by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog: There are all sorts of signs that the relentless pressure that has been causing an enormous amount of stress on our financial system is starting to break things. Do you remember how bad things got in 2008 and 2009 when home prices fell dramatically? Well, as you will […]

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Minnesota leftists showed no pangs of conscience after disrupting a Sunday worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul. The church was targeted because one of its lay elders works in federal law enforcement—specifically, serving as the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement director for St. Paul. But, despite sparking national outrage, the anti-ICE demonstrators are only doubling down. “Today, we are calling for the resignation of so-called pastor David Easterwood from Cities Church,” declared career activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, who led the Sunday demonstration, at a Tuesday press conference organized in front of the Hennepin County Government Center. “We are asking Cities Church to operate in truth and integrity and the true meaning of the gospel and to recognize that David Easterwood’s dual role as a pastor and the director of the ICE office is a most definite conflict of interest, and it cannot stand.” The change in venue was the only accommodation activists made to public criticism, although it still lacked a reasonable connection between means and ends. On Sunday, agitators demonstrated in a church to protest government action. On Tuesday, they assembled at a government building to protest the church. “In the New Testament, pastors are called by God and examined, affirmed, and held accountable by the local congregation alone, under the lordship of Christ. Political activists possess no jurisdiction over a church’s pastoral leadership,” David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, told The Washington Stand. “Scripture is clear in the pastoral epistles, particularly 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, that a pastor’s qualifications are moral, doctrinal, and pastoral in nature, not political. Disqualification arises from moral failure, false teaching, or abuse of office, not from disagreement over public policy or the perceived political implications of a pastor’s lawful vocation.” “Ultimately, the controversy reveals a serious confusion of jurisdiction. God has entrusted the church, not activists or the state, with authority over doctrine, discipline, and shepherding,” Closson concluded. “For someone outside the congregation to insist on a pastor’s removal is to claim authority they do not possess, impose standards Scripture does not require, and subject the church to political pressure. Such a demand cannot be accepted without undermining the biblical autonomy and spiritual authority Christ has granted exclusively to the local church.” Sadly, public officials who should know better misused their credentials to provide political cover to the agitators. As The Washington Stand reported Tuesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, expressed astonishment that the U.S. Department of Justice would consider charging the agitators with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, indicating that he may have never read the full text of the law. In the same interview with ex-CNN host Don Lemon (who was in the thick of the Sunday demonstration), Ellison attempted to further justify the protest with the platitude, “None of us are immune from the voice of the public.” Of course, this statement has little to do with Sunday’s outrage. It sounds true because those wishing to engage in a public forum will inevitably be exposed to contrary opinions (although, ironically, leftists refuse to accept this). But Ellison twisted the meaning by equating a small cadre of agitators with “the public,” the intrusion into a private space with a public forum, and the disruption of a worship service with a generic exchange of ideas. In a separate interview with CNN, Ellison simply passed the blame to President Donald Trump. “The reality: he’s trying to provoke us,” Ellison alleged. “And I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. I can only tell you that the president is causing all of this.” Ellison is up for reelection in November. Yet Ellison is not the only Minnesota politician siding with the church-disruptors. In a Facebook post, Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke, a Democrat and a transgender-identifying male who has produced movies critical of the church, compared it to a 1989 “die in and protest in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York” over the AIDS epidemic among gay men. “Actions like this—nonviolent resistance in the face of government inaction or oppression—are essential,” Finke wrote. “And they must continue until ICE is out of our state, the administration is out of the White House, and dignity and humanity for all of our neighbors is achieved.” Thus, Finke makes the unwelcome disruption of Sunday worship not only defensible but “essential.” He describes it not as an encroachment on time-honored religious freedom but as “nonviolent resistance in the face of government inaction or