It would be difficult to come up with a better example of our technocracy and throwaway culture in action: a same-sex couple in Ontario is suing the surrogate mother they hired to help produce a baby for them for refusing to kill the child at 22 weeks of gestation — an age at which he could have lived outside his mother. The reason? “Medical experts” told the would-be purchasers of the baby that he had a cleft lip and possibly had genetic abnormalities. The mother, who had been carrying him in the most intimate way possible for more than five months (and had been exchanging cellular material in the process), refused to kill her child and gave birth to a generally healthy boy, aside from the cleft lip. But now the purchasing couple is seeking hundreds of thousands in damages, saying that she failed to keep them informed, put the child “at risk,” caused emotional distress, and violated confidentiality. I’ve been writing about situations like this for two decades. This isn’t primarily a contract dispute, but rather a window into how surrogacy turns both women and children into commodities. The two males involved had to hire two biological mothers required for their project. Not just the surrogate mother, but the mother whose eggs they purchased for IVF. Having treated these women as products, it is hardly surprising that they treated the child as one as well. Once the child didn’t meet their quality-control expectations, they simply assumed they could discard him like garbage. The surrogate mother herself said she felt “used” and “thrown away” because the child wasn’t “perfect.” She was not valued by the same-sex couple or the broader culture in Canada as a person with inherent dignity. She was instead reduced to a rented uterus meant to be used to produce an outcome for someone else. Because of her profound connection to her son, she was not willing to subject him to unimaginably painful dismemberment (the likely fate of a prenatal child this far along) simply because he had a disability. Admirably, she stood up and refused to be used. We in the pro-life movement have made a concerted effort in recent years to focus on protecting and loving both mothers and their prenatal children. But notice how in the technocratic paradigm presumed in today’s re-production, the very concept of a mother simply falls out of the story. This little person was to come out of the technological project of two men. In an address to diplomats this past January, Pope Leo XIV said, “By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, this violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a ‘product,’ and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family.” Both Pope Leo and Pope Francis have called for global bans on surrogacy. Pope Francis was particularly aggressive in his criticism: “I consider despicable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.” Insisting that the gift of a child can “Never be the basis of a commercial contract,” he made an impassioned plea to “prohibit this practice universally.” This may seem like a far-out idea in Canada and the United States, the Wild West of violent and eugenic reproductive practices. But many other countries, including those that are very friendly to same-sex couples, have already recognized what is going on here and banned the practice. For instance, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain prohibit all forms of surrogacy, both commercial and altruistic. Countries like India, the U.K., and Australia have banned commercial surrogacy. Thailand, China, and other countries have passed strict limits, especially on commercial arrangements, which put economically vulnerable women at risk for exploitation. They reflect a growing international consensus that surrogacy commodifies women and children in ways no civilized society should tolerate. Canada and the United States are major outliers. Our technocratic reproductive practices are violent, eugenic, and reduce human beings to mere things to be discarded as trash. The U.S. recently celebrated the 250th birthday of a founding document that calls us to more fully live out the theological truth that all human beings are equal, not because of any traits they may or may not have, but because they share a nature created by God. This Ontario case should be a wake-up call. The United States and Canada must join the civilized world in banning these barbaric practices. Children are not defective merchandise. Women are not bodies to be rented out to the highest bidder. Disability doesn’t justify violence against children. No one has the right to purchase a child on the open market. Ban surrogacy now. *** Charles Camosy is professor of moral theology and bioethics at the Catholic University of America.

