A fresh poll shows Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton narrowly leading Democrat James Talarico in the must-win Senate race, offering Republicans a much-needed boost in a contest that has increasingly given party leaders heartburn.
<a href="https://emersoncollegepolling.com/texas-2026-poll-paxton-and-talarico/">An Emerson College Polling/Nexstar Media survey</a> released Thursday shows Paxton with 47% support, narrowly ahead of Talarico at 46%. Another 5% of voters remain undecided, while 2% back another candidate.
The one-point difference falls within the poll&#8217;s three-point margin of error, making the contest effectively a dead heat. But it&#8217;s the first poll to show Paxton ahead since early June, according to <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/senate/general/2026/texas/talarico-vs-paxton">RealClearPolitics</a>, as Republicans worry that low GOP turnout and a Democratic-friendly political landscape could flip one of the reddest states in the nation — and with it, control of the U.S. Senate.
&#8220;Despite having a three-month head start and getting millions from out-of-state billionaires with deep ties to Jeffrey Epstein, James Talarico is already losing steam and falling behind,&#8221; RNC spokesman Zach Kraft told The Daily Wire. &#8220;It should come as no surprise that Texas wants a MAGA warrior like Ken Paxton over a gender-confused freak like Talarico.&#8221; 
Emerson College Polling Executive Director Spencer Kimball said the Texas Senate race is sharply divided by age, with voters under 50 favoring Talarico by 15 points, 53% to 38%, while voters over 50 back Paxton by 11 points, 53% to 42%.
Digging deeper, Paxton holds his strongest advantage among white voters and men, while Talarico leads among most black and Hispanic voters. Talarico holds just a one-point advantage among women after facing backlash over his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-book-is-gay-read-the-sexually-explicit-volumes-james-talaricos-church-gives-kids">views</a> on Christianity, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-james-talarico-says-he-loves-trans-children-in-unearthed-clip">“love” for transgender children</a>, and disdain for the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-audio-thats-blowing-a-hole-in-talaricos-christian-persona">American flag.</a> 
Top issues for Texas voters include the economy (30%), immigration (19%), threats to democracy (14%), and healthcare (13%). Republican voters rank immigration as their top issue (32%), while Democrats (33%) and independents (31%) rate the economy as their top concern.
Those issues have not stopped either campaign from diving into hot-button cultural issues as both sides wage a fierce battle for Christian voters who will likely play a pivotal role in November. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2026/08/13/texas-ken-paxton-james-talarico-religion-campaign-christianity/">The Texas Tribune</a> reported Thursday that Paxton’s and Talarico’s differing views of Christianity have emerged as a defining issue shaping the race in a state where nearly half of voters say faith is “very important” in their lives.
A pro-Paxton super PAC <a href="https://x.com/approject/status/2085795525354234239?s=20">went viral</a> after using artificial intelligence to remake Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous “Daisy” ad, depicting a young girl being prepared to undergo a sex-change operation as an AI-generated Talarico stands at the operating table.
“She dreams of growing up, falling in love, becoming a mother,” an AI narrator says. “The trans industry preys on confused children. Irreversible puberty blockers. Cross-sex hormones. Sex-change surgeries.”
Talarico, meanwhile, is seeking to make inroads with evangelical voters — the <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/texas/">largest religious group</a> in Texas — by touting his Baptist upbringing despite his support for abortion, calling God “nonbinary,” opposing the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools, and his affiliation to a progressive Presbyterian denomination.
A <a href="https://x.com/jamestalarico/status/2087706393247952952?s=20">30-second spot</a> features his grandfather: &#8220;As a Baptist preacher in South Texas, he taught me to follow the two great commandments — love God, and love your neighbor,&#8221; Talarico says, suggesting the Gospel message includes reducing the cost of healthcare, housing, and groceries. 
A recent Fox News poll found that <a href="https://x.com/JWheelertv/status/2082987392626020796?s=20">78% of white evangelical Christians</a> in the Lone Star State plan to vote against Talarico, despite concerns that Paxton’s personal scandals and marriage struggles could alienate the key demographic. 
“I truly believe that God just delivered me, not because I am a great person, because God is sovereign and he does what he wants to do,” Paxton said on Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgTrzsr0B_c">podcast</a>, referring to the unsuccessful 2023 impeachment effort against him. “I don’t take credit for it; it’s really by the grace of God.” 
The <a href="https://www.cookpolitical.com/senate/race/488686">Cook Political Report</a> ranks the race as Lean Republican.

hc060226AbbottConvention – Ken Paxton

Ken Paxton Gets Some Much Needed Good News In Race Against Talarico

2026 elections

advertising

Christianity

Faith

James Talarico

Ken Paxton

Midterms

News

political surveys

Politics

Poll

polling

Religion

Texas

Coca-Cola is facing backlash for allowing customers to order Coca-Cola cans with personalized messages, including &#8220;Allah Is King&#8221; and &#8220;Satan Is King,&#8221; but when customers try to write &#8220;Jesus Is King,&#8221; they are rejected.
A video shows customers are able to order bottles with custom phrases through the Coca-Cola website which allows slogans like &#8220;Allah Is King&#8221; and &#8220;Satan Is King&#8221; to advance to the company’s review, but &#8220;Jesus Is King&#8221; is immediately declined. The Coca-Cola website also did not allow users to create cans with Christian names such as &#8220;Holy Trinity,&#8221; &#8220;Virgin Mary,&#8221; or &#8220;Holy Spirit.&#8221;
The website cited restrictions on religious figures for why it wouldn’t create the can with Jesus&#8217; name on it. It did, however, allow users to generate the messages &#8220;Jesus is bad&#8221; and &#8220;Jesus is evil.&#8221;
Coca-Cola has not issued an official statement in response to the backlash but has made changes to its website so that all online submissions undergo review for compliance with its content guidelines.
Coca-Cola did not immediately respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment. 
The controversy is not the first time Coca-Cola has faced public criticism from conservatives. In 2021, the company’s former CEO James Quincey slammed new voting laws in Georgia, where the company’s headquarters is located, after Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed voter ID requirements into law. Quincey stepped down from his CEO position in December of 2025. 
The company that sometimes ventures into politically charged topics and conversations has also faced backlash from the other side of the aisle when the far-Left group, “The Latino Freeze Moment,” <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/coca-cola-boycott-explained/">called</a> for boycotting the beverage company after it scaled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts last year. 
“Latinos and Latinas stop spending money. Hold the line. We can all collectively make a big impact by simply holding and not spending our money,” the Latino Freeze Movement said on its website.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola Said No To Jesus But Yes To Satan

