Rebecca Bendheim, the author of a YA book for teen readers, posted on social media about deliberately designing the cover art to hide the book’s theme from parents while simultaneously advertising it to children.
“When Penguin [Random House] asked me what I wanted for my cover, I said I wanted it to be gay enough for queer kids and teens to clock it, but for homophobic parents to just think it’s a friendship story,” the author and middle school teacher bragged on Instagram.
The book in question is called “When You’re Brave Enough” and has a publication date of April 7, 2026. According to the <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/774613/when-youre-brave-enough-by-rebecca-bendheim/">publisher</a>, it is recommended for children ages 10 &#8211; 14.
“So I said, no holding hands, make my character look gay…” She went on to point out the subtle details she and the cover artist agreed on, including flowers growing between the pair to represent a crush that’s “growing.”
“So what do you think? Would you guess this was a queer book?” Bendheim asked her followers.
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In a follow-up video, the author shows her book cover to random people on the street to see if they can guess what it’s about.
“Shoutout to the people who answered and to librarians who help kids and teens find subtle queer books if they need them,” she <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DVuH_7CDZfj/">wrote</a> in the caption. “I’m a firm believer that positive representation saves lives!! Would you be able to tell?”
Her <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/good-morning-america-book-pick-for-teens-features-rape-threesomes-necrophilia">comments</a> come just after another YA book, “Sibylline” by Melissa de la Cruz, made headlines for including graphic sex scenes of necrophilia, threesomes, and rape. “Sibylline” is being promoted as a &#8220;Good Morning America&#8221; Book Club selection in their Young Adult category.
This has been a hot topic in the publishing community recently. There was a discussion about the importance of “representation” and a lot of hand-wringing over so-called book bans during a SXSW EDU panel on March 11. The panel was called, “Beyond Bans: Defending LGBTQ+ Stories and Literary Freedom.”
“The worst thing we could possibly do is let that fear stop us from continuing to make art,” author Casey McQuiston <a href="https://people.com/lgbtq-authors-targeted-by-book-bans-exclusive-11925852">said</a> at the time, per People. “And not only to make art, but to go out into public libraries to visit, to go out into schools.”
McQuiston’s author page describes her as a “bestselling author of queer romantic comedies.” The most famous of these, “Red, White, &amp; Royal Blue,” is for adults, but she also wrote the YA romantic mystery, “I Kissed Shara Wheeler.”

Book with bookmark and rainbow ribbon of LGBT pride.

Author Proudly Says She Made Book Cover Gay Enough For Kids But Invisible To Parents

Books

Children's Books

Entertainment

LGBTQ

Social Issues

U.S.

When one thinks of Whole Foods, one might think of its selection of cheeses and organic yet processed offerings. Perhaps one thinks of the pizza and all-natural deodorants and lotions. Maybe one thinks of the patchouli that struggles to mask the aroma that comes with all-natural deodorants. (If so, you’re <a href="https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/grocery/search?k=patchouli">out of luck</a>, though parent company Amazon <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=patchouli&amp;crid=3K7552CU37UUZ&amp;sprefix=patchouli%2Caps%2C236&amp;ref=nb_sb_noss_1">has you covered</a>.) 
What you most likely do not think of, though, is jail. This is a mistake for, unlike patchouli, when it comes to being detained, Whole Foods is <a href="https://www.curbed.com/article/whole-foods-theft-shoplifting-wealthy-new-yorkers.html">there for you</a>. 
When talking about Walmart or Target, theft is a given. If your local supercenter switches back and forth from self-checkout to human checkers, theft — or shrink, as it’s known in the retail world — is the real reason. It’s just so easy to bag a few items that didn’t get scanned.
Shrink is one of the prices of doing business. Its presence is factored into budgets, both in expected amount and the cost of hiring people to thwart it. General employees are instructed to ignore it thanks to America’s surplus of lawyers. Instead, as is done in Whole Foods, you deploy specialists to combat the problem. 
This isn’t new. Back in the mid ‘90s, when I worked at Hastings Books, Music, and Video, which for the younger readers was one of the various places people could go to buy books and music and rent videos before streaming was a thing, we knew our most prolific shoplifters. We could never catch them in the act, though, so they were free to steal with impunity. We didn’t have a Mike, as the Fort Greene Whole Foods does, but we had a Toni. Toni, a former state trooper, never caught them either. It didn’t help that they were certain traveling people who only came through periodically.
There were also teenagers who couldn’t afford the latest from Wu-Tang Clan. They were sporadic and small potatoes, though, unlike those who preferred to steal CDs that they would later sell back to us a few months later when they swung back through the area. Most importantly, all of them knew they were stealing. There was no rationalization.
For those who end up in Whole Foods jail, it’s all rationalization. It’s not that they can’t necessarily afford “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqB8jARITw">Bonestorm</a>,” it’s that, like punching someone in the dark, they view shoplifting as a victimless crime. This isn’t exactly shocking coming from a collective that thinks Bernie Sanders is correct about <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/thinkprogress-attacks-sanders-for-changing-rhetoric-on-millionaires-after-he-becomes-one/">millionaires — make that billionaires</a>, doesn’t understand that assets aren’t necessarily walking around money, and just really needs a sushi tray before therapy. 
The therapist, presumably, does not get stiffed, though this piece in <a href="https://www.curbed.com/article/whole-foods-theft-shoplifting-wealthy-new-yorkers.html">Curbed</a> on Whole Foods jail doesn’t specify. (Journalism is dead.):
<blockquote>For years, she had thought of the California rolls, brownies, and protein shakes she stole as a kind of artist’s subsidy while she got her own practice off the ground. But on this particular day, her luck had run out. Astrid was late for therapy and hadn’t eaten, so she stopped in for a quick lunch. As usual, she began her meal in-store, moving toward the door with confidence, while ripping open a sushi tray. Soy-sauce packet between her teeth, one foot out the door, she felt a hand on her arm.</blockquote>
As with all the people mentioned in the piece, Astrid is a pseudonym. Her story is amazing. California rolls, brownies, and protein shakes are not exactly sustenance foods. She could have stolen bananas, which I am not condoning, even as some extoll <a href="https://x.com/jarvis_best/status/2032115230428577809">the benefits of shoplifting</a>, which are super healthy and also low cost, but no, Astrid had to go elite. This also gets to the other problems with this attitude.
First, shrink is really <a href="https://x.com/KelseyTuoc/status/2031855465626476651">detrimental to business</a>. In the early days of Walmart, founder Sam Walton gathered a group of store associates around him early one morning. He had a coffee can with $1 in pennies in it. He starts taking pennies out for overhead, utilities, merchandise, payroll, and the other obvious costs of doing business. When he was done with those, only four pennies remained. He then took two of those, explaining that those two cents represented shrink, meaning that despite starting with a dollar, profits only equaled two cents.
Walmart famously operates on razor-thin profit margins, usually in the 2-3% range, though. What about Whole Foods? Surely hippie Walmart is pulling <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-aapl-net-profit-margin-021910677.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAISnplhmtBjdDa40Y2mOHblKTAuhqObCSV4ECnIsB-TqrZz-KPPz5N_-oqrQl61gnqA0SfK787vzWrLnfc2KS_jnv-WQ0DVsKNWhXIF_X1PQDVzzCaaxnzJE_y1PCIVidLFanX4fAjJQz6FR21OTPNURAqIoy-yXr3ngGRNqhTxd">Apple-esque numbers</a>, right? Wrong! Whole Foods is operating on … razor-thin profit margins comparable to Walmart. Stealing eye cream, sushi trays, tuna rolls, soft French cheeses, steaks, and the like means the company has to pass its increased costs onto paying customers. In other words, if you see something, say something.
The other, and to my mind larger, problem with hipster heists is there is a much better solution, especially for those who are presumably concerned about food waste, climate change, and inequality: dumpster diving.
And look, I get it, dumpster diving isn’t as sexy as committing crime, but it is victimless. You don’t even have to call it dumpster diving. Just become a <a href="https://freegan.info/">freegan</a> and really lean into “strategies for sustainable living beyond capitalism.” Commit, people! It may even provide your life with enough meaning to get you out of therapy.
Will you have to learn to live with bread that’s maybe a little stale, not that I’ve ever had a prototypical freegan give me such a loaf, or strawberries that are a little mushy. Toast the bread. Enjoy fruit when it’s at its sweetest. Wonder why you didn’t go dumpster diving with and learn from your anti-capitalist acquaintance who’s now building a <a href="https://www.vastspace.com/">private for-profit space station</a>.
You can start tonight. And it won’t even require you to give up Whole Foods, though I’d steer clear of the sushi if I were you. The cover of darkness may be required to become a successful freegan, but if you fly too close to the sashimi, you’re going to feel that punch to your stomach.
* * *
Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/47LCsh6lIWl7w1hJk7yhQc">Cookin&#8217; Up a Story</a> podcast. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Whole lotta trouble

