from The HighWire with Del Bigtree: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

Religion plays a larger part in the lives of Republican voters than in the lives of their Democrat counterparts, according to a new survey. A report from the Pew Research Center released late last month found that two-thirds (66%) of Republicans believe “with absolute certainty” in God, compared to only 41% of Democrats who said the same—a 25-point difference. Roughly half of Republicans also said that religion is “very important” in their lives (48%) and that they pray daily (52%), while only 28% of Democrats described religion as “very important” and just over one third (35%) said that they pray daily. Regular church attendance (at least once a month) scored lower among both groups: 41% among Republicans and only 24% among Democrats. In comments to The Washington Stand, Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview at Family Research Council, shared his insights on the data. “I think there are a couple things happening here that are related. First, modern progressivism is inherently secular,” he explained. “It is based on the idea that personal fulfillment is the greatest good, feelings determine truth, and the satisfaction of personal desires is the only path to happiness. It stands in opposition to the idea that we are ultimately to submit to the will of a power greater than ours.” Backholm continued, “So the more progressive you are, the less you will see the idea of God as true or helpful, so the more likely you are to be secular. Of course, there are people who try to be both religious and progressive, but they end up worshipping a God that requires nothing of them and agrees with them about everything, so it’s the same as not having a God at all.” “There’s a chicken-and-egg component to the relationship between religion and politics,” Backholm said, addressing whether Republicans are more religious than Democrats because their political views foster faith or whether the more religiously-devout tend towards Republican politics because they align more nearly with their faith. “There’s no doubt that political beliefs shape religious beliefs. In fact, in recent years, we’ve seen people’s journey to Christianity begin with a realization that leftism doesn’t work and wanting to understand why. So, politics can influence religion,” the Biblical Worldview scholar explained. “But sometimes our politics becomes our religion. If we don’t believe truth exists outside of us, once we make up our mind politically, we create a community and even a religion that affirms our political convictions,” he continued. “In this sense,” he explained, “our politics becomes our religion because it is the North Star around which we orient everything else. This can happen on the Right and the Left, but it’s more common on the Left, because the Left is philosophically opposed to the idea of fixed truth,” Backholm posited. “Conservativism, at least in the sense that I understand it, requires us to acknowledge an authority above us and encourages us to submit to that authority. Secularism denies an ultimate higher power.” The Pew Research study also discovered that while Republicans tended to maintain similar religious trends when examined by racial demographic—for example, 48% of white Republicans and 49% of both black and Hispanic Republicans say that religion is “very important” to them—Democrats differ more widely on religious matters depending on their race or ethnicity. Among white Democrats, 29% said that they believe in God, 24% said that they pray daily, and only 17% described religion as “very important” or said that they attend church services regularly. Among black Democrats, however, 75% said that they believe in God, 65% reported that they pray daily, 60% classified religion as “very important,” and 42% said that they attend church services regularly. Hispanic Democrats fell in between the two demographics but were still almost twice as likely to believe in God, pray daily, describe religion as “very important,” and attend church services regularly as white Democrats. Backholm suggested that “cultural realities partially explain the ethnic difference. Being a Democrat was not always so closely related to hostility to God in the way it is today.” He explained, “Black and Hispanic communities were Democrats for different reasons than white communities, and that relationship became personal and emotional as much as anything else. So, while the Democratic Party is hostile to the religious values many of them still hold, they find it difficult to leave the party for some of the same reasons it would be hard to leave your family and say you’ll never see them on Christmas again.” “White secular people and religious black and brown people end up in the same place, but it’s often for different reasons,” Backholm expounded. “Those reasons are not reconcilable, which is why we’re seeing a fracture of the traditional Democratic base. The rich white secularists are moving over the Democratic party while poor and middle class black and brown people are finding their beliefs increasingly incompatible with the Democratic Party and leaving as a result.” In the 2016 presidential election, for example, 82% of black men voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. By 2020, only 79% of black men voted for the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, and only 77% voted for Biden’s deputy, Kamal Harris, in 2024. “These kinds of cultural shifts don’t happen all at once, but they are happening because they must happen,” Backholm postulated. “Biblical Christianity is incompatible with modern progressivism. Of course, that doesn’t mean the Republican Party is a paragon of virtue, but its principles are not antagonistic to God and the creation order.” According to the Pew Research Center, 78% of white Republicans, 61% of black Republicans, 70% of Hispanic Republicans, and 41% of Asian Republicans identified as Christian, as did 42% of white Democrats, 76% of black Democrats, 63% of Hispanic Democrats, and 28% of Asian Democrats. In total, 74% of surveyed Republicans identified as Christian and 20% as “religiously unaffiliated,” while 50% of Democrats identified as Christian and 40% identified as religiously unaffiliated. Originally published by The Washington Times. The post Data: Republicans Two Times More Likely to Be Religious Than Democrats appeared first on The Daily Signal.

