'Are you really going to try this today?'

'He had nothing to do with the horrific crimes'

Santa has arrived early in Idaho—in the form of a mystery donor who is giving away a million dollars to families in crisis. The Secret Santa of The Gem State started making Christmas magic a couple of months ago and will continue spreading joy through the end of the year. One of the earliest gifts […] The post Idaho Secret Santa is Giving a Million Dollars to Local Residents Dealing with Chaos appeared first on Good News Network.

Politicians push government IDs. In a Transportation Security Administration announcement, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem sternly warns, “You will need a REAL ID to travel by air or visit federal buildings.” European politicians go much further, reports Stossel TV producer Kristin Tokarev. They’re pushing government-mandated digital IDs that tie your identity to nearly everything you do. Spain’s prime minister promises “an end to anonymity” online! Britain’s prime minister warns, “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID.” Queen Maxima of the Netherlands enthusiastically told the World Economic Forum that digital IDs are good for knowing “who actually got a vaccination or not.” Many American tech leaders also like digital IDs. The second richest man in the world, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, says, “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything.” That’s a good thing? “That is a recipe for disaster and totalitarianism!” says privacy specialist Naomi Brockwell. “Privacy is not about hiding. It’s about an individual’s right to decide for themselves who gets access to their data. A digital ID will strip individuals of that choice.” “I already have a government-issued ID,” says Tokarev. “Why is a digital one worse?” “It connects everything,” says Brockwell. “Your financial decisions, social media posts, your likes, things that you’re watching, places you’re going. You won’t be able to voice things anonymously online anymore. Everything you say will be tied back to who you are.” Digital ID backers say the new ID will make life easier. “You can access your own money, make payments so much more easily,” says the U.K.’s prime minister. Yes, says Brockwell, “until those services start saying, ‘No, you can’t use our system.’” Even without a digital ID, Canada froze the bank accounts of truckers who protested COVID-19 vaccine mandates. With a digital ID, politicians could do that much more easily. “You’re essentially putting a giant target on every aspect of your life,” warns Brockwell, “wrapping it up in a nice bow and saying, ‘Here, if you want to control me, just untie this.’” In the U.S., many states are passing age verification laws that require you to identify yourself and prove your age before accessing certain websites. Proponents say this will protect kids from dangerous content. “Unfortunately, politicians just can’t promise that it will only ever be used for that,” says Brockwell. “You always have governments with these great-sounding bills called the ‘Let’s Stop All the Bad People Doing All the Bad Things’ Bill. … But what they’re voting for is a system of control and oppression. … You’ll be ranked based on past activities and choices that you’ve made.” China does that. People with low social credit scores may be denied entry into schools or find they cannot buy a train ticket. “It makes you super easy to target,” says Brockwell. “Easy to silence if suddenly you become ‘problematic.’ Whoever controls that data has a lot of power. We’re simply handing it to them. People need to be aware that they have no control over who will get access to this tool and who will control this tool in the future.” Tokarev points out that companies like Facebook, Google, and Chase Bank already have her data. “Shouldn’t I trust my government more?” “Governments, unlike companies, can throw you in jail,” Brockwell replies. “This is America,” says Tokarev. “We’re not going to become China.” “We are skyrocketing towards that direction!” insists Brockwell. “The surveillance infrastructure we’re trying to put in place in the United States is heading directly towards where China currently is.” What can we do about it? “People need to be reminded that they’re empowered to actually affect that change,” says Brockwell. “They can reach out to representatives; they can push back. Protect themselves and not build this infrastructure in the first place.” 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 Government Control in the Digital Age appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Almost three years after the COVID-19 pandemic was officially declared over, a church in California is still facing over $1.2 million in fines for keeping its doors open to minister to the spiritual needs of the public. Calvary Chapel San Jose’s legal saga began in August 2020 when county inspectors reportedly “made 44 visits to the church” over the next five months due to Pastor Mike McClure’s refusal to cancel the church’s in-person services. At the time, California’s public health orders that regulated which businesses could remain open due to being deemed “essential” notably favored retail stores, bars, casinos, and restaurants, while requiring churches to remain closed. At one point, even strip clubs were allowed to remain open while other businesses were required to close. State officials eventually ordered Calvary Chapel to pay over $1.2 million in fines for continuing to hold public services. But the church fought back by filing a lawsuit against Santa Clara County in August 2023, claiming that county officials surveilled the church in violation of its constitutional rights. “This type of expansive geofencing operation is not only an invasion of privacy but represents a terrifying precedent if allowed to go unaddressed,” the suit stated. It went on to note, “The county consistently imposed harsher restrictions on churches and fined Calvary millions of dollars while overlooking other large gatherings,” citing protests, weddings, and graduation parties. On Monday, the American Center for Law and Justice petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. The ACLJ pointed out that Calvary Chapel was specifically required to, at various times, “limit the number of congregants, socially distance the worshippers, ban them from singing, and require them to wear face masks,” while various other gatherings and businesses were allowed a wide range of exceptions to the COVID-19 rules. Robert Tyler, who serves as president and chief counsel at Advocates for Faith and Freedom, the firm representing Pastor Mike McClure, joined Tuesday’s edition of “Washington Watch” to analyze the case. “[L]et’s not forget that five years ago we were in lockdown, particularly here in California,” he recounted. “Californians were told, you can’t go to church, you can’t worship, you can’t sit down in a service, you can’t sing, you can’t raise your hands, you can’t lay your hands on people, you can’t take Communion, you can’t be baptized. Uh, these were things that were going on in California … five years ago.” Tyler continued, “Pastor Mike McClure and the church had a restraining order that we were fighting off. Pastor Mike was being brought up on contempt charges in December [2020] and again in January [2021]. And so we fought, and Pastor Mike [was] convicted in his heart saying, ‘This isn’t right. We have a First Amendment and we have a right to worship, and the government can’t come in and tell us that you cannot pray with someone and lay hands on them.’ Especially when at the time people were not mass dying from COVID. They were dying from suicide, kids were being abused by their abusers, locked in homes. It was a horrible time. And so Mike is standing and continues to stand, and we’re standing with him five years later.” Tyler further described how Calvary Chapel was forced to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court due to the failures of the California court system. “[T]hey issued $1.2 million in fines [and] upheld those fines. … Although, they started out [at] $4 million, we got them down substantially. But here we are today and a church is being fined. Not much different than what we’re seeing in South Korea right now, where you have just a lot of craziness going on over there with this new president over there. We’ve got to be careful here in the United States.” Tyler went on to elaborate on how part of what is at issue in the case is a disputed definition of the Constitution’s free exercise clause. “[B]ack in the 1990, Justice [Antonin] Scalia actually gave us this pretty bad interpretation of the free exercise clause,” he explained. “We’ve had some development positively, and frankly, if the California courts had had applied the law as the U.S. Supreme Court gave us some interpretation back five years ago, … we wouldn’t be here today, but they didn’t apply it that way. … [I]t said you can’t go around and allow Costco and liquor stores to remain open and … not allow churches to remain open. … And here they’re trying to say, ‘Well, this is about masks. You have to be wearing masks.’ And Pastor Mike is saying, ‘Look, I’m a pastor. I’m not the mask police. If people want to come in and worship, we allow them to come in and worship.’ We’re saying that the government shouldn’t have the right to be able to step in and dictate how people are worshipping.” Tyler concluded by underscoring that the Calvary Chapel case could have wide-ranging implications for the freedom of worship in the U.S. “[W]e’re actually asking for the court to take another look at how [it] analyzes free exercise and actually go back to how it used to look at the free exercise clause, even before it did in the early 1990s, when the free exercise clause meant much more,” he contended. “… [W]hat happened is they weakened it so that government had a lot more leverage over churches and the free exercise of religion. We’re trying to give the leverage back to the free exercise of religion and take it away from the government.” Originally published by The Washington Stand The post California Church Appeals to SCOTUS over $1.2M in COVID-19 Fines appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Back in 2005, “The Case for Christ” author and Christian apologist Lee Strobel published a book called “The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger.”In September this year, 20 years after its original publication, Strobel released an updated version of his Christmas book to include the latest scholarship, research, archaeological findings, and scientific insights that have emerged since.On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn interviews Strobel about these fascinating new findings that change the way we read the Christmas story. According to the most widely accepted narrative, Mary and Joseph came to Bethlehem for the census, arrived at an inn, but were turned away by the innkeeper for lack of space, forcing Mary to give birth to Jesus in a separate stable or barn among animals, where she laid him in a manger.But Strobel says there’s one Greek word that changes this narrative entirely, and that word is “kataluma.”In the ancient manuscripts of the gospel of Luke, “kataluma” is the word used to describe the place where Mary and Joseph were turned away, but it doesn’t mean inn, according to most scholars.It actually translates to “guest room.”A typical house in first-century Bethlehem, Strobel explains, had “one large room broken down into two parts.”“The larger part was a living area — that’s where people would live, eat, sleep — and then there was a couple of steps down to a smaller area where the animals were brought at night,” he explains.However, because animals were often seen as beloved pets, sometimes they were allowed to come up into the main living area. A manger (a feeding trough) was therefore a common item in both the upper and lower spaces of the house.Wealthier families also had a “kataluma” — a guest room — in their homes, used for hosting traveling family and friends.The original scriptures say that Mary and Joseph were turned away from the “kataluma” because it was occupied. This means that the couple likely didn’t seek shelter at an inn at all but rather at a relative’s home.It makes sense that the “kataluma” would have been full at this time because of all the people traveling into Bethlehem for the census. Mary and Joseph, Strobel explains, were likely told by their relatives that they could just stay and birth the baby in the main living area.“And yes, there is a manger there. And yes, some of the animals may have come up the stairs because of the commotion,” he says, reiterating that animals and mangers were common in a home’s main living space.“There probably was no inn,” he concludes.But an imprecise translation for “kataluma” isn’t the only evidence for this new narrative.Strobel explains that Luke uses the word “kataluma” only one other time in the book, and it clearly refers to a separate room in a family home. But he uses a different word — “pandocheion” — to refer to a traditional inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan.“If he wanted to use the word ‘inn,’ he would have used ‘pandocheion,’ but he didn’t. He used ‘kataluma,’” he says.Further, “in first-century Jewish culture, the value of hospitality was so high that it would have been impossible for an innkeeper to turn away a pregnant Jewish woman,” Strobel tells Glenn.“It would have destroyed his business. ... And we don’t even know there were any inns in Bethlehem. It was a small town — 500 people. It wasn’t on a main crossroads. There may or may not have even been an inn there in the first place,” he adds.The revelation that Jesus was most likely born in a home rather than in a dirty barn “changes everything,” Glenn says.But there are even more details that the traditional Christmas story gets wrong about Jesus’ birth, according to Strobel.According to the standard narrative, Mary is on the verge of giving birth when she and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem, but this urgency, Strobel says, comes from “a book of fiction that was written in 200 A.D.”The scriptures only tell us “that while they were in Bethlehem, she gave birth. Doesn’t say they’re in Bethlehem five minutes or five days or five months,” he explains.To hear more incredible revelations from Strobel’s investigations into the authentic Christmas story, watch the video above.Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

This year's tour marks several notable changes in the lineup. The post Happy Together 2026 Tour Sets Lineup, First Dates appeared first on Best Classic Bands.

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