A new poll by the highly respected Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that there is a continuing decrease in support among Palestinians for the October 7th atrocities, but it is still at 59%. The first poll taken after the October 7 atrocities was in December 2023, and it found that 82% of […] The post 77% of Palestinians Oppose Disarming Hamas, Only 12% of Gazans Blame Hamas appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Andrew Klavan’s new book arrived in my inbox with providential timing. Only a few hours before I started perusing The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness, I’d signed a publishing contract for my first novel — a story of murder, prostitution, and the many debased things that fallen man is willing to do in pursuit of his ambitions. But a tiny part of me blushed at the plot I was preparing to put down on paper — what would compel a Christian, a self-professed church lady no less, to tell such a sordid tale?  What compels other Christians to read them? Klavan, as might be expected from an award-winning crime writer and very public Christ-follower, has long been thinking about such questions and now provides an answer. “We should look at the question from the other direction,” Klavan says, “what good does it do anybody to write about the world as it’s not?” And the world, as he details through the true stories of three notorious killers — including history’s first killer — can be a very dark place. Portraying that darkness accurately in our art, Klavan contends, is one way we can better recognize and appreciate the light. As one endorser of The Kingdom of Cain said, the book is part meditation and part memoir. I’d add, it’s also part apologia, as Klavan makes an argument for the ultimate triumph of not just a generic goodness but a Christian goodness. Evil, he argues, in the tradition of C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, is the unwelcome guest to the original state of creation, which, as we know from Genesis, was very good. “The shall-nots of the Ten Commandments are not restrictions on our true selves,” writes Klavan, “They are a guide to clearing the path to our original nature so we can become who we truly are.” Another way to say it is that the world began with a moral order, and what goes against that order is the intruder. Klavan explains why this reality should inform the work of any Christian artist seeking to write words that ring true. “I will write about absolutely horrific things,” he says, “but always in the moral world.” What does writing dark works in the moral world look like? He shows us. While analyzing the great fictional works his three case studies inspired, Klavan’s insights give new relish to film classics, offering fresh revelations about their appeal to audiences. One of his chapters on 1950s cross-dressing serial killer Ed Gein dissects how he is reimagined in the film Psycho. Unlike the novel it was based on, the movie recognizes not just the psychological brokenness of its villain, but his spiritual deformity. What the Catholic Hitchcock “understood in his bones,” Klavan writes, “is that there is a tension between the things of the spirit and the things of the flesh.” And so, the great director played up that tension, bringing about his female lead’s murder right as she is in a moment of redemption, preparing to make amends for stealing $40,000 from her employer. This elevates the story from simple scare fest to tragedy. “[Lead female character Marion’s] work in the film is the work of the spirit,” Klavan writes. Through her death, Hitchcock picked up on an aspect of Gein’s history that Psycho’s initial author didn’t — “the struggle to reconcile religion with eroticism is real.” This is something Hitchcock subtly points to by having Norman Bates use a biblical painting of Susanna and the Elders, which depicts two spiritual leaders trying to sexually exploit a woman as she is bathing, as a peephole to spy on Marion undressing for the shower. From the Book of Daniel to the Bates Motel — the baser impulses of men will ever be a threat to women. Other works inspired by the Gein case, like The Silence of the Lambs, compel because they not only tell us truthfully of the violence associated with perverted sexual desire, they also mock the idea that the explanations for such violence will be provided by psychiatry rather than religion. Hannibal Lecter is simply the face of unapologetic evil — like the icy Nietzscheans Leopold and Loeb (whose story Klavan also details), there is no Freudian concept that will restrain his malevolence. He would have to become an entirely new creature for that, a magic that only Christianity can work. The book is full of similar, worthy insights, particularly when it comes to works inspired by the story of Cain. It is clear that for Klavan, there is no joy like the joy of accurately representing the human experience, and humanity is sinful. You cannot tell compelling stories while hiding reality, something the Bible’s authors apparently knew very well, given the horrors that fill Scripture’s pages from incest, to gang rapes, to, well, crucifixion. Too often, Christians forget the “true” part of the Apostle Paul’s admonition to think about: “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable.” Truth is sometimes ugly, but all truth is God’s truth, Klavan tells me, and will reflect God’s moral order. “Every honest story, every true story, has God,” he says “Whether you believe or not, if you tell a true story, if you tell the truth about life, God will be there.”

