Deer oh deer.

By looking at toilet roll, you can learn a lot about psychology, culture, and humanity. Seriously.

We now know something the Biden administration spent years denying: It wasn’t merely enforcing the law around abortion clinics — it was allegedly partnering with abortion activists to identify, track and ultimately prosecute pro-life Americans. And that should stop every honest person in their tracks. Because if we’re going to have a national conversation about presidents “attacking Catholics,” as the media suddenly seems eager to do whenever President Donald Trump so much as raises an eyebrow at the Vatican, then we should probably start with the administrations that actually used the machinery of government to target religious believers. Start with former President Barack Obama, who famously tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor — nuns who devote their lives to serving the elderly poor — to violate their religious conscience. Then move to former President Joe Biden, who, it now appears, went even further. According to reporting from The Daily Wire, Biden’s Department of Justice relied on intelligence gathered from radical pro-abortion groups to monitor peaceful pro-life activists — people who had not yet been charged with any federal crime — and then build cases that ended with FBI arrests. Let that sink in. The federal government was reportedly outsourcing its surveillance and investigative efforts to activist organizations that have a direct political and ideological stake in crushing the pro-life movement. That’s not law enforcement. That’s a political operation. The Daily Wire cites a DOJ report titled “The Biden Administration’s Weaponization of the FACE Act,” which examined more than 700,000 records. The FACE Act, of course, was originally intended to prevent physical obstruction of abortion clinic entrances. It was also meant to protect churches from disruption — a part of the law that the media rarely remembers exists until activists storm a sanctuary and decide worship services are an acceptable place to stage political theater.       But what the DOJ report allegedly found was far more troubling than an overzealous application of a statute. The records included dossiers on pro-life activists who had not been charged with federal crimes but who were nevertheless treated as threats, largely because abortion groups flagged them as such. And if that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly the pattern we’ve seen repeatedly from the modern Left: government agencies using ideological “cutout” organizations to do what the government isn’t supposed to do openly. Whether it was the State Department floating efforts to pressure advertisers and throttle conservative media, or federal agencies leaning on private groups to police speech and shape narratives, the Biden administration developed a habit of laundering political targeting through “nongovernmental” actors. In other words: plausible deniability. According to the report, much of the escalation traces back to former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to resurrect the National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Care Providers in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022. That task force reportedly operated out of the DOJ Civil Rights Division under the direction of Sanjay Patel, who was fired this week. Patel, according to the DOJ report, was in direct communication with the National Abortion Federation’s security team and regularly coordinating with Planned Parenthood and the Feminist Majority Foundation. So we’re not talking about vague ideological sympathies here. We’re talking about open coordination between the federal government and the activist wing of the abortion industry. And the numbers make the bias even harder to dismiss. Daily Wire reporting compared sentencing requests and outcomes for pro-life defendants versus pro-abortion defendants. The Biden DOJ, they found, sought longer average sentences for pro-life activists — and the final outcomes reflected that imbalance: Pro-life defendants received an average sentence of 14 months, while pro-choice defendants averaged three months. Fourteen months versus three. That is not “equal justice under law.” That is animus made policy. And none of this should surprise anyone who has been paying attention for longer than five minutes. Democrats have been weaponizing the administrative state for decades. This is not some brand-new Trump-era phenomenon, no matter how often the cable news panels pretend otherwise. The Obama administration used the IRS to harass conservative and pro-life organizations. Clinton-era politics normalized the idea that federal power could be turned on political enemies. Biden’s DOJ, if these reports are accurate, simply continued the tradition — with a more aggressive posture and a more open contempt for religious dissent. Yet imagine, for a moment, the scandal if the Trump administration had coordinated with pro-life organizations to build cases against abortion advocates. Imagine if the DOJ had been caught trading texts with pro-life security teams. Imagine if federal prosecutors were accused of seeking harsher punishments for abortion-rights defendants while going easy on pro-life defendants. It would have been a national emergency. Front-page news. Congressional hearings. Wall-to-wall