oppression.” And Finke declared that such assaults on Christianity must continue until it nullifies federal immigration law in Minnesota and forces regime change in Washington. Of the many problems with this declaration, the most significant is its conflation of a local Christian church with the U.S. government. Agitators have yet to explain what government action was resisted by their disruption of worship. And they have yet to explain how persecuting one local church will force the entire federal government to change its policy and personnel. The basic reality is that Cities Church stands in no relation to the federal government. It belongs to a different kingdom, holds to different principles, and aims at a different goal. Protests against federal policy have nothing to do with the church and are irrelevant if directed at it. The agitators who disrupted the church service—particularly the many who profess familiarity with Christianity—should understand this, even if all they did was read the church’s website. One can only conclude, therefore, that their targeting of a church suggests not merely hostility toward the federal government, but hostility toward the church as well. Yet another activist’s comments illustrate this point well. In defending her participation in the worship disruption, Chauntyll Allen, head of BLM Twin Cities, claimed, “We have the head of this whole [ICE] operation standing in a pulpit preaching to a congregation every Sunday morning. And that was really just not okay for us.” Anyone who took five minutes to peruse the church’s website would realize that David Easterwood is one of eight elders, who rotate preaching duties; no recent sermons were preached by Easterwood. But Allen failed to recognize her own ignorance of the church’s practices, choosing instead to mask it with a superficial claim to know more about Christianity than those who attend church weekly. “I mean my mother’s a pastor, and so I grew up in Christianity, I grew up in the church. And one of the things I remember about Jesus Christ himself is that when things weren’t going right in the church, he went in and he flipped tables.” According to the gospel record, Jesus only flipped tables once, or arguably twice (Matthew 21:12-13 John 2:14-17). His purpose was to drive worldly business out of the temple, so that God’s house would once again be a “house of prayer.” Thus, table-flipping is no model for routine Christian behavior, but Jesus’s words do convey a stark warning to those who would invade the church and use it as a prop for their political agenda. Originally published in 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 Minnesota Leftists Double Down on Anti-Church Protest as Feds Prepare for Arrests appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the post-#Resistance era, The New York Times has had to redefine itself as a lifestyle brand. When it's not focused on stuff like a 45-minute recipe for buttery Gochujang tofu and broccoli or articles with titles like "Love Found Its Pace in a New York Walking Group" (story's in...

Conservatives are used to being called names: racist, sexist, transphobic, and the list goes on. Typically, these charges are rooted in policy differences: If you oppose DEI and racial quotas, the Left will call you racist. If you oppose men competing in women’s sports, you’re a transphobe. These labels are weapons used to advance political narratives, and typically deserve the same attention as an unhinged, all-caps comment in your X feed. They should be ignored. Yet when it comes to sexism, conservatives should consider how their messaging makes the sexist charge stick with women who otherwise might join our movement. Conservative leaders aren’t misogynists, but particularly when speaking to and about women, they are sometimes tone deaf. Take the issue of marriage and family life. For good reason, conservatives frequently trumpet evidence showing the benefits of marriage and family formation. Children raised by married parents enjoy a long list of benefits. Married women and men are less likely to live in poverty, have better health outcomes, and report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than their single counterparts. This is important information for the public to have. Yet efforts to raise awareness about the benefits of marriage and family formation frequently come across as denigrating childless or unmarried women. Conservatives may think they are countering nihilistic TikTok influencers and gender studies professors who seem driven to convince impressionable young women that marriage and children are the enemies of good mental health, while an OnlyFans career offers true fulfillment. Yet the persuadable women most likely to hear conservatives’ counter messages are women who already recognize the benefits of marriage and children, but who find themselves outside those institutions nonetheless. Today, nearly 20% of women over age 45 are childless. According to a Pew survey of childless adults, nearly 40% admit that they once wanted children. That’s almost certainly an understatement since many childless adults likely don’t want to admit, even to themselves, that they regret missing this irreplaceable part of the human experience. Additionally, about one-quarter of children