A former White House staffer shocked viewers and everyone in the studio when she collapsed mid-sentence during an appearance Thursday evening on Fox News’ “Fox News at Night.” Camryn Kinsey was External Relations Director for the Presidential Personnel Office from August 2020 until January 2021. She was responding to a question from guest host Jonathan Hunt — who was filling in for regular host Trace Gallagher — when she appeared to briefly struggle with her words and then slumped to one side, falling to the floor. WATCH: ?BREAKING NEWS LIVE on FoxNews, political commentator and former Trump White Official, Camryn Kinsley, while answering a question, passes out on camera and falls to the ground…. FoxNews had to cut to a break to tend to Camryn Kinsley. ?? Hoping she is okay, prayers! pic.twitter.com/OdOHJUpKTT — American USMC Veteran ❤️?? (@MarineF18ret) May 9, 2025 Kinsey was responding to former President Joe Biden’s Thursday appearance on ABC’s “The View,” where he had attributed former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign loss to too many voters “going the sexist route” — and also claimed that he would have won the 2024 election if he had remained on the ballot. “This is what they have to do. They have to rewrite history because they had a failed campaign, they had a failed presidency,” Kinsey said. “They put [Kamala] as the border czar, she never went to the border, so this is about incompetency, it’s not about — ah — ideology or — ah — it’s not about — ah —” Without another word, Kinsey slumped to her left and fell off the chair, apparently unconscious. “Oh — Oh, my goodness,” Hunt exclaimed as staffers could briefly be seen running to assist Kinsey and the camera cut to Hunt: “We’re just going to get some help here for Camryn, let me come back to Lydia while we get some help for Camryn here. So, Lydia — we’re going to actually go to a break.” Kinsey shared an update on X on Friday, and she did not give details about the nature of the emergency, but made it clear that she was on the mend. Wow, sorry for the scare last night. I want to start by thanking the incredible Fox News team and the EMTs who responded with such speed and care. It was an unexpected and frightening moment, but thanks to their professionalism and kindness, I’m doing well. To everyone who has… — Camryn Kinsey (@camrynbaylee) May 9, 2025 “Wow, sorry for the scare last night. I want to start by thanking the incredible Fox News team and the EMTs who responded with such speed and care. It was an unexpected and frightening moment, but thanks to their professionalism and kindness, I’m doing well,” she said. “To everyone who has called, texted, prayed, or checked in, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your support has meant the world. I’m taking it slow, staying hydrated, letting my body rest, and thanking the Lord that everything is okay.” “It may not have been how I planned to end the segment, but I’ll be back on your TV soon. Hopefully long enough to finally finish my point about Kamala!” Kinsey concluded.

Editor’s Note: This is the fourth and final part in a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. Check out part one, part two, and part three. — A small, USAID-like federal agency called the African Development Foundation refused to hire white people, and treated white employees who did slip through so poorly that one soiled herself because she was afraid to leave her desk to use the bathroom, employees told The Daily Wire. The agency violated so many rules and laws that its general counsel was flabbergasted — but when he called attention to it, officials framed him for violent threats and removed him from his job with a bizarre manifesto that called him “grimy” and “unwholesome,” the general counsel, Mateo Dunne, who is white, said. The agency attracted attention by locking the doors to prevent auditors from the Department of Government Efficiency from seeing its books, and suing Elon Musk to prevent a takeover. The lawsuit is pending, but all of its employees have been laid off after the Trump administration gained access to the office space using U.S. Marshals. From 2021 until February, the agency was led by CEO Travis Adkins, who came to it after a short stint at USAID as a Joe Biden political appointee. Adkins’ former assistant, who is black, said in a sworn affidavit that “On at least three occasions, Mr. Adkins told me that he wanted his entire team (to include the General Counsel) to consist only of Black people. He wanted all of his direct reports to be Black.” “He was very adamant in only hiring African Americans, mainly female, and he told me many times he would not hire a white person or a veteran. I said that’s discrimination, and he said ‘I’m the president and CEO, I can do what I want,’” the assistant told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. Adkins is also a lecturer at Georgetown University. The African Development Foundation was created by Congress in 1980 as a board whose members are appointed by the president of the United States to six-year terms, who in turn appoint a CEO to run day-to-day operations. The board chair was Jack Leslie, a white former staffer to former Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) who was appointed to the board by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Adkins bragged