Commentary Culture Investigations

You’ve probably never heard of Gaza photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and are unaware of an interview he gave earlier this month, where he criticized the Gaza media and Hamas, and at the same time, admitted not publishing photos showing Israeli captives being beaten in Gaza.  Aside from The Jerusalem Post and MEMRI’s coverage, you’d be hard pressed to find it anywhere else, certainly not prominently in our liberal media. Azaiza gave the interview to Ahmed Biqui on the podcast Taqarrab, Azaiza.According to the Post, “Azaiza said he filmed Israeli hostages being beaten by a Gazan mob on October 7 2023, but chose not to publish the footage because he feared it could put the Palestinians involved at risk. “I saw the vehicle of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and there were Israeli captives there, people got out, watched, beat them, hit them, and I followed them and filmed. But I did not publish those videos. Why? Because I did not want to ruin the lives of the people who were filmed.”Azaiza said he understood that if he revealed the faces of those beating the Israelis, eventually Israel would eliminate each one, and added, “”I did not want to be responsible, even indirectly, for the deaths of those people in exchange for a few likes and views online.” Of course Israel has been taking out October 7th leaders and participants one by one for many months now, but a journalist hiding the truth to protect terrorist thugs is exactly the problem that coverage of Israel and Gaza has been suffering for decades. And Azaiza described a much wider journalistic coverup in GazaAccording to MEMRI, New York-based Azaiza, who is an employee of UNRWA, and was evacuated with his family to Qatar in 2024, revealed photojournalists in Gaza opting not to film residents who criticize Hamas. “When someone gets out of the ambulance and says something like, “May Allah punish Hamas”, and I’m filming him, and people around him turn off the camera.. I honestly couldn’t bring myself to look away from what he is saying, or turn away the camera from what he was saying. Ultimately, he’s simply blaming his government, the one responsible for dragging him into a war like this.”Azaiza continued with an admission, “So I was in a state of inner conflict at first. To be honest, I found it hard to publish things like this at first… I’ve never seen a journalist from Gaza publish something like this.” The host interjected, “Usually things like this are not published,” to which Azaiza replied, “Right, if someone says something like this, many journalists lower the camera.”According to the Jerusalem Post story, Azaiza also ripped Hamas’s leadership, in no uncertain terms, accusing the terrorist group of bringing disaster upon the Gaza Strip.“From October 7 until today, show me one Palestinian who lives in Gaza and was protected by Hamas’s weapons? No one in Gaza received protection from those weapons.” Azaiza went on to criticize Hamas’s leadership over its months-long refusal to agree to a deal. “I am not waiting two years to judge whether Hamas made mistakes. I see the mistake in front of my eyes, when people are dying every day. Now they are talking about an agreement in which they will agree to lay down their weapons. You could have agreed to that already on October 11, 2023. Why was it so important that tens of thousands would be killed? On what table did you put the Palestinian issue? You brought us back to the Middle Ages. You caused women in Gaza to urinate into a plastic bucket. This does not bother you, but what bothers you is if someone suddenly criticizes you?”This interview provided devastating truth about what is taking place and has been taking place with media coverage inside Gaza since October 7th. Azaiza is no angel, having admittedly participated in covering up events, but one would hope that what he has come forth with, including his brutal take-down of Hamas, and how they have harmed the Palestinian people, would gain traction here in our media. Unfortunately, it will not.

“Anyone who is mentally incapacitated due to alcohol and other drugs cannot give consent,” states a high school sex education curriculum used in Washington state.
“Exploiting a person’s impairment from the use of alcohol or other drugs is not okay under any circumstances. If someone is incapacitated from alcohol and/or other drugs, they cannot give consent,” reasons Dartmouth University’s sexual consent guide.
The sentiment is a common one repeated in schools, colleges, and workplaces across the country. Incapacitation from alcohol negates one’s ability to consent. Intoxication, meanwhile, negatively impacts one’s judgment.
When power dynamics are thrown into a situation involving a woman repeatedly so drunk that time and again she fails to remember her sexual encounters, consent is bound to be in question. Or, at the least, a man’s decision to continue having sex with a woman who doesn’t remember it the next morning should be under great scrutiny.