Fortune500

Abdul El-Sayed has campaigned on reaching across the religious divide with an appeal to Christians and Muslims alike, and he boasts that over two dozen Christian leaders back his bid to replace Michigan Senator Gary Peters. Those leaders include a pastor who suggested conservative activist Charlie Kirk deserved to be shot and the senior pastor of a church that hosted a drag event for kids.
El-Sayed, who once <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/24/next-obama-abdul-el-sayed-first-muslim-governor-michigan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hoped</a> to be America&#8217;s first Muslim governor, is locked in a competitive primary race with Democrat Rep. Haley Stevens. While many of his positions on topics from abortion to so-called &#8220;gender-affirming care&#8221; directly conflict with the Bible, that has not deterred some Christians from backing his campaign.
Included among El-Sayed&#8217;s supporters is Larry Davis, the pastor of Christian Tabernacle Baptist in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Davis, who believes that President Donald Trump faked the multiple assassination attempts, had no kind words for Charlie Kirk after his murder.
“He is being held as a hero. We shouldn&#8217;t be happy that he got killed. But we shall embrace that you REAP what you SOW,” Davis <a href="https://www.facebook.com/logosmediator/posts/pfbid02RVYALdHTR2JVwFz7KctircVUXk8dE2xCjZSq5asDDfvxwyncGSWZuKQh5sXwvGJBl">posted</a> on Facebook alongside an anti-Kirk meme the day after the popular conservative activist was gunned down at an event at Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025.
&nbsp;
<div id="attachment_1142261" style="width: 872px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1142261" class="size-full wp-image-1142261" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.26.27-AM.png" alt="" width="862" height="920" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.26.27-AM.png 862w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.26.27-AM-281x300.png 281w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.26.27-AM-540x576.png 540w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.26.27-AM-768x820.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 862px) 100vw, 862px" />Larry Davis Facebook.</div>
In another post, Davis shared a clip of Kirk criticizing DEI and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/logosmediator/posts/pfbid0Jajkv4JjjFt7QpvXLSt6CKcjc1Jwe8bySvguuSjNNpV8BRWAZgMWrVmXsK5qXkaxl">asked</a>, “Would you give a racist out of his own mouth the medal of freedom.”
On September 19, the pastor again spread his message that Kirk reaped what he sowed.
“No man should take it on himself to take the life of another. But the scriptures says be not deceived God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man show [sic] that shall he also reap,” Davis said alongside an AI-generated image of Kirk and Jesus Christ.
The Daily Wire sent a message to Davis to ask about his support for El-Sayed. His church, which has no listed email address, did not answer multiple phone calls.
Pastor Terrance Johnson, another religious leader who endorsed El-Sayed, shared a similar animus toward Kirk. He suggested that he was not sad about Kirk’s assassination because he was a “racist bigot.”
“You will accept a black man refusing to mourn his own father but you wil [sic] not accept a black man refusing to mourn a racist bigot because….. We all know why,” Johnson posted in a long screed quoting Tupac song lyrics a day after Kirk’s killing.
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1142269" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.40.58-AM.png" alt="" width="1003" height="495" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.40.58-AM.png 1003w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.40.58-AM-300x148.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.40.58-AM-768x379.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1003px) 100vw, 1003px" /></div>
When someone commented on his post, “is this the heart of Christ,” Johnson responded by saying, “what is the heart of Christ.”
In another post, Johnson claimed that ICE was equivalent to the Ku Klux Klan.
“So ICE is the KKK rebranded. Still wearing mask it’s just that the badges are now out instead of being hid under the sheets,” he said.
Johnson’s Church, Second Missionary Baptist Church in Monroe, Michigan, recently <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Da5Kv7hgwwr/">hosted</a> El-Sayed for an event. In a Facebook post, the church <a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/1008191515327976">said</a> the event was for the Democrat to share “why he’s running for office.”
During the appearance, El-Sayed claimed to attendees that he was the only candidate who could “guarantee you healthcare” and attacked America’s history as “sordid,” according to a video posted by the church.
“We just commemorated 250 years. And I know there&#8217;s a lot of sordid history in those 250 years, but I also know what my life would have been had I been born in a place that I was supposed to be born. But for an accident of history, I get born here,” El-Sayed said. “Are we willing to put ourselves back in to correct that system so that the next 250 look a lot better than the last ones did?”
“It is the many versus their money. We got a choice. Do we want them to come in and buy an election?,” he added.
&nbsp;
<div id="attachment_1142273" style="width: 1581px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1142273" class="wp-image-1142273 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.46.01-AM.png" alt="" width="1571" height="1115" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.46.01-AM.png 1571w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.46.01-AM-300x213.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.46.01-AM-812x576.png 812w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.46.01-AM-768x545.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-23-at-10.46.01-AM-1536x1090.png 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1571px) 100vw, 1571px" />Facebook: Second Missionary Baptist Church.</div>
“Second Missionary Baptist Church of Monroe does not endorse or oppose any political candidate or party,” the church posted on July 17. “Our prayer is that every voter takes time to seek wisdom, research the candidates, and make an informed decision at the ballot box.”
Another pastor backing El-Sayed’s campaign is the ultra-woke Nathan Dannison of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, which recently hosted a “queer prom” for adults and youth that <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FountainStChurch/posts/pfbid0jKRtWoLiCbmbVCfLggmD7JiVrBDH99WCEtbi8S6THySZAqP78MAx7cNLHYGJnvt1l" target="_blank" rel="noopener">featured</a> “12 drag performances.”
Dannison, who recently <a href="https://nathandannison.substack.com/p/preaching-about-psychedelics">said</a> that psychedelics have been part of his “spiritual discipline” for the last twenty years, said that abolishing ICE is a baseline position any candidate supported by him needs to take. In recent Facebook posts, Dannison has defended El-Sayed over his strong anti-Israel positions.
Dannison <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nscottnorth/posts/pfbid0keXseMToK1b6q7uxnda7z8Ad6MyDkAPSG3F3zWYwC48srDutvR1FUFNtJqCGpGcvl">said</a> that he’s “pretty horrified by a lot of the anti-Abdul posts I&#8217;m seeing from center-left Michigan voters that are obviously mashing the ‘fwd:fwd:fwd’ button or the copy-pasting ad copy from astro-turfed emails/sms/etc from defense lobbyists.”
“Dr. El-Sayed is not antisemitic. To the contrary, one of the reasons I support him is because he understands the real and present dangers facing Jewish Americans who are being blamed for foreign policies and wars that have absolutely nothing to do with their religion and history in this country,” he added.
Fountain Street Church <a href="https://fountainstreet.org/justice/choice-fund" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raises funds</a> for women to end the lives of their unborn children and says it is “proud to be the State&#8217;s longest standing abortion fund.”
Other pastors backing El-Sayed’s campaign included Detroit Rev. Horace Sheffield III of New Destiny Christian Fellowship and Rev. Keith Whitney of Sanctuary Fellowship Baptist Church.
Sheffield, who unsuccessfully <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Horace_Sheffield">ran</a> for Congress in 2014 and <a href="https://www.horacesheffield.com/projects/)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">appeared</a> in the anti-white documentary “White With Fear,” sells anti-Trump t-shirts on his ministry website that say “I will take Biden in a wheel chair over Trump standing up.”
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1142979 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-11.37.41-AM.png" alt="" width="1250" height="974" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-11.37.41-AM.png 1250w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-11.37.41-AM-300x234.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-11.37.41-AM-739x576.png 739w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-21-at-11.37.41-AM-768x598.png 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1250px) 100vw, 1250px" /></div>
Whitney is the <a href="https://www.mosesaction.com/boardmembers/blog-post-title-one-gd3dr" target="_blank" rel="noopener">president</a> of Moses Action, an advocacy group that pushes for left-wing criminal justice reform and <a href="https://www.mosesaction.com/reproductive-freedom-statement" target="_blank" rel="noopener">supported</a> a ballot initiative to make the right to end the life of your unborn child a constitutional right.
“Throughout black history, government officials — most of them white men — have made decisions about black women’s bodies and health that have been harmful, traumatizing, and often deadly. Granting our current lawmakers the ability to dictate personal health decisions feels like a dangerous step backwards,” the group said in a statement.
Several of the pastors listed on El-Sayed’s campaign website, including Bishop Alan Evans and Pastor Parris McMurray, appear to be affiliated with the Church of God In Christ, Inc. The denomination <a href="https://www.cogic.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/SOLife-Resolution-11_12_19-1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">adopted</a> a &#8220;sanctity of life” resolution in 2019 that “abortion is the killing of the innocent” and describes abortion as “genocide.”
The denomination did not respond to questions about its pastors endorsing the pro-abortion El-Sayed.
El-Sayed wants to codify the right to an abortion in federal law and suggested he will fight back on efforts to crackdown on abortion pills.
“Everyone has the right to make personal decisions about their healthcare,” his campaign <a href="https://abdulforsenate.com/priority/medicare-for-all-the-path-to-a-healthier-america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">website</a> says. “That includes reproductive and gender-affirming care. I’ll fight to codify the rights once protected by Roe v. Wade into federal law.”
Earlier this month, El-Sayed earned the endorsement of the Council of Baptist Pastors of Detroit and Vicinity, which said it supported his emphasis on “affordability” and “human dignity.” It did not respond to questions about El-Sayed leftist advocacy on social issues.
“Pastors attend to their communities in the best and worst of times, and their support is about trusting me to show up in those moments with them,” El-Sayed said. “Together, we’re building a Michigan that brings people together across faiths, regions, and backgrounds in the work of offering dignity, opportunity, and respect for every Michigander.”
The Democratic primary is on August 4.

Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Holds Rally In Detroit With Sen. Bernie Sanders And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Meet The Christian Pastors Who Endorsed Pro-Trans Muslim Abdul El-Sayed

Abdul El-Sayed

Abortion

Islam

Michigan

Muslim

Senate

Transgender

Scholars have discovered two previously unknown sermons by St. Augustine of Hippo while translating an 11th-century manuscript from a German monastery, shedding new light on one of Christianity&#8217;s most influential theologians.
University of Würzburg Latin scholar Christian Tornau discovered the sermons while translating a manuscript originally from Bad Doberan Abbey in Germany. The manuscript contained copies of six sermons attributed to Augustine.
&#8220;Two of the six sermons are previously undiscovered writings by Augustine,&#8221; Professor Tornau <a href="https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/einblick/single/news/two-new-sermons-augustine-discovered/">said</a>.
Because forged works attributed to Augustine are common, Tornau and his colleagues initially suspected the sermons were inauthentic,  The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/07/29/science/saints-lost-sermons-reveal-secrets-of-the-witch-of-endor/">reported</a>. 
After identifying Augustine’s trademark humor, references to his North African Christian tradition, and a distinctive style of prayer, however, Tornau and a panel of 20 Latin scholars concluded: “they are indeed authentic.” 
Augustine, who was born in what is now Algeria, is regarded as one of Christianity&#8217;s most influential theologians. His writings, including Confessions and The City of God, helped shape medieval philosophy and Western thought. 
The newly discovered sermons focus on the biblical account of King Saul and the Witch of Endor from the First Book of Samuel. In the story, Saul seeks guidance from God before a battle but instead turns to the Witch of Endor, asking her to summon the prophet Samuel, who foretells Saul&#8217;s death.  