about concealing operations from the board, saying “them white motherf—ers, they don’t need to know… I don’t think I should tell them sh–,” according to the assistant. A junior employee disappeared a few months after she took complaints to the board, and the assistant asked what happened to her; Adkins replied, “I just put the white b—h on a contract and then the contract ended,” the assistant said. The situation was the same under the prior CEO, C.D. Glin, a former Peace Corps DEI officer and later an Obama political appointee to the Peace Corps who led the agency from 2016 to 2021. “C.D. [Glin] literally said to me that he needed to hire black people,” another employee told The Daily Wire on condition of anonymity. “Virtually everyone he hired in programs was black.” In 2021, the agency had to pay a settlement after it laid off a white senior executive without paying her severance or following federal rules, and she alleged it was because of her race. It conducted a “reduction in force” that was targeted at her, and falsely claimed she didn’t have the qualifications to shift into another job, even though many of those jobs had actually reported to her. In previous installments in this series, The Daily Wire reported how its agency’s CFO received payments to his personal bank account from a company to which he steered $1 million. The agency gave money to African grantees and then instructed them to re-route it to the agency’s employees and friends in America, and even pushed a for-profit multi-level marketing scheme run by a board member on poor Africans. “I think USADF deserved the fate that it received, because if it couldn’t be run correctly, then it shouldn’t be run at all.” Retaliation In a government agency, the job of the general counsel is to ensure that rules and laws are followed. Glin ensured that the role was either empty or filled with junior lawyers with no experience in government, even though the agency engaged in complex international finance. After he departed as CEO in May 2021, there was a brief period in which the agency had no permanent leader, and a traditional general counsel managed to slip through. When Mateo Dunne, a white former high-level Defense Department executive, took the job, he was appalled by how little the African Development Foundation seemed to care about laws and rules. The lawyer set out to interview employees about conflicts of interest, purchase card abuse, contracting fraud, and a toxic workplace environment. In a matter of days, the evidence started stacking up. He told the acting CEO, Elisabeth Feleke, that outside lawyers would have to be brought in to document the full scope of the lawbreaking. Instead, Feleke ordered him to stop the investigation, told him to change the preliminary findings, and falsely told the board the probe was complete, he told The Daily Wire. Dunne stopped investigating, but sent his preliminary report to the board. He soon learned that despite nearly uniform agreement that Glin had been abusive, the organization wasn’t getting a fresh start. The board agreed to hire a decades-long friend of Glin’s, Travis Adkins, to replace him. When Adkins entered the office for the first time, Glin enveloped him in a bear hug. Adkins later testified under oath that he was selected to lead the African Development Foundation without even applying for the job, and that he couldn’t recall when or how he managed to be selected. As Adkins’ start date neared, Dunne prepared to show him the lawbreaking he had found so that Adkins could reform the agency. But it seemed that Adkins already knew, and his first priority was shutting Dunne’s investigation down. Within hours of Adkins being sworn in as president and CEO in January 2022, he put Dunne on leave and cut off his access to evidence before he could even speak, video shows. “You will be on administrative leave the very moment that we hang up this call. You will have a box mailed to your home to allow you to send back to us any USADF-issued equipment,” he told Dunne. “You are not to contact any of the members of the USADF staff. And again, your access to all of our data and systems will be closed down immediately.” Dunne replied: “I had prepared this slide deck to introduce myself and what I’ve done at USADF. This conversation obviously went a different way … I guess I have a couple of questions.” “We’re not going to do questions and answers,” Adkins said. “We’re not going to have a back and forth about this.” Dunne was never told why he was placed on paid leave, which Adkins acknowledged was the first step in a discipline process. Internally, the agency sought to build a justification for firing the white lawyer, with chief of staff Brandi James compiling a 75-page manifesto that called Dunne “Adversarial, Belittling, Calculating, Combative, Condescending, Deceitful, Defensive, Grimy, Sinister, and Unwholesome.” The report called Dunne a “danger to USADF’s mission and staff.” But the details made clear that the risk was not to anyone’s life, but rather the livelihoods of law-breaking bureaucrats. The dossier faulted him for his “insistence on tying up staff time on investigatory digs.” The evidence of insubordination was that he had investigated apparent spending on luxuries and personal items by top staff, when Acting CEO Elisabeth Feleke said, “I have not given Mateo