Yet no one cared when this summer Ruby Rippey, California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s former secretary and affair partner, penned an essay in Vanity Fair revealing that on several occasions she was blackout drunk when she had sex with Newsom. (RELATED: The Women Who Will Haunt Gavin Newsom’s Presidential Campaign)
By blackout drunk, I mean that she was so inebriated that, though she was conscious and interacting with Newsom, her brain was not forming memories normally.
A state of inebriation associated with not remembering what happened the next day is medically established to begin at 0.16 percent BAC, which is twice the legal limit for driving in California. The University of Toledo classifies this as “very drunk” and says that the effects include “nausea, disorientation, dizziness, increased motor impairment, blurred vision, judgment further impaired.”
In her July Vanity Fair essay, Rippey writes that she doesn’t remember her first sexual encounter with Newsom, which happened the night they both attended a wedding, at which she drank liberally and didn’t touch her food. She says the last thing she remembers is Newsom massaging her feet in his chauffeured car. The next thing she knew, she writes, she was in bed next to him, having passed out and wet the bed.
This wasn’t the only time she didn’t remember what happened with Newsom upon waking up the next morning.
On another occasion, at a Beverly Hills hotel bar, she writes that she remembers “only flashes,” like “leaning in too close” to Newsom, before everything “goes black.” When she woke up the following morning next to Newsom, her head was pounding and shirt buttons were all over the floor. She wondered where the buttons came from. It was only when Newsom texted her “Thank God the W had T-shirts” that she surmised that the buttons had come from her tearing Newsom’s shirt. Yet again, she had been so drunk that she didn’t remember the sexual encounter at all.
This is, of course, highly concerning. Here we have a woman stating publicly that she was extremely drunk when she had sex with Newsom — and when he was her boss and the mayor of San Francisco to boot.
Moreover, she describes herself as being “wasted” when she returned to her husband after her meetings with Newsom. “I come home at three in the morning, wasted, breath thick with alcohol, and slide into bed beside my sleeping husband, pressing my cold body against his for warmth.”
This is the sort of thing that even the most sexually liberal coach against. That Washington high school sex education curriculum, for instance, gives an example of what should be avoided. “Naomi is highly intoxicated and therefore cannot consent. Even if her words (“uh-huh”) indicate yes, the fact that she is drunk means that she cannot consent.”
In her Vanity Fair essay, Rippey goes on to detail how she developed an addiction to cocaine during her affair with Newsom. “Alone, cocaine doesn’t appeal much to me,” she writes. “But after one or two bottles of wine, it makes it so I can drink twice as much for twice as long.”
As she continued her affair with Newsom, her mental state became foggier and foggier.
“The nights blur: rooftop bars, wine, cigarettes, and names I immediately forget. Strangers’ living rooms. Finishing the last lines long after I stop wanting them. The taxi ride home as the sun comes up. The city already moving—belonging to people who have slept. My body, a crime scene.”
When Rippey finally goes to rehab, it is her sister who calls up Newsom and tells him it is his responsibility to say no if Rippey ever calls him again.
*****
We’ve long known that Rippey’s consent was questionable. In my book, Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power, I wrote that Rippey’s long-known problems with cocaine and alcohol rendered her vulnerable to her boss’s advances.
Another worrying sign about the consent involved in Newsom’s relationship with Rippey came from Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Newsom’s now-wife. At the time the affair was revealed, Siebel Newsom claimed that it had consisted of a “few nothing incidents when [Rippey] showed up passed out outside of his door.” As I wrote in February, “What kind of boss has an affair with his secretary with substance abuse problems who shows up passed out outside his door?”
But we have not known — until now — Rippey’s account that she was so drunk during some of their encounters that she doesn’t even remember them.
Yet the press seems to have ignored this revelation. Stories on Rippey’s Vanity Fair essay have focused on the fact that her account of the affair conflicts with the story of the affair that Newsom published in his memoir earlier this year. (He described it as “the stupidest and also briefest of affairs.”) (RELATED: Gavin Newsom Will Regret His Book Launch)
The headline of the Sacramento Bee’s story on the Vanity Fair essay reads: “Ruby Rippey reveals new, contradicting details of Gavin Newsom affair in Vanity Fair.” The Guardian said, “Former Gavin Newsom aide shares fresh details of affair.” The New York Times went with: “Aide Who Had Affair With Newsom 20 Years Ago Details Her Experience.”
