The Texas State Board of Education faces pressure from leftist activists and conservative lawmakers as it meets Friday to consider a push to place more positive references to Islam in the state’s history curriculum. 
Officials in the Lone Star State are reviewing social studies standards amid a push from Muslim advocacy groups, which claim current proposals are “exclusionary and Islamophobic.” At the same time, congressional Republicans are urging the board not to give Islam a more prominent role, particularly in response to lobbying from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. 
“It has come to our attention that an extensive lobbying effort is underway to have the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) alter curriculum standards in a way that would diminish American and Texas history,” Rep. Brandon Gill and other Texas Republicans wrote in a Friday <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/1024602690/Rep-Gill-Letter-to-Texas-SBOE?_gl=1*1gq3kdd*_up*MQ..*_ga*NjgyMzMyMjg3LjE3NzU4MzYzNTA.*_ga_Z4ZC50DED6*czE3NzU4MzYzNDkkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzU4MzYzNTMkajU2JGwwJGgw*_ga_8KZ8BV0P5W*czE3NzU4MzYzNDkkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzU4MzYzNTMkajU2JGwwJGgw">letter</a> first obtained by The Daily Wire. The letter went on to describe CAIR as a &#8220;transnational criminal organization.”
CAIR has denied any connection to terrorism and has sued the state over the designation. Members of CAIR-Texas have <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/texas-education-officials-pushed-delay-175944847.html?guccounter=1">attended</a> recent board meetings to voice their opposition to how Muslims are currently represented in state curriculum. 
Republicans also pushed back on claims they say are being introduced into the standards.
“The petitioners’ efforts claim that Islam influenced our founding, culture, and way of life,&#8221; the letter states. &#8220;For instance, the (board) recently responded to public testimony asserting that the Alamo is an Islamic building.” 
&#8220;Such claims are intended to introduce sensationalized or false history into our curriculum, and it is not the (board&#8217;s) responsibility to accommodate flagrant lies or cultivate spurious claims of their belonging.”
The fight over the standards has been raging for weeks, with local Muslim groups organizing in support of changes. In March, an Islamic center in Houston <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DWRUs5Bjk-U/">hosted</a> a discussion on “challenging Islamophobia in Texas schools.” 
Gill said that Islam played no major role in the founding or development of Texas and warned against what he described as &#8220;revisionist history.&#8221;
“Students should be taught age-appropriate facts and hard-truths, even when it is uncomfortable. Islam did not play a role in the founding or development of Texas, and to say so would be an outright lie,” he wrote.
The other lawmakers who signed onto the letter include Reps. Chip Roy, Wesley Hunt, Michael Cloud, Nathaniel Moran, Ronny Jackson, Lance Gooden, Brian Babin, Keith Self, and Pat Fallon.

MixCollage-10-Apr-2026-09-46-AM-265

One Of America’s Most Iconic Symbols — Now ‘Islamic’? The New History Fight

Brandon Gill

CAIR

History

Islam

Texas

Students in New Mexico will learn more about the January 6 Capitol riot and climate change than the moon landing.
New Mexico high school <a href="https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/High-School-United-States-History.docx.pdf">history guidelines</a> contain over a dozen references to the January 6 riot while only mentioning the moon landing once. The guidelines, part of the New Mexico Instructional Scope for History, are largely focused on racial and gender grievances and encourage teachers to promote Democratic politicians and lament how the richest men in the United States today are “mostly white.&#8221;
“The freedom of those in America and Ukraine after the 2021 Capital [sic] Insurrection and Russian invasion of Ukraine are two events that reveal the rights and safety of women, immigrants, children, and the LGBTQ community are at risk,” an example discussion in the guidance reads. 
Teachers are also instructed to show footage from NBC showing “Americans armed with weapons and military-type gear storming the Capital, breaking glass, defacing sacred art, political statues and podiums on and in our Capital [sic] building in Washington, DC.”
The purpose of the footage is to “disprove some of the beliefs that it was not violent or a threat to our democracy.”
The repeated misspelling of &#8220;Capitol&#8221; in the January 6 section is one of several errors in the guidelines. In another section, teachers are encouraged to list Democratic politicians from racial and sexual minorities, including &#8220;VP [Kamala] Harris, Transportation Secretary [Pete] Buttigieg, Interior Secretary [Deb] Haaland and Supreme Court Justice Brown.&#8221;
The last example appears to be a reference to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Rhyen Staley, the director of research at Defending Education, said the documents were an example of politics being pushed in the classroom.
“These state level documents expose a troubling pattern by education activists of pushing leftwing political and social biases into K-12 classrooms as established ‘facts,'&#8221; Staley told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Students and families deserve an education that values a politically neutral approach to weighing different sides of issues, not political indoctrination.&#8221;
The <a href="https://web.ped.nm.gov/bureaus/curriculum-instruction/new-mexico-instructional-scope-nmis/">New Mexico Instructional Scope</a> is an “educator influenced tool designed to provide guidance and support to assure that all students in New Mexico have access to content at their grade level combined with the use of impactful instructional strategies.”
The history guidelines reveal a heavy focus on left-wing activism and grievance politics.
Teachers are suggested to ask students why the United States still struggles “with the idea of racial equality,” discuss the pros and cons of reparations, and assess “who is responsible for the socio-economic disparities in early U.S. immigration to today.”
In contrast, the moon landing and the space race are each only mentioned once
The guidance also suggests that states like Georgia and Florida have implemented laws that are similar to voting restrictions on black people during the Jim Crow era. Teachers are recommended to provide “Current suppression of voting rights” in examples of Georgia, Texas, Florida, and New Mexico.
“How does the current suppression of voting rights compare to the suppression of voting rights during and immediately following the Reconstruction Era?” a question for students said. 
Another suggested discussion is whether there are “more opportunities for minorities today in the business realm.”
“Absolutely there is more opportunity today than there was back then, but that doesn’t mean that things are totally equal. Even though there are lots of Black owned businesses, the richest men in the country are still mostly white,” a suggested student response to the question said. 
Other guidance included in the history materials is for students to be encouraged to “join a program already in existence and help spread their message to prevent global warming” or write to their representative about climate change. 
Students should be able to define LGBTQ (“Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, queer or questioning”) and PFLAG (“Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays”).
“How do historically underrepresented groups such as women of color, LGBTQ and Indigenous people offerse [SIC] diverse views of society,” teachers should ask students, according to the guidance. 
Similar politically focused guidance is found in materials for instruction on <a href="https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/High-School-World-History-NMIS.pdf">world history</a> and <a href="https://web.ped.nm.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/High-School-Ethnic-Cultural-and-Identity.docx.pdf">ethnic studies</a>. 
In the guidance for world history, “equity” is defined as the principle “that all citizens have had different opportunities and experiences, and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.”
The world history guidance also contains guidance recommending that students “create their own posters that show their actions on climate change” after watching a climate alarmist documentary from former Vice President Al Gore. 
The ethnic, cultural, and identity guidance discusses left-wing groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Black Lives Matter, and the Human Rights Campaign.  
“How do advocacy at the local, community, national and global levels work together to achieve change over time?” a supporting question asks. 
It also introduces students to the concept of “gender identity,” which it defines as ”identification with, or sense of belonging to, a particular group based on gender, such as cisgender, transgender, agender, bigender.”
New Mexico, a solidly blue state, has previously come <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-mexico-government-survey-asks-middle-and-high-school-students-if-they-are-two-spirit?author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=New+Mexico+Government+Survey+Asks+Middle+And+High+School+Students+If+They+Are+‘Two-Spirit’">under scrutiny</a> for asking high school students whether they identify as “two-spirit” or transgender through its Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey.