are being raised by a single parent. Those single parents don’t need to be told how much easier it would be to have another adult helping to give their kids all the love and support they need. They live it every day. Touting the benefits of a happy family life can seem not so much instructive as rubbing it in. Done wrong, this messaging risks not only alienating childless and unmarried women, but all of those who love them. When women hear that messaging, they don’t solely think about how it impacts them, but also the people they love and worry about the most: their dear best friend who hasn’t found a husband; their beloved, recently divorced sister juggling kids’ schedules and costs. Married women with children will reject those who they see as dunking on their loved ones. Conservative leaders should also keep this in mind when addressing work-life issues. Of course, parents should know how vulnerable children are in those first months and years of life, and why investing time in them is so beneficial. Yet, when done wrong, those messages can sound like attacks on working women — many of whom would love to downshift their careers but feel like they can’t afford to do so. It is certainly true that facts don’t care about your feelings. Political leaders must make policy decisions grounded in clear-eyed reality. Yet it is also true that feelings are often unmoved by facts. That is why, when communicating about sensitive and deeply personal issues, policy leaders must be careful in how they communicate those realities, because poorly chosen words can do far more damage than good. Republicans do not want to be seen as a party that only values married mothers or only women as mothers. The party also welcomes single women, widows, lesbians, and divorcees — any woman — so long as she shares the core conservative beliefs that personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets are the foundation of a flourishing country. Republicans should be succeeding in winning women over. Democrats have spent recent years denigrating the very concept of womanhood — as if being a woman is a costume that you can put on and take off. Conservatives took the lead in defending women as a distinct group worthy of equal opportunity and protection under the law. Women saw this and recognized conservatives as the champions of common sense and core women’s rights. Conservative policies are fundamentally pro-woman: Women thrive in a safe, secure society with a robust economy offering plentiful opportunities for people to pursue their own visions of happiness. This policy vision needs to be communicated carefully, in a manner that shows that women — all women, not just married mothers — are valued and can find a home in our movement. * * * Carrie Lukas is the president of the non-profit Independent Women’s Forum. Follow her on X at @carrielukas. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Minnesota leftists showed no pangs of conscience after disrupting a Sunday worship service at Cities Church in St. Paul. The church was targeted because one of its lay elders works in federal law enforcement—specifically, serving as the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement director for St. Paul. But, despite sparking national outrage, the anti-ICE demonstrators are only doubling down. “Today, we are calling for the resignation of so-called pastor David Easterwood from Cities Church,” declared career activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, who led the Sunday demonstration, at a Tuesday press conference organized in front of the Hennepin County Government Center. “We are asking Cities Church to operate in truth and integrity and the true meaning of the gospel and to recognize that David Easterwood’s dual role as a pastor and the director of the ICE office is a most definite conflict of interest, and it cannot stand.” The change in venue was the only accommodation activists made to public criticism, although it still lacked a reasonable connection between means and ends. On Sunday, agitators demonstrated in a church to protest government action. On Tuesday, they assembled at a government building to protest the church. “In the New Testament, pastors are called by God and examined, affirmed, and held accountable by the local congregation alone, under the lordship of Christ. Political activists possess no jurisdiction over a church’s pastoral leadership,” David Closson, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Biblical Worldview, told The Washington Stand. “Scripture is clear in the pastoral epistles, particularly 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, that a pastor’s qualifications are moral, doctrinal, and pastoral in nature, not political. Disqualification arises from moral failure, false teaching, or abuse of office, not from disagreement over public policy or the perceived political implications of a pastor’s lawful vocation.” “Ultimately, the controversy reveals a serious confusion of jurisdiction. God has entrusted the church, not activists or the state, with authority over doctrine, discipline, and shepherding,” Closson concluded. “For someone outside the congregation to insist on a pastor’s removal is to claim authority they do not possess, impose standards Scripture does not