The Times characterized her essay thusly: “She seems to blame herself for betraying her husband and says that her life spiraled as she drank heavily and used cocaine.”
The newspaper did, at least, point to Rippey’s consideration in her essay of the role that Newsom’s position of power played in the affair. The Times quotes Rippey as saying: “Power does not need to coerce. It only needs to exist. The responsibility to hold the line belongs to the one who holds it. That didn’t happen.” What the Times did not reckon with was Rippey’s reflections on how alcohol and drugs impacted her ability to consent.
Rippey’s acknowledgment that her boss’s position of power played a role in the affair is novel. At the time of the #MeToo movement, she came out to say her role as his secretary had no impact: “Yes, I was a subordinate, but I was also a free-thinking, 33-[year]-old adult married woman & mother.” Now, she says of that 2018 statement: “Claiming responsibility felt like the last form of agency I had.”
*****
Only the conservative California Globe seems to have taken notice of how worrying the allegations leveled against Newsom in the Vanity Fair essay are.
In an article titled “Gavin Newsom’s Predatory Behavior Coming Home to Roost,” Katy Grimes writes that Newsom’s position as mayor and Rippey’s role as his secretary is “a classic power imbalance used by a predator.”
I was on maternity leave when Rippey’s essay came out. Upon reading it, I wondered if there would be a public debate over Newsom’s relationship with Rippey. Would people ask if this was unforgivable, especially for a politician? After all, the country was closely following the story of Graham Platner and the sexual allegations leveled against him that involved his own heavy drinking. Newsom himself (falsely) claimed he would go to rehab after his affair with Rippey was revealed. A problem with wine, the implication was, had impaired his judgment when he had the affair.
Alas, no such public debate ever came. Everyone simply moved on, reasoning that the story of Newsom’s affair is old news.
On Reddit, one person responded to the story by writing: “Seriously who gives a f**k? 33 year old woman and 38 year old man have an affair. The end.”
But no one should be able to get away with this. Rippey was Newsom’s best friend’s wife. She was in the throes of alcohol and cocaine addictions so bad her nights were blurry and her memories nonexistent.
Newsom knew exactly what he was doing to Rippey, her husband, and their baby son. In Rippey’s account, we hear Newsom tell Rippey one night in a hotel while cleaning up spilled wine: “You know, we really can’t do this anymore. You can’t be doing this to Alex.” And yet, according to Rippey, the affair went on “for months” thereafter.
Again, no one should be able to get away with this, let alone a governor with designs on higher office. It’s one thing to have an affair with your subordinate while mayor. It’s quite another to have an affair with a subordinate who is constantly drunk out of her mind.
Ellie Gardey Holmes is the author of Newsom Unleashed: The Progressive Lust for Unbridled Power.
READ MORE by Ellie Gardey Holmes:
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Well, of course.
President Trump has issued a ban on the presence of media outlets CNN, MS NOW, and Politico in the White House press pool.
And you would think the world is ending. Here’s a sample headline, this one from USA Today: “Trump bans media outlets CNN, MS NOW, Politico from White House.” (RELATED: Does the Press Understand the First Amendment?)
USA Today’s story begins this way:
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Friday he is banning three major news outlets – CNN, MS NOW and Politico – from the White House in his latest move to crack down on the independent press.
The move is almost certain to face legal challenges as free speech experts said it conflicts with the US Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free speech and a free press.
Trump accused the outlets of “reporting FAKE NEWS” in a social media post, and said they “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States.” Trump added, “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
Note well that Politico describes the Trump ban as affecting “Media Outlets.” Not “liberal media activists” but “Media Outlets.”
This news was received in the media as — no surprise! — something akin to the end of the world.
The media was suddenly flush with outraged reporting. Note well this from Mediate: 
President Donald Trump participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the White House on Monday, an event that was not carried live by the WH television pool, but only on the White House’s official feed.
As Trump was not near a network mic, his remarks at the ribbon-cutting for the new helipad were completely drowned out by background noise. Notably, so-called “chopper talk” is often difficult to hear, but the White House press pool helps to clear out the background noise with their mics.
Trump’s event was not carried live by broadcast or cable news networks as Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News joined together on Monday and pulled their TV cameras from White House pool, effectively boycotting coverage of the Trump White House following the ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.