People don’t read as many books as they once did, and that makes me sad. I love books. I want everyone to love books and for children to learn to love reading. And yet, for over 30 years, most children have learned to hate reading, and they have now become adults who hate to read. Why? Because their schools taught them to. In 1987, California adopted a destructive and now discredited method of teaching reading called Whole Language. Whole Language rejected phonics and instead treated words like symbols. Teachers stopped saying, “sound it out.” For example, a child would be taught to recognize the word, “frog” but could not sound out any other word starting with “fr.” When confronted with words like “friend” or “freeze,” the child would have to be “cued” with a picture or a hint. As a result, children learned to guess. Some learned to do it well and eventually came to phonetic pronunciation on their own. Many did not and remained functionally illiterate, able to read only what they could recognize, but unable to “sound out” words they had never seen before. By the early 2000’s, all 50 states had at least some school districts using Whole Language, and some of the most populous states, such as California, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts, mandated Whole Language in all schools. State teachers’ unions and the National Education Association all supported its adoption. But the experiment on America’s children failed miserably. The nationwide use of Whole Language over three decades has caused incalculable damage and is the worst pedagogic injustice in U.S. history. An excellent documentary podcast, Sold a Story, details the rise and fall of Whole Language and the people who profited from it, including Lucy Calkins, who finally admitted in 2022 that she was wrong all along. (Oops! Sorry about the functional illiteracy, kids.) Now, I would think an 800-pound gorilla like the Whole Language fiasco might at least be mentioned once in an 8,600-word article about America’s reading problem. I was wrong. The massive lament by Rose Horowitch declares The End of Reading is Here in The Atlantic’s August edition, and she fears for the Republic if people don’t read more. Daily Wire columnist Jonathan Minnema says she is wrong in a much shorter article: The Age of Reading Isn’t Over. I agree with Minnema that reading will be just fine because Whole Language has now been banned in 42 states. What bothers me most about Horowitch’s article is her utter lack of curiosity as to the root cause of declining literacy. She certainly cites some depressing figures: … it’s true that Americans’ basic reading skills are declining. Fourth- and eighth-grade reading scores have slid for the past decade… In 2024, in a national test, just 35 percent of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument… Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30 percent of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20 percent. Scary stuff. Horowitch’s own magazine published a story on Whole Language and Lucy Calkins in 2024, yet she doesn’t mention it. Daily distractions from video slop and social media, though bad, do not somehow prevent students from acquiring reading skills in any functional classroom. The popularity of such junk is not the cause, but rather the result of the Whole Language era. Kids who dislike reading and see it as an uninteresting chore will entertain themselves somehow. People are indeed spending less money on books. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank, annual retail book sales peaked at $1.4 billion in 2007 and fell sharply thereafter to $650 million in 2025. Just after the 2007 sales peak, new technologies entered the world: the iPhone (2007), the iPad (2010), E-readers (2007), and Netflix streaming (2007). But something else happened in 2008: thousands of kids crippled by Whole Language began to graduate from high school. As if on cue, average critical reading SAT scores also began to decline in 2008 as more students began taking the test. Young adults who hate reading probably won’t buy books, ever again. Ms. Horowitch’s essay is ultimately cowardly and predictably elitist. Rather than seeking a more likely systemic or bureaucratic cause for the disaster she sees, she instead fixes blame on parents: Things are about to get worse, and fast. The next generation reads much less than today’s adults did when they were kids. Kindergarten teachers say that many of their students don’t know nursery rhymes or fairy tales… (In the study of 236,000 American adults, only 2 percent read to a child on a given day.) Perhaps I ask too much of Ms. Horowitch, a Yale graduate who also attended the elite Phillips Exeter Academy, a $60,000-a-year high school in New Hampshire. She was certainly not subjected to the vagaries of the Whole Language era. But a journalist with 8,600 words at her disposal has a duty to investigate the likely causes and origins of any danger to the Republic. *** Harry Angell is a petroleum geologist and a visiting fellow at the California Policy Center. He is also the author of The Anastomosing Dendrite, a Substack newsletter.

