itself partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney — signed as its new spokesperson Shane Gillis, a comedian who’d been dropped from SNL only to return as a host. And on February 22 — 46 years to the day from America’s “Miracle on Ice” — the U.S. men’s hockey team beat Canada in overtime for our first Olympic gold since 1980. Those players stood at the State of the Union, grinning from ear to ear, and got a standing ovation. My nephews are obsessed with them. They see those radiant smiles and that pride in America, and they want to emulate it.  In his post-game interview, hockey star Jack Hughes said, “This is all about our country right now. I love the USA. I love my teammates. It’s unbelievable. The U.S. hockey brotherhood is so strong and we had so much support from ex players, and I’m so proud to be American today. So proud.” That’s not some guy ranting into a webcam about alpha males; it’s the real thing, and young men can feel the difference. The 2024 election was, in many ways, a referendum on all of this. The entire post-election media analysis centered on one question: How did Democrats lose young men? The answer was simple. They’d spent a decade telling young men they were the problem, and eventually, young men believed them and voted accordingly. Saving this country is going to require things that make some people uncomfortable. It is going to require men who are willing to be strong without apology, to serve without being asked, and to lead without waiting for permission. For 20 years, we told men to sit down. The men who are standing back up — not the talkers, not the grifters, but the ones who actually build and serve and sacrifice — are the ones who will matter. But I’m not going to speak for men. Instead, I’ll let Sergeant Dan Hollaway, 82nd Airborne Infantry, share his thoughts on the resurgence of American masculinity. “Masculinity is not a social accessory,” he told me. “It is the backbone of every civilization that has ever endured. Masculinity began as an unspoken contract with reality: I will go where it is dangerous so others don’t have to. If certain burdens are not carried, then people die. This is the natural law of masculinity, and it has never changed. For a generation, America’s masculinity was mocked, undermined, and treated as something dangerous or obsolete — and many men simply withdrew. But that retreat is ending, and as men return to strength, discipline, and responsibility, the benefits are already becoming visible. American pride is on the rise, and we have the unique opportunity to save the greatest country in the history of the world by simply being men.” *** Bridget Phetasy is a writer and comedian. She’s the host of the show Dumpster Fire and podcast Walk-Ins Welcome. Find more of her writing on her Substack Beyond Parody at phetasy.com. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

A recurring theme throughout Scripture is that those who are not following the Lord, who are, in fact, in open rebellion against him, will nevertheless claim to be his standard bearers in the hopes of harnessing his power for their cause. We see it in 1 Samuel 4-5 when disobedient Israel decides to carry the Ark of the Covenant into battle, believing its presence will guarantee their victory. We see it in Jeremiah 7 when the Israelites are sure that the Lord is on their side, despite their idol worship, because they possess the temple. We see it in Acts 19 when seven men who know nothing of Christ try to cast out demons in his name and are left naked, bloody, and fleeing for their lives. And we see it today in the Senate candidacy of James Talarico, the Democrats’ great white hope for convincing Texas voters that they, too, are representing Jesus in the public square. The significant electoral advantage Republicans enjoy with Christians — colloquially known as the “God Gap” — has been an acknowledged problem for the Left since the 1990s. But after years of being broadly antagonistic toward faith, including removing references to God from their party platform and from the Pledge of Allegiance during caucus meetings, Democrats are suddenly realizing they may find more success if they don’t alienate every voter who ever darkened the door of a church. To some degree, the most successful Democrats have always done this. Bill Clinton regularly trotted out his born-again bona fides. Barack Obama, too, referenced his church membership to allay concerns that he was hostile toward religion. And, of course, black candidates like Raphael Warnock not only use the language of faith to win votes, they use actual pulpits in Sunday services. But Talarico, a member of the liberal mainline Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is doing something different. And it has the legacy media cheering. Vox reports that he is “reclaim[ing] Christianity from the Right” by teaching Democrats a “better way to talk about faith.” MS NOW (formerly MSNBC) says that his “unapologetic embrace of his Christian faith sets him apart from other rising Democratic stars.” And the New York Times crows that he “poses a new kind of threat to Republicans” through his “matter-of-fact critique of how faith has come to be expressed in the American church.” What they mean by all