Tornau <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/travel/lost-sermons-christianitys-greatest-saints-discovered-after-1600-years">told</a> Fox News Digital that Augustine’s interpretation of Saul&#8217;s repentance was the &#8220;most remarkable element” of the sermons.
While many Christian scholars throughout history viewed Saul as an unrepentant villain, Augustine interpreted the story as suggesting Saul made peace with God before his death.  
&#8220;In any event, it is indicative of Augustine’s [independence] of mind and his willingness to think everyone, even those who appear most evil, [is] capable of salvation through the grace of God,&#8221; Tornau said.
&#8220;This combines intellectual honesty and episcopal humility in a remarkable and very Augustinian way.&#8221;
The sermons also revisit one of the Bible&#8217;s longstanding theological questions.
“The story [also] raises a theological question: ‘Why can a necromancer summon the spirit of a prophet?’” Tornau said. “This in turn opens up the theodicy problem: ‘how can an omnipotent God allow this or is he not really omnipotent?’” 
According to Tornau, Augustine explored whether the encounter was merely an illusion or whether God permitted it, using the account to examine the relationship between divine providence and evil. 
Tornau is working with the publisher Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (CSEL) to bring Augustine’s sermons to the public.

Screenshot 2026-07-29 at 2.20.30 PM

Lost Sermons From One Of Christianity’s Greatest Saints Finally Come To Light

Catholic Church

Church

Germany

Western Civilization

A fortress is not always conquered by an army battering down its walls. Sometimes it is lost because those entrusted with guarding the gate fail to recognize the motivation of the one asking to enter.
That is the danger confronting America in 2026.
Not because God’s throne is in danger. He remains sovereign over every ruler, every nation, and every election. Not because a political party can redeem America. No party died on the cross. No candidate rose from the grave. Jesus Christ alone is Savior and Lord.
The importance of 2026 lies in this sobering reality: Islamist political influence is moving from agitation to organization, from protest to electoral power, and from temporary coalitions to institutional footholds.
Listen carefully. The concern is not that Muslim citizens vote, organize, donate, or run for office. Those are constitutional rights, and Christians should defend them. Many Muslims came to America to escape the very Islamists about whom I am warning.
The issue is not Muslims.
The issue is Islamists.
Biblical authority and Constitutional duty
The Constitution is not supreme over the Bible. For the Christian, God’s Word is our final authority. When government commands what God forbids — or forbids what God commands — the Biblical answer is clear: “We must obey God rather than human beings!” (Acts 5:29).
At the same time, the Constitution is the highest human civil charter governing the exercise of American public office. An officeholder who swears to support it is not declaring it divine. He is promising to discharge his office truthfully and not secretly substitute another legal order for the one he has sworn to uphold.
Biblical Christianity therefore holds two Truths together: God is supreme over government, and God commands believers to honor lawful government.
Jesus said, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21). Caesar has real authority — but limited authority. Government may punish wrongdoing, preserve public order, and protect the innocent. It may not claim worship, command sin, or silence the Gospel.
When Daniel was forbidden to pray, he did not pretend to comply while praying secretly. He opened his windows. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were commanded to worship an idol, they refused publicly. When the apostles were ordered to stop preaching Christ, they answered openly and accepted the consequences.
That is Biblical civil disobedience.
The Christian does not conceal his convictions. He does not infiltrate government under false pretenses. He does not lie for the Kingdom. Paul declared, “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Christ’s Kingdom advances through Truth, proclamation, prayer, service, sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit — not through forced conversion, concealed infiltration, or the sword.
This is precisely where Biblical Christianity and Islamism part company.
Political Islam seeks to unite religious, political, judicial, and social authority beneath Sharia. In its entryist form, it may use constitutional freedoms as temporary instruments for acquiring the power necessary to reshape the constitutional order itself.
Entryism and Taqiyya
Entryism is the strategy by which an ideological movement enters a larger party, coalition, school system, civic institution, or government body without fully disclosing its final objectives. The entryist adopts the language of the host institution, gains confidence, places personnel, acquires influence, and redirects the institution from within.
Entryism does not begin with a candidate announcing, “I intend to replace the Constitution with Sharia.” That would expose the objective.
It begins with language the secular West celebrates: inclusion, representation, social justice, civil rights, tolerance, and pluralism. These words may express legitimate concerns. But in the hands of an entryist movement, they become the key that opens the gate.
Taqiyya is <a href="https://brill.com/view/book/edcoll/9789004378872/B9789004378872_s021.xml">the doctrine of concealment</a>, historically developed most prominently among Shiite Muslims living under persecution. <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-new-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-west/9780231151269/">Islamist movements have operationalized its logic politically</a>: conceal or soften the ultimate objective until sufficient legitimacy, access, and power have been accumulated.
Entryism is the strategy. Taqiyya is the mask.
This is not conjecture. In a <a href="https://www.investigativeproject.org/document/20-an-explanatory-memorandum-on-the-general">1991 internal memorandum</a> later introduced in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution, Muslim Brotherhood figure Mohamed Akram described the Brotherhood’s work in North America as “a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
This does not mean every Muslim practices deception. It means that when an Islamist movement repeatedly uses dual messaging, concealed relationships, and strategic ambiguity, we should call the method what it is.
Pattern recognition is not prejudice.
Europe has already shown us the playbook
Europe is not a hypothetical warning. It is the precedent.
In Birmingham, England, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/birmingham-schools-education-commissioners-report">investigators documented coordinated efforts</a> to influence public-school governing bodies, install sympathetic leaders, marginalize resistant headteachers, alter curricula, and introduce a conservative Islamic ethos into schools that were not legally Islamic schools. The project advanced through appointments, personnel decisions, and institutional pressure — not through an openly declared Sharia platform.
Tower Hamlets revealed another stage of the method. Religious sentiment, communal loyalty, political patronage, and public grants were manipulated to consolidate electoral power. A letter signed by 101 imams told voters that supporting Lutfur Rahman was their religious duty; <a href="https://fieldcourt.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Erlam-Ors-v-Rahman-Anor-2015-EWHC-1215-QB-23-April-2015.pdf">the Election Court found undue spiritual influence</a>. Rahman later returned to office after his disqualification ended.
A court may expose the machinery without dismantling the machine.
<a href="https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/actualites/dossiers-de-presse/publication-du-rapport-freres-musulmans-et-islamisme-politique-en-france">France has investigated</a> an ecosystem of political Islam operating through mosques, schools, charities, associations, and local partnerships. Germany has banned organizations openly promoting a caliphate and rejecting its constitutional order. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/5/pro-palestine-candidates-including-corbyn-secure-wins-in-uk-election">British elections have demonstrated</a> how concentrated electorates mobilized around Gaza and communal identity can overturn supposedly safe political assumptions.
The pattern is clear: recognition produces access; access produces influence; influence produces appointments and funding; dependency makes scrutiny politically dangerous; and when honest scrutiny becomes forbidden, freedom is already dying.
The pattern at America’s gate
The same mechanisms are emerging in the United States.
In New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District, Adam Hamawy <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/new-jersey-election-2026-primary-12th-congressional-district-2/">won a crowded Democratic primary</a> after <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00932723/">American Priorities</a>, a new pro-Palestinian super PAC, <a href="https://newjerseyglobe.com/congress/pro-palestine-super-pac-plans-to-spend-2-million-supporting-hamawy/">announced an approximately $2 million effort</a> supporting him. Hamawy’s Muslim identity is irrelevant. His historical associations are not.
As a young man, he <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/new-jersey-playbook/2026/05/05/the-history-of-hamawy-and-the-blind-sheikh-00906080">traveled with and translated for Omar Abdel-Rahman</a>, the “Blind Sheikh,” and<a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-blind-sheikh-and-the-candidate-0a37e742"> later testified in his defense</a>. He also performed <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2026/05/adam-hamawy-benevolence-international-foundation-bosnia-al-qaida/">humanitarian work through the Benevolence International Foundation</a>, which the U.S. Treasury <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/po3632">later designated as a financier of terrorism</a>.
These facts do not prove that Hamawy knew of criminal activity or presently holds Islamist convictions. His later service as a U.S. Army combat surgeon is important. But unresolved associations, concentrated outside spending, and a path into Congress demand complete answers: What did he know? Did relationships continue? What are his positions on the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Sharia, apostasy, blasphemy, and freedom to convert?
In Texas, <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-general-ken-paxton-takes-legal-action-part-landmark-investigation-alleged-effort-impose">the attorney general has investigated</a> an organization calling itself the Islamic Tribunal over allegations that it represented religious decisions as final judgments carrying judicial approval. The organization <a href="https://www.keranews.org/government/2026-04-06/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-islamic-tribunal-dallas-sharia-law-muslims">says its guidance is voluntary and nonbinding</a>. The proper question is whether its conduct matches its public description. Were participants free to refuse? Were women pressured? Were religious rulings used to discourage access to civil courts?
Words must be tested by conduct.
The 2026 election is the most important election of our lifetime because it may determine whether Islamist entryism is confronted before it becomes entrenched—or normalized after it acquires institutional power.
For the Christian, ultimate allegiance belongs to God alone. For every officeholder, the civil test is honest constitutional fidelity: Will you protect the right to leave Islam, become a Christian, evangelize Muslims, criticize Muhammad, reject penalties for apostasy and blasphemy, and preserve equal protection under civil law?
Christians must love Muslim people, defend their liberties, and proclaim to them the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But love is not blindness. Tolerance is not surrender.
Our weapons are not hatred, slander, fear, or violence. Our weapons are Biblical Truth, prayer, lawful action, constitutional vigilance, and the Gospel.
Europe has shown us the playbook. Entryism opens the institution. Taqiyya conceals the destination.
The question is whether those entrusted with guarding the gate will recognize it before the gate is lost.
*** 
Michael A. Youssef, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist, bestselling author, and internationally respected Bible teacher who brings more than 50 years of insight to the global stage. Born in Egypt under socialist and Islamist systems, Dr. Youssef witnessed firsthand the realities of spiritual and political darkness. He later lived in Lebanon and Australia before immigrating to the United States, fulfilling a childhood dream by becoming a naturalized American citizen in 1984. This unique personal history fuels his distinct perspective on Middle Eastern geopolitics and current events in the West.
Entryism succeeds only when someone inside opens the gate. In my new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Unholy-Alliance-Progressivism-Islamist-Invasion/dp/B0G1G3X797">An Unholy Alliance: How Progressivism Brought About an Islamist Invasion</a>, I name who has been opening it—and why: a &#8220;Red-Green&#8221; partnership in which secular progressivism ushers political Islamism into our schools, our media, and our halls of government. I wrote this book for those entrusted with guarding the gate, and I offer a twelve-point plan for responding with Biblical Truth, courage, and the Gospel.