Trump Supporters Hold “Stop The Steal” Rally In DC Amid Ratification Of Presidential Election

Students In Blue State Spend More Time Learning About January 6 Than The Moon Landing

Capitol Riot

Education

January 6

New Mexico

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.
***
This summer marks the 250th birthday of the United States. In preparation for this historic moment, over 1,500 prominent Catholics from across America will soon gather in prayer for the country’s future at the 21st annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
Their witness testifies to the endurance of American Catholics over the past two and a half centuries, whose commitment to prayer — and refusal to be cowed by adversity or hostility — helped establish enduring concepts of human dignity, freedom, and excellence that powerfully shaped the world. Though secular forces seek to undermine Catholic beliefs and influence today, the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast annually reminds our adversaries that Catholicism has historically prevailed against great evil, and accomplished miracles, thanks to the prayers of those who refused to give up on their country or their faith.
Catholicism played a role in offering peace and hope to settlers from the earliest days of the American founding. There is some evidence that <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAc3addc5d-8e37-a0b8-f5c1-bac159165378" title="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/was-squanto-catholic-what-we-know-about-this-hero-of-the-first-thanksgiving?redirectedfrom=cna" href="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/was-squanto-catholic-what-we-know-about-this-hero-of-the-first-thanksgiving?redirectedfrom=cna" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/was-squanto-catholic-what-we-know-about-this-hero-of-the-first-thanksgiving?redirectedfrom%3Dcna&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw15CNWv2xXBRslxjvpULwI-">Squanto</a>, a Native American translator without whom the earliest pilgrims wouldn’t have survived their first winter in New England, was Catholic.
Many of the Catholics joining Christian pilgrims for a better life in the new world were welcomed with pervasive anti-Catholic skepticism and legislation in the early American colonies. Undeterred, Catholics braved harsh conditions and uncertain futures — even death — to bring faith and civilization to America. The sacrifice of Catholic Jesuits such as Saint Isaac Jogues, who was brutally tortured and martyred by the Mohawks, as well as the missions, schools, and hospitals founded by the Jesuits, Spanish Franciscans, and other Catholics, played a pivotal role in shaping and sustaining the nation for generations to come. Their impact is evident in the <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAe656ce6a-c7dd-da6d-b91f-d006c0388c4a" title="https://www.churchpop.com/the-hardcore-catholic-saints-behind-american-cities-names/" href="https://www.churchpop.com/the-hardcore-catholic-saints-behind-american-cities-names/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.churchpop.com/the-hardcore-catholic-saints-behind-american-cities-names/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1kRZH6aZdY6ir9Ky6jtd9e">number of major cities</a> that were named after Catholic saints.
Catholics also helped to establish and protect core American freedoms. Cecil Calvert, the Catholic 2nd Baron of Baltimore, was a primary driver behind the 1649 “Act of Toleration,” which made Maryland the first colony to pass religious freedom laws and later influenced the drafting of the First Amendment.
Charles Carroll made history as the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, which drew upon concepts of the natural law originally derived from the logic of the Catholic Saint Thomas Aquinas. Carroll&#8217;s signature on that globe-shattering document was significant since most of the colonies didn’t allow Catholics to hold office at the time. Following the Revolutionary War, won partially thanks to the aid of Catholic King Louis XVI of France, <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA869e99c8-aa6b-f169-9782-d03d15b07f8f" title="https://catholicvote.org/7-surprising-facts-about-the-american-founding/#:~:text=Without%20hesitation%20they%20threw%20in,to%20be%20suffered%20or%20excused." href="https://catholicvote.org/7-surprising-facts-about-the-american-founding/#:~:text=Without%20hesitation%20they%20threw%20in,to%20be%20suffered%20or%20excused." target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://catholicvote.org/7-surprising-facts-about-the-american-founding/%23:~:text%3DWithout%2520hesitation%2520they%2520threw%2520in,to%2520be%2520suffered%2520or%2520excused.&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0UkcNwrIZRZC79cqJgrD8D">two of Carroll’s relatives</a> became the first Catholic members of Congress. In 1961, John F. Kennedy would make history as the first Catholic to become the president of the United States.
Over the 17th to 21st centuries, Catholics continued shaping America through religious, philanthropic, and educational endeavors. To this day, the Catholic impact on <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAad7812b5-6a61-c55c-fef5-60b5bd6e662c" title="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21452027/" href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21452027/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21452027/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3J7QaB7hrekaN6agG-ITeC">American health systems</a> and philanthropy can&#8217;t be overstated. Heroic figures such as Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton and Saint Mother Frances Cabrini, like thousands of other religious sisters, braved anti-Catholic sentiment and horrible conditions to create dozens of schools, orphanages, and hospitals.
Three major medical institutions today, the Columbus Hospitals in New York and Chicago and the Columbus Sanitarium in Seattle, were founded by Cabrini, while the U.S. Catholic <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA427d8dba-b12b-776a-ed38-42e6a9cd86e0" title="https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/a-patron-saint-for-catholic-schools/" href="https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/a-patron-saint-for-catholic-schools/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.catholicherald.com/article/columns/a-patron-saint-for-catholic-schools/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0UtsvUhnw1KEBFKNgWHHQj">parochial school system</a> was established by Seton. Thanks to these and other Catholic efforts, the Catholic Church is universally respected as the leading philanthropic organization in America and the world. Catholics have also been vital forces in the key moral battles of the 21st century pertaining to human life and dignity.
Catholic Bishops staunchly opposed segregation during the Civil Rights movement, while Catholic nuns and an estimated 35 Catholic priests marched in the historic Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965.
When the Supreme Court of the United States legalized abortion in 1973, Catholics galvanized on behalf of the unborn. Catholic lawyer Nellie Gray responded by founding what is now the largest annual human rights demonstration in the world: the <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA05e1e3fd-1c7c-cb19-c44e-f5b547707d47" title="https://marchforlife.org/women-of-the-pro-life-movement-nellie-gray/" href="https://marchforlife.org/women-of-the-pro-life-movement-nellie-gray/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://marchforlife.org/women-of-the-pro-life-movement-nellie-gray/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1HoD4SU6-V8BlrjU5OS2Cz">March for Life</a>. Today, this peaceful protest draws over 100,000 Americans, including tens of thousands of Catholics, from across the country. Catholics also helped establish the pro-life safety net, which now boasts <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWAbf8b89ad-7a99-25e6-728e-6065794eb14f" title="https://lozierinstitute.org/new-pregnancy-centers-provided-over-452-million-in-services-and-goods-to-families/" href="https://lozierinstitute.org/new-pregnancy-centers-provided-over-452-million-in-services-and-goods-to-families/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://lozierinstitute.org/new-pregnancy-centers-provided-over-452-million-in-services-and-goods-to-families/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0u0_KwcMfHVyuQI81HRohI">over 3,000 organizations</a> and countless volunteers (many Catholic!) nationwide that care for women and children in need — despite <a id="m_8748698953216603900OWA8c203794-770c-7de7-7204-07b6d936f9ec" title="https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/" href="https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://catholicvote.org/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1773855206894000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2CaT5NVHDVGKYZih8VmBLK">violent hostility</a> from pro-abortion opponents.
As attacks on religious freedom increasingly threatened Americans’ right to practice their faith in the public sphere, Catholics boldly fought back. In 1993, Catholic lawyer Kevin “Seamus” Hasson founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has won 13 Supreme Court cases in the past 15 years. In 1994, Catholic Alan Sears was a primary founder and president of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is now the leading religious freedom law firm in the world and has played a role in 83 Supreme Court victories.
From attempts to force poor nuns to fund contraception in their healthcare plans, to attacks on pregnancy resource centers for not providing abortions, or pressure on religious employers and business owners to participate in activities that violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, both Becket and ADF have won hard-fought victories and established Supreme Court precedent that protects American freedoms for generations to come.
And at a time when European nations imprison citizens for social media posts and prayer, Catholics at nonprofits and religious freedom firms such as Becket and ADF are leading the fight to protect men, women, children, and ultimately the truth — especially against attempts to allow biological males in women and girls’ sports and spaces, as well as the horrifying trend of transgender surgeries on children.
These fights — over the gender wars, abortion, religious freedom, free speech, immigration — and so many others continue dominating news cycles and evoking despair among many that our nation is irreconcilably damaged and headed towards ruin. Yet on Thursday, Catholics will unite in prayer for the nation’s future at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. As they reflect on the challenges ahead and the past 250 years of American history, they have every reason for optimism.
Catholics faced setbacks and discouragement at every period of our nation’s history, including many grave threats to truth and freedom in America today. Yet Catholic heroes like Jogues, Cabrini, Seton, Gray, Hasson, Sears, and so many others continue to lead us by example, teaching us to meet adversity with the hope and perseverance that only authentic prayer can sustain. I hope attendees of this year’s prayer breakfast take heart from this remarkable Catholic legacy. Through the power of prayer, we can similarly fight the good fight that God has entrusted to each of us for the benefit of our nation, and ultimately the world.
***
Mark Randall is a board of director and chairman of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