Whole Foods Has Its Own ‘Jail’ For Shoplifters — Just Ask The Sushi Thief

Food

Opinion

shoplifting

Walmart

Whole Foods

For years, the radical Left has treated America’s civilian universities as laboratories for anti-American indoctrination — peddling &#8220;whiteness studies,&#8221; seminars on gender-based genocide, and even the celebration of Hamas. On Thursday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth made it clear that toxic &#8220;woke&#8221; rot ends at the doors of the Department of War.
Hegseth delivered a blistering ultimatum to the military’s educational bureaucracy, directing the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness to establish an immediate task force. Hegseth announced a 90-day &#8220;scorched earth&#8221; assessment of the nation’s senior service colleges, including the Army War College and National Defense University. The mission? To &#8220;rip out&#8221; the DEI playbook and return the focus to what actually matters: lethality, meritocracy, and winning wars.
“Seminars on genocide through the analytic of gender. Hmm, sounds interesting,” Hegseth mused. “So-called ‘whiteness studies.’ Courses that celebrate the history of Hamas, where a professor calls Islamist militants and their attacks ‘astounding’ and ‘incredible.’ Graduate studies that focus on the abolition of law enforcement. Classes on leadership that are just recycled garbage from the old DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion playbook: These are examples of classes that our leaders in our civilian colleges and universities too often celebrate.”
“The truth is, they help cultivate a radical hate America agenda, and we can&#8217;t afford that same toxic ideology in America&#8217;s War Department,” he declared. “It degrades our readiness. It&#8217;s a risk to our forces. And it undermines our mission of peace through strength.”
He continued:
<blockquote>
At the Department of War, we have a duty to ensure that our professional military education develops real leaders, warfighters who dominate into the future. We&#8217;re committed to making our own senior service colleges maintain the highest of standards, that those places align with President Trump&#8217;s commitment to the American people, that our military will remain the strongest in history.
That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m directing the Undersecretary of War for Personnel and Readiness to establish a task force effective immediately. The mission of that task force is to evaluate our senior service colleges, where we educate our own. Think places like the Army War College, or National Defense University, the Naval War College, Marine Corps University, or the Air War College, where our senior officers go to continue their education.
We&#8217;re going to ensure that the professors, administrators, and curriculum of those institutions are focused on national security, strategy, history, and overall excellence, confirm that high standards and meritocracy are forefront, and make sure that what we&#8217;ve seen in our civilian institutions never surface in our military education institutions.
Trust me, I&#8217;ve heard the stories. I know some of our own senior service colleges, some of those that I just listed, have similar courses and similar ideologies. We need to rip ‘em out, and we&#8217;re going to.
This task force will have 90 days to assess whether our senior service colleges — the list I just provided — are actually effective. They&#8217;re going to identify any deficiencies and make sure they&#8217;re focused on core national security issues.
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Professional Military Education should produce warfighters and leaders—not wokesters.
That’s why we are establishing a Task Force to evaluate our Senior Service Colleges and ensure the focus is where it belongs.
No distractions. Just warfighting. <a href="https://t.co/zQhUA2bk9I">pic.twitter.com/zQhUA2bk9I</a>
&mdash; Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) <a href="https://twitter.com/SecWar/status/2032271118665396517?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2026</a></blockquote>
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The move is a sharp course correction from the Lloyd Austin era under the Biden administration, where the Pentagon became a playground for Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral linguistics. In 2021, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-cotton-reveals-military-whistleblower-complaints-on-woke-training-bidens-secdef-insists-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-is-important-to-this-military?utm_source=chatgpt.com">exposed</a> hundreds of whistleblower complaints from service members forced into &#8220;privilege walks&#8221; and told that the U.S. military was a &#8220;fundamentally racist&#8221; institution. In 2022, academics even <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marines-receive-woke-report-which-says-to-stop-calling-drill-instructors-sir-maam?utm_source=chatgpt.com">pressured</a> the Marines to drop &#8220;sir&#8221; and &#8220;ma&#8217;am&#8221; to avoid &#8220;misgendering.&#8221;
Hegseth’s directive signals a total rejection of those priorities. By targeting the curriculum and the administrators of senior service colleges, the War Department — a name restored to emphasize the military’s true purpose — is shifting back to the warrior ethos. Hegseth emphasized that if the military is pulling officers out of civilian universities because they have become too &#8220;woke,&#8221; the military’s own institutions must be beyond reproach.
The Secretary’s mandate is clear: the task force will evaluate whether these schools are effectively producing critical thinkers grounded in the principles of the Founding Fathers. No more &#8220;white fragility&#8221; readings; no more &#8220;abolition of law enforcement&#8221; studies. As Hegseth noted, the focus is now on ensuring those rising to the highest ranks are prepared to dominate the battlefield.
Under the new leadership, the era of treating diversity and inclusion as a &#8220;warfighting imperative&#8221; is over.