Manhattan, Midtown Manhattan, people walking at Times Square

Why Western Fortresses Fall From Within

DW Opinion

Islamists

On the campaign trail, Democrat candidate James Talarico often describes his faith as “biblical Christianity.&#8221; But the Senate hopeful once credited Islamic mystics with shaping his faith just as much as Christian writers, audio unearthed by The Daily Wire reveals.
In a recent <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/us/politics/james-talarico-christian.html">interview</a> with The New York Times, Talarico asserted that his faith was rooted in “biblical Christianity.” During an appearance on The State of Belief podcast in April 2024 alongside Muslim state Rep. Salman Bhojani, Talarico praised Islam for shaping his religious beliefs. Those comments could come into play as debate heats up in Texas about Islam&#8217;s growing presence in the state. 
“I know personally that I&#8217;ve learned as much about my faith from Salman&#8217;s tradition, from the Islamic mystics, from poets like Rumi, as much as I have from Christian authors and Christian writers,” he said. “This kind of interfaith dialogue, it doesn&#8217;t water down your tradition, in fact it strengthens it, it brings out new flavors and new colors.” 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Faith and Public Service with Texas Reps Salman Bhojani and James Talarico" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ph72LCduP8I?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Talarico later quoted the 13th-century Islamic mystic as saying “in every religion there is love, yet love has no religion.”
Talarico, looking to become the first Democrat to win statewide election in Texas in decades, has faced much scrutiny over his leftist version of Christianity and the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/at-james-talaricos-church-its-offensive-to-respect-gods-pronouns-but-abortions-ok">uber-woke</a> church he attends in Austin. That scrutiny comes as the legacy media speculated that Talarico could sway Christian voters who ordinarily vote Republican.
On the 2024 podcast, Talarico celebrated Bhojani’s election as the “true fruition of multi-racial, multicultural, multi-religious democracy” and “a threat to those who don&#8217;t believe in a pluralistic democracy” and “those who are pushing a sectarian exclusive Christian nationalist vision for our country.” He also said that “Texas is proud to be the home of more Muslim Americans than any other state in the union” and that advocating for the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms was “deeply unchristian.”
The creep of Islamic ideology into Texas has been a hot issue over the last few years, with Governor Greg Abbott <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/not-welcome-in-our-state-texas-governor-designates-radical-muslim-groups-as-foreign-terrorists">designating</a> the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a foreign terrorist organization in November 2025. Abbott accused CAIR of attempting to impose Sharia law on the Lone Star State. State officials have also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/texas-says-its-halted-construction-of-muslim-centered-epic-city-outside-dallas">moved</a> to challenge planned Islamic cities, keep schools promoting Sharia law from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/texas-bans-schools-tied-to-americas-adversaries-from-education-freedom-program">receiving</a> state dollars, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/one-of-americas-most-iconic-symbols-now-islamic-the-new-history-fight">pushed</a> backs on efforts to brand the Alamo as an “Islamic building.” 
Talarico, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-audio-thats-blowing-a-hole-in-talaricos-christian-persona">describes</a> himself as a “Christian who hates Christianity,” has said he believes God is “nonbinary” and that Jesus was a “radical feminist.” During a recent commencement speech at Paul Quinn College, Talarico appeared indifferent to whether people believed in God or attended church. 
“I&#8217;m not asking you to join an organized religion. I&#8217;m asking you to join something bigger than yourself. Find a spiritual practice that works for you, whether it&#8217;s meditation or fasting, gardening, or bird watching, whether it&#8217;s in a church, or a temple, or a book club, or a neighborhood group, find a community that can help you touch the ground of your own being.”