GettyImages-2033775702

America At 250 — Catholics Gather In Prayer As The Fight For The Nation’s Soul Heats Up

Catholic Church

Religion

Upstream

Academy Award-nominated American director and filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is being questioned for his new AI-generated series, “On This Day&#8230; 1776.”
The 56-year-old filmmaker, best known for dark dramas including “Requiem for a Dream” (2000), “Black Swan” (2010), and “The Whale” (2022), is producing the series with his AI-based company Primordial Soup. “On This Day” will use Google DeepMind to reconstruct scenes from the American Revolution and post them to Time Studio’s YouTube channel, per <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/darren-aronofsky-revolutionary-war-ai-series-1236488180/">The Hollywood Reporter</a>.
The series has a stated goal of “reframing the Revolution not as a foregone conclusion but as a fragile experiment shaped by those who fought for it,” the companies said in a statement. Episodes will be released to coincide with the 250th anniversary dates as they occurred throughout this year.
Two episodes, one featuring George Washington boosting morale in Massachusetts and another with Benjamin Franklin encouraging Thomas Paine to champion common sense, were released yesterday.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="On This Day… 1776 | Official Trailer" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/E4cLKIxt8W8?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>
Aronofsky has been vocal about using AI as a tool, and not as a replacement for filmmaking. He insists that the creations are “soup not slop,” and are worthy of watching. Many fans, however, are less than thrilled about it. 
“Wow this looks like a hunk of worthless dog sh*t,” Daily Wire podcast host Matt Walsh <a href="https://x.com/mattwalshblog/status/2017086047868404138?s=43">wrote</a> on X in response to the trailer. 
“A director should completely lose their career for this. [H]is wikipedia should say former filmmaker from now on no matter what else he does,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/ecto_fun/status/2016950114439323746?s=43">agreed</a>. 
“My favorite part of this garbage is how you can see which actors the different characters lifts their looks from (due to unlawful usage of their likeness in the training data) and how these characters slowly morph into different actors during scenes,” <a href="https://x.com/Carnivol/status/2017163838601224671">said</a> a third X user.
“This look [sic] awful,” another popular comment <a href="https://x.com/BikeMan/status/2016981447446290642">said</a>. “It has that weird uncanny valley AI sheen on it as usual. AI also always has boring, predictable camera movements. Slow rotations and pans every time. I see the standard AI dead eyed line deliveries are present as well.&#8221;

Darren Aronofsky

‘Black Swan’ Director Mocked For AI-Generated Series About The American Revolution