US-IRAN-ISRAEL-WAR

‘RIP ‘EM OUT’: Hegseth Declares War On Wokeness In Military Schools, Launches 90-Day Review

Department of War

Pete Hegseth

Politics

Wokeness

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1929-iran-the-least-popular-war-ever-launched?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
Self-help guru Tim Ferriss, one of the biggest names in the modern “optimize your life” universe, has apparently just arrived at a conclusion I’ve been yelling about for years: self-help is very, very bad for you. Self-help is self-harm.
Now, I have to admit something up front: I don’t know much about Tim Ferriss. I’ve heard the name before. But I avoid all self-help. It should be clear to you by now that I don’t like self-help literature. It smells like a scam from 100 miles away.
I want to improve myself, yes. I want to improve. But the self-help stuff? No. 
When I was a teenager, I read a little bit of it like &#8220;The 48 Laws of Power&#8221; by Robert Greene. Or the really famous one by Dale Carnegie, &#8220;How to Win Friends and Influence People.&#8221; That’s the classic of the self-help category.
And, as I remember it, all it boils down to this: be nice to people and remember their names. 
That’s it. I just saved you ten bucks on Amazon. 
And I guess that’s good advice.
But a lot of the self-help stuff is pretty noxious. I’ve thought this for years. And apparently Tim Ferriss agrees — at least partially.
<h3>Ferriss’ “Road To Damascus” Moment</h3>
Ferriss seems to have had a Road to Damascus moment — not necessarily with a religious conversion, but with a recognition that what he’s been doing might be wrong.
According to an article in <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/03/09/tim-ferriss-self-help-may-be-harming-people/">The Telegraph</a> titled, “The self-help guru who decided he might be doing more harm than good,” Ferriss is confronting his most profound insight yet in his latest blog post, “The Self-Help Trap.” The piece is about 3,000 words. It’s got all the usual &#8220;optimization&#8221; language — optimizing is one of the words they all use.
Ferriss, now 48, asks whether his own industry might, with some important caveats, be making desperate people worse rather than better.
And then he says, quote:
<blockquote>“The older I get, the more I think that self-help can be a trap. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. I say this after around 20 years of writing self-help, and a lifetime of consuming it &#8230; What if self-help itself is actually creating or amplifying unhappiness?”</blockquote>
Ferriss says modern self-help contains a &#8220;built-in flaw: to continually improve yourself, you must continually locate the ways you are broken.&#8221;
He gets so close. I love so much of what he’s saying — and then he totally misses the point. The point just goes right over his head. But he gets very close, and so I give him credit for the introspection.
Some people are reading this cynically: is he just doing a new kind of self-help? Has Self-help ruined your life? Read my new book: &#8220;Ten Easy Steps to Get Over Self-Help,&#8221; by Tim Ferriss! 
No. That&#8217;s not what he&#8217;s doing here. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think maybe he’s being sincere. He’s in the middle of his life’s journey, and he’s had this realization.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1929-iran-the-least-popular-war-ever-launched?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-1054531" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/MK-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
<h3>Self-Help Is A Trap And You Can See It In The People Who Buy It</h3>
Ferriss says, “I think self-help can be a trap.” That’s true.
The people who are most obsessed with self-help, in my experience, are the most messed up, depressed people.
And you might say, well, yeah — they’re messed up. They’re trying to get help.
Well, it ain’t working.
It’s like your friend or relative who’s been going to the therapist — usually just means drug dealer, but, you know, the psychiatrist — for 30 years. They never get any better. And maybe they get more dope, but they don’t ever get any better. 
And you say, hey, have you thought about trying something different?
And they say, oh, I couldn’t, I’m so messed up—could you imagine if I lost my psychiatrist?
Hold on. Maybe you’re going that backwards. Maybe your psychiatrist is actually not helping but even compounding the problem.
I think that’s what happens with self-help, but not for the reason Tim Ferriss gives.
<h3>The Problem Isn’t “Finding What’s Broken.” It’s Denying What’s Broken.</h3>
Ferriss says self-help has this in-built flaw: to continually improve yourself, you must continually look at the ways you are broken.
That’s not the problem.
You know what else impels you to continually reflect on the ways in which you’re broken? Christianity does that, when you examine your conscience, and especially when you go and confess your sins to a priest. You have to sit down and think of the number and kind of all the ways that you are broken.
The problem with self-help is that it doesn’t do that.
The whole premise of self-help, actually, is a denial of the fundamental ways in which we are broken, because self-help, at its root, I think, denies original sin.
The whole point is that you really can help yourself. And not just help yourself a little bit. You can save yourself. You can optimize your life.
And ultimately you can’t.
You can exercise. You can work-out. You can practice certain habits of virtue. But ultimately, you can’t save yourself.
This is what the Church formally declared when it condemned the heresy of Pelagius. The problem with self-help is it misses out on the best way you can help yourself, which is looking to Someone beyond yourself.
Not looking to Tim Ferriss. Not looking to Dale Carnegie. Not looking to whatever other guru is trending on the internet this week. But looking to Someone who is greater than you — who is so far beyond humanity and yet mysteriously takes on humanity, and so understands us intimately. Not only who created us, but who has lived as one of us — who is like us in all respects, except sin.
That’s what it’s about.
<h3>A Christian Offshoot With All The Fun Parts And None Of The Obligations</h3>
Just as liberalism is a perversion — it’s kind of a spin-off of Christianity that tries to keep all the fun parts of Christianity without any of the obligations and the duties and the limits — this is the same thing with self-help.
The self-help literature I’ve read, some of it, it spins out of Christianity, and it takes away all the limits and all the essential stuff. It takes away the parts that acknowledge that not only are you broken, but you’re so broken that there is essentially nothing you can do without grace.
So, if you want to read some self-help literature, a good writer on this would be Saint Thomas Aquinas, who points out that without grace, every human being will fall into mortal sin. And even if you’re in a state of grace, you’ll still fall into venial sin.
That’s how broken we are.
<h3>The Ferriss Moment We Should All Root For</h3>
Ferriss is close. He’s very close.
We’ve got to help Tim Ferriss be great.
Wouldn’t it be great if one of the big proponents of self-help actually turned people on to real help?
Because the trap isn’t noticing your flaws. The trap is believing you can fix the deepest ones alone — believing that the answer is always inside you, always one more habit, one more hack, one more optimization away.
And that’s not liberation.
That’s just a nicer-looking cage.