require, and subject the church to political pressure. Such a demand cannot be accepted without undermining the biblical autonomy and spiritual authority Christ has granted exclusively to the local church.” Sadly, public officials who should know better misused their credentials to provide political cover to the agitators. As The Washington Stand reported Tuesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, expressed astonishment that the U.S. Department of Justice would consider charging the agitators with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, indicating that he may have never read the full text of the law. In the same interview with ex-CNN host Don Lemon (who was in the thick of the Sunday demonstration), Ellison attempted to further justify the protest with the platitude, “None of us are immune from the voice of the public.” Of course, this statement has little to do with Sunday’s outrage. It sounds true because those wishing to engage in a public forum will inevitably be exposed to contrary opinions (although, ironically, leftists refuse to accept this). But Ellison twisted the meaning by equating a small cadre of agitators with “the public,” the intrusion into a private space with a public forum, and the disruption of a worship service with a generic exchange of ideas. In a separate interview with CNN, Ellison simply passed the blame to President Donald Trump. “The reality: he’s trying to provoke us,” Ellison alleged. “And I wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened. I can only tell you that the president is causing all of this.” Ellison is up for reelection in November. Yet Ellison is not the only Minnesota politician siding with the church-disruptors. In a Facebook post, Minnesota state Rep. Leigh Finke, a Democrat and a transgender-identifying male who has produced movies critical of the church, compared it to a 1989 “die in and protest in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York” over the AIDS epidemic among gay men. “Actions like this—nonviolent resistance in the face of government inaction or oppression—are essential,” Finke wrote. “And they must continue until ICE is out of our state, the administration is out of the White House, and dignity and humanity for all of our neighbors is achieved.” Thus, Finke makes the unwelcome disruption of Sunday worship not only defensible but “essential.” He describes it not as an encroachment on time-honored religious freedom but as “nonviolent resistance in the face of government inaction or oppression.” And Finke declared that such assaults on Christianity must continue until it nullifies federal immigration law in Minnesota and forces regime change in Washington. Of the many problems with this declaration, the most significant is its conflation of a local Christian church with the U.S. government. Agitators have yet to explain what government action was resisted by their disruption of worship. And they have yet to explain how persecuting one local church will force the entire federal government to change its policy and personnel. The basic reality is that Cities Church stands in no relation to the federal government. It belongs to a different kingdom, holds to different principles, and aims at a different goal. Protests against federal policy have nothing to do with the church and are irrelevant if directed at it. The agitators who disrupted the church service—particularly the many who profess familiarity with Christianity—should understand this, even if all they did was read the church’s website. One can only conclude, therefore, that their targeting of a church suggests not merely hostility toward the federal government, but hostility toward the church as well. Yet another activist’s comments illustrate this point well. In defending her participation in the worship disruption, Chauntyll Allen, head of BLM Twin Cities, claimed, “We have the head of this whole [ICE] operation standing in a pulpit preaching to a congregation every Sunday morning. And that was really just not okay for us.” Anyone who took five minutes to peruse the church’s website would realize that David Easterwood is one of eight elders, who rotate preaching duties; no recent sermons were preached by Easterwood. But Allen failed to recognize her own ignorance of the church’s practices, choosing instead to mask it with a superficial claim to know more about Christianity than those who attend church weekly. “I mean my mother’s a pastor, and so I grew up in Christianity, I grew up in the church. And one of the things I remember about Jesus Christ himself is that when things weren’t going right in the church, he went in and he flipped tables.” According to the gospel record, Jesus only flipped tables once, or arguably twice (Matthew 21:12-13 John 2:14-17). His purpose was to drive worldly business out of the temple, so that God’s house would once again be a “house of prayer.” Thus, table-flipping is no model for routine Christian behavior, but Jesus’s words do convey a stark warning to those who would invade the church and use it as a prop for their political agenda. Originally published in 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 Minnesota Leftists Double Down on Anti-Church Protest as Feds Prepare for Arrests appeared first on The Daily Signal.