'Black Swan' Director Mocked For AI-Generated Series About Revolutionary Period

American Revolution

Artificial Intelligence

Entertainment

Television

YouTube

The Ohio state House of Representatives passed a bill along party lines last week that would allow public schools to teach on the &#8220;positive influence of religion,&#8221; particularly Christianity, in history courses.
House Bill 486, titled the &#8220;<a href="https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/legislation/136/hb486">Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act</a>,&#8221; would codify teachers&#8217; rights under the state constitution to instruct their students on how Christianity positively shaped U.S. history, according to one of the bill&#8217;s sponsors, state Rep. Gary Click, NBC Columbus affiliate WCMH <a href="https://www.nbc4i.com/news/politics/charlie-kirk-bill-to-teach-positively-about-christianity-passes-ohio-house/">reported</a>.
&#8220;The teaching of the historical, positive impact of religion on American history is consistent with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. An accurate and historical account of the influence of Judeo-Christian values on the freedom and liberties ingrained in our culture is imperative to reducing ignorance of American history, hate, and violence within our society,&#8221; the bill states. &#8220;Accurate historical instruction regarding verifiable, historical impacts of religion on American history is factual and is not proselytization or a violation of the First Amendment.&#8221;
The text of House Bill 486 provides examples of how public school teachers can teach on the positive influence of Christianity, such as the faith of the pilgrims, the clear presence of Christianity in the Mayflower Compact, the appeal to divine power in the Declaration of Independence, and Christianity&#8217;s influence on the U.S. Constitution. The bill is named after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, a devout and outspoken Christian, who was assassinated while speaking on the Utah Valley University campus on September 10.
“Charlie was a committed Christian, whose life and work will serve as a testament to the power of conservative ideals combined with a legacy of faith for generations to come,” Click said.
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All 62 Republicans in the Ohio House voted in favor of the legislation, while all 27 Democrats opposed it. It now heads to the state Senate, where Republicans hold a 24-9 majority.
“It’s essential that we highlight the positive influence religion has had throughout our history – uniting communities, enriching our shared values, and safeguarding our First Amendment rights as Americans to speak and worship freely,” said Republican state Rep. Michael Dovilla.
The bill was criticized by education and civil liberties groups and advocates for the separation of church and state. The Ohio American Civil Liberties Union <a href="https://www.acluohio.org/news/house-bill-486-opponent-testimony/">argued</a> that the bill &#8220;is obviously designed to paint Christianity in the most positive light while deliberately avoiding the negative.&#8221;
&#8220;The ACLU of Ohio submits HB 486 is, at a minimum, unneeded,&#8221; the organization added. &#8220;Politicians leaning on schools and universities to teach their version of Christianity and religion is an idea rejected centuries ago, and for good reasons.&#8221;
Gabe Guidarini, chairman of the Ohio College Republican Federation, pushed back on the criticism, arguing, “This bill does not impose a belief system, it simply allows teachers and professors to include historical truths that have too often been neglected — how faith shaped the resolve of the pilgrims, guided our Founders’ convictions, inspired movements that provided us the liberties we enjoy today and informed the moral fabric that has bound our republic together since its birth.&#8221;

Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk-Inspired Bill Allowing Schools To Teach Christianity’s ‘Positive Influence’ Nears Law

Christianity

Ohio

U.S.

Fitness influencer Jillian Michaels was amazed to discover that Jesus Christ was a real person whose existence was chronicled in texts beyond just the Bible.
The conversation took place during an episode of Michaels’ podcast while she was speaking with world-class historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson.
Hanson was discussing the specific issues the Romans had with Jesus, which prompted her to admit that she was surprised to learn his existence was widely accepted as a historical fact.
 “I thought we didn&#8217;t even know this guy… this is going to infuriate people and I&#8217;m so sorry and I stay out of it, but I thought we weren&#8217;t even really sure whether or not Jesus existed and the apostles wrote this stuff hundreds of years ago,” Michaels said. 
Hoover explained, “We have Roman documents completely separate from religion, that he was a magnetic, he was a romantic, wonderful person to the people who knew him and he had staged a revolution and that presented a problem in this troublesome province.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Victor Davis Hanson: The Civilizational Crisis No One Expects" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QEXG_SWVdKo?start=1681&#038;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>
The historian recounted how Pontius Pilate was a Roman official who was most interested in keeping peace in the region, so he pushed the blame for Jesus being put to death onto the Pharisees, using the justification that this move helped achieve that goal.
Hanson also noted how Jesus’ teachings were the antithesis of what the Romans believed. “He&#8217;s got a new religion and unfortunately it&#8217;s turned the other cheek, brotherhood of man, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, that&#8217;s not Roman. We have a Roman military ethos that the strong inherit the earth and if an enemy offends you, you hit him twice. And this guy is preaching something very different,” the historian explained.
“When anybody says that the Jews killed Jesus, it&#8217;s more like the Romans wanted a quiet province and they did not like Jesus and what he represented was anti-Roman…So they said basically, well, in Judaism, in Judea, the Jewish establishment, the religious establishment doesn&#8217;t like him any more than we do. So we can get rid of him and then say the Pharisees basically did it.”
“This is so wild. I&#8217;m sorry. I know it&#8217;s not wild for people who know this information, but I genuinely thought, okay, the Jews had the Old Testament, the Torah, and then maybe there was this guy, Jesus,” Michaels said as she looked on in awe. “The apostles wrote stuff, but the first guy who wrote something was like 90 or so years later. We think maybe there&#8217;s some Dead Sea Scrolls kind of mentioned this guy, Jesus.”
Michaels doesn’t talk much about religion publicly, but <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/jillian-michaels-stands-by-criticism-of-the-olympics-opening-ceremony/">described herself</a> as “not a religious person” and “agnostic” in 2024.