But of particular note was this other Mediate headline which revealed, one can believe, more than intended. The headline: “‘Extraordinary Show of Solidarity!’ Media World Floored By Rival Networks Banding Together to Fight Trump Ban.”
This jewel of a story unintentionally confirmed longtime charges of liberal media bias. The story reported this:
Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and NBC News joined together on Monday and pulled their TV cameras from White House pool, effectively boycotting coverage of the Trump White House following the ban on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico.
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting,” said the five networks that make up the White House TV press pool in a joint statement.
The move was led by White House TV pool rotational chair and Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton, who wrote, “Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President. This follows the White House’s position preventing CNN from fulfilling its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool put in place.” Boughton’s advisory was for Monday, and it is unclear if it applies going forward.
All of which is to say, the president has outed the media for what it really is. Namely, the vast majority of the media is really not about just-the-facts journalism. It is really about liberal activism. That, as underlined by this reaction from the White House press corps, is really — seriously really! — about nothing more than advancing the liberal activist agenda of the moment.
My Newsmax colleague Todd Starnes noted this:
“The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government,” the networks said. “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”
“The problem is that the networks are not providing accurate information about the government.
There is absolutely no difference between the newsrooms at Fox and CNN or PMS-NOW.
The only question is whether President Trump will pull the plug on administration officials doing interviews on Fox.
Were any member of the White House press pool to write and report a story that ran completely counter to the conventional left-wing propaganda streaming out of the White House press corps, there would be un-shirted you-know-what that would erupt from the “journalists-who-are-really-liberal-activists.”
Note well this recent story from, yes, Politico:
The administration’s embrace of alternative conservative outlets continues a pattern from Trump’s first term, but the divide between the MAGA-friendly media and their more mainstream counterparts has become visible in the briefing room in a way it wasn’t before. Without dedicated seats of their own, a group of about a dozen new media reporters have taken to gathering in the “conservative corner” — as some reporters call it — along the far wall of the briefing room, near the “new media seat” that Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has set aside for a rotating cast of alternative outlets and conservative influencers.
Make no mistake. As is discernible right there, the liberal activists pretending to be independent journalists are not happy at the appearance of any remotely conservative journalist in the White House press room.
And suffice to say, there is history here. Lots of it, going back decades to the emergence of William F. Buckley Jr. and his pioneering conservative publication National Review (The 1950s). Buckley was promptly dumped on by the liberal media of his day, a pattern that became the norm as the conservative media gained strength over the coming years.
In short? (Or long?) Here we are in 2026, decades after Bill Buckley opened the door to focusing on the myth of non-partisan journalism and revealing it to be a mask for liberal media activism.
Which is to say, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Liberal journalists masquerading as independent journalists are decidedly not.
The president gets it.
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“Dangers of AI,” editorial cartoon by Tom Stiglich for The American Spectator on Sep. 21, 2026.

Every day that the Russia-Ukraine war continues and escalates, the threat of a wider war increases. Moscow and Kyiv are now routine targets in this war, and the death toll continues to rise. Poland and NATO countries, including the United States, continue to aid Ukraine, while North Korea, Iran, and China help Russia. Meanwhile, the U.S./Israeli war with Iran has spread to other Gulf states and the Red Sea, causing turmoil and uncertainty in global oil markets. And tensions continue to rise in the western Pacific over the future of Taiwan. History never actually repeats itself, but it sometimes rhymes. In 2026, it is rhyming with the events of 1956.
Today’s crises in the same three regions could also coalesce into a third world war.
Seventy years ago, political uprisings in Eastern and Central Europe — especially in Hungary and Poland — shook the foundations of the Soviet empire. In the western Pacific, tensions were high after the 1954-55 Taiwan Strait crisis, which involved the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) shelling and bombing of the Nationalist-controlled islands of Kinmen (Quemoy) and Matsu. In the Middle East, Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal and nationalization of the Suez Canal Company led to Israel’s invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, backed by France and Britain, which also dispatched troops to the region and conducted air strikes. The crises in these three regions in 1956 had the potential to evolve into a third world war. Today’s crises in the same three regions could also coalesce into a third world war.