coverage. But because the targets were pro-lifers, the story is treated like a niche controversy -- something for conservative media to discuss, while the mainstream press quietly looks the other way. That brings us to one of the most important questions of all: How were the people involved in this allowed to remain embedded inside the DOJ for so long? Sanjay Patel was reportedly still working at DOJ until Monday. That is not a small detail. That is a flashing red warning sign. Because it lends credibility to something the political class has mocked for years: the existence of a bureaucratic deep state — career officials who outlast elections, ignore the will of voters, and quietly advance an ideological agenda regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. This is what it looks like when a permanent governing class decides it is untouchable. And it also illustrates why the fight to remove ideological holdovers inside federal agencies is not some paranoid fantasy. It’s a real, ongoing struggle — one that will define whether elections actually matter. The bigger issue here isn’t just abortion politics. It’s the steady normalization of using government power to punish religious Americans. The Democratic Party has shown, again and again, that it is willing to use the apparatus of the state to crush dissent from people of faith. Not because those people are violent. Not because they are criminals. But because their beliefs are inconvenient. That’s why millions of Americans have fled places like California, where progressive lawmakers increasingly flirt with the idea that religious organizations should be allowed to operate only if they comply with left-wing doctrine. It’s not hard to imagine where this eventually goes: Any religious practice that doesn’t comply with the left-wing social agenda will be quasi-criminalized, all under the language of “antidiscrimination,” as if the First Amendment is just an outdated technicality standing in the way of progress. If Democrats ever gained full control of the judiciary, especially if they succeeded in stacking the Supreme Court — which you can be sure former Vice President Kamala Harris would have attempted to do if she had won in 2024 — this is exactly the direction they would push the country. This is why the Biden administration may go down as the worst in modern American history — even worse than Obama’s. Not because Obama didn’t do the same things. Advertisement But because Obama understood enough to keep it quiet. Biden said the quiet part out loud. Ben Shapiro is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author.

Sugar has had a terrible few decades in public relations. Which is rich, considering sugar never hired a publicist or lobbied for its inclusion in 37 varieties of salad dressing. Sugar was simply sitting there, being a carbohydrate, when an entire industry decided it made a more convenient villain than portion size, impulse control, or the more uncomfortable question of why a gas station sells a beverage the size of a toddler.Fat was the villain in 1990. Americans loaded up on SnackWell's cookies and ate them by the sleeve.Somewhere between the obesity panic of the 2000s and the clean-eating obsession of the 2010s, sucrose transformed from a pantry staple into a health and wellness villain on par with cigarettes and sloth.Sugar, sugarThe human body runs on glucose. Your brain needs it. Your muscles prefer it. Sugarcane has been sweetening drinks in South Asia since roughly 350 A.D., and somehow humanity survived long enough to argue about it on social media.The problem was never the molecule but the amount — 22 teaspoons a day, the American average, poured mostly into beverages people didn’t even register as meals. A single large fountain soda contains 17. A flavored coffee drink from any chain you can name contains more than that and comes with a cheerful barista who will spell your name wrong on the cup while handing you what is essentially a dessert with a lid.That is a dosage problem. It got rebranded as a chemistry problem, and that rebranding sold a lot of diet soda.Gut checkI learned this the hard way, via my own stomach. For about two years I swapped sugar for artificial sweeteners with the confidence of someone who had done exactly one Google search. Sucralose (commonly sold as Splenda) in my coffee. Stevia in everything else. The occasional sugar-free chocolate that tasted like sweetened cardboard, which I ate anyway, because suffering voluntarily is how adults signal virtue.I was, by all the metrics I had invented for myself, being responsible. Then I started feeling bloated roughly 40 minutes after every meal — a persistent, uncomfortable fullness that no amount of walking around the block seemed to fix. And then came a specific, percussive kind of digestive discomfort that I will describe only as "audible." My fiancée noticed. I blamed the dog.I cut the sweeteners on a Friday. By Sunday, the situation had resolved itself completely. The bowel-induced thunder had passed, the barometric pressure had normalized, and my fiancée stopped sleeping with the window open.Metabolic mayhemIt turns out that I was ahead of the research for once in my life. A recent study examining the biological effects of common artificial sweeteners — sucralose and stevia, specifically — found that even quantities comparable to everyday human consumption altered