Jillian Michaels

Jillian Michaels Is Shocked To Discover Jesus Was A Real Person

Celebrities

Jesus Christ

Editor’s Note: This is the fifth and final installment in the series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.”
In <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/proletarian-profanity-like-communists-democrats-want-to-trap-voters-in-a-linguistic-ghetto">Part IV</a>, Xi Van Fleet and Sasha Gong — both activists, scholars, and survivors of Mao’s communist uprising — exposed the radical communist roots of Democrats cringey attempt to seem cool by using profanity.
Today, the authors look to the future, and explore how radical leftist movements rewrite history, not just to justify their actions and demonize the cultures they want to destroy, but to change how people think about their past, present, and future. 
***
Every nation lives by its landmarks. These are not merely dates on a calendar, but signposts dividing history into “before” and “after.” They anchor collective memory and shape how a people understand themselves.
For Americans, the great landmarks have long been clear: 1492, the discovery of the New World; 1776, independence; 1861, the Civil War; 1929, the Great Depression; 1964, the Civil Rights Act. To speak of “before” and “after” these events is to tell the story of a nation striving toward freedom, law, and self-government.
In recent years, however, new landmarks have been imposed by ideological fiat. The most striking is the New York Times’s 1619 Project, which declared that America began not in 1776 but in the year enslaved Africans first arrived in Virginia. With that shift, the axis of history moved: “before and after independence” became “before and after slavery.” Liberty and law were redefined as hypocrisy and oppression. More dividing lines quickly followed: before and after Jim Crow, before and after George Floyd, and so on.
These changes are not merely academic. When the Chinese Communist Party seized power in 1949, it imposed a single ultimate landmark: “before liberation” and “after liberation.” Five thousand years of recorded history were collapsed into a morality tale. Everything before was painted as darkness; everything after as light. The word liberation itself became a judgment on every person and institution. Those who had prospered before were condemned, often destroyed.
The CCP has never ceased wielding this powerful weapon to manufacture historic milestones. After the disastrous Mao era, it crafted yet another milestone by dividing its own history into ‘before Reform and Opening-Up’ and ‘after.’ The Mao years were rebranded as ‘decades of arduous exploration’ in search of a better China, erasing the atrocities that claimed tens of millions of lives.
The post-Mao period, by contrast, is exalted as the Party’s crowning achievement: lifting the Chinese people out of poverty and transforming China into an economic superpower. And the ultimate aim? To enshrine the CCP as the eternal liberator of the Chinese people. This is not just propaganda but a wholesale transformation of society. History was rewritten, language reshaped, culture remade. The “before” was demonized; the “after” glorified. Ordinary people adopted the new vocabulary, willingly or not. And once language changed, thought and memory changed too. The Chinese people, once bound by a magnificent civilization, were divided into “good” and “bad” classes — oppressors and oppressed, loyalists and enemies. Hatred of the designated groups was not just tolerated but demanded.
America is not a one-party state. Our institutions remain democratic. Yet the project of re-framing — what might be called Cultural Marxism — has advanced here with surprising speed. The narrative of American exceptionalism, rooted in liberty, law, and individualism, has been replaced by a narrative of slavery, racism, and oppression.
The Left has shown itself to be even more cunning Cultural Marxists than the Maoists. They have redefined and “simplified” American history into a new binary: before and after. In their telling, the “before” is our present — defined solely as slavery and white oppression — rendering the Civil War irrelevant and erasing the achievements of countless Black Americans, including Barack Obama. The “after,” meanwhile, exists only in the future. And how is that future to be reached? By dismantling the entire system, which they insist is built on racism, bigotry, and injustice. 
History’s landmarks are never neutral. They can unite or divide, elevate or diminish. To say “before independence” and “after independence” is to conceive of ourselves as citizens — free, equal, and striving for self-rule. To say “before slavery” and “after slavery” is to fix identity forever in terms of bondage and resentment. One story moves toward freedom; the other freezes us in grievance.
Nations cannot thrive on grievance. A shared history, however imperfect, is the glue that binds generations. To rewrite that history into a tale of villains and victims is to dissolve the glue.
The real question is whether we will continue to allow new landmarks to redefine us. Will we pass on to our children the story of a free people, equal under God, struggling but advancing toward justice? Or will we hand them a fractured narrative that teaches them to see one another as permanent enemies?
History is never only about the past. It frames the future. What we choose as our “before” and “after” will decide who we become.
READ MORE:
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/license-to-kill-what-turns-normal-people-to-political-violence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part I: License To Kill: What Turns Normal People To Political Violence?</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-wheel-of-misfortune-victims-victimhood-and-victimization?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=Opinion&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=The+Wheel+Of+Misfortune%3A+Victims%2C+Victimhood%2C+And+Victimization" target="_blank" rel="noopener">American Maoists, Part II: The Wheel Of Misfortune: Victims, Victimhood, And Victimization</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/from-red-guard-to-blue-hair-why-leftists-destroy-womanhood?author=Xi+Van+Fleet+and+Sasha+Gong&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=From+Red+Guard+To+Blue+Hair%3A+Why+Leftists+Destroy+Womanhood">American Maoists, Part III: From Red Guard To Blue Hair: Why Leftists Destroy Womanhood</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/proletarian-profanity-like-communists-democrats-want-to-trap-voters-in-a-linguistic-ghetto">American Maoists, Part IV: Proletarian Profanity: Why Democrats Want To Trap Voters In A Linguistic Ghetto</a>
Xi Van Fleet is a survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, activist, and author of “Mao’s America: A Survivor’s Warning.”
Sasha Gong is a writer, scholar, journalist, and filmmaker. A dissident in Mao’s China, she holds a PhD from Harvard University and was previously Director of the China Branch at Voice of America.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Erasing History: The Real Cultural Marxism

1619 Project

Commerce Department

Marxism

monuments

Could the Catholic Church have done more to fight the Nazis? Conventional wisdom says yes, but newly-released information from the Vatican suggests otherwise.
Beginning August 13, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles will correct the historical record surrounding the papacy and Nazi Germany in &#8220;The Pope and the Führer: The Secret Vatican Files of World War II.”
Using once-secret files, made public in 2020 by Pope Francis, Knowles takes viewers through private correspondence and long-buried testimony that reshapes the legacy of a pope long accused of silence during Hitler’s reign. Knowles — a devout Catholic — is joined by a range of leading historians and Vatican scholars, offering new insight into the man who led the Catholic Church through one of history’s darkest chapters.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/the-pope-and-the-fuhrer-the-secret-vatican-files-of-world-war-ii-the-official-trailer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH &#8216;THE POPE AND THE FUHRER&#8217; TRAILER HERE.</a>
“For eighty years, the world has condemned one man as the ‘Pope of Silence,’ the man who stood by in the face of shocking evil,” Knowles says in the trailer. “This is not just a story about Hitler and the Holocaust. One of the worst lies ever told about the Catholic Church is what she did or didn’t do in one of modernity’s darkest hours. Now, for the first time, the Vatican Secret Archive is open, and the truth is far more shocking than the fiction.”
In the four-part series, Knowles traces Pius&#8217; rise to the papacy, Rome&#8217;s fight against Hitler, and the Church’s response to the rising Soviet Union.
Knowles is the host of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show,&#8221; &#8220;Michael &amp;,&#8221; and &#8220;Yes or No&#8221; on Daily Wire, as well as &#8220;The Book Club&#8221; on PragerU. In addition to his digital content, Knowles is the author of &#8220;Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds&#8221; and &#8220;Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide.&#8221;
“The Pope and the Führer” premieres August 13 on DailyWire+. New episodes every Wednesday.

Copy of 16×9

Michael Knowles Reveals The Truth About The Vatican And The Nazis

Michael Knowles

Nazi Germany

Pope Francis

The Vatican

World War II

Friday marked 81 years since Allied Forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in history, taking the first steps on a journey that would ultimately wrest Europe from the occupation and control of Nazi forces.
Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower — who would later be elected the 34th President of the United States — wrote two letters in the hours before 156,000 troops (primarily American, British, Canadian, and Australian) swarmed a 50-mile stretch of beaches near Normandy, France. One, delivered to the men preparing to march into the jaws of death, expressed his confidence in his men and his prayers for their victory. The second was a handwritten note, in which Eisenhower said that he alone would shoulder the blame if the mission were to fail.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Left: Eisenhower’s D-Day letter: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade” &amp; “Let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great &amp; noble undertaking.”
Right: Eisenhower’s in-case-of-failure letter: “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” <a href="https://t.co/qBNjmHOu8T">pic.twitter.com/qBNjmHOu8T</a>
&mdash; Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930849040851247517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!&#8221; Eisenhower opened the first of the two letters. &#8220;You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.&#8221;
<a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=wisepops&amp;utm_campaign=dad&amp;utm_content=fathersdaygiftpopups" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gift Dad an All Access Membership. Use code DAD40 at checkout to save 40%!</a>
&#8220;Your task will not be an easy one,&#8221; the general warned. &#8220;Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!&#8221;
&#8220;I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!&#8221; he concluded. &#8220;Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.&#8221;
The second letter was much shorter — and was misdated &#8220;July 5,&#8221; likely due to stress — and scribbled in the general&#8217;s own hand. It was the message he intended to deliver if Operation Overlord failed:
<blockquote>&#8220;Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.&#8221;</blockquote>
But 81 years later, the world remembers the bravery and dedication of the men who charged those beaches amid a hail of machine-gun bullets and mortars to deliver first France, and then the rest of Europe, from Nazi control.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Eighty-one years ago, our nation&#39;s bravest stormed the beaches of Normandy. 
We will never forget their sacrifice. <a href="https://t.co/eiwNDhBTHG">pic.twitter.com/eiwNDhBTHG</a>
&mdash; DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) <a href="https://twitter.com/DODResponse/status/1930990988891201670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
RIGHT NOW in 1944, this is the scene in Normandy. The liberation of France is underway <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/0LUQIImNJp">pic.twitter.com/0LUQIImNJp</a>
&mdash; Military History Now (@MilHistNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/MilHistNow/status/1930855923481972947?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
“Here the allies stood &amp; fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking. … These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DDay</a> <a href="https://t.co/kcFUv9wllA">pic.twitter.com/kcFUv9wllA</a>
&mdash; Jerry Dunleavy IV 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) <a href="https://twitter.com/JerryDunleavy/status/1930988710440452389?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivered remarks commemorating the 81st anniversary, saying, &#8220;Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic wall was impenetrable &#8230; He clearly had not met enough Americans.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
. <a href="https://twitter.com/SecDef?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SecDef</a> “Eighty-one years ago, Hitler thought his Atlantic wall was impenetrable.
He clearly had not met enough Americans.” <a href="https://t.co/pmf4WQK0G7">pic.twitter.com/pmf4WQK0G7</a>
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) <a href="https://twitter.com/DODResponse/status/1930950043151815068?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 6, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