In his study of the origins of the First World War, the American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan traced them generally to the decline of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s European order between the peace ending the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 and Bismarck’s dismissal by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1890. What we are witnessing in 2026 is the result of the decline of President Richard Nixon’s global order that his diplomacy and statecraft established between 1969 and his resignation in 1974.
Nixon’s realist statecraft improved U.S. relations with China to strengthen our containment policy against Soviet Russia, while making peace in the Middle East in the wake of the Yom Kippur War of  October 1973. But Nixon also improved relations with Russia — détente — to punctuate his “triangular diplomacy” that kept the U.S. closer to China and Russia than they were to each other. In a sense, Nixon’s statecraft was similar to Bismarck’s diplomacy in the late 19th century that arranged the European chessboard in a way that kept France and Russia from forming an alliance against Germany. (RELATED: Nixon–Mao, Trump–Putin, and Triangular Diplomacy)
Richard Nixon learned statecraft in part by serving as vice president in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower was not a philosophical or ideological conservative, but a conservative realist when it came to foreign policy. Eisenhower’s realism in 1956 helped prevent the crises in East-Central Europe, the Middle East, and the western Pacific from descending into a global cataclysm.
Eisenhower significantly titled the second volume of his presidential memoirs Waging Peace, in which he provided his reflective perspective on the crises in the Middle East, Eastern-Central Europe, and the western Pacific. “These crises,” Eisenhower wrote, “… at times threatened to touch off World War III.” In October 1956, Eisenhower had to deal with all three crises simultaneously. In his memoirs, he provided a day-by-day, hour-by-hour account of the developments in Europe and the Middle East.
Eisenhower noted the irony that in Eastern Europe the U.S. joined France and Britain in condemning the Soviet crackdown (politically in Poland; militarily in Hungary), while in the Middle East, the U.S. sided with the Soviets in opposition to the Israeli-French-British action over Suez. He explained that without European assistance in Hungary — which would not be forthcoming due to the Anglo-French involvement in the Middle East — the United States could do nothing militarily to save the Hungarian revolution, while the actions of Israel and our allies in the Suez crisis could have led to a direct U.S.-Soviet military conflict. U.S. interests — not those of Israel or our NATO allies — governed Eisenhower’s decisions.
Tensions with China over Taiwan existed in 1956, but lay dormant until 1958, when Eisenhower again — as he did in 1954-55 — successfully deterred a full-scale invasion of Taiwan by Communist China.
So, Ike pressured Israel, France, and Britain to withdraw from Egypt, which they ultimately did. And when the Soviets threatened to send troops to Egypt, Eisenhower quietly warned them “about the consequences of any such move.” Eisenhower reflected in his memoirs that in the face of political criticism for failing to support Israel and our NATO allies and the Hungarian and Polish uprisings, he made decisions that protected American interests and maintained global peace. His decisions and actions in the western Pacific did likewise.
In assessing Eisenhower’s decisions in the midst of the 1956 crises, biographer Michael Korda writes that “Ike had acted swiftly, decisively, and undeniably for the good; although he felt great sympathy for his old friends in Britain, and even greater sympathy for the gallant but ill-advised Hungarians, he carefully managed events to avoid a clash with the Soviet Union, and he preserved peace — not a perfect peace, to be sure, or one without victims and compromises, but still peace.”
The same could be said for Nixon’s foreign policy decisions from 1969 to 1974, when he established a world order that reduced Soviet influence in the Middle East and protected U.S. interests there, maintained the peace in the Taiwan Strait, and set the stage for the unraveling of the Soviet empire, which was achieved by the Reagan administration in the 1980s.
President Trump, with the current crises in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the western Pacific, is dealing with the decline of Nixon’s global order that developed from misguided foreign policy decisions of his predecessors reaching back to Bill Clinton. Those misguided decisions involved the unwise expansion of NATO, the imprudent “endless wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan with George W. Bush’s “Wilsonian” overtones which distracted our attention from China’s geopolitical challenge, and a neoconservative approach to global politics that emphasized ideology over realism. It is Eisenhower’s management of the 1956 crises that shows the way forward for President Trump.
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There is something that has always rather puzzled me.  Why, in the landscape of modern cultural and political battles, does abortion stand as a near-sacred issue, certainly to feminists, and indeed to most women, not all of whom are on the cultural left?