OMR Festival 2024 In Hamburg

Tim Ferriss Says Self-Help Is A Trap. He’s Right — But For The Wrong Reason.

Christianity

Michael Knowles

Psychology

At the high-profile United Nations Commission on the Status of Women this week, the United States was the only nation in the world to vote against a woke document that failed to define what a woman is and promoted gender ideology and diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, The Daily Wire can first report.
Thirty-six nations are members of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and every single year during the commission, there is an agreed-upon document that focuses on topics affecting women around the world, including injustices.
This year&#8217;s document was a disappointment to Bethany Kozma, Director of Global Affairs (OGA) at the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the other members of President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration who had traveled to the commission in New York.
The document was filled with mentions of DEI, gender ideology, and ambiguous language about &#8220;reproductive rights,&#8221; but was bereft of language unique to womanhood, according to Kozma. &#8220;No mention of motherhood or unique female experiences,&#8221; she said, adding, &#8220;and it failed to define what a woman is.&#8221;
In short, The Daily Wire has learned, it was not aligned with the Trump administration&#8217;s policies and views on these issues. Since the president took office again in 2025, the United States has clearly defined what a woman is, banned boys from girls&#8217; spaces and sports, fought back against transgenderism in the medical world, and shut down many DEI projects in corporations and academia.
&#8220;The UN Commission on Women is supposed to be for women, yet for years, it’s been co-opted to include men pretending to be women,&#8221; she explained. &#8220;Many countries claim to support and empower women, yet some of them cannot even answer the simple question: &#8216;What is a woman?'&#8221;
&#8220;Thanks to the moral leadership of President Trump, the tide is changing and we&#8217;re standing up for women and girls,&#8221; she emphasized. &#8220;And I really was hopeful that we could come to an agreement.&#8221;
Kozma and her delegation from the United States worked hard to participate in good faith, offering amendments to the document that they knew some countries might sign onto. Natalie Dodson, senior advisor to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., shared that their delegation worked aggressively to negotiate with the other countries in order to include language defending the integrity of women.
&#8220;The text was not something that the U.S. liked at all,&#8221; Kozma explained. &#8220;It would not have been something that we would have ever put out on behalf of the United States government, but we had offered several amendments that were just very common sense.&#8221;
One amendment that they had been asking for, over and over, was an amendment that essentially defined men and women so that there would be no ambiguity.
<div id="attachment_1056463" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1056463" class="size-full wp-image-1056463" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_6039-scaled.jpeg" alt="" width="2560" height="1920" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_6039-scaled.jpeg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_6039-300x225.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_6039-768x576.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_6039-1536x1152.jpeg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/03/IMG_6039-2048x1536.jpeg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />Members of the United States Delegation at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.</div>
The Commission on the Status of Women wasn&#8217;t interested in the American amendments, Kozma and Dodson explained to The Daily Wire. Minutes before midnight on Sunday night, the council sent the final draft to the United States without acknowledging any of the American red lines that Kozma&#8217;s team had outlined.
And when it came time to vote on the amendments, which were intended to be voted on separately, the council bundled all the amendments together. Some nations might have voted for one amendment but not another, and bundled together, the amendments failed.
During Monday&#8217;s vote, the United States was the only nation in the world to vote against the document. Six nations abstained: Côte d&#8217;Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Mali, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia.
Kozma believes it was a deliberate attempt at &#8220;isolation&#8221; by the council to make the United States look like &#8220;we won&#8217;t don&#8217;t defend women and girls.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m really proud of us,&#8221; she told The Daily Wire over the phone. &#8220;We were the only country that was voting to protect women and girls.&#8221;