of this is that Talarico is doing more than the time-honored tactic of simply claiming Christian identity to woo faith-friendly voters. He’s out on the campaign trail teaching doctrine. False doctrine. In one heavily political sermon, Talarico appealed to a heretical Gnostic text, the Gospel of Thomas, to claim that Jesus is a “radical feminist” and Christianity is a “feminist religion.” He has described God as “nonbinary” to explain his support for providing transgender surgeries and puberty blockers to children. On the Joe Rogan Experience, he cited Luke 1, in which the Angel Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive the Messiah, to defend policy proposals like up-to-birth abortion, infanticide for babies who survive abortion, and opening abortion clinics in federal buildings. “I say all this in the context of abortion,” Talarico told Rogan, “because before God comes over Mary, and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent … so to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. You cannot force someone to create.” He added that Genesis 2:7 (“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”) — means that “life starts when you take your first breath.” For someone who claims the mantle of Christ for his candidacy, Talarico shows remarkably little loyalty to him. On Ezra Klein, he endorsed universalism, saying, “I believe Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages.” In fact, Talarico doesn’t seem to view Jesus as a savior at all. During his appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he told the audience one need not even be a Christian to get into Heaven. “Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I are going to be saved,” he said. “By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick … Nothing about going to church … nothing about even being a Christian.” Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Scripture will instantly spot how grossly Talarico distorts God’s word. The problem is, in a country where fewer than half of Americans can identify the four gospels, most don’t have that passing familiarity and can be easily duped. Whether it be John Cornyn or Ken Paxton, Talarico’s Republican opponent in this race will certainly try to poke holes in his religious assertions, as will conservative pundits. But if it is only other politicos warning against him, the impression onlookers will very likely have is that these are simply political disagreements. That would be disastrous for the spiritual education of a public increasingly interested in Christianity. Because it is not political arguments he is making, but theological ones. And that is why the most public rebukes of Talarico must come from pastors. The Bible gives clear commands in passages like Titus 1:9-11, Ephesians 5:11, and Jude 3 that shepherds must oppose false teachers and expose their errors to protect the flock. It also offers plenty of examples to follow. From Jeremiah publicly condemning the false prophet Hananiah in the temple courtyard for making the people “trust in a lie,” to the Apostle Paul sarcastically calling out the Judaizers, to Jesus himself ferociously reproving the Pharisees, Scripture gives us picture after picture of watchmen on the walls sounding the alarm against false teaching. The need for that alarm is no less just because the false teaching happens to occur in the context of an election. Many high-profile conservative pastors have shown little reticence in calling out President Donald Trump for misusing Scripture on occasion, and they are right to do so. They are often less eager to “punch left” for fear of being seen as too political. Yet the Left’s most sacredly held social positions — abortion on demand, sexual perversion as a protected identity — are in direct conflict with a text that tells us God knew us in the womb and calls it an abomination for a man to pretend to be a woman. It is not that the American church is becoming too political; it is that our policies have become so immoral that the church cannot stay silent. Left-wing actors twisting Scripture out of all recognition to give spiritual legitimacy to their positions is a growing problem that shepherds will have to contend with in order to faithfully discharge their duties, no matter how Talarico’s race turns out. Just last month, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said that he vetoed a bill to protect children from transgender procedures because he’s a Christian and he’s following Christ’s command to love his neighbor. In July, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) invoked Matthew 25 in a floor speech opposing the budget bill. Even the agitators who invaded Cities Church in St. Paul, profanely screaming in the faces of crying children about their white privilege, claimed they were following the model of Christ in turning over tables in the temple. Before his death last year, John MacArthur, one of the foremost preachers of our era, did not hesitate to confront California Governor Gavin Newsom when he misused Scripture to defend his policies. In 2022, when Newsom began rolling out billboards that cited Matthew 25 to promote abortion, MacArthur issued an open letter: Almighty God says in His