gut microbiome composition in measurable ways.The gut houses roughly 39 trillion microorganisms, meaning it contains more bacterial cells than human cells, a fact that raises serious questions about who, exactly, is running things. It regulates metabolism, modulates immune response, produces neurotransmitters, and sends chemical signals to the brain, influencing mood and appetite. The body is less a person than a committee, and the committee has opinions about your sweetener choices.Disrupt the ecosystem, and you get disrupted systems downstream. The researchers found that beneficial compounds helping maintain metabolic health declined in subjects exposed to these sweeteners. In plain terms, the body became measurably worse at handling sugar, and it had not consumed any sugar to arrive there. The sweetener had taught the body a new dysfunction without any of the calories required to earn it.RELATED: Save your brain: Eat more meat Bettman/Getty ImagesSweet surrenderThe findings on sucralose were particularly persistent. Researchers observed that its effects on gut bacteria and gene activity carried across multiple generations in animal studies. Offspring who had never consumed sucralose showed early signs of impaired glucose regulation — their bodies struggling with sugar metabolism as an inherited consequence of a parent's diet.This is epigeneticism: the transmission of acquired biological traits through changes in gene expression rather than DNA sequence. Stevia's impacts were detectable but short-lived, fading rather than compounding. Neither result fits the marketing promise of a neutral, calorie-free pleasure. Both suggest that the quest to outsmart biology with chemistry has, predictably, run into biology itself.Americans consume artificial sweeteners at scale. They are in diet drinks, protein bars, flavored yogurts, chewing gum, children's vitamins, and roughly half the products shelved in the "healthy" aisle of any grocery store. Meanwhile, rates of obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic disorders remain stubbornly high — exactly the conditions these products were engineered to help prevent. The sweeteners are not the sole explanation. But the idea that they carry zero metabolic consequences is no longer a position the evidence supports, and it was probably never as solid as the packaging implied.The M-wordNone of this requires burning your Splenda packets in the back yard, but the broader pattern is familiar enough to be dispiriting. Fat was the villain in 1990. Americans loaded up on SnackWell's cookies — fat-free, proudly labeled, stuffed with sugar — and ate them by the sleeve because the math seemed to check out. Sugar became the villain in 2010. Americans loaded up on artificially sweetened alternatives and called it progress.The villain rotates on a roughly 20-year cycle. The processed food industry introduces the replacement, funds the science that endorses it, and collects the revenue while researchers spend the next decade figuring out what went wrong. Then a new villain is identified, a new replacement is launched, and somewhere a marketing team opens a bottle of champagne that probably contains aspartame.The answer to every panic in that cycle was always moderation, a word so aggressively boring that it apparently requires a global dietary crisis every 10 years to get anyone's attention. It also means reframing what sugar actually is: not a poison to be eliminated but a pleasure to be savored, like good whiskey or compliments from your father. Save it for a nice piece of cake, a well-made dessert, the occasional spoon of honey stirred into morning tea with the uncomplicated satisfaction of someone who has stopped reading the label.

The horror of the surrogacy trend reared its head again this week. An Instagram video posted by gay musician Shane McAnally has triggered the ire of many conservatives and viewers alike. 'The most horrifying video I've ever seen in my life.'Posted earlier this week, the video shows a man, presumably either McAnally or his "husband," Michael Baum, holding their adopted third child, Texson, whom they recently brought into the family after taking him from his mother after she gave birth. "Who do you want, Dada or Pop?" the man asks the baby repeatedly over the course of the video.The baby can be heard making noises that sound remarkably like "mama" and "mom" throughout the video.RELATED: Surrogacy 'trafficking'? Unmarried Chinese couple in the US accused of massive baby scam — 21 kids placed in foster care Tibrina Hobson/Getty ImagesThe man holding the baby feigns shock when the infant cries out for his mother, saying, "No way, Jose," to the baby.The baby, who according to People was born in late October 2025 and immediately turned over to the homosexual couple, begins to cry at this point in the video, visibly upset. The man in the video and the man holding the camera both begin to laugh at the baby while he cries harder and harder for his "mama." "There is no mama. I'm so sorry. You have Dada and Pop," the man in the video says. "No mama," he repeats as the baby cries.The Daily Wire's Michael Knowles described this video as "the most horrifying video I've ever seen in my life."Instagram users seemed to have experienced the same revulsion Knowles did. "This is why it’s important to remember that it’s a child’s right to have parents- and not a[n] adult’s