“Well, we have to ask,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro recalls being pressed.

No, they really didn't.

In his new memoir, Shapiro tells the true story of his interaction with Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. The vetting process, headed by former Attorney General Eric Holder, obsessed over Shapiro’s views on Israel. In fact, the vetting team demanded to know if Shapiro had ever been an agent for the Israeli government—on no evidentiary basis except that Shapiro is Jewish.

This is an ancient libel against Jews—driving the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms in eastern Europe, the Dreyfus Affair in France and, of course Germany under the Nazis. It’s the anti-Semitic assumption that a Jew living as a Jew is suspect of disloyalty on that basis alone.

And now it’s come to America embraced by the Democrat Party itself—part of its presidential campaign in 2024.

Kamala Harris needs to answer for this repulsive development—and so does her party.

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This past Sunday, the unthinkable happened. A leftist mob aided and abetted by former CNN host, Don Lemon, burst into an evangelical congregation at worship on the Lord's Day.

It happened as Citi's Church in St. Paul, Minnesota was worshiping this past Sunday. Angry protestors invaded the church, stopped its worship, intimidated its members, and demanded that the church denounce one of its elders who is currently serving as acting field director for US immigrations and customs enforcement, better known as ICE.

Is this where we are headed? Invading a church engaged in worship on the Lord's Day is the breaking of a bright moral line. Children and young people in this Southern Baptist congregation were traumatized. This is flatly wrong and clearly scandalous.

Federal authorities need to act and responsible citizens need to remind our fellow citizens that ICE is an official federal law enforcement agency and is to be fully respected.

This church invasion was a first. It likely won't be the last.

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Chalk up a significant win for religious freedom—this time from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The court ruled that religious organizations have the right to hire people who share their faith, even for non-ministerial roles like administrative assistants or technicians. In other words, faith-based organizations don’t lose their religious identity the moment someone steps out of the pulpit and into an office.

The decision applies only to religious organizations themselves, not to secular businesses or hospitals they may operate. But it still matters a great deal.

At stake is a basic principle: religious groups exist to advance a mission grounded in shared beliefs. Every employee contributes to that mission in some way. Forcing a religious organization to hire people who reject its core convictions undermines its very purpose.

Kudos to the Ninth Circuit for recognizing this simple truth.

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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on cases that could determine whether states have the authority to preserve women’s sports for biological females.

The cases, from Idaho and West Virginia, challenge laws that restrict girls’ and women’s athletic teams to participants of the same biological sex. Transgender students argue these laws violate Title IX and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

But beneath the legal claims lies a more fundamental question: who gets to define what it means to be a woman under the law?

The Court must decide whether government is required to treat self-declared gender identity as determinative—or whether it can rely on the objective reality of biological sex.

Upholding these laws protects fairness and safety in women’s sports. More importantly, it prevents sex (and womanhood itself!) from becoming an arbitrary legal construct.

That matters.

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The difference between the illusion of power and its reality is the difference between the Ayatollah Khamenei and President Donald Trump. Trump is on the cusp of joining the very small number of American presidents who reorder the world. Khamenei is on the cusp of history’s abyss reserved for murderous fanatics.

The belief in the unlimited power of a totalitarian government to maintain itself and protect its rulers is a dangerous conceit, as Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro have both discovered.

It may be that Ayatollah Khamenei is in the process of discovering the same hard reality: No government, no matter how ruthless, can endure for centuries or even decades in the face of a resentful population.

Not even the rulers of Rome at the height of the Caesars were guaranteed an endless run of power.

If either the U.S. or the Israeli’s provide the final push, the great people of Persia will re-emerge and regain their place among the great civilizations on the planet.

We wish them well.

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On paper, the regime in Iran should represent everything that Western progressives reject. Women experience brutal oppression and are treated like chattel belonging to male family members. The economy centers on the nation's military-industrial complex, with the IRGC controlling 40% or more of the nation's economic output.

Don’t forget how the mullahs treat the LGBTQ community, religious minorities, indigenous peoples, and so on.

And yet, the mainstream media waited nearly two weeks to report on the uprising in Iran. Progressive publications like The Nation, the New Republic, and Slate never mentioned it. The Golden Globes vented about Trump and ICE—but remained silent on Iran.

Why the silence? As Yascha Mounk wrote on Monday, the Left’s hatred of the Western democracy makes Iran’s theocratic tyrants their natural allies. Their silence is their expression of grief that true liberty may prevail in Tehran and vindicate Western values.

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On paper, the regime in Iran should represent everything that Western progressives reject. Women experience brutal oppression and are treated like chattel belonging to male family members. The economy centers on the nation's military-industrial complex, with the IRGC controlling 40% or more of the nation's economic output.

Don’t forget how the mullahs treat the LGBTQ community, religious minorities, indigenous peoples, and so on.

And yet, the mainstream media waited nearly two weeks to report on the uprising in Iran. Progressive publications like The Nation, the New Republic, and Slate never mentioned it. The Golden Globes vented about Trump and ICE—but remained silent on Iran.

Why the silence? As Yascha Mounk wrote on Monday, the Left’s hatred of the Western democracy makes Iran’s theocratic tyrants their natural allies. Their silence is their expression of grief that true liberty may prevail in Tehran and vindicate Western values.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City, he took his oath on the Koran, rather than a Bible.

In America, free exercise of religion is a constitutional right. Mamdani was absolutely entitled to swear his oath on his faith’s sacred text.

But texts matter, and so do the principles they enshrine.

In the Bible, political authority is limited and not divine. Church and state distinct, and individual conscience is separate from government power.

Under the Quran, religious and political authority are one and the same, and the state is understood to be an instrument for enforcing divine law.

Judeo-Christian thought made limited government possible by insisting that the state isn’t sacred. Under Islam, conscience is subordinate to religious authority.

That distinction matters.

Americans should be paying attention.

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