US Troops on D Day.

81 Years Later, The World Remembers D-Day

American History

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Military

Pete Hegseth

Politics

There is a philosophy that has now become dominant on the Left and even parts of the center. It&#8217;s throughout the West.
The deeper roots of this philosophy bear a deadly fruit.
Let’s begin with a bizarre and hilarious spectacle. Great Britain’s King Charles III was visiting the Canadian Parliament and decided that it would be worthwhile to offer a land acknowledgment.
This is hilarious because King Charles is the King of Great Britain. The only reason the Canadian Parliament exists is because of the settlement of Canada by British citizens. That’s why he is there in the first place.
Charles doing a land acknowledgment and taking that seriously would amount to essentially disestablishing Canada, the United States, Australia, South Africa and a bunch of other countries, because all of those countries were originally created as functioning polities by the British Empire.
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This bizarre idea that Charles can arrive on Canadian territory and start apologizing to the indigenous people for the presence of white people in this particular area is absurd, especially coming from King Charles, who is the greatest beneficiary on planet Earth of the imperialism of the British Empire.
There are human universals, such as migration, settlement, annexation, and conflict, and they are not unique to white people, Westerners, or Europeans; it&#8217;s just that white people, Westerners and Europeans, have been much better at it than other parts of the population on planet Earth. They&#8217;re more successful, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, but that does not mean that there is some unique sin that attends to whiteness, being Western, or being European.
Charles said, “I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. This land acknowledgement is a recognition of shared history as a nation. While continuing to deepen my own understanding, it is my great hope that in each of your communities, and collectively as a country, a path is found toward truth and reconciliation, in both word and deed.”
Of course the land is unceded, because the nature of human conflict is that when people migrate from one part of the Earth to another part of the Earth, conflict tends to arise, and then someone wins and someone loses. And it is a very good thing that the British Empire won in Canada.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2208-the-trump-2026-victory-plan?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Here’s the basic idea: The world is better off because of the British Empire. The world is better off because of American power and the spread of European ideals. That is obviously true. The spread of things like property rights, due process of law, capitalism, freedom of religion, all of which are not human universals — those are the legacy of the West.
There&#8217;s always an attempt to take human universals and then project them as West-specific problems. That is not true.
The problems of murder and raping and looting and slavery are human universals.
What is unique about the West is all the other stuff. Reversing that polarity and suggesting that the West is somehow uniquely sinful because it was better at war than others, or because Westerners were better at settlement than the Algonquin who lived on the land where Canada&#8217;s parliament now sits, and that is a human tragedy, is not, in fact, a human tragedy.
Bad things happen throughout human history. The bad things are tragedies. But overall, in the broad scope of history, it is an absolutely wonderful thing that Europeans ended up on the North American continent.
Anyone who doesn&#8217;t believe so should probably leave. If you don&#8217;t believe that, you probably should go back to your dingy apartment and cede it back to the natives from whom your ancestors took it.
All of this ties into a deeper and more deadly philosophy.
The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited the White House and was asked about the “Kill the Boer” chant, which has become common at some rallies, targeting the Afrikaner farmers who originally settled in the area of South Africa as early as the 17th century, fought for hundreds of years, and were responsible at one point for tremendous racism against black people.
But the solution to that is not genocidal chants. Yet there’s an idea that as long as the people who are shouting the genocidal chants are not white, European and Western, it suddenly becomes okay.
Why? Because the rules don&#8217;t equally apply in this left-wing philosophy, where the sins of the West are unique and the West is unique in its evil.
What that means is that the West has to be destroyed. This has deadly consequences. And it doesn&#8217;t matter whether you call this stuff anti-white or anti-Semitic or anti-whatever. The problem with this generalized philosophy is that it is simply evil.
When you separate the world into victims and victimizers and you suggest that anyone who&#8217;s been uniquely successful is the victimizer and anyone who is not is a victim, what you get is victimizers with the moral impetus and the moral weight to kill people.
What you end up with is actual terrorism, actual violence, actual overthrow of the institutions that made the West great in the first place.