The internet has video after video of fruit and veggie hauls being dunked in baths of specialty produce wash. What was once a simple rinse under tap water has become a complicated routine fraught with questions about food safety, organic vs. non-organic, and contamination. And after year after year of produce recall headlines, it’s no wonder we’re obsessing over clean produce.  Between pesticides, dirt, and bacteria, there’s a lot that can catch a ride on your produce, but that doesn’t mean the Instagram-chic method is the best one. If you’ve seen the aesthetic videos of rows of berries and peppers washed, diced, and tucked into the fridge, you’re not alone in wondering whether that’s truly the best way to prep produce.  For starters, washing and cutting produce before storing can introduce moisture that grows mold as the produce sits in the fridge. That’s why this method requires eating washed produce soon or ensuring it’s dry and stored with a paper towel to absorb excess water.  But even the process of washing the produce itself is muddled by mixed messaging and arguments over what method is most effective. For sturdier produce such as potatoes, carrots, or beets, a produce scrubber and tap water will clear away most of the dirt. When it comes to clearing away pesticides and bacteria, though, especially on more delicate produce like berries and lettuce, the answer is less clear.  Leafy greens and herbs can hide dirt and grime in pockets and folds, so peeling or cutting open lettuce will help expose any areas that need extra cleaning. However, many lettuce mixes are labeled as “pre-washed” or “triple washed” and do not need to be rinsed again.  That aside, just about any produce can survive a gentle rinse. I’ve personally had luck washing delicate mushrooms — rather than just brushing them clean — and leaving them to dry longer or cooking out the extra water. Even produce with an inedible peel, such as avocado or melon, can transfer bacteria from the exterior to the interior on a knife’s blade, leading many food safety recommendations to advise washing all produce.  Across the country, produce washes are hitting grocery store shelves, but these rinses are not necessarily safe to eat and may get absorbed into produce during use. Instead, rinsing produce in white vinegar is a safe way to kill bacteria; just follow up with a quick water rinse to get rid of the vinegar flavor and residue.  Pesticides can be more stubborn to remove, but some studies suggest that a 10-minute baking soda soak (1 teaspoon per cup of water) can help remove the pesticides on the surface of produce. There is also some evidence that rinsing produce in vinegar can help remove pesticides. However, neither of these methods is foolproof.  Getty Images The unfortunate truth is that it’s impossible to remove all dirt, bacteria, and pesticides from fruit and vegetables.  Instead, the most effective method is buying food that starts with less contamination. This means shopping from a local, trustworthy farm or looking for in-season foods. It also means sticking to foods sprayed with fewer pesticides or buying organic. Each year, the Environmental Working Group publishes the Clean Fifteen and Dirty Dozen as buyer guides. The Clean Fifteen includes foods low in pesticide residue, and the Dirty Dozen lists the foods most contaminated with pesticides, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. When it comes to making grocery store decisions, the Dirty Dozen are best to buy organic and skip the pesticides altogether, and while the Clean Fifteen are still best to buy organic, they likely carry fewer pesticides if you’re looking to save a few bucks and buy non-organic.  This year, pineapple, sweet corn, avocado, papaya, onion, frozen peas, asparagus, cabbage, cauliflower, watermelon, mangoes, bananas, carrots, mushrooms, and kiwi top the Clean Fifteen. Meanwhile, spinach, kale, collard greens, mustard greens, strawberries, grapes, nectarines, peaches, cherries, apples, blackberries, pears, potatoes, and blueberries landed on the Dirty Dozen.  These lists vary year-to-year. The produce that tends to carry the most pesticides is often not protected by a thick peel: The leafy greens and berries on the Dirty Dozen will carry pesticide residue straight from their thin peels into our stomachs.  In the end, though, the nutrients derived from fresh produce outweigh the risk from potential contamination that sticks on after a good scrub, wash, or soak. Aside from avoiding food on recall lists, staying away from obvious signs of mold or rot, and buying organic, there’s no way to know what produce is safe and what is contaminated. Instead, focusing on what is fresh, in-season, and nutrient-dense goes much further in the health department than any fancy produce wash. When it’s impossible to eliminate all risk, the best we can do is buy organic, rise away the dirt, and enjoy what is otherwise a healthy meal. *** Jordan Jantz is the assistant editor at IW Features as well as a freelance writer, editor, and website designer. 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.