Democratic Senate Candidate Talarico Participates In Juneteenth March

James Talarico Says ‘Islamic Mystics’ Shaped His Faith ‘As Much’ As Christians

2026 Midterms

An LGBTQ activist is doubling down, blaming white men after a Muslim man with known Islamist associations rammed a vehicle into Berlin’s Pride festival on Saturday before attacking bystanders with a machete, leaving one person dead and several others injured.
A viral video circulating online shows an <a href="https://x.com/iAnonPatriot/status/2081229875361325146?s=20">unidentified pink-haired woman</a> lamenting not the terror attack, but the public&#8217;s reaction to it.
“I&#8217;m getting really, really sick of this. I&#8217;m getting really tired of having to repeat myself over and over again,” she said. “So the suspect is an Islamic extremist. That&#8217;s their suspect right now. That&#8217;s what I read. Okay, I&#8217;m not going to say anything about the rest of the Muslim population because of actions of this one person.”
Then, the leftist shifted her focus and hurled unfounded accusations towards another demographic: white Christian men.
“But what I can say is the people who were celebrating about this were all white men, young white men with crosses in their profiles because we&#8217;ve all seen it. We&#8217;ve all seen how you guys react towards gay people, and how you wish harm on them constantly,” she said. “I get a constant hate on my videos, especially about trans people. You&#8217;re not going to hide behind another scapegoat group and pretend that they&#8217;re actually the violent ones when it&#8217;s you.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
OMG. Liberal women are blaming “white men” for the Islamic extremist who ran over people at an LGBTQ parade in Berlin.
“You’re not going to scapegoat the Muslim community like they’re the violent ones, when it’s actually you (white men).”
Can’t make this sht up. 💀💀 <a href="https://t.co/0nbsKYgqys">pic.twitter.com/0nbsKYgqys</a>
— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) <a href="https://x.com/iAnonPatriot/status/2081229875361325146?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 26, 2026</a></blockquote>
The woman claimed white Christian men share the same ideology as Abdul Ballout, who police say deliberately drove a white van into Berlin’s Tiergarten Park around 10 p.m., killing one woman and injuring at least 29 others before attacking festival goers with what authorities said may have been a machete. The 21-year-old convicted terrorist had previously attempted to join the Islamic State in Syria and was released from German custody just months before Saturday’s attack, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/known-islamic-terrorist-on-the-run-unleashed-machete-attack-after-plowing-van-into-crowd?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Jacob+Wheeler&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Known+Islamic+Terrorist+On+The+Run+Unleashed+Machete+Attack+After+Plowing+Van+Into+Crowd">The Daily Wire reported</a>.
Migration levels in the European Union remain high, with approximately <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20260227-1">4.2 million</a> immigrants arriving in 2024 and total foreign-born residents reaching roughly 64 million. Spain and Germany recorded the largest absolute numbers of new arrivals, according to the <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Migration_to_and_from_the_EU">European Commission</a>.
“You hold the same exact beliefs that this man who did this attack did, and you&#8217;re trying to distance yourself from it. And you know why you&#8217;re trying to do that? Because you&#8217;re ashamed, and you should be,” she said in the video.
The passionate defense highlights the growing, confounding alliance between LGBT activist groups and Islamic ideology in Western countries.
“Ahmad attacks people at a Pride Parade because Islam. White liberal woman with aposematic hair coloring concludes white men are to blame. Suicidal Empathy is a fatal disease of the human spirit,” Gad Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist, <a href="https://x.com/GadSaad/status/2081359046775275807?s=20">said</a> on X.
“Queers for Palestine real quiet about this one,” Kangmin Lee, a conservative digital content creator, <a href="https://x.com/kangminlee/status/2081243091629904336?s=20">reacted</a> on social media.
Germany’s latest terror attack, which is said to have left a “horrific scene,” left Pride attendees reeling, including Ricarda Hofmann, a presenter at one of Europe’s largest LGBTQ celebrations.  “What happened today has changed something in me,” she <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DbPTNq6iDz4/?hl=en&amp;img_index=1">wrote on Instagram</a>.
On Sunday, organizers of the Berlin Pride festival vowed not to allow the Islamic terror attack to be used &#8220;for political ends.&#8221;
&#8220;People are trying to divide our society and set some people against others. As the CSD in Berlin, we will not allow this,&#8221; a representative for the group <a href="https://x.com/SkyNews/status/2081393662244646936?s=20">said</a> at a press conference.

NYC Pride

WATCH: Pink-Haired LGBT Activist Blames White Christian Men For Islamic Terror Attack

Berlin

Christian

Identity Politics

LGBT

LGBTQ

Radical Islam

terror attack

Terrorism

I started with a joke. Late one night I floated a theory in a comment section, mostly to see who I&#8217;d offend. The theory was this: Your slot in Christianity — Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed, charismatic, whatever — might have less to do with your theology than with your personality. Put another way, maybe your Myers-Briggs type predicts your pew.
So I built a grid. Sixteen types, sixteen streams. ENFJ, the one who thinks everyone can be reached, runs on mission and warmth. Methodist. INTJ loves Calvinism because the logic is airtight. Reformed, obviously — Jonathan Edwards with a study Bible and a spreadsheet. ENFP needs to feel it. Hands up, eyes closed, front row of the charismatic service. ISTJ wants order, duty, and a really good liturgy. Missouri Synod Lutheran. ESTP shows up to the megachurch, gets inspired, and is in the car before the closing song.
I called it half-formed and possibly very wrong and invited the whole comment section to tell me I&#8217;d lost it. But it wasn&#8217;t only a bit. It started with something I&#8217;d been chewing on for a while.
Why was everyone at my church so introverted? They liked me. They just seemed to want me to sit beside them in a class rather than actually talk, which, it turns out, is how introverts bond. I am not one. I have 4,000 names in my phone.
We have never trusted personality tests more than we do right now. By the test maker&#8217;s own count, <a href="https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/Test-Pages/Statistics">88% of Fortune 500 companies</a> have run their people through the Myers-Briggs. Around two million take it every year. McKinsey uses it. Federal agencies use it. Somewhere in your office, there&#8217;s a color-coded chart of everyone&#8217;s DiSC type taped to a wall.
The church went all in too. Walk into a mid-sized church, and the leadership team has done StrengthsFinder. The small groups are working through Enneagram books. Some church-planting networks now fold personality tests into how they screen the guys they send out. We took a nine-pointed diagram a mystic named Gurdjieff brought west a century ago and dropped it into the new members&#8217; class.
None of it is settled science. Take the same test twice, and you can come out a different letter. People admit this, cheerfully, and take it again anyway. We trust these things enough to hire with them, to build teams with them, and to plant churches with them.
And we never once get mad about them. No one has ever said &#8220;screw that guy for being an ISTJ.&#8221; Nobody storms out over a DiSC profile. Your StrengthsFinder top five has never started a fight in a parking lot. Your Enneagram number is allowed to just be your number.
Then we get to denomination, and the grace runs out. We&#8217;ll go to war over that one. Split churches. Write 4,000-word takedowns of men we&#8217;ve never met. &#8220;To hell with that guy,&#8221; as long as &#8220;that guy&#8221; is a Catholic. Or a Calvinist. Or a charismatic.
This made me wonder if we&#8217;ve been aiming at the wrong target the whole time, if the tag we&#8217;re ready to damn each other over is sitting right on top of the one we&#8217;d never say a word about. So I went looking to see if anyone had actually studied it. Turns out someone spent 30 years on it.
<h4>The professor who counted the pews</h4>
His name is Leslie Francis. He&#8217;s a professor at the University of Warwick, an ordained minister, and the author of a <a href="https://www.lincolnbishop.ac.uk/staff/revd-canon-professor-leslie-j-francis">small library of peer-reviewed studies</a> on personality and religion. He took thousands of pastors and churchgoers, ran them through psychological type measures, and published his findings in journals with names like Mental Health and Religion &amp; Culture. And the pattern he found is the one I was joking about.
Churchgoers are not a random sample of humanity. They lean hard toward one temperament. Sensing and Judging: the SJ. The dutiful, the orderly, the people who show up early and bring the casserole. Among American Catholic priests, <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11089-012-0483-7">more than a quarter test as ISTJ</a>. In the general male population, it&#8217;s about one in six. The people running to the altar are wired a certain way before they ever get there. And a lot of them are introverted, the ones who&#8217;d rather you take the seat beside them than start a conversation. My church wasn&#8217;t the weird one; I was.
<h4>Same church. Same theology. Different brains.</h4>
Here&#8217;s the part that stopped me. For his cleanest test, Francis used a big denomination that fits two very different churches under one roof. On one side, the sermon-first churches. Bible-centered, plain, practical. Give me the text and the application. On the other, the ritual-first churches. Ceremony, reverence, mystery, a service that carries you more than it explains things to you.
If you grew up mainline Protestant in the Midwest, you already know this split. It&#8217;s the contemporary service and the traditional service. These services are in the same church, sometimes the same building. The sermon-first room has the drum kit, the lyrics on a screen, and a pastor in untucked flannel. The ritual-first room has the organ, the hymnal, and the order of worship your grandma would recognize.
Then the researchers counted who sat in each. In the sermon-first churches, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-anglican-studies/article/abs/church-tradition-and-psychological-type-preferences-among-anglicans-in-england/5433914B1E79354AFFEE9CF5C6C32A64">83% tested as Sensing types</a>. Concrete, literal, and practical. In the ritual-first churches, that dropped to 69%. The room filled up with Intuitives. The people who reach for symbol, mystery, the thing behind the thing. Same denomination. Two personalities, sorted by whether the church has an organ or a fog machine.
And before you say it&#8217;s really just theology in disguise, they checked. In a follow-up study of more than a thousand pastors, the same split <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/jet/26/1/article-p22_2.xml?language=en">held up even after the researchers controlled</a> for how conservative and how charismatic each person was. Strip out the theology, and the personality gap is still there. Their own conclusion was that it tracks a preference for a style of worship, not a doctrine.
The organ people and the fog-machine people were sorting themselves by temperament. They just called it conviction.
<h4>It keeps going</h4>
Francis&#8217;s team has a profile for charismatics, too. Higher charismatic orientation lines up with <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/27691616.2026.2652951">Extraversion, Feeling, and Perceiving</a>. The exact wiring of the person who wants to feel the room, follow the moment, and isn&#8217;t watching the clock. My ENFP card, more or less, sitting in a peer-reviewed table.
Studies of brand-new churches, the kind meeting in a school gym or a movie theater, find they pull <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349323834_Psychological_type_and_psychological_temperament_differences_between_worshipers_at_new_churches_and_established_ones">more Intuitives, more Extraverts, and more Perceivers</a> than the established church down the road. The startup guy in the room, basically.
The science is cleaner than my original joke. It doesn&#8217;t say INTJ equals Presbyterian. It says the sensing-intuition axis maps onto ritual-versus-sermon. It says the dutiful SJ fills the traditional pew. It says the feelers chase the charismatic moment. And nearly all of it is British data on Protestants, so stretching it over a Texas megachurch is my leap, not theirs.
But the spine of the joke was right, and a British professor spent three decades proving it.
<h4>So what do you do with a theory like this</h4>
Here&#8217;s the uncomfortable part. If the stream you&#8217;re in is partly a function of how your brain came wired, a few of our favorite arguments look smaller.
The Bible-church guy who thinks the liturgy crowd is soft is, in part, a Sensing preference sneering at an Intuitive one. The traditionalist who finds the megachurch shallow is, in part, an Intuitive wrinkling his nose at a room full of Sensors having a perfectly nice time. We dress our temperament up as discernment, and we call our comfort zone orthodoxy.
None of this makes anybody&#8217;s theology wrong. Calvinism isn&#8217;t false because it flatters the INTJ. Beauty isn&#8217;t a gimmick because Intuitives can&#8217;t live without it. Whether a thing is true and who&#8217;s drawn to it are two different questions, and the studies don&#8217;t touch the first one.
But it brings me back to where I started. We forgive each other every other label. The Enneagram four gets to be dramatic. The ISTJ gets to color-code the church directory, and we call it a spiritual gift. Denomination is the one tag we damn each other over, and it might be the one sitting closest to the wiring we already agreed to forgive.
I&#8217;m not asking anyone to stop believing their tradition is the right one. I believe mine is. But it&#8217;s worth holding the possibility that the believer across town isn&#8217;t your enemy or your project. He might just be a different type, hearing the same gospel in a different key, sitting in the pew that fits how he was built.
***
Seth Tower Hurd writes The Five, a twice-weekly newsletter covering the news and culture stories that don&#8217;t make the front page. Find it at <a href="http://sethtowerhurd.substack.com">sethtowerhurd.substack.com</a>.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Gemini_Generated_Image_n4wjlwn4wjlwn4wj