direction or mandate to investigate credit card fraud.” “Them white motherf—ers, they don’t need to know… I don’t think I should tell them sh–.” As evidence of Dunne “circumventing and breaching USADF protocols,” the dossier complained that Dunne notified Glin that he had not filed years’ worth of mandatory Office of Government Ethics conflict-of-interest forms, carrying a $600 penalty, even though Feleke told him not to raise the issue. As general counsel, Dunne was the agency’s “designated ethics officer” and required to do so by the government-wide ethics office. The forms would have revealed that the African group had paid money to a group associated with Glin, and refusal to file them can carry criminal penalties. Adkins went as far as implying that Dunne had threatened to kill him, alluding to something “being sent to people regarding the death of government officials, as all of us are government officials.” This, it turned out, was a fantastical distortion of Dunne sharing a sentimental quote from a New York governor acknowledging the passing of a former legislator. Then a new comment appeared on the agency’s profile on the employer-review site GlassDoor that said, under “Advice to Management”: “die.” The post was attributed to “General Counsel.” The African Development Foundation sicced four different law enforcement agencies on Dunne for making death threats. The former Sunday school-teaching lawyer said he was framed. “If I was going to do an anonymous post I would obviously not put my job title in there,” he said. Adkins was forthright with the board’s chair, Jack Leslie, about what was really going on. He wrote to Leslie that Dunne was placed on leave for his “efforts to damage USADF’s reputation via the Office of Inspector General…Dunne conducted an unauthorized, backward-focused investigation that unsettled staff. … He then began leveling accusations that USADF senior leadership was ‘interfering’ with his investigations and General Counsel functions.” Lies  The African Development Foundation never told Dunne what he was being investigated for, or formally moved to fire him, which would require proving that he did something wrong. It simply left him on paid leave indefinitely, violating a law that limits investigative leave to 90 days. After six months, in July 2022, he quit to take another job. An agency’s top lawyer calling attention to rampant lawbreaking, only for him to be removed from duty, is as remarkable a case of whistleblower retaliation as the government has seen. Dunne provided documentation to the Office of Special Counsel, which exists to investigate whistleblower retaliation. But it closed his file when the employee he’d been working with left her job, he said. He filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination on the basis of his race and retaliation. In August 2024, an administrative law judge dismissed his case, even though he had an affidavit from a black employee saying that Adkins had told her repeatedly that he did not want any white people working for him. Dunne is appealing in court. Dunne deposed African Development Foundation staff in the course of that lawsuit. In his sworn testimony, Adkins denied saying he wouldn’t hire white people — but also claimed he didn’t know how many people worked for him, that he could only remember the names of two, and that he didn’t know what race various employees were. A typical exchange from Adkins’ deposition Adkins’ sworn testimony was repeatedly contradicted by documents and the testimony of other employees. Adkins had told the board that a government-wide human resource office had “recommended Mr. Dunne immediately be placed on Administrative Leave for misconduct and performance.” A representative of that office testified that it was not true. He denied plotting to remove Dunne as general counsel before he even started as CEO in an effort to spare his friend Glin and officials like Mathieu Zahui, the chief financial officer, and a target of the investigation. But discovery in the lawsuit showed that Zahui had written during that time period that “The board and the incoming president would like to explore the possibilities of a do-over” on the general counsel hire. Dunne said it has been painful to watch some turn the African Development Foundation into a “martyr,” seemingly to avoid acknowledging that DOGE’s scrutiny was warranted, when no one cared to fix it, though signs were abundant that it was broken. He said he left his job at the Defense Department to come to the African agency “because I wanted to help people,” but found that widespread rule-breaking was short-changing both Africans and low-level staff. “I think USADF deserved the fate that it received, because if it couldn’t be run correctly, then it shouldn’t be run at all. If the leaders of that agency couldn’t act, and members of the foreign policy establishment wouldn’t act,” he said. “It’s an indictment of the entire system.” READ MORE: Foreign Aid Official Who Resisted DOGE Took Secret Payments After Steering Africa Money To Friend  African Aid Agency Used Foreign Pass-Throughs To Hide Money That Went To D.C. Staff Aid Agency Pushed Official’s For-Profit Pyramid Scheme On Poor Africans