This is strange in and of itself, for it goes against what we have traditionally seen as female inclinations. Women historically have responded to infants in a unique and distinct way, one that can only be called nurturing, tender, loving. It is no accident that the stereotype of them with a baby is of them babbling and cooing. Yet most modern women seem to be very comfortable with the idea that infants can be killed before they are born.
Fertility rates in developed nations have plummeted below replacement, and this correlates closely with the rise of the feminist movement.
This change has come about only as the result of a much greater political and ideological effort, one aimed at destroying sex-based distinctions. Unrestricted abortion, after all, does something nothing else can: it severs the link between sexual activity and reproduction. And nothing has historically constrained women’s actions and choices more than that. (RELATED: The Demonic Possession of Liberal Women)
Consider: you cannot attain real equality between men and women unless females no longer bear the greater burden in reproduction. But if you treat pregnancy as an optional inconvenience, then the sexes become almost interchangeable. Women can have sex with the freedom of men, and never have to worry that she might be incapacitated for nine months and burdened thereafter with years of childcare. The shame that once attended such procedures must be actively fought and denigrated, and women must receive from the medical profession only an open-armed welcome when they choose to end a pregnancy. A woman’s choice is sacrosanct. Women cannot be criticized, nor can they be accused of wrongdoing. (RELATED: A Massachusetts Jury Legalized 4th Trimester Abortions)
This much is manifest. What was not, when the abortion movement first took off, was where it would lead.
Ideas, however, are fecund creatures. You cannot just introduce them and expect them not to be fertile and multiply.
This analogy is particularly apt here, I might add, for now we come to the next generation that abortion begat: the transgender movement.
It extends the logic of abortion all the way. If abortion renders female reproduction simply elective, then why should women — or men — be held back just because they are not the sex they would prefer? Biology can be overridden, either by desire or “gender-affirming care” for minors, using puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. All of these follow on patient-affirming models that gained traction as expansive access to abortion grew.
It does not matter that the Cass Review (2024) and European re-evaluations exposed weak evidence for youth transitions, noting autism, trauma, and rapid-onset cases to exist disproportionately among teen girls. It does not matter that desistance rates for childhood dysphoria without intervention have always been historically high: 60-90 percent, in fact. (RELATED: Of Lobotomies, Anorexia, and ‘Gender-Affirming Care’)
Instead, medicalization and acceptance — this concept is important, and was patterned on the speed at which abortion was accepted — proceeded quickly, even though sterility was a frequent outcome. Before the rise of transgenderism as a movement, males were the majority. Once it became a movement, transgender girls suddenly far outnumbered males. UK GIDS documented that where there used to be a male majority amongst transsexuals, now there was a large female majority among adolescents. And a European LGBT youth survey found 80 percent of 15–17-year-old trans respondents were females.
It became a largely female movement, just as abortion advocacy was, for it was based on the same female-centric movement abortion was. Exactly the same people who campaigned most vociferously for abortion now supported policies which treated sex as fluid, just as abortion treats pregnancy as a curable medical condition.
This is not merely an issue of individual choice in gender. It is much more than that. It is part of a broader ideological effort to change a fundamental sexual dimorphism into a matter of personal preference, a mere social construct. Abortion rights function as the foundational claim that women’s bodies can be reshaped to match male patterns of autonomy and career without any trade-offs at all.
Now the next step: the same reproductive realities that abortion is believed to neutralize do not end at viability. Once a fetus is viable and has a realistic chance of survival outside the womb with medical support, typically around 24 weeks, standard medical practice strongly disfavors abortion over delivery. If there are life-threatening or serious maternal conditions in the third trimester, prompt delivery is the solution, not abortion.
But that clinical perspective is opposed to the abortion movement’s political aims, for it would still leave a woman with a child she does not want. So the movement has worked indefatigably to ensure the option to end a pregnancy remains available long past viability. And for this reason, the very state in which the next terrible consequence was to appear, Massachusetts, will on Nov. 8, 2026, make abortion up to birth legal.
Now we reach the final piece of this tragedy. On Jan. 24, 2023, Lindsay Clancy strangled her children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and eight-month-old Callan, then cut herself and jumped from a second-story window. She was left paralyzed from the waist down. She has never disputed causing the deaths. Her defense instead argued postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder and therefore a lack of criminal responsibility. Prosecutors argued the killings were intentional. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Is the Lindsay Clancy Case a Windfall for the GOP?)