A raccoon was found splayed across the bathroom floor in a liquor store sleeping off a bender. An employee in a Virginia liquor store was shocked to find whiskey bottles broken across the floor when he opened up. He was even more shocked to find the drunk raccoon sleeping off a hangover. “He fell through […] The post Raccoon Found Sleeping off a Bender in a Liquor Store appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

They went Instagram-official in time for the holidays

Underwater coral reefs are filled with thumps, pops, and snaps from shrimp and fish, and ecologists often use underwater microphones to monitor the health of marine environments. But until now, ecologists have largely been unable to interpret these sounds because reefs are crowded with hundreds of different species—very few of which have had sounds accurately […] The post New Underwater Tool Lets Ecologists ID Fish From Their Sounds–46 Species So Far (LISTEN to 5 of Them) appeared first on Good News Network.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told participants in the Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, “I’m here to help.” He also said of state officials, “Let’s just go fight these people,” according to a 2021 audio recording now receiving renewed scrutiny after more than 50 guilty pleas in the scandal. The audio, which Ellison has not denied, reveals fraudsters complaining that Minnesota agencies refused to reimburse them for money they claimed to have spent feeding children—claims found false in court. The fraudsters accused agencies of racism, and Ellison seemed to take these claims seriously, saying he would forward them to his staff. Ellison’s press secretary, Brian Evans, flatly denied that the AG took any action to fulfill the implied promise to “fight” state agencies. “During the meeting, Attorney General Ellison very clearly asked attendees to share examples of the discriminatory or unfair conduct they claim to have faced,” Evans told The Daily Signal. “They did not do so, and no action was taken in support of them.” After the meeting, during which fraudsters suggested they would support Ellison’s reelection campaign, donors connected to the fraud ponied up cash. “AG Ellison returned every contribution from the handful of people associated with Feeding Our Future as soon as he was made aware of those connections,” Evans told The Daily Signal. In an April op-ed, Ellison wrote that these “professional scammers” tried “using outrageous claims of discrimination as a pretense to cover for their scheme to defraud the federal government.” Bill Glahn, a policy fellow with the conservative-leaning Center of the American Experiment, first published the audio recording. “Yeah, I have an ax to grind, sure, but the facts are the facts,” Glahn told The Daily Signal in a phone call Thursday. He noted that meeting attendees mentioned a Feeding Our Future lawsuit. “Attorneys working for Keith Ellison were representing the Department of Education in this lawsuit filed by the people in the room, and he’s pledging his support to the plaintiffs while he’s representing the defendants,” Glahn said. Glahn called this “highly unethical.” Rather than just saying, “I’ll look into this,” Ellison gave “pledges of support” and added “his own anecdotes about how state government is racist,” Glahn explained. He also noted that Ellison didn’t have time to act on his pledge “because the FBI raided [Feeding Our Future] offices five weeks later.” The Timeline Federal authorities charged 78 defendants connected to the $250 million Feeding Our Future scheme, 56 of whom have pleaded guilty. Authorities say Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock launched the fraud scheme in April 2020. Feeding Our Future sued the state’s Department of Education for racism in November 2020, but the department settled one month later. The department suspended payments to the nonprofit on March 30, 2021, and the nonprofit again sued, leading to more payments three months later. Ellison met with the fraudsters on Dec. 11, 2021, and some Feeding Our Future associates gave thousands to his campaign shortly afterward. Federal agents executed search warrants on Jan. 20, 2022, leading to the first indictments in September 2022. Glahn said he acquired the audio from Kenneth Udoibok, the defense attorney for Bock, who was convicted in March. Udoibok did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment. What Did Ellison Say? The recording reveals Ellison echoing racism complaints. “Every time East African business owners enter a market segment, these various departments and counties come in arbitrary fashions, create unnecessary roadblocks and hurdles, and at times conduct business in a very racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic manner,” complains Abshir Omar, a consultant for Feeding Our Future who has not been charged with any wrongdoing. Ikram Mohammed, another Feeding Our Future consultant who faces fraud and bribery charges, describes the denial of funds as “a form of violence against our community under the color of law.” Ellison says of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, “he knows that there’s a lot of unfair discriminatory stuff going on with East African businesses, I know it.” He notes he does not trust Jodi Harpstead, then commissioner of the Department of Human Services, to stop discrimination. Harpstead stepped down in February. Ellison’s press secretary told The Daily Signal that the AG had no role in her departure. “We are in the middle of a battle with the agencies now,” Ellison says in the recording. Ellison’s press secretary, speaking to The Daily Signal, noted that the AG asks for evidence of alleged discrimination. In one case, Ellison notes, “That’s super unfortunate, but it may not be malicious.” The press secretary also pointed out that when the fraudsters warn Ellison he might suffer politically for supporting them, the AG replies, “I’m not here because I think it’s going to help my reelection.” “The attorney general very clearly rejects their implicit offer of campaign support,” Evans said. “Instead, he affirms that he took the meeting to do the work of the office and stand up to injustice.” Yet, immediately after that statement, Ellison says, “So, let’s just go fight these people. The question is figuring out exactly how to put a stop to it, right? The how is the real question for me, here.” “I’m telling you, sue, sue, sue,” he later advises. The AG repeatedly says he is forwarding attendees’ concerns to his team. “I already got my team digging into this,” he says. “When should we come together again to discuss this?” Returning Donations Many of those connected to Feeding Our Future contributed $2,500 to Ellison’s campaign on Dec. 20, 2021. Gandi Mohamed, who faces fraud and money-laundering charges, did so, as did other business partners who have not been indicted—Mahad Hassan, Jamal Hashi, and Khadija Ali. Liban Alishire, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering, contributed $2,500 on May 27, 2022. Ellison returned Alishire’s contribution on Sept. 20, 2022. Ellison’s press secretary suggested the contributions from the other four individuals had been returned. If so, that should show up on the next round of campaign finance disclosures, Glahn said. ?FAILURE OF ASSIMILATIONMost of the Minnesota fraudsters are of Somali descent—to a degree that raises questions about the community.That said, some of the best whistleblowers opposing this fraud are of Somali heritage, too.Here's what I told @JesseKellyDC about it. pic.twitter.com/LMgII86ozz— Tyler O'Neil (@Tyler2ONeil) December 7, 2025 The post Minnesota AG Said, ‘Let’s Just Go Fight’ State Officials on Behalf of Feeding Our Future Fraudsters, Audio Reveals appeared first on The Daily Signal.