World Leaders Gather For The 80th Session Of The United Nations General Assembly

U.S. Stands Alone Defending Women In Gender Identity Fight At United Nations

Department of Health and Human Services

Transgender

United Nations

Women

The national chain Smoothie King has issued an official response to a viral video that appears to show a customer wearing pro-Trump apparel being refused service at one of its locations, saying the employees involved have been fired.
It all started when TikTok user @enl1986 posted a video that appeared to show two employees refusing to take an order from a man she identified as her husband, Jake. 
The stated reason for the refusal of service was that Jake was wearing a sweatshirt with Trump’s name on it.
The interaction reportedly occurred at a Smoothie King location in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“As a brand, Smoothie King is committed to ensuring our stores are a place free of discrimination of any kind, where every guest and team member is treated with care and respect,” a <a href="https://x.com/SmoothieKing/status/2028689603314458713">statement</a> from the company said. “Following an investigation into an incident involving a guest who was refused service at a franchised location in Michigan yesterday, the franchise owner has taken immediate action and the two employees involved are no longer with the business.” 
The company added that both the franchise owner and corporate representatives had reached out to the guest multiple times to apologize and would continue to follow up. It also said the local owner will implement &#8220;mandatory retraining&#8221; for all employees.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
location in Michigan yesterday, the franchise owner has taken immediate action and the two employees involved are no longer with the business. Both the franchise owner and Smoothie King corporate have reached out to the guest several times to apologize and will continue to follow
— Smoothie King (@SmoothieKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/SmoothieKing/status/2028617911451930774?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
In the video, the woman can be heard telling the employees, “We were just wanting a smoothie and you literally looked at us and I asked you if everything was OK and you said: ‘We don’t feel comfortable serving you’ because of my husband’s hoodie. That is discrimination.&#8221;
One of the employees responded, &#8220;OK, well, have a great day.&#8221; 
&#8220;That is illegal,&#8221; the woman replied. A second employee then chimed in, saying, &#8220;I said, &#8216;Trump discriminates [against] us.'&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Woman claims Smoothie King in Michigan wouldn’t serve them because her husband was wearing a Trump hoodie
Any comment <a href="https://twitter.com/SmoothieKing?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SmoothieKing</a>?? <a href="https://t.co/ASmMBDE7gG">pic.twitter.com/ASmMBDE7gG</a>
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) <a href="https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2028398745184817217?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“That has nothing to do with us getting a smoothie,&#8221; the woman recording said. An employee responded, &#8220;OK, well, that’s who you support, though, that’s who you love.&#8221;
Later in the video, the woman recording added, &#8220;What’s embarrassing is that we’re American citizens and I wanted to get a smoothie.&#8221; 
At one point, an employee said the store had the &#8220;right to refuse service,” while the man accompanying her described the service refusal as a “crime.” 
The exchange quickly sparked debate on social media, with users divided over whether the employees had the right to refuse service.
“You can be denied service for any reason the retailer decides, it&#8217;s that simple, it doesn&#8217;t matter if the customer is wearing a Trump or Biden hat,” one user <a href="https://x.com/L0rdMoore/status/2028430837432119715">insisted</a>.
Others compared the situation to the infamous Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in which a Colorado bakery owner declined to create a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, a dispute that reached the Supreme Court.

Smoothie King

Smoothie King Refused To Serve Customer In Trump Hoodie, Employees Face Consequences

Business

Conservatives

Discrimination

Donald Trump

Michigan

Just a few years after boasting about how transgender surgeries were “huge money makers,” Vanderbilt University Medical Center will no longer perform the procedures.
The Nashville-based health care center confirmed to The Daily Wire that the surgeries, which include procedures like crafting pseudo-genitalia for gender-confused individuals and removing the breasts of women who identify as men, were being phased out for logistical reasons.
“Due to operational limitations and lack of surgical coverage, Vanderbilt Health will cease providing gender-affirming plastic surgeries for adults,” a spokesman for the hospital told The Daily Wire. “Vanderbilt Health continues to provide nonsurgical gender-affirming care for adults 19 years and older. Vanderbilt Health does not provide any gender-affirming care for patients younger than 19.”
Vanderbilt University Medical Center, also known as Vanderbilt Health, is a separate entity from Vanderbilt University.
The hospital’s transgender medical program first <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/huge-money-maker-video-reveals-vanderbilts-shocking-gender-care-threats-against-dissenting-doctors">faced criticism</a> in September 2022 when Daily Wire host Matt Walsh published videos highlighting comments from Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor discussing how lucrative transgender surgeries were.
“It’s a lot of money,” said Taylor, the program’s director at the time. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”
Taylor discussed how “chest reconstruction” could bring in $40,000 per patient and described “female-to-male bottom surgeries” — where a fake penis is constructed by taking skin from the forearm, abdomen, and thigh — as “huge money makers.”
“These surgeries are labor intensive, there are a lot of follow-ups, they require a lot of our time, and they make money,” Taylor said. “They make money for the hospital.”
Vanderbilt Health&#8217;s transgender center opened in 2018, and Taylor <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/health/2018/08/21/vanderbilt-transgender-health-clinic-nashville-tennessee/1054571002/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> its purpose was “to coordinate” patients&#8217; “care wherever they are in the transition process.”
Taylor has since left VUMC and now runs a primary care center in Massachusetts and <a href="https://www.bluecanyonprimarycare.com/about">describes</a> herself as an expert in “general LGBTQ Health and Adolescent Medicine.”
The investigation from Walsh prompted a statewide probe from Republican officials who moved quickly to pass a ban on transgender procedures for kids. That ban was challenged by the ACLU, but was upheld in June 2025 by the Supreme Court.
Over two dozen states have passed laws to shield minors from transgender surgeries and hormonal procedures. The Trump administration has come down hard on hospitals that offer transgender procedures to kids, pulling federal funding and initiating investigations into hospitals across the country.
One <a href="https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default?BillNumber=HB2498&amp;GA=114">bill</a> currently making its way through the Tennessee legislature would prohibit dollars from TennCare, the state’s health funding program for impoverished people, from funding transgender procedures.

Four Surgeons discuss each Other Surgical Precision and Healthcare Expertise  before the Operation case