The Hidden Force Shaping Where Christians Worship

Upstream

Alexandra Ashcroft amassed nearly 1 million fans of her tarot card readings and astrology practices on TikTok. But after she found Christianity, she abruptly shut down her account, sacrificing viral status for salvation.
Formerly known as Alex Reads Tarot on TikTok, Ashcroft was so popular she was name-dropped in “<a href="https://youtu.be/29UawRk5nDc?list=RD29UawRk5nDc&amp;t=146">Love Me Different</a>” by Paramore singer Hayley Williams: Endless scrolling up ‘til 3, Alex Reads Tarot reads the sh*t out of me. Williams later <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DaHCWSRRyx4/">amended</a> the line in a live performance as: Alex Reads Tarot, oh my God, R.I.P.
Ashcroft’s departure was a shock to her community. She broke the news of her spiritual awakening in a post. “I noticed that as my faith grew, I began to find myself wrestling with questions that I couldn’t quite ignore,” <a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/entertainment/influencers/tiktok-tarot-reader-alex-reads-tarot-loses-thousands-of-followers-after-revealing-shes-following-jesus-c-22501066">she said</a>.
“Over the past nearly a year, my faith has become the most important thing in my life. Through that journey, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting, questioning, praying, and trying to understand my faith more and where God was starting to lead me. This hasn’t been an overnight change. This has been a gradual journey that has slowly changed the way that I see my life and my faith.”
<blockquote class="tiktok-embed" style="max-width: 605px; min-width: 325px;" cite="https://www.tiktok.com/@whatstrending/video/7655111842905230606" data-video-id="7655111842905230606">
<section><a title="@whatstrending" href="https://www.tiktok.com/@whatstrending?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@whatstrending</a> The internet is completely losing it over Alex Reads Tarot (@yourfiresignbestie)   She just wiped her entire platform, rebranded to @alexintheordinary, and announced she is completely leaving the spiritual space because &#8220;Jesus Christ has saved my life.&#8221;   Now, the entire community is in a total frenzy.   Major creators are calling her out, demanding she delete her account entirely instead of keeping a massive following she built off tarot readings to launch her new religious journey.👀   Let’s settle this in the comments: Is it completely gross to pivot an entire following instead of starting over from scratch? Or should people just let her live? . . . <a title="alexreadstarot" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/alexreadstarot?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#alexreadstarot</a> <a title="alexintheordinary" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/alexintheordinary?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#alexintheordinary</a> <a title="yourfiresignbestie" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/yourfiresignbestie?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#yourfiresignbestie</a> <a title="witchtok" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/witchtok?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#witchtok</a> <a title="whatstrending" href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/whatstrending?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">#whatstrending</a> <a title="♬ original sound - WhatsTrending" href="https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7655111967031479054?refer=embed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">♬ original sound &#8211; WhatsTrending</a></section>
</blockquote>
<script async src="https://www.tiktok.com/embed.js"></script>
She then vowed to stop posting occult-related content, immediately retooling her social media handles to read “Alex The Ordinary” and “<a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@alexcourageinchrist">Alex Courage In Christ,</a>” where wands, cups, and swords were replaced by personal testimony and Bible passages. It was a total 180 from the goldmine that made her famous. She lost <a href="https://www.facebook.com/christianvideo.kenosis/posts/popular-tiktok-creator-alex-reads-tarot-lost-over-30000-followers-in-48-hours-af/1981556885974121/">30,000 followers</a> in a matter of hours.
“I don’t know exactly what comes next for me,” <a href="https://cbn.com/news/world/ex-psychics-advice-tiktok-star-alex-reads-tarot-who-renounced-occult-jesus">Ashcroft noted</a>, “But what I do know is that Jesus Christ has saved my life, and I can no longer ignore that reality.”
Comments on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@whatstrending/video/7655111842905230606">her video</a> were brutal, with one reading, “To be honest, I never got a good vibe from her,” and another stating, “Immediately unfollowed and blocked her.”
On Reddit, a debate erupted over whether tarot was even considered to be a sin, with some claiming that divination, playing cards, and Christ can coexist. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/tiktokgossip/comments/1uf8tac/comment/otujwuk/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">Someone</a> suggested, “It truly seems like she is in full blown religious psychosis. It&#8217;s extreme and really sad to see.” <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/tiktokgossip/comments/1uf8tac/comment/ott7luk/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">Another claimed</a>, “She’s fallen down the alt right pipeline.” On another thread, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/TarotReadersOfReddit/comments/1ueo848/comment/oto345m/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web3x&amp;utm_name=web3xcss&amp;utm_term=1&amp;utm_content=share_button">one user</a> warned, “A sudden pivot to Christianity is never a good sign.”
But believers welcomed Ashcroft’s evolution with open arms. Host of the “Relatable” podcast <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=26368829009460299">Allie Beth Stuckey</a> posted, “Please pray for Alex … Pray that the Holy Spirit would fill her with the peace that passes all understanding, and would give her the strength that’s needed … People who are making money from bad, sinful content, it’s so hard for them to give that up.”
On <a href="https://www.facebook.com/christianvideo.kenosis/posts/popular-tiktok-creator-alex-reads-tarot-lost-over-30000-followers-in-48-hours-af/1981556885974121/">Facebook</a>, a fan shared, “She lost 30,000 haters and gained the realest love there is.”
“I used to do tarot and my crystals and deity, but guess what, God has brought me things that stuff never could,” another <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@whatstrending/video/7655111842905230606">TikToker</a> added. “He’s taught me more than that stuff could. Now my blessings are 10x more and I’m even more at peace. Don’t knock it till you try it. God is good.”
While speculation continues to circulate as to the real reason behind her change of heart, some who share a similar journey to Ashcroft’s are opening up about walking away from dark spiritual practices. 
One former psychic, Jenn Nizza, offered her perspective on Ashcroft’s transformation. Now a born-again believer, she recalled how mystic cards were for her a “gateway into the demonic,” first gaining a foothold when she was just a curious 13-year-old. 
“When Jesus first called me, first started to draw me, I was a psychic medium,” she told the <a href="https://cbn.com/news/world/ex-psychics-advice-tiktok-star-alex-reads-tarot-who-renounced-occult-jesus">Christian Broadcasting Network</a>. “When Jesus first started drawing me out of that darkness, it was not an instant deliverance; it was a process. At the end of that 10-month journey … Jesus fully set me free and I became born again. [I] accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and believed in the Gospel.”
But Nizza knows the straight-and-narrow isn’t always easy to walk. “Even though the enemy will come at you, the enemy comes at Christians as a whole, the church as a whole, you have the victory in Christ,” she noted in support of Ashcroft’s next chapter. “Never look back, because what you’ve put behind yourself could never have measured up to Jesus. Nothing is better than Jesus. Always reach out when you need support and help.”
While Ashcroft continues to battle criticism in the weeks following her initial announcement, she seems to be restructuring her following by leveraging biblical truths — at least, it seems, what she understands of them so far.
“I cannot say sorry for finding Jesus,” she posted to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@alexcourageinchrist/photo/7664984745859730710">TikTok</a>. “He opened my eyes to the reality of the spiritual world.”
“When I speak out against witchcraft now, it doesn’t come from a place of malice or forgetting where I came from. It comes from a place of deep love,” she wrote. “When you encounter the ultimate truth, you naturally want the people you care about to see it, too. I accept that this truth causes friction, but my silence would mean I don’t care about your soul, and I care too much to stay quiet.” 
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Gemini_Generated_Image_xogtszxogtszxogt