On Saturday's edition of MS NOW's The Weekend, co-host Jackie Alemany, discussing the huge Feeding Our Future welfare fraud conducted by Somalis in Minnesota, prompted Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to discuss how President Trump's criticism is just another outbreak of bigotry. She "explained" in her question to Ellison that Trump has " historically used isolated instances to justify this language of bigotry and paint with extremely broad brushstrokes and make these generalizations. He has honed in on this investigation into Feeding Our Future, which your office actually prosecuted." That is false. It was a federal prosecution. Then she made it worse: "I'm wondering if you can set the record straight here, and talk a little bit about this investigation and what it entailed, and how isolated it actually was."  Despite being a liberal Democrat and a Muslim, Ellison—no doubt knowing just how pervasive the Somali fraud was—declined to run with Alemany's ball. Instead, he indirectly corrected her and congratulated the US Attorney's office for conducting the prosecutions, and piously claimed, "We all wanna protect the public dollar. We wanna prosecute people who engage in fraud."   The reality is that the Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota has been anything but "isolated." As per this article [emphasis added]: The fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota was staggering in its scale and brazenness.   Federal prosecutors charged dozens of people with felonies, accusing them of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from a government program meant to keep children fed during the Covid-19 pandemic.   At first, many in the state saw the case as a one-off abuse during a health emergency. But as new schemes targeting the state’s generous safety net programs came to light, state and federal officials began to grapple with a jarring reality.   Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided. What was the source of that article, entitled "How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch"? Some racist, right-wing rag, no doubt? Uh, it was the New York Times.  That same article quoted a defense attorney who has represented a number of the fraudsters as saying: "Some involved became convinced that state agencies were tolerating, if not tacitly allowing, the fraud. No one was doing anything about the red flags. It was like someone was stealing money from the cookie jar and they kept refilling it.” The article also quoted a Somali American fraud investigator who said: "Elected officials in the state — and particularly those who were part of the state’s Democratic-led administration — were reluctant to take more assertive action in response to allegations [of fraud] in the Somali community." The investigator added: “There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc” for Democrats.  Contrary to Alemany's claim, the Somali welfare fraud was actually widespread -- just like the liberal media's instinct to cover up hard truths that contradict its woke narrative.  Here's the transcript. MS NOW The Weekend 12/6/25 9:29 am ET JACKIE ALEMANY: And Attorney General, I want to get back to this playbook that you outlined from the president of what [Trump] does when he's backed into a corner and wants to detract attention.  He also, in the past, historically used isolated instances to justify this language of bigotry and paint with extremely broad brushstrokes and make these generalizations. He has honed in on this investigation into Feeding Our Future, which your office actually prosecuted.  I'm wondering if you can set the record straight here, and talk a little bit about this investigation and what it entailed, and how isolated it actually was.  KEITH ELLISON: Well, it was the U.S. Attorney's office that actually brought the prosecutions. My office contributed and gave evidence and information to advance the prosecution.  But I want to say thank you and hats off and congratulations to our colleagues in the U.S. Attorney's office for a job well done. They prosecuted over 78 of these people.  But let me just say this. We all wanna protect the public dollar. We wanna prosecute people who engage in fraud. We are up for that. But, we can't do it on a partisan basis. We gotta do it together. We can't use incidents like this to score a political point. We gotta come in as a state and say, you will not steal money intended for poor people and prosecute them. That's how we protect the resources of the State of Minnesota. 

Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg completely flipped the script on the climate activists in the media and academia who were predicting hurricane catastrophe for the U.S. this year. Here’s a hint: the climate Armageddon never happened. Lomborg unleashed a pretty spicy take in a December 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed that’s sure to make heads explode in the leftist press: “Climate Change Might Have Spared America From Hurricanes.” Say what? Lomborg’s core argument was that “Scientific and media bias promote the illusion that global warming produces nothing but bad results.” Talk about a plot twist. MRC Business drafted a roundup November 24 of outlets like The New York Times and CBS News that were all clamoring to make readers and viewers believe that the end was nigh before hurricane season kicked in. CNN meteorologist Briana Waxman, for example, scare-mongered August 4 that “Primetime hurricane season is here, and the Atlantic is a powder keg.”  For all the climate brouhaha, the final tally for this year’s hurricane season amounted to just 13 tropical storms and five hurricanes with no U.S. landfall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  Watch CBS Evening News Co-Anchor John Dickerson's initial doom reporting on hurricane season from May below   Lomborg took note of the extreme bias media types continue to look through whenever they’re trying to make a changing climate out to be the boogeyman adults should be seeing in their nightmares: These analyses typically run climate models simulating the world as it is today, with elevated sea-surface temperatures, and compare them with a hypothetical preindustrial world with cooler oceans. If a hurricane is more likely in the former scenario than in the latter, the conclusion is that climate change made the hurricane more likely … But notice what’s missing from the coverage. A New York Times article in October highlighted hurricanes ‘turning away from the East Coast,’ noting 12 named storms so far but only one minor tropical storm brushing the U.S. This was framed as welcome relief, with the misses attributed to atmospheric steering patterns like the Bermuda high-pressure system. Not once did the piece invoke climate change. The journalists seem to believe that climate change can cause only bad outcomes. Did you catch that? Climate change, as a concept, is practically always framed dubiously to be some kind of death knell, when the opposite could also be true, if journalists and reporters even attempted to be logically consistent. As Lomborg concluded: “If warmer oceans energize storms, couldn’t they also influence other meteorological phenomena that diverted this year’s hurricanes harmlessly out to sea? No one ran the models to check. No professors lined up for quotes.”  This isn’t an “anomaly,” Lomborg wrote. In fact, it’s reflective of a “pattern” that’s been going on in media coverage for years. “Dig into past coverage, and you’ll find climate framing in hurricane coverage dating back to the mid-2000s—tying intense storms and active seasons again and again to global warming,” Lomborg recounted. As was the case then, Lomborg rebuked that “[t]hese stories overflow with experts declaring each event a harbinger of climate doom, backed by fresh attribution studies. Yet when reality bucks this narrative, no one makes the connection.” Oof. Put some ice, er, climate change on that burn. 

Acts of generosity are little rebellions against isolation.