After Boasting About $40K Trans Surgeries, Vanderbilt Health Reverses Course

Nashville

Tennessee

transgender surgery

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers can now detain refugees who haven&#8217;t obtained green cards within their first year in the United States as part of a larger crackdown on fraud and potential national security threats, according to a new federal memo.
The Trump administration is now instructing federal officers to arrest the refugees and &#8220;re-vet&#8221; them, according to the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-gives-ice-broader-powers-to-detain-legal-refugees-citing-security-concerns/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">memo</a>, which was obtained by CBS News. The Feb. 18 memo states that refugees who haven&#8217;t become legal permanent residents after one year, meaning they never obtained a green card, must avail themselves to federal immigration authorities to have their cases reviewed.
If they fail to do so voluntarily, they may face arrest by ICE.
ICE can then hold them &#8220;for the duration of the inspection and examination process,&#8221; according to the memo, which came from acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Joseph Edlow.
&#8220;The detain-and-inspect requirement ensures that refugees are re-vetted after one year, aligns post-admission vetting with that applied to other applicants for admission, and promotes public safety,&#8221; the memo reads.
&#8220;The changes are designed to better enforce the statutory requirement that aliens admitted as refugees who have been present in the United States for at least one year return or be returned to DHS custody for inspection and examination for admission as an LPR [legal permanent resident]. They further reflect the public policy interest in thorough vetting of aliens admitted as refugees, including vetting for national security, public safety, and fraud-related issues.&#8221;
Former ICE New York field office deputy director Scott Mechkowski told The Daily Wire that the move is &#8220;essential,&#8221; given &#8220;evolving global threats.&#8221;
&#8220;This ensures that our immigration system remains resilient against potential fraud or emerging risks and thereby protecting American communities and upholding the integrity of our humanitarian commitments without compromising public safety,&#8221; Mechkowski said.
Previously, refugees couldn&#8217;t be detained solely because of their failure to get residency within their first year in the United States, according to CBS. ICE also had just 48 hours to decide whether to release refugees or place them into deportation proceedings if there were any red flags.
Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge and current resident fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, told The Daily Wire &#8220;that the prior policy was not consistent with the language of section 209(a) of the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act],&#8221; which states that refugees who fail to obtain a green card in the first year &#8220;shall, at the end of such year period, return or be returned to the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for inspection and examination for admission.&#8221;
&#8220;The whole idea behind that refugee scheme is that certain foreign nationals are so endangered that we must allow them in, and then we will complete the inspection after they have been here for a year &#8212; a fact that should be clear from the statute,&#8221; Arthur said.
Many refugees let in during the Biden administration &#8220;may not have met the definition of &#8216;refugee'&#8221; as spelled out in the Immigration and Nationality Act &#8220;because they lacked a well-founded fear of persecution on account of the five factors (race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion) therein,&#8221; Arthur said.
Last year, the Trump administration set the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-sets-refugee-limit-to-lowest-level-in-history">refugee cap</a> at the lowest level in the country&#8217;s history, allowing just 7,500 immigrants to enter. The federal government also commenced a review of refugees brought into the country during the Biden administration, according to CBS.
An Afghan national who <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/lakanwal-newly-indicted-shooting-guardsmen-near-white-house-killed-sarah-beckstrom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was brought into the country</a> by the Biden administration in 2021 shot two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 26. Specialist Sarah Beckstrom tragically succumbed to the injuries she sustained in the ambush.
The attack sparked a pause on all immigration applications from foreigners who hail from &#8220;high risk&#8221; countries.
Refugee advocates say the latest move by the Trump administration will open the floodgates for the Trump administration&#8217;s deportation campaign.
&#8220;This policy is a transparent effort to detain and potentially deport thousands of people who are legally present in this country, people the U.S. government itself welcomed after years of extreme vetting,&#8221; said Beth Oppenheim, the CEO of HIAS, which helps with refugee resettlement, according to CBS.

US-AFGHANISTAN-CONFLICT-ARRIVALS

A Little-Known Rule Surfaces As Trump Admin Reopens The Books On Refugees

Department of Homeland Security

Refugees

Trump Administration

Kansas will enact legislation banning males who identify as female from using women’s bathrooms after Republican lawmakers overrode Democrat Governor Laura Kelly&#8217;s veto. 
The Kansas House <a href="https://www.kslegislature.gov/li/b2025_26/measures/sb244/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">voted</a> 87-37 on Wednesday to overturn Kelly’s veto of a <a href="https://www.kslegislature.gov/li/b2025_26/measures/documents/sb244_enrolled.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bill,</a> which requires that multi-occupancy private spaces in public buildings be separate by sex. The state Senate previously voted 31-9 on Tuesday to do the same. 
“Today, Speaker Hawkins and I signed the veto override for SB 244. Common sense has prevailed against Laura Kelly and the radical left, and now women and girl&#8217;s (sic) private spaces will be protected from biological men,” Senate President Ty Masterson wrote on social media on Wednesday, sharing a photo alongside House Speaker Dan Hawkins. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Today, Speaker Hawkins and I signed the veto override for SB 244. Common sense has prevailed against Laura Kelly and the radical left, and now women and girl’s private spaces will be protected from biological men. <a href="https://t.co/8UCu7tUzzK">pic.twitter.com/8UCu7tUzzK</a>
— Ty Masterson (@TyMastersonKS) <a href="https://twitter.com/TyMastersonKS/status/2024248789918196154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The law applies to multi-occupancy restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, and shower facilities designated for use by males or females.
The legislation also defines “gender” for purposes of state law as a person&#8217;s biological sex and requires driver’s licenses to reflect a person&#8217;s sex rather than gender identity. Birth certificates must also list a person’s sex. 
Responding to the override, Kelly <a href="https://www.governor.ks.gov/Home/Components/News/News/926/56">said</a> the bill was “poorly drafted” and would have “far-reaching consequences.” 
She claimed it would prohibit “brothers from visiting sisters’ dorms and husbands from wives’ shared hospital rooms.”
The bill&#8217;s passage was condemned by leftist groups such as the ACLU of Kansas. 
“This discriminatory bill undermines our state’s strong constitutional protections against government overreach and persecution,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas. 
U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) praised the state legislature for overriding the veto. 
“Congratulations to the Kansas Legislature on this important win for our state. Grateful for the strong leadership of Senate President Ty Masterson, Speaker Dan Hawkins, and the entire Legislature for standing up to radical left gender ideology, and delivering commonsense protections for Kansas girls,” <a href="https://x.com/RogerMarshallMD/status/2024276721168765012">said</a> Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) on Wednesday. 
The veto override was also praised by American Principles Project President Terry Schilling.
“Gov. Laura Kelly tried to smuggle boys into your daughters’ locker room. And when Kansans blocked her, she pretended it was about hospital visitation,” he told The Daily Wire. “What Laura Kelly and Democrats lack in common sense, they make up for with bald-faced lies and indifference to the safety of children.”
Last year, Kansas&#8217;s GOP supermajority <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/kansas-republicans-override-dem-governors-veto-to-ban-trans-procedures-on-kids">overrode</a> Kelly&#8217;s veto to enact a law banning transgender medical procedures for children.