Viral TikTok Star Explains Why She Turned Against Witchcraft

alex reads tarot

A frightening monster in theaters this summer doesn’t hide in a closet (but it just might force you to). It takes the form of the person you love most and comes for you precisely because you love him.
That’s the conceit behind &#8220;Leviticus,&#8221; the Australian horror film that has arrived in American cinemas to mostly critical praise. It’s set in a remote, Christian town so fundamentalist that it smacks of caricature. When a romantic relationship between two young men is discovered, the community subjects them to a deliverance ritual meant to burn their desire away. But the rite instead summons a presence that appears to each boy as the other, hunting him whenever his longing stirs. 
Cleverly, “Leviticus” depicts an inverse exorcism: Conversion therapy is not shown as removing a harmful spirit, but as introducing a spirit of fear and shame that results in death. Making the indictment broader than conversion therapy, director Adrian Chiarella says the monster stands for homophobia “in all its shades.” Considering the film’s title, Chiarella indicts the entire biblical ethic that sex belongs only within the marriage of one man and one woman as deadly. 
Ironically, the film’s caricature is self-indicting as it mirrors overgeneralizations happening in law and culture. This past March, in Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled eight to one, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, that Colorado had overreached by forbidding a licensed counselor from even talking with willing clients about unwanted same-sex attraction.
By lumping such counseling with real past abuses — like electric shock therapy, lobotomies, and fringe deliverance rituals — Colorado’s law likely violates the First Amendment. Speech, Justice Neil Gorsuch reasoned, does not forfeit constitutional protection simply because someone calls it therapy. The court did not bless coercion; it directed the lower courts to scrutinize whether Colorado’s ban could inhibit such speech. The point is that overgeneralization, while sometimes rhetorically powerful, ultimately crumbles when thoughtfully critiqued.
Past invasive and coercive practices, whether secular or religious in motivation, are wrong and harmful. Where Christians have traded the gospel of hope and wholeness for fear, shame, and control, they have inflicted real wounds that no theological cleverness can explain away. “Leviticus” camps there but never asks whether such practices are counterfeits of biblical ethics.
In a pivotal scene, the religiously zealous mother of one of the young men tells him, “We need fear. It’s how we survive.” True, fear is a God-given survival mechanism, but enthroning it is un-Christian because it reduces human beings to instinct-driven animals. The gospel message instead enthrones love. “Perfect love casts out fear,” the apostle John writes, “because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18). God’s love, displayed at the cross, where Jesus bears the punishment we deserve, removes fear and frees us to love God and pursue holiness out of gratitude. Chiarella thinks he has exposed Christianity’s bigotry. But he’s actually exposed a distorted view of both human nature and the biblical sexual ethic.
The horror in “Leviticus” works only if we grant that a person is defined simply by his desires, so that fencing off a desire erases the self. Straining to condemn homophobia in all its shades, the film flattens the very people it means to defend into one-dimensional beings. The biblical account moves the other way, insisting that human beings bear God’s image and that our longings, however powerful, never amount to the whole of who and what we are.
Scripture calls us to be sexually moral, indicting heterosexual excesses as seriously as any other. Writer Matt Moore understands this far better than Chiarella. He has spoken openly for years about his own same-sex attraction and about his stumbles along the way.
In younger years, Moore writes, he “wasn’t worried about being sexually moral.” He simply wanted to be “normal.” What he found was not an easy fix but something sturdier: honesty about his struggle, a forgiving community, and the same winding and uneven path of moral and spiritual formation every one of us is walking. None of that is cinematic, of course. It is slow and messy. It is the unglamorous work of a life being remade, which is the truest story the movies rarely tell.
Consider, too, the figure the film enlists to embody Christian belief: a shadowy “Deliverance Healer” muttering incantations over a crackpot rite. By calling the film “Leviticus,” Chiarella suggests that such a practice is biblical. Yet no church most Christians would recognize runs on shamans and spells. Chiarella’s straw man is actually a backhanded compliment. Genuine Christianity is too sturdy to attack head-on, so the film substitutes a flimsier version the audience can safely reject. What’s kept off screen is the true meaning behind what Leviticus and other parts of the Bible actually teach about sexuality. 
The Bible’s sexual ethic is not a set of dusty prohibitions from men who found homosexuality icky and then baptized their bigotry. It is not arbitrarily prohibitive; it is protective. Every human being is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27), and sex between a man and a woman is the natural means by which sacred human life is created. Because the product of sexuality is sacred, the process must be sacred too. Without boundaries, the process becomes common, even trivial. As pornography proliferates, humans become objects of gratification. Biblical boundaries, therefore, make sense not only naturally, but morally.
Biblical marriage between one man and one woman is a portrait of unity in diversity in that a man and a woman, unmistakably distinct, become one. The Hebrew carries the idea beautifully. A married man and woman “become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). The word one is “echad,” which means “unified.” It’s the same word Israel is commanded to confess over God: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one (echad)” (Deuteronomy 6:4).
From a Christian perspective, the unity of diversity between husband and wife echoes the triune God’s unity of diversity. And that echo beckons us to a destination. The New Testament closes with a wedding in which God binds himself forever to a wayward humanity he has cleansed and made lovely, the pattern every human marriage quietly rehearses (Revelation 19). Same-sex sexuality loses that male-female echo by substituting the sacred diversity for uniformity. To protect us from that, the Bible shelters sex under holy wings. 
By the critics’ own accounts, “Leviticus” gives its characters no resolution; it ends in unbroken dread. Christianity proclaims the opposite: God’s gracious love protects human sacredness, removes the dread of condemnation, and calls us toward sexual wholeness. Like the inverse exorcism at its center, “Leviticus” gives us the photo negative of true Christianity. We’re better off with the authentic picture.
***
Abdu Murray is a speaker, author, and attorney who specializes in addressing issues where religious faith and emerging cultural trends intersect. Since founding <a href="https://embracethetruth.org/">Embrace the Truth</a> in 2004, he has spent decades analyzing how the major religious and non-religious thought traditions have attempted to address cultural issues.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Film Independent Presents “Leviticus”