A father who has been engaged in a year-long battle against his local school district asked the Trump administration on Friday to investigate Pennsylvania over its “systemic failure” to provide parents with a mechanism to hold school officials accountable.  The controversy began after the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District allowed a “genderqueer” witch to distribute a sexually-themed survey to 14-year-olds in May 2023 without parental consent. Chad Williams, a parent who lives in the district, says that no one has been held accountable for the distribution of the surveys, which he says violated state and federal privacy laws.  Williams wants the Justice Department to look into both the school district and Pennsylvania after he says state entities failed to conduct any serious investigation.  “Parents must be given the right to opt-out of instruction that is religiously offensive or otherwise violates parental rights and the failure of a school district to afford such opportunities is a violation of due process and equal protection,” the Pacific Justice Institute’s Janice Lorrah wrote in a complaint sent to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon. The Pennsylvania Department of Education recently closed the educator misconduct complaint that Williams filed against Unionville-Chadds Ford School District.  In an email to district parents, Sanville celebrated the conclusion of the Pennsylvania Department of Education probe and said that school complaint processes had been “weaponized for personnel grievances.” Williams told The Daily Wire that no one from the state interviewed him or allowed him to present evidence during its year-long investigation. He now says that he needs the Justice Department to step in because Pennsylvania has dropped the ball.  “Unlike other states, which have robust administrative mechanisms to investigate and adjudicate privacy violations, Pennsylvania lacks a centralized complaint system, dedicated oversight, and effective enforcement, thus denying parents and students due process under the Fourteenth Amendment,” his complaint says.  “Instead, Pennsylvania delegates complaint handling to local education agencies, leaving parents without recourse when a school district fails to — or refuses to — follow its own policies and procedures,” the complaint adds.  Williams believes that the district violated the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. He points out that President Donald Trump’s executive order on “ending radical indoctrination” in public schools specifically calls out violations of the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment.  In previous communications with parents, the district admitted that the surveys were in violation of district policy and federal privacy laws. The surveys asked students asked about their gender identity and whether they had ever been “pressured” into a sexual act or whether someone had pressured them to do something sexual. “The district admitted that they violated those statutes but yet the state wouldn’t take any disciplinary action for the violations of law,” Williams told The Daily Wire.

The annual Met Gala is a place for stars to shine. Guests show up dressed to impress with everything from gorgeous to risqué and sometimes even outlandish attire. This year, Motown superstar Diana Ross arrived in a show-stopping gown adorned with personal details that will warm your heart. The white dress with an enormous train and feather accents was very special to Diana. Together with her son, Evan Ross, and designer Ugo Mozie, Diana Ross created a family heirloom. “My breathtaking 2025 Met Gala white-forever-gown is an exquisite, tailored masterpiece of craftsmanship. The design vision for the layered gown and cloak was created by me along with my son @realevanross and designer @ugomozie,” she wrote on Instagram. “The dazzling 18-foot crystal and beaded ensemble is embroidered with my children’s and grandchildren’s names. This grandeur of a look combines the elegance of personal style with a deeply personal narrative, transforming it into a canvas that celebrates my family legacy—stretching across time and generations.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ms Ross (@dianaross) Family Is Everything To Diana Ross As a mother of five and grandmother of eight, Diana Ross knows the importance of family and love. She made sure to bring them to the Met Gala with her. “The Ross Family names embroidered on this memory-gown include my children, Rhonda, Tracee, Chudney, Ross, and Evan, and my eight grandchildren: Raif, Callaway, Everlee, Leif, Indigo, Jagger, Bronx, and Ziggy. Wherever I walk, I carry my children and my grandchildren with me,” she shared. Fans loved Diana Ross’ dress and the meaning behind it. “God bless you today, tomorrow, and always,” a fan wrote. This person agreed, “Absolutely BEAUTIFUL you are and what a wonderful tribute to your Children and Grandchildren, they are Blessed to have you. Thank you for showing some of the young women how to dress Classy. Thank you for being who you are and sharing your beautiful voice with the World.” This story’s featured image is by Kevin Mazur/MG25/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue. The post Diana Ross Stunned At The Met Gala While Wearing A Very Special Gown appeared first on InspireMore.

'DOGE isn't a slogan. It's a strategy.'

'It can't seriously claim to be free from ideological biases'

'Fly right on through'