The King And Queen Visit Canada – Day 2

Why The West Must Not Apologize For Its Success

Ben Shapiro

Boers

Canada

Colonialism

England

Europe

Great Britain

King Charles III

Murder

Opinion

South Africa

Western Civilization

Earlier this month, we celebrated the 80th anniversary of V-E Day, “Victory in Europe,” which marked the end of the European Theater’s part in the Second World War. It is a date certainly worth commemorating as it closed one of the darkest chapters in European history, which was the rise and fall of Hitler’s Third Reich.
For the countries in what today we call Western Europe that languished for years under the jackboot of Nazi oppression — France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Greece — the Allied victory truly represented liberation.
<div id="attachment_925633" style="width: 875px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925633" class="size-large wp-image-925633" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-865x576.jpg" alt="Ecstatic crowds celebrating VE Day in London's Piccadilly, at the end of World War II, 8th May 1945. Original Publication: Picture Post - 1991 - This Was VE Day in London - pub. 1945 (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="865" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-865x576.jpg 865w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-3093644.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 865px) 100vw, 865px" />Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</div>
But there was another side to V-E Day that seems to get glossed over. And that is the less happy fate of the Eastern European nations who were not liberated by the Anglo-Americans rolling in from the west, but rather the Red Army coming in from the east. And for those nations — Poland, Hungary, then-Czechoslovakia, the Baltic states — V-E Day merely meant trading one brutal oppressor for another. Indeed, as the Allies were closing in from both sides, the dark joke in Germany was “Optimists are learning English, pessimists are learning Russian.”
We have been conditioned for over 80 years to viscerally recoil at the very mention of the Führer’s name. Just say “Hitler” and the mind conjures up images of the Holocaust and mass murder of millions of innocents carried out by robotic, goose-stepping stormtroopers wearing their signature coal scuttle helmets.
Yet, when we utter the name “Stalin,” no such dark imagery materializes in the collective mind. And yet, in terms of pure numbers, it can be argued that the Soviet “Man of Steel” had more blood on his hands than even Hitler. Why the indifferent reaction?
It could perhaps be attributed to a curious media/academic tendency of apologetics towards communism. As polls consistently show, both of these institutions lean very much to the left. And Stalinism is the ultimate expression of their collective leftist ideology come to fruition in all its destructive inevitability. During the 1930s, for example, dispatches from Moscow-based New York Times correspondent Walter Duranty were shamefully obsequious towards Stalin, offering up for his readers images of a prosperous, happy communist USSR workers’ paradise.
No matter that the Soviet dictator was coldly stripping Ukraine of food and inducing a famine in 1932-1933 (called the “Holodomor”) during which anywhere from 3.5 to 5 million Ukrainians died of starvation — atrocities Duranty labeled as a “big scare” and “exaggeration.”
Then there was Stalin’s 1929-1933 genocide against the Kulaks (wealthy peasants who resisted his policies) to facilitate the expropriation of farmland. In one directive, the Soviet leader declared, “We must smash the Kulaks, liquidate them as a class.” Millions died.
And what of the estimated 700,000 to 6 million who died in Stalin’s Gulag, the far-flung network of concentration camps where he sent his enemies, whom the hyper-paranoid dictator saw all around him. (Figures vary widely; the latter number comes from dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned for eight years.)
Starting in 1936, Stalin wiped out his political and military adversaries in a series of show trials called “The Great Purge.” Stalin’s biographer Oleg V. Khlevniuk estimates that 1.6 million were arrested, with 700,000 shot; no one knows how many died of torture.
<div id="attachment_925699" style="width: 883px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925699" class="size-large wp-image-925699" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-873x576.jpg" alt="RUSSIA - JANUARY 01: Joseph STALIN, the supreme ruler of the USSR, working in his garden around 1935 to 1936 while Lavrenti BERIA, the chief of the Soviet secret police, poses with STALIN'S daughter, SVETLANA, on his knees. (Photo by Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)" width="873" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-873x576.jpg 873w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-300x198.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516-768x507.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-104408516.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 873px) 100vw, 873px" />Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</div>
During the Second World War on the Eastern Front, Stalin was so profligate with the lives of his people that by the time the red banner of the USSR was flying over the Reichstag in the conquered Berlin, some 27 million Soviets lay dead. Many as a result of combat and German atrocities, of course, but also due to Stalin’s unimaginative strategies that callously offered up both his soldiers and civilians before the guns of the Wehrmacht as fodder.
Whereas Hitler’s policies were driven by twisted racial hatred, delusions of grandeur, a sense of grievance on behalf of a nation he felt was ill-treated at Versailles, and, by the end, drug-addled bona fide madness, Stalin in some ways is even more disturbing as there was a cold, calculating, and ruthless nature to his machinations.
Stalin will also go down as one of the most treacherous characters in history. It should be remembered that until Hitler turned on him and attacked Russia in June 1941, Stalin and the German dictator were allies. Hitler only felt secure enough to invade Poland and trigger the Second World War because Berlin and Moscow had just entered into a non-aggression pact the month before. In fact, people often forget that in September 1939, Poland was not just invaded by the Wehrmacht but also by the Red Army. After which, Stalin’s NKVD promptly rounded up 22,000 members of Poland’s military and intelligentsia, marched them to the Katyn Forest, and shot them all dead.
<div id="attachment_925683" style="width: 949px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925683" class="size-large wp-image-925683" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-939x576.jpg" alt="9/28/39: Russo -German Pact Molotov signing pact directly behind is J. Von Ribbentrop on the right is Josef Stalin. (Photo by Bettmann/Corbis/Getty Images)" width="939" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-939x576.jpg 939w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-300x184.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680-768x471.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-875641680.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 939px) 100vw, 939px" />Bettmann/Corbis/Getty Images</div>
Says historian Victor Davis Hanson: “Of the six major belligerents of World War II, on the Axis side, Italy, Japan, and Germany, and the United States, Russia, and Britain, Stalin made a deal with every one of them at one time or another, and he honored the ones with the Axis better than he did us.”
But, unlike Hitler, Stalin’s image during the war was softened by the Roosevelt administration and pliant media due to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. FDR, especially, was hopelessly naïve about the duplicitous nature of the man whose military he was now supplying through Lend-Lease. As far as he saw it, the Russians were now our allies after all. And, frankly, we needed the Red Army to kill as many Germans as possible before we invaded France. The mass murderer of Moscow was thus re-christened “Uncle Joe” Stalin. And as it was his Red Army more than any other that destroyed the Wehrmacht, what he did to his own people and those in Eastern Europe were swept under the rug until the Cold War commenced in the late 1940s. After all, as the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
<div id="attachment_925619" style="width: 762px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-925619" class="size-large wp-image-925619" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-752x576.jpg" alt="Russian leader Marshal Josef Stalin and President Franklin Roosevelt confer in the Soviet Embassy during the Tehran Conference, Tehran, Iran, December 7, 1943. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)" width="752" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-752x576.jpg 752w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-300x230.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926-768x588.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-186649926.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 752px) 100vw, 752px" />Underwood Archives/Getty Images</div>
80 years after the war in Europe ended, modern Germany is still horrified by, and ashamed of, their Nazi past. But to this day, even in a post-Cold War Russia in which information regarding the horrific crimes carried out by the Bolsheviks is now widely accessible, Stalin is revered by the Russian people. A 2021 poll by the Levada Center found that 70% of Russians held a mostly or very favorable view of Stalin.
And that same lack of revulsion over Stalin’s decades-long reign of terror carries over into the West today as a misguided affinity for Marxism slithers its insidious way through the halls of so-called higher education. A poll by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that millennials, particularly younger ones, displayed a dreadful ignorance of communism and even support for it. Almost half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 20 “said they would vote for a socialist, while 21% would go so far as to back a Communist.” Even more shocking was that a “third of millennials say they believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than Joseph Stalin.” This is criminal negligence on the part of academia — and dangerous.
I have a shirt that reads “Communism killed 100 million people and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Though gallows humor, the message is also a searing indictment of a left-leaning academic and media establishment that are utterly dismissive of the crimes perpetrated by the founding fathers of their own defunct and cruel ideologies. The verdict of history should have condemned Soviet communism to the ashbin of history decades ago. But a fatal attraction for this defunct ideology that invariably leads to mass murder is alive and well in the West today. This is a tragedy — and dangerous.
* * *
Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Daily Wire, The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id=55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B07MQJBJSD?ccs_id%3D55112527-86f6-4c89-b82e-a96d6869abed&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3K_WhJtiUZw7LF1PwSIHtH">books</a>. Follow him on <a href="https://x.com/bschaeffer123" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://x.com/bschaeffer123&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1736518135479000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0P6pRoAqcBhUQ1W0qwN5rH">X/Twitter</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
This article originally appeared on the author&#8217;s <a href="https://bradschaeffer.substack.com/p/for-eastern-europe-v-e-day-commemorates">Substack.</a>