right to have children," one user said.Another said, "That's not funny. Someone please save this baby :(.""People go to therapy for the trauma that’s caused when they grow up with an absent mother. Why are adults trying to get children to meet their needs when it was always supposed to be the other way around?" a third commenter added to the post. McAnally has repeatedly mocked his child as the "homophobic baby" in other posts on his page. For example, a video posted in December shows a 6-week-old Texson smiling as the man holding the camera tells him about his brother, sister, and two puppies. He then says, "And two dads." Texson stops smiling and appears to furrow his brow at this moment. According to People, McAnally and Baum were "married' in 2012. They have another son and a daughter, named Dash and Dylan, respectively. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Tune in to any late-night talk show these days, and it's nothing but wall-to-wall clapter — the seal-like applause emitted by audiences in response to any variation of the phrase "orange man bad." As Robert Plant once queried, "Does anybody remember laughter?"Those of us old enough to have watched Carson, Letterman, or O'Brien do. Well, Jimmy Kimmel has news for you: He's not here to entertain you. In fact, he's offended you even expect it. The "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" host unloaded on entitled TV viewers while chatting with former first lady Michelle Obama on the failing podcast she co-hosts.And it was as cringe-inducing as you'd expect. Turns out, Kimmel takes it personally when critics say he should be funny."To say that, 'Well, your job is this,' it makes me — I bristle at that because, first of all, don't tell me what my job is. I don't tell you what your job is. My job is whatever I decide my job is, whatever my employer allows me to do. That's what my job is."His job, apparently, is to speed up the decline of late-night TV, and in his defense, he's doing a heckuva job ...French toastFirst, the French found Jerry Lewis irresistible. Now, the country's movie buffs have fallen for one of 2025's biggest box office busts."Ella McCay" arrived with plenty of hype last year, from its starry cast (Jamie Lee Curtis, Albert Brooks, Woody Harrelson) to a legendary writer/director (James L. Brooks) behind the camera. The film, focusing on a flustered young woman (Emma Mackey) thrust into the political scene, earned withering reviews. The box office tally? A shockingly low $4 million domestically.Yet the French are coming to the film's rescue. Disney+'s French edition debuted the film after its theatrical release got benched due to that chilly U.S. reception. The French goodwill, boosted by fawning media support, built up to the point where the studio agreed to a limited theatrical release in the country.Maybe AI can insert a digital Jerry Lewis into the Paris-set sequel ...Role reversalNick Offerman may be our generation's Laurence Olivier.The comic actor's turn as Ron Swanson on NBC's "Parks and Recreation" remains the libertarian gold standard. His character loathed the government, hoping to shrink it to the size of Jiminy Cricket's belt buckle.In real life, Offerman is a raging progressive, and he can't stop savaging both President Donald Trump and the right in general.This week, he popped up on the far-left "Daily Show" to trash Trump's plans for a glorious 250th birthday party for ole Uncle Sam. That includes a permanent arch to honor the historic moment."Can't he play with his model replicas in the basement like a normal demented grandpa. ... Can we stop with these self-aggrandizing celebrations, like you're some Roman emperor? What's next, gladiator fights?"Ron Swanson might blanch at the arch as an unnecessary expenditure, but he'd forever love Trump for his DOGE-style shrinkage ...RELATED: Welcome to WokeNut Grove: Sneak peek at Netflix's 'Little House on the Prairie' reboot NBC/UCG/Education Images/Getty Images'Focker' fatigueHaven't we suffered enough?Some movie franchises stumble after a glorious run. Think "John Wick," those "Fast & Furious" romps, and even the "Mission: Impossible" saga. It happens, and it's the rare series that maintains its level of excellence.We all agreed the 2000 comedy "Meet the Parents" was a hoot, giving stars Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller all the juicy lines they craved. But the sequel, "Meet the Fockers" was a star-studded stiff. And the less said about "Little Fockers," the better.But since no franchise is allowed to rest in peace, a fourth "Fockers" is coming this fall."Focker-in-Law" adds "Wicked" alum Ariana Grande to the saga. This time, she's about to marry Greg and Pam's son (Skyler Gisondo), causing tension in the Focker-verse. The trailer is hard to watch, with so many callouts from the first film and Stiller looking embarrassed to be back in the franchise.Unlike Offerman, he's not that good an actor.The worst part may be De Niro, who, back in 2000, was still regarded as one of our finest actors. Now, his chronic anti-Trump rants have poisoned his box office appeal and alienated plenty of potential moviegoers.Maybe the sequel will find his character strapped to a lie-detector machine, forced to answer if he actually believes his crazed, anti-Trump predictions.Now that we'd pay to watch.

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