Word, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34). Scripture also teaches that it is the chief duty of any civic leader to reward those who do well and to punish evildoers (Romans 13:1–7). You have not only failed in that responsibility; you routinely turn it on its head, rewarding evildoers and punishing the righteous… In mid-September, you revealed to the entire nation how thoroughly rebellious against God you are when you sponsored billboards across America promoting the slaughter of children, whom He creates in the womb (Psalm 139:13–16; Isaiah 45:9–12). You further compounded the wickedness of that murderous campaign with a reprehensible act of gross blasphemy, quoting the very words of Jesus from Mark 12:31 as if you could somehow twist His meaning and arrogate His name in favor of butchering unborn infants. You used the name and the words of Christ to promote the credo of Molech (Leviticus 20:1–5). It would be hard to imagine a greater sacrilege. Charles Spurgeon didn’t hesitate either. In the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were making inroads by selling the British working class on their theories. Though these were in the political realm, they crossed over into the religious. Thus Spurgeon, the most famous preacher of that era, felt duty-bound to address them, warning that embracing socialism would leave “all society shattered, and men wandering like monster icebergs on the sea, dashing against each other, and being at last utterly destroyed.” He then added a point, highlighting that the religious and the political often overlap: “Those who love the Church of God feel heavy at heart because the teachers of the people cause them to err. Even from a national point of view, men of foresight see cause for grave concern.” Much more than any other Western nation, America is still broadly Christian, if not always in individual devotion, at least in cultural allegiance. The silver lining of moments like this, when false doctrine is being spread from such high places, is that it offers preachers of the truth an opportunity to gain new hearers. I cannot remember a time when Christianity was being discussed and debated so broadly. The problem is, too much of that talk is not profitable and requires a sound teacher to offer a rebuttal. And pastors should be jealous of their territory, over which Caesar holds no authority or intimidation. If the wolf is a senator rather than a seminarian, you still confront and expel the wolf. If you don’t, don’t be surprised when it devours a few of your sheep.

Nine defendants in the anti-ICE Prairieland Detention Center riot last Independence Day in Texas were convicted in federal court on Friday. The defendants were convicted on a range of charges including rioting, “providing material support to terrorists,” “conspiracy to use and carry an explosive,” and “using and carrying an explosive” in the North Texas Antifa Cell attack that left a local police officer shot in the neck. In a statement, FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge R. Joseph Rothrock described the incident as a “coordinated attack” on the facility where illegal immigrants were being held before deportation from the United States. Two individuals were also convicted of “conspiracy to conceal documents.” According to the Department of Justice, Benjamin Song was considered the attack’s “leader,” who gave out firearms and recruited people for the effort. Song was convicted of attempted murder of federal officers for the “unlawful attempt to kill with malice aforethought the Alvarado Police Officer” and for unlawful discharging of a firearm in “the attempted murder of two correctional officers and an Alvarado Police Officer,” as he was the one who shot the officer in the neck. Song successfully fled the scene but was arrested on July 15, 2025, while law enforcement arrested most of the other individuals involved “shortly after,” the DOJ said. Song could face up to life behind bars, with a minimum of 20 years, according to a Department of Justice press release. Seven of the individuals could get 10-60 years in prison, and Daniel Rolando Sanchez Estrada could be sentenced to up to 40 years in prison. “These guilty verdicts and convictions rightly reflect the vicious, armed attack that these Antifa cell members planned and executed against law enforcement and detention center officers on the night of July 4 last year,” U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould said in a statement. “Their terrorist acts, attempted murder, vandalism, and explosives launched at a detention facility were a far cry from some peaceful protest or First Amendment expression. Because of the prompt action of first responders that night and tenacious work of our law enforcement partners in tandem with the prosecutors in my office, sixteen people have been brought to justice for these violent acts and their attempts to conceal them. We will continue in this mission to hold others accountable who perpetrate such violence and fund these ANTIFA groups in the Northern District of Texas.” Notably, the attackers used “monikers” in group chats to plan the riot. The attackers also used fireworks and committed acts of vandalism, including spray-painting “F*ck You Pigs” on a building.