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) took a moment on Sunday to reflect on his friendship with his late colleague, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Graham’s office had announced his passing overnight, stating that his death had been the result of a “brief and sudden illness” — and later reports confirmed that EMTs had been called to his Capitol Hill residence to assist with a man in his 70s who was suffering from cardiac arrest. While many of Graham’s fellow senators shared their thoughts via social media, Booker spoke directly to the camera to tell a behind-the-scenes story about his colleague and friend. WATCH: I am stunned by Senator Graham’s passing, and thinking back this morning about some of the work we did together. My prayers are with his family and all who cherished him. Rest in Peace. pic.twitter.com/cPUXDQxk1B — Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) July 12, 2026 Booker dove right in with a story about his first real interaction with Graham, saying that when he was elected to the Senate, his first priority was to get something done on mass incarceration — and when he talked to colleagues like Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), they all told him that Graham was the guy he wanted on board. The New Jersey senator said that when he approached Graham, he was initially told to come back later — Graham was in the middle of a contested primary against an opponent he described as “bat-sh*t crazy,” and needed to get that behind him before he could do the next thing. So Booker waited, and Graham won his primary — and then Booker came back to see him. “I laughed, and came back to him after the primary,” Booker said. “And true to his word, he rolled up his sleeves and we went to work. And thanks to him and Dick Durbin and some other Senate heroes, our bill became The First Step Act — after years, two presidents, two Congresses, it became law.” Booker went on to describe the scene as the bill was going through final revisions, when he was trying to get one last provision squeezed in about “children being put in solitary confinement” — and a White House official assured him that it was not going to happen. The official then proceeded to get Graham on the phone, thinking that the South Carolina senator would give a similar response. “So he gets the White House operator to connect Lindsey Graham on the phone, and Lindsey Graham listens for maybe a hot second and then interrupts the guy,” Booker explained. “And says, ‘Are you kidding me? We need Cory Booker to get this bill done. We can’t do it without him, give him what he wants.’ And it’s in the bill.” Booker quoted one of the White House negotiators who told him early on in the process that Graham was the political equivalent of “an unguided missile.” “That, God, you never knew which way he was going to go — whether he would come back and hit you — but when he was aligned, when he would be in the right place at the right time, man, he could get things done that other people couldn’t and bring a lot of light and new possibilities to the efforts.” “I am stunned at Lindsey Graham’s death,” Booker concluded. “But I pray that he is reunited with his friend [the late Arizona Republican senator] John McCain, that they both are experiencing God’s love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness … I will miss my — perhaps most unexpected — friend in the Senate, someone with whom I got some good things done.”

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) shared a photo from his hospital bed — and delivered a long-awaited explanation regarding his twenty-eight day absence from the Senate: pneumonia. Despite spending the last month in the hospital — after being admitted on June 14 — the former Senate Majority Leader said that he plans to return to the Senate to complete his term. “I still have unfinished business to complete on your behalf, and I have every intention of finishing the job you elected me to do,” he said. McConnell added that he has been working closely with his legislative staff from the hospital — who have been briefing him as often as it is warranted — so that he can keep abreast of the most current issues before the Senate. MCCONNELL releases a photo – and statement. “To my fellow Kentuckians – “When you elected me to a seventh term and made me our Commonwealth’s longest serving Senator, you did so trusting that I’d keep showing up to fight for you every day. And over the past several weeks,… pic.twitter.com/YTzTXDhEgu — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 12, 2026 McConnell also shared that he has been in close contact with a number of his colleagues in the Senate — but the longer he remained out of sight, the more rumors began to swirl suggesting that something far worse might have happened to him. After several colleagues attempted to quash the rumors by issuing statements detailing their conversations with McConnell, a joke quickly emerged: people would claim to have spoken to McConnell, and then detail outlandish things that they said transpired during their discussions. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), wrote last week, “I spoke to McConnell for about 20 minutes this morning. He said we should end the war with Iran, quit giving aid to Israel, stop spying on Americans without a warrant, and he’s really sorry about how my primary turned out.”  But McConnell’s own recent statements contradict Massie’s claims: the Kentucky senator told the American people in April that he was fully supportive of President Donald Trump’s military actions in Iran. “They’ve been at war with us for 47 years. They’ve killed Americans, they’ve killed Israelis, they’ve killed throughout the region, our Sunni Muslim allies … they are bad guys,” he said.  Despite McConnell’s stated eagerness to get back to work, he says his doctors told him it will take time. “As much as it frustrates me, this process takes time. And on the advice of my doctors, I won’t be able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet.” McConnell revealed he’s recovering from an initial fall that left him “briefly unconscious.” During his hospital stay, he contracted “a mild case of pneumonia.” McConnell gave an overall status update on his health saying he hadn’t broken any bones, suffered a stroke or heart attack, and did not have any tumors or hemorrhages.  McConnell’s wife, former U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, was pictured next to him with his hand behind his back smiling. Chao had been in China just days prior where she issued an update on her husband’s health. She had said his condition did not require her to return from China early. Calls reportedly from dispatchers and Emergency services were released from the day of his hospitalization where dispatchers mentioned “cardiac arrest” and “CPR.”