Friends applying make-up while looking at mirror

Battle Over Women’s Bathrooms Delivers A Biological Reality Check

Bathrooms

Kansas

Goldman Sachs plans to scrap its race, sex, and other DEI factors when considering potential additions to its board of directors.
The board’s governance committee made the decision to axe DEI metrics from its list of qualifications for new board members after striking an agreement with the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit, according to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/goldman-sachs-board-dei-57fea527?mod=hp_lead_pos2">The Wall Street Journal</a>.
The committee has four broad factors it considers when looking for new board members, one of which is a demographic profile that includes viewpoints, military service, and other markers, as well as DEI variables such as a person’s race, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Going forward, the committee plans to strip away the DEI calculations from its rubric for board candidates.
The National Legal and Policy Center has a small ownership stake in Goldman Sachs and in September, proposed that the committee strip away the DEI component of its board member criteria. The center had requested that the bank share the proposal with shareholders ahead of its annual shareholder meeting scheduled for this spring, but Goldman Sachs struck an agreement with the center that involved pulling the proposal and the bank scrapping its DEI metrics anyway.
Goldman Sachs had last year dropped its DEI requirements for companies that wanted the bank’s help in listing for an IPO.
Goldman Sachs’ curbing of its own DEI policies comes as the Trump administration has pursued policies to push such metrics out of the federal government while wielding federal powers to push companies to distance themselves from DEI as well. President Donald Trump, on his first day of his second term, took a stand against DEI, ordering federal departments and agencies to begin cutting DEI positions in the government.
The president also directed federal agencies to look into companies with DEI policies for potential discriminatory practices. In February of last year, the president <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-targets-two-financial-firms-over-dei-and-esg-push">took</a> aim at two financial firms, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, that the president said were pushing racial quotas and climates activism on numerous other companies.
At the time, both firms had guidelines that had the potential to impact a wide swath of companies that encouraged them to adopt DEI criteria in promotions to their board. They also had similar guidelines directing companies to take steps to address climate change.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Goldman Sachs Will No Longer Judge Board Members By DEI Metrics