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from The Michael Knowles Show. * * * For years, American elites have told us a simple story about religion and reason: religious people are the crazy ones. They are irrational, superstitious, emotionally needy, clinging to old myths in an age of science and sophistication. The serious people, we are told, are the secular people. The smart people have moved on. The enlightened people know better. Faith is for the weak, the backward, the unthinking. Religion is a crutch. Orthodoxy is neurosis. Church is for the people who cannot handle reality. It is one of the most enduring prejudices in modern public life. And it is one of the most revealing. Because when you look at the actual data, the picture is not merely more complicated than the stereotype. It is, in a very important way, the opposite of the stereotype. According to survey data from the Pew American Trends Panel, the least crazy people in the country are conservative Christians who go to church weekly. The craziest people in the country are liberals who do not go to church. That is not the story we have been told for the last hundred years. It is certainly not the story we were told during the New Atheist moment, when public intellectuals and their admirers assured us that religion was the great enemy of reason, sanity, and civilization. But the numbers point in another direction. Asked whether a doctor or health care provider had ever told them they had a mental health condition, the highest rates came from liberals with no religious attendance. The lowest rates came from conservatives who attended weekly religious services. One can quibble around the edges. One can offer caveats, and there are caveats. But one cannot escape the central fact: the people most committed to regular religious practice appear, by this measure, to be the least crazy, and the people most detached from religion appear to be the most crazy. That does not prove every theological claim. It does not mean every churchgoer is mentally well or every secular person is mentally unwell. It does not justify cruelty toward people who struggle. But it does demolish a civilizational assumption that has shaped elite culture for generations. What we were told, over and over again, is that religious people are crazy. They are illogical. They are irrational. They believe in “sky daddy” and other cartoon versions of religion invented by people who have no intention of grappling with what believers actually believe. The secularists do not want to deal with the substance of faith, because that would require argument. It is easier to sneer. Easier to reduce millennia of theology, metaphysics, and moral reasoning to a punchline. Easier to dismiss the churchgoing neighbor as simple-minded than to answer him. And yet the data say the opposite. The religious people are the sanest people. The irreligious people are the craziest people. That reversal matters for reasons beyond partisanship. It suggests that faith and reason do not stand in opposition after all. In fact, the Christian tradition has always insisted on precisely the opposite. The Gospel of Saint John begins not with sentimentality, not with anti-rational emotionalism, but with a profound metaphysical claim: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word, the Logos, is not merely speech. It is divine logic, divine reason, the intelligible order of reality itself. That is why Christianity, properly understood, has never been a rebellion against reason. It has been a fulfillment of reason. Faith and reason go together. God is not the negation of logic. God is the source of logic. Orthodoxy is not a retreat from reality, it is an attempt to live in right relation to reality. And perhaps that helps explain why the most orthodox believers are often the least crazy. A serious religious life imposes moral structure. It disciplines desire. It situates suffering within a larger frame of meaning. It teaches that man is not the measure of all things and that appetite is not destiny. It offers ritual, continuity, accountability, community, repentance, forgiveness, obligation, inheritance, transcendence. In a lonely, fragmented, hyper-individualistic culture, those are not small things. They are stabilizing things. By contrast, a secular culture that severs itself from transcendence does not become neutral. It does not become merely rational. It often becomes disordered. If there is no higher truth, then the self becomes sovereign. If the self becomes sovereign, then every desire demands validation. If every desire demands validation, then limits feel like oppression. And if there are no limits, no sacred order, no given nature, no created purpose, then the person is left not liberated but untethered. That is not sanity. That is confusion with better branding. None of this means Christians should gloat. It is fine to dunk on the libs a little, but only if it is a loving dunk, one intended to bring them over rather than merely humiliate them. The deeper point here is not mockery. It is vindication. A great many people fell away from religion because they thought religion was for stupid people, for weak people, for crazy people. They assumed smart people had outgrown God. They assumed sanity belonged to the secular. That just is not true. Actually, the opposite appears to be true. The people most rooted in orthodox belief and weekly worship are often the least crazy people in the country. And the people who have spent decades mocking them from the commanding heights of culture are, by this measure at least, faring much worse. The choir does need preaching sometimes. But this argument is not only for the choir. It is for the many people who have absorbed the modern prejudice against religion without ever seriously examining it. It is for those who have been told that faith is irrational, that church is for fools, that belief is a form of neurosis. The data do not merely complicate that prejudice. They shatter it. Maybe the real madness is not believing in God. Maybe the real madness is building a culture on the assumption that man can remain sane after cutting himself off from truth, order, and the divine logic of the universe.

WASHINGTON—Planes have been grounded at all three Washington, D.C.-area airports after a strong chemical smell forced workers to evacuate the region’s air traffic control center. Flights were abruptly grounded at Reagan National, Dulles, and Baltimore-Washington International Airports late Friday, and inbound flights were diverted, causing major delays at one of the nation’s largest air travel hubs. It is unclear what caused the smell, or how long the airports will remain locked down. Flights were also grounded at Richmond International Airport.