The Horror Movie That Takes Aim At Christianity

Movies

Nearly half of Generation Z says one political factor is making them less likely to attend church, according to newly released survey data. 
The research found that 48% of Gen Z adults say Christian support for President Donald Trump makes them less likely to attend church. 
Political scientist and religion researcher Ryan Burge highlighted <a href="https://religionnews.com/2026/07/20/half-of-gen-z-says-trump-support-keeps-them-out-of-church/">newly released data</a> from the Billy Graham Center Research Institute examining barriers that keep young adults from embracing Christianity. The survey included 2,365 Gen Z adults ages 18 to 28 and was led by Rick Richardson of Wheaton College. 
Overall, nearly one in five respondents said they &#8220;strongly agreed&#8221; that Christians&#8217; support for the president discourages them from going to church services. 
“So, it’s fair to say young adults are pretty evenly divided on this idea,” Burge and Richardson wrote. “But these results are confounded by a few variables: Younger adults tend to be more left-leaning in their politics, and a significant share of Gen Z claims no religious affiliation, which means a lot of these respondents wouldn’t be going to church much anyway.”
Digging deeper, the survey found a sharp partisan divide. Among Gen Z Democrats, 67% said they &#8220;strongly,&#8221; &#8220;somewhat,&#8221; or &#8220;lightly&#8221; agreed that Christian support for Trump makes them less likely to attend church. Fewer than half of independents shared that view. Republicans, however, broke sharply in the opposite direction, with 74% saying they disagreed. 
About 72% of Gen Z atheists said Christians’ support of Trump has made them less likely to attend a church service. For agnostics, the figure fell slightly lower to 65%. Gen Z Protestants were least likely to feel that way, according to the report, which was highlighted by Religion News Service. 
“But even among Gen Z Christians, there’s a significant share who said Trump made it harder for them to attend at all: 44% of those who identified as a generic Christian, 42% of Catholics and 30% of Protestant young adults said they were turned off by the Christian-Trump alliance,” the report stated. 
White evangelicals have played a pivotal role in Trump&#8217;s electoral success, forming the backbone of the Republican coalition and backing him by overwhelming margins in all three of his presidential campaigns. In 2024, Trump captured 82% of the white evangelical vote, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2024/exit-polls/national-results/general/president/0">according to exit polls</a>. Catholics also broke decisively in his favor, with nearly 60% backing Trump after <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/exit-polls/president/national-results">narrowly supporting Joe Biden</a> in 2020.
At the same time, other recent surveys suggest religion may be gaining traction among some segments of younger Americans. 
About 42% of men aged 18 to 29 now say religion is “very important” in their lives, up from 28% two years earlier, according to a <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/708410/young-men-religious-young-women.aspx">recent survey from Gallup</a>. The 14-point jump was the largest recorded among any demographic group in the poll’s recent history and returned young men to levels of religiosity not seen since the early 2000s.
Vice President JD Vance has <a href="https://x.com/VP/status/2056135528752234892?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2056135528752234892%7Ctwgr%5Ec3aaf5b9e9b1bcf5d074b80023045f4e297c71f6%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Fthousands-of-christians-fill-national-mall-for-prayer-service-celebrating-americas-faith-heritage">hailed the numbers</a> as a rebuke to the expert class that has long predicted the demise of American Christianity. 
“Defying predictions, the experts said that religion and faith were dying. Today, a wave of young Americans is returning to the pews, and we know that they’re looking for meaning, for authority, for direction, and of course, for closeness with God,” Vance said. “That should give all of us hope for our future together.” 
<a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/05/14/how-americans-feel-about-religions-influence-in-government-and-public-life/?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">A Pew Research poll</a> in May showed 37% of U.S. adults believe religion is gaining influence in America, the highest share since 2002.

Worshipper praying on a church

Half Of Gen Z Say A Political Factor Is Keeping Them Out Of Church

Gen Z

A Texas police department is in damage control after it threatened to censor the speech of Christian street evangelists during a pride festival, following a heated <a href="https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2074971464487284897?s=20">confrontation</a> that has drawn the attention of the federal government.
On June 27, Sarah Stogner, a longtime officer with the Fort Worth Police Department, went viral after threatening street preachers Richard Penkoski and David Grisham with disorderly conduct citations over their religious speech at Trinity Pride Fest, according to <a href="https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/tarrant-county/fort-worth-police-department-pride-fest-viral-video-david-grisham-officer-sarah-stogner-texas/287-c8928e80-44d7-4af0-ae77-0890cb28acf0">WFAA</a>.  
Leading up to the face-to-face clash, <a href="https://dallasexpress.com/tarrant/preachers-claim-police-warned-offensive-speech-about-transgender-women-could-lead-to-citation-at-pride-festival/">The Dallas Express</a> reported that the preachers were blocked from public streets and sidewalks surrounding the pride event.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Female Texas Cop THREATENS to ticket a retired officer and Christian street preacher for &#8220;offensive speech&#8221;
Cop: &#8220;If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem&#8230;&#8221;
Man: &#8220;You&#8217;re going to ticket us for &#8216;offensive&#8217; speech?&#8221;
Cop: &#8220;Yes, I am&#8221;
This cop is blatantly… <a href="https://t.co/qX0UjnRBSL">pic.twitter.com/qX0UjnRBSL</a>
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) <a href="https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/2074971464487284897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 8, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“That ordinance means music, not talking. If someone is offended by your talking, then we have a problem,” Officer Stogner told the preachers.
One of the evangelists fired back: “That is a constitutional violation of our rights. I don’t care if they’re offended.” 
Stogner doubled down: “Okay, then I’ll write you the ticket, then we’ll go from there.” 
&#8220;You&#8217;re going to ticket us for &#8216;offensive&#8217; speech?&#8221; the other preacher, who was recording the exchange, said.
&#8220;Yes, I am,&#8221; Stogner replied. 
<a href="https://x.com/Carlos__Turcios/status/2071306445115588915?s=20">In a separate exchange</a>, another Fort Worth police officer warned the street preachers that they could face legal consequences if their Christian message offended others. The officers later issued the evangelists one citation of disorderly conduct related to loud noise from a bullhorn, according to <a href="https://dallasexpress.com/tarrant/preachers-claim-police-warned-offensive-speech-about-transgender-women-could-lead-to-citation-at-pride-festival/">The Dallas Express</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨FORT WORTH, TEXAS🚨Police told street preachers at the FW all-ages Pride event they could be cited if someone was offended by their speech. Asked if calling a transgender woman “sir” was citable, an officer replied, “It’s a gray area.”
Follow:<a href="https://x.com/Carlos__Turcios?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Carlos__Turcios</a><a href="https://x.com/DallasExpress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@DallasExpress</a> <a href="https://t.co/DSAtqZNmW1">pic.twitter.com/DSAtqZNmW1</a>
— Carlos Turcios (@Carlos__Turcios) <a href="https://x.com/Carlos__Turcios/status/2071306445115588915?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 28, 2026</a></blockquote>
The tense exchanges racked up tens of millions of views on X, fueling debate over free speech and religious liberty protections in one of the nation&#8217;s most conservative states.
“In Texas? Wow,” Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2071608690612810014?s=20">wrote</a> on X. 
After the Department of Justice <a href="https://x.com/AAGDhillon/status/2075532674706321783?s=20">initiated a review of the incident</a>, the Fort Worth police chief acknowledged his officers had mishandled the incident.
&#8220;The biggest issue that I have is just the conversations and the way that we were describing what is lawful, what is not lawful,&#8221; Police Chief Eddie Garcia told <a href="https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/tarrant-county/fort-worth-police-department-pride-fest-viral-video-david-grisham-officer-sarah-stogner-texas/287-c8928e80-44d7-4af0-ae77-0890cb28acf0">WFAA</a> in an interview. &#8220;When we&#8217;re right, we&#8217;re right, and when we&#8217;re wrong, we&#8217;re wrong.&#8221; 
&#8220;There certainly was a better way to have that communication, and we were wrong in the manner in which we communicated that. Certainly, we&#8217;re going to take accountability for it,&#8221; he added. 
Garcia added that accountability will include renewed training on the First Amendment. 
&#8220;We just trained up our command staff again with refresher courses. We&#8217;re going to be training our sergeants. We&#8217;re going to be training our officers,&#8221; Garcia said.
The proposed measures didn’t cut it for the street preachers, who argued the damage is already done. 
&#8220;They have already violated their rights,&#8221; Attorney CJ Grisham, who represents David Grisham (no relation),  said, disputing the noise ordinance citation. &#8220;It doesn&#8217;t meet the noise violation ordinance in any way whatsoever. So, just on its face, the charge is baseless,&#8221; he told WFAA.
Grisham alleged the viral exchange represents a troubling pattern with law enforcement, taking direct aim at Officer Stogner. 
&#8220;We have her on video doing this last year at the Pride festival. So, this is a pattern of abuse by Officer Stogner. But it&#8217;s not just her. Look at how many other officers were standing around,&#8221; Grisham said. 
It’s unclear whether Stogner or any of the officers involved will face any disciplinary action for the incident. 
On Tuesday, Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, demanded more information from the police department to determine whether “further formal action” was necessary. 
“Government actors cannot discriminate against viewpoints or restrict peaceful free speech just because it may be offensive to some,” Dhillon <a href="https://x.com/AAGDhillon/status/2077077136347636220?s=20">said</a>. “Under this administration, the Civil Rights Division will defend free speech, as protected by the Constitution.”

Sydney Makes History As 50,000 People March For Global Equality In Pride March

Texas Police Forced Walk Back Threats Against Christian Street Preachers At Pride Festival

Menu