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Goldman Sachs

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-more-weimar">The New Jerusalem</a> on Substack.
* * *
In the minds of most journalists, all human history can be summed up with the words, “Rome fell, then Hitler came.” A few more accomplished scholars among the chattering classes might be able to distinguish between the fall of Rome’s republic, followed by the empire, and the fall of the empire, followed by a thousand years of hideously faith-infused darkness. But basically, to journalists, all signs of political or cultural decadence — whether it’s a Republican being elected or some other Republican being elected — are omens that American Rome is about to collapse followed by the rise of American Hitler.
“A Confessing Church for America’s Weimar Moment,” reads a headline in The Dispatch. “We must not let the shooting of Charlie Kirk become Trump’s Reichstag fire,” writes a genius at The Guardian. “Welcome to Weimar 2.0,” headlines a book excerpt by the catastrophist Robert D. Kaplan in Foreign Policy. And that’s not even counting the continual Hitler forecasts on cable TV. One could almost feel sorry for der old Führer, his psycho ass getting dragged out of hell every ten minutes to serve as a warning to us all.
And look, yes, it’s true, the United States is in one of those periods of dissolution and transition that come upon every nation from time to time. So too was Weimar, the unstable republic that rose up in the wake of Germany’s crushing defeat in World War I. Such periods are often marked by polarized politics, destructive sexual profligacy wrongly celebrated as liberation, and art forms informed by and infused with the general cultural decay. So with America. So with Weimar.
Beyond that, however, the comparison is a shallow one. For one thing, the image of Weimar among our clerisy is skewed with bias. Watch any movie set in the era — the musical Cabaret is a good one — or any television series — Babylon Berlin is my favorite — or read histories like Peter Gay’s famous Weimar Culture. You’ll get the sense that you’re learning about a time of delightful but doomed sexual and artistic creativity, with benign but hapless socialists slowly falling beneath the darkening Nazi shadow.
But no. The undisciplined sex lives, the anti-freedom politics of both the left and the right, and the shocking but ultimately ephemeral cultural productions were all one thing, all part of the same process of decay. Weimar — and the world wars that preceded and followed it — marked the end of a civilization — the greatest civilization that has yet existed on planet Earth — the civilization that was Europe from around 1345 to 1914. It was this, in fact, that gave Hitler his rhetorical super power: he diagnosed the decadence correctly. He just didn’t realize he was its ultimate manifestation. Ah well. Even a mass murdering racist lunatic can’t be right all the time.
<div id="attachment_1044519" style="width: 745px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1044519" class="size-large wp-image-1044519" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-735x576.jpg" alt="Charles Chaplin movie art for the film 'The Great Dictator', 1940. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)" width="735" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-735x576.jpg 735w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-300x235.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264-768x602.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-156480264.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px" />Charles Chaplin movie art for the film &#8216;The Great Dictator&#8217;, 1940. (Photo by United Artists/Getty Images)</div>
So the United States is in a decadent state and so was Weimar, and decadence anywhere looks like decadence everywhere. History does repeat itself.
But it repeats itself for a reason. It’s the same reason a person’s life tends to repeat itself. The human race, like each of its individual members, has a nature, a character. Like everything that exists, character is bounded by its defining limits. Those limits cause it to express itself in a finite number of patterns. Over time, those patterns are certain to reassert themselves in recognizable forms.
The patterns of a healthy society or person will be shaped something like a rising spiral. Certain arcs of activity will recur over and over, but they will recur in increasingly wise, creative and productive ways. There will be periods of dissolution but they will be what is sometimes referred to as “chaos leading to a higher plane.” You can trace such a pattern in the plays of William Shakespeare. You can find it in the history of England between Elizabeth and the end of World War II.
The history of a rotten society or person will form a descending spiral, the repeated arcs of foolishness and evil growing ever darker and more self-destructive. The life of every tyranny is like this. The life of every addict too.
Then there’s the history of an ignorant or neurotic society or person. This will simply look like a circle. The subject goes round and round on a level track while uttering occasional gasps of wonder at having found themselves at a place they’ve passed a hundred times before but have a hundred times forgotten. You know people like this. Every now and then, they announce they’ve had some smack-the-forehead revelation that will change their lives forever. Then they return to the exact same ideas and behaviors they’ve had before. Perpetually primitive tribes are also like this, no matter how we want to romanticize them.
In short, times of dissolution will indeed be followed by a transition. But Hitler — get ready for it — is not the only possible outcome. The time surrounding the French Revolution in Great Britain showed many of the usual signs of decadence, but the Victorian era that followed was arguably Britain’s greatest age. So with the United States in the 1920’s and 30’s. Those decadent days led to the mighty 1950’s and a new American half century. As with each individual, what follows a nation’s dissolution all depends on the essential health of the nation’s character.
Where then are we?
It seems obvious to me that the primary cause of our current decline is the falling away of the Baby Boomers. My age cohort has dominated the political and cultural landscape for seventy years. Now, we’re played out and heading for the exits. Our accomplishments were many. We made hypocritical virtue signaling an art, introduced self-destructive drug use to the general population, slowed the rise of black Americans by burying them under the smothering dependencies of the Great Society, and wasted all the money accumulated by every generation before us along with some money that will be accumulated by the generations to come. We also popularized the personal computer so, like, yay for us.
What the United States will become when we are gone is, of course, not yet clear, but it’s a good bet it will be defined by the way we use the new forms of communication that have been and are still being generated by technology. Who or what will dominate those engines of culture is largely what all the current division, panic, bullying and violence is intended to decide.
Periods like this are often resolved by the rise of a powerful personality. Will this person shape the coming Zeitgeist or merely ride its wave? Your answer will depend on whether you agree with Thomas Carlyle that “the History of the world is but the Biography of great men,” or with Tolstoy who said, “great men—so called—are but the labels that serve to give a name to an event.” Like the question of nurture or nature, this question is impossible to resolve, probably because, like the question of nature and nurture, the binary itself is an illusion. But as I say, contra the journalists, Hitler is not the only model for such era-defining personalities. George Washington and Queen Victoria are far more benign examples of the breed. Luther and Napoleon were mixed blessings. History is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
When we scan the horizon for the coming definitive personality, it’s pretty hard to see the horizon with the gigantic Donald Trump standing in the way. So yeah, maybe he’s the guy. He has no coherent ideology so his effect may not be a lasting one. But he does bear all the marks of a Tolstoyan Godzilla. Like that monster created by nuclear blasts, Trump is the product of our generation’s eruption of materialist vulgarity. But he is also the avatar of the American everyman in our time. Like that character — much maligned by the elites who feed off his bounty — he is blunt, common sensical, creative, independent and bold. If he uses these traits to blast away such fatal nonsense as open borders, transgenderism and socialism — if he restores our simple patriotism and can-do spirit — the imprint of his nature may well be Trump’s legacy to the new age.
But this is still America. Perhaps the great figure that will shape our 21st Century is not Trump or any other individual, but we, the people. In that case, Weimar, with its sexual libertinism, its artistic Dadaism and its polarized politics, actually does serve as a guide — a guide to what each and every one of us should not do.
Let we, the people, then, like healthy men with healthy minds, eschew the habits of decadence.
Get your sex life in order. Give up porn and feminism and other such perversions, and yoke your desires to their natural purposes: the creation of families, the solidifying of marriages and the maintenance of self-governing homes.
In politics, murder your isms. Follow the facts instead. Do what works, what keeps people free, what makes free people happy, what encourages the wealthy but protects the poor. Our founding principles are still the best guides ever invented to achieving those ends. Use them. Make our leaders use them too.
And in the culture, forget the overrated shock of the new. In the arts as in life, follow one rule: Make something beautiful. Whether it’s a movie or an invention, a business or a family, a community at peace or simply a life lived lovingly and well. Turn your back on every ugliness and cruelty. Head down the path of beauty and, like the prodigal son, you will see your Father running to greet you from afar.
And that’s another thing — one last thing — love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind. In general, they neglected to do that in Weimar and ended up worshipping the devil instead. No matter what anyone tells you, those are the only two choices. Choose right, and I guarantee you, Hitler will stay in hell — or on cable TV, which amounts to the same thing — where he belongs.
* * *
This article originally appeared in <a href="https://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-more-weimar">The New Jerusalem</a> on Substack.
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fifth installment, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/After-That-Cameron-Winter-Mysteries/dp/1613166869/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3EGZUC370LG46&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Y_NI0mDOKeowShheDQTVx5NH-fAeimJoCD56_T0Acpl8C0mup7uJf-nGGSRLEItaaekoDnvS2vWLMa4Zd2UBXQ8Y-g-P502jOWz-Y8IX3ZQsdlO7WMLrg1xIhNoKmjCorSWUR4C2l_RbiZ7apJ1MfPzGOrrEf7AdAXX6xwnJRVP_XqUfWuMuVthTWscaU3P4vgmS86-96n-721enHfX12CFQWTajqFbVnrsDkexfUf4.6_gTH6h1Bb9Pn375QdF_VAVZSayDvjQBBKGXE-MTiFo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=klavan&amp;qid=1754049918&amp;sprefix=%2Caps%2C80&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">After That, The Dark,</a> is NOW AVAILABLE. Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>.
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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Colorado Democrats have introduced a bill that would make the Centennial State the first to fully legalize prostitution.
<a href="https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb26-097">Senate Bill 97</a>, sponsored by Democrat Senate Majority Whip Nick Hinrichsen, would repeal penalties for prostitution, currently a petty offense under Colorado law. It would also allow for “soliciting for prostitution, keeping a place of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, and prostitute making display.”
Michael Allen, district attorney for Colorado’s 4th Judicial District and the top Republican candidate for state attorney general, called the bill “disgraceful.”
“Coloradans are leaving this state in record numbers because crime is rising and the cost of living is out of control — yet radical Democrats in the legislature are focused on legalizing prostitution,” Allen said in a statement.
Colorado <a href="https://www.thecentersquare.com/colorado/article_12d02ddb-6814-494e-996c-e67711def869.html">ranked</a> 13th in the nation with 88 human trafficking cases in 2024. Preliminary data show the state had 110 cases in 2025, surpassing its previous record of 107 in 2023, according to Center Square.
“Human trafficking is inseparable from violent crime, drug activity, and organized criminal networks,” Allen said. “Legalizing prostitution will only fuel these dangers and further victimize the most vulnerable among us.”
Prostitution is legal in certain Nevada counties, while Maine legalized prostitution, but criminalized paying for sex.
The legislation also legalizes advertising prostitution and escort services and removes language classifying buildings used for prostitution as public nuisances. If passed, it would not allow for any local laws prohibiting prostitution.
“Criminalizing prostitution endangers adults who engage in consensual sexual activity,” the bill reads. “Sex workers deserve clarity and certainty that they can safely conduct business within the state, regardless of the local governing authority.”
The bill does not allow paying for sex with children or pimping.
Co-sponsors of the bill include Democrat Senate Assistant Majority Leader Lisa Cutter and Democrat representatives Lorena García and Rebekah Stewart.
The ACLU of Colorado supports the bill, but a few towns, including Fountain, Monument, and Woodland Park, are opposing it, <a href="https://www.westword.com/news/colorado-could-legalize-prostituion-sex-work-new-bill-40843835/">according</a> to Westword.
The bill has been assigned to the Judiciary Committee, which includes Hinrichsen, but a hearing date has not been set. Democrats have a 5-2 majority on the committee. If passed, the bill would take effect immediately.
“The Democrats running for attorney general must join me in condemning this legislation and the most extreme elements of their party — immediately,” Allen said. “Colorado deserves better.”

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