Stalin In Moscow

From Reich To Red: Why Stalin Still Haunts Us 80 Years After V-E Day

Adolf Hitler

Communism

Germany

Josef Stalin

Leftism

Russia

The following is an excerpt from the book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/At-First-Light-Bravery-Amazing/dp/1642939595" target="_blank" rel="noopener">At First Light: A True World War II Story of a Hero, His Bravery, And An Amazing Horse</a>&#8221; by Walt Larimore and Mike Yorkey (Knox Press, April 19, 2022). 
***
On Saturday evening, December 6, 1941, “Phil,” as Marilyn called him and as he now liked to be called, took her out for dinner at the Bungalow, a popular seafood restaurant in Biloxi, Mississippi that overlooked the calm, brown waters of the Mississippi Sound. The menu had something for every taste: fresh seafood, choice steaks, Southern fried chicken, Cajun specials, and even Chinese dishes. After enjoying the surf-and-turf special, the young couple decided to go to the cinema. 
Marilyn had wanted to see the romance, Johnny Eager, starring Lana Turner and Robert Taylor. In contrast, Phil had a yearning to watch Tarzan’s Secret Treasure, starring Maureen O’Sullivan alongside his favorite movie star, Johnny Weissmuller, one of the world’s fastest swimmers. They compromised with Ball of Fire, starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck.
The next morning dawned clear with unlimited visibility and an unseasonably warm fifty-nine degrees predicted as the high. Rather than attending church together, which was their habit, Phil and Marilyn decided to play hooky. He picked her up early, and they trailered their horses to the nearby De Soto National Forest, where they rode through the gently rolling terrain. When they located Black Creek, Mississippi’s only National Scenic River, they followed the meandering ribbon of water until they found a wide white sandbar. There they set out a picnic lunch and talked for hours in the warm sunshine about their hopes and dreams—and, for the first time, about the prospects of a life together. 
Late in the afternoon, they returned to the stable and found a group of people gathered around a radio. “Whatcha listening to?” Phil asked. The men shushed him as he and Marilyn leaned closer to listen. 
The announcer blurted, “This is KTU in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am speaking from the roof of the Advertiser Publishing Company Building. We have witnessed this morning the severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese…. This is no joke. It is a real war… There has been serious fighting going on in the air and on the sea.” 
Phil and Marilyn’s eyes met, and he pulled her close. There was another second or two of static. Then the announcer continued, “We cannot estimate just how much damage has been done, but it has been a very severe attack.” 
The sound of rustling papers came through the small radio as the announcer took a deep breath. “Oh, this is much worse than we’ve heard up to now. The BBC is now reporting, and I quote, ‘At oh seven fifty-five local time, the first wave of between fifty and one-hundred-fifty planes struck the naval base for thirty-five minutes, causing several fires and untold damage to the Pacific Fleet. The Japanese squadrons dropped high explosive and incendiary bombs. A second strike followed at about oh nine hundred when a force of at least one hundred planes pounded the base for an hour,’ end quote.” 
Phil looked at his watch. This meant the attack had started just before 1 p.m. in Gulfport, located in the Central Time Zone. 
The broadcaster continued, “The BBC also says, and I quote, ‘The Times newspaper’s Washington correspondent says the U.S. government expects Germany and Italy to declare war on the U.S. within hours. Although the attack has shocked the American people, there is little doubt that it has been brewing for some years,’ end quote.” 
Marilyn began to cry; Phil pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “Oh, Phil,” she muttered, “This can’t be happening, can it?” He could only hold her close as a zillion thoughts raced through his mind. Their shared disbelief mirrored their astonishment.
The announcer paused a moment, and the clacking of a teletype machine could be heard. “This just in. This just in. Japan declares war! Japan declares war!” 
Someone whispered to the man. The pitch of his voice increased as he announced, “This wire is just in from Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan. Here are his words, and I quote, ‘We, the Emperor, hereby proclaim unto our loyal and valorous subjects that we have now declared war upon the United States of America and Great Britain,’ end quote.” 
Phil’s mind swirled. He thought, So, this is it. This is really it. Soon, I’ll be off to war. I’ll be going into battle. He couldn’t have imagined such a confluence of excitement and horror occurring in one moment. Marilyn continued to weep in his arms. 
“I have to get back to GCMA. Now!” he said. 
She nodded. They ran to the car and sped away. 
The next morning, Monday, December 8, the nation awoke to even more bad news: the extent of the damage from the surprise attack on Hawaii. At that point, no one knew that the Japanese attack had killed 2,403 U.S. personnel, including sixty-eight civilians, and destroyed or damaged nineteen U.S. Navy ships, including eight battleships, and destroyed or damaged 328 aircraft. 
Not even the U.S. government was aware that the ship with the most lives lost, the battleship USS Arizona, would report 1,177 dead—meaning that about one half of those who perished at Pearl Harbor were on the Arizona. What everyone did know was that Japan also attacked the Philippines, Wake Island, and Midway on the morning of December 7. The only good news was that the three aircraft carriers of the U.S. Pacific Fleet had been out to sea on maneuvers. 
After a hastily arranged Protestant church service at GCMA, Phil received a call from his father. He had been working on the train running between New Orleans and Memphis. At a stop in Water Valley, Mississippi, Phil Sr. had been given a handwritten note:
Do not permit any Japanese to ride your train. Orders of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Then Phil and his fellow cadets attended a solemn assembly at 11:30 a.m., during which they listened intently to the nationwide radio broadcast of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address to a joint session of Congress inside the U.S. Capitol. The President started his speech with these memorable words: 
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. 
After recounting details of the aerial assault, the President concluded his speech with this: 
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us. 
With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.
The roars of approval and tsunami of applause from the members of Congress could be heard over the speakers, and was joined by the young GCMA cadets as they bounded to their feet, throwing their caps toward the ceiling, and hugging and swatting one another on the back. As the cheers faded, though, they became aware that America was about to face an extraordinary test—one that would potentially threaten her very being. The young men at GCMA knew that their training put them in a position to quickly make a difference and play a significant role in the days ahead.
The next five months flew by, and on a beautiful, cloudless, and calm seventy-degree Saturday, May 16, 1942, Phil graduated with honors from GCMA and the Reserve Officers Training Corps, or ROTC.
Before Pearl Harbor, he had planned to begin pre-med studies that fall, but with America in the midst of a global conflict against the Axis powers, he realized that he would not be studying medicine anytime soon. 
Philip Larimore Jr. understood that he was destined for war.

Pearl Harbor

From Picnic To Peril: How A Young Couple’s World Was Shattered By Japan’s Attack On Pearl Harbor

Books

Japan

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