This was a terrible act, one that destroyed not just her three children’s lives, but the lives of her and her husband. But instead of condemnation, we see exactly the same pattern as we saw with abortion and transgenderism: instant acceptance and instant rationalization of her act. She was not to be found guilty.  She is a woman and must not suffer the consequences of her actions, for, just as a woman is not responsible if she gets pregnant, so is a woman who kills her babies not responsible, for then you would make a woman pay for something only women suffer from: postpartum depression.
The Lindsay Clancy case is the postpartum face of the same logic the abortion movement applies before birth. Clancy could hardly have an abortion: the children were already born. But the abortion movement’s core claim is that reproduction is not a woman’s destiny: pregnancy can at will be interrupted so that a female may live as autonomously as a male. Female autonomy is the ultimate value.
Clancy’s act is what happens when that logic meets children who can no longer be aborted. The slogan “my body, my choice” is meant to justify ending a pregnancy. After delivery, the body is still female, but the infant is now manifest. The movement that insists those costs must not constrain women before viability has no coherent reason for why infants suddenly become untouchable after birth, except by appealing to an arbitrary legal line.
No one knows what the future will bring now that we have come to this tragic pass. Fertility rates in developed nations have plummeted below replacement, and this correlates closely with the rise of the feminist movement. Yes, it gave women more freedom, but certainly not more happiness, and it correlates with delayed marriage, rising singlehood, and a cultural message that pregnancy is an interruption rather than a feature of female physiology. Simply put, feminist ideals are destroying our future. And they have now culminated in excusing murder. This will not be the last time that happens.
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Anthony Tye Rodrigues is a retired academic living in Texas, and the author of a trilogy set in Britain in the later Roman Empire.  His latest book is called Gemini.
 

Kevin Schaul, Washington Post

Media Research Center President David Bozell joined The Wilkow Majority Monday afternoon to address the Left’s hypocritical overreaction to Trump’s decision to exclude CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House.Bozell emphasized:”You want to talk about censorship, look at what Mark Zuckerberg attested to… the Biden admin was all over Silicon Valley censoring those who questioned the Power Five narrative.””You want to talk about censorship, look at what Mark Zuckerberg attested to… the Biden admin was all over Silicon Valley censoring those who questioned the Power Five narrative.”MRC’s @DavidBozell pushes back on the left attacking Trump for “censorship” on @WilkowMajority pic.twitter.com/ceUY1CmYu0— Media Research Center (@theMRC) September 21, 2026Trump’s decision was well-reasoned, unlike the response from the Left. Bozell explained that just as President Trump is not stripping away the Left’s right to report, he retains the right not to invite “fake news” into his inner circle. As CNN’s own Brian Stelter once admitted, “Freedom of speech does not guarantee freedom of reach,” Bozell noted. The media’s double standard is glaring, and their hyperventilation over this executive decision is equally dramatic. Bozell remarked:“The idea that the president is banning the press and taking away freedom of speech, that is such an overreaction. It’s such a hyperbolic, silly overreaction.”Bozell suggested that Trump’s decision may have also been rooted in national security concerns. When the Washington Post accused Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon of underreporting casualties during the Iran conflict, and Hegseth called the claim a disgusting lie, the public was forced to choose whom to believe. While this left-wing major newspaper continues to carry dangerous clout, public trust in the media overall has “sunk like a stone,” Bozell noted. “For Republicans, it’s 8% according to Gallup… If you add in every other voter demographic, it gets up to a sky-high 24%. You’re not going to get much lower than that.” He added, “CNN has lost 50% of its audience in the last 5 years.” Considering the media’s current trajectory, Bozell clarified:”If you follow the media landscape to its logical conclusion, you’re going to have two distinct pools, one on the left and one on the right.””If you follow the media landscape to its logical conclusion, you’re going to have two distinct pools, one on the left and one on the right.”MRC’s @DavidBozell on the @WilkowMajority pic.twitter.com/HMD73rb5p6— Media Research Center (@theMRC) September 21, 2026Left-wing media outlets do not appear concerned by this growing divide. Bozell called them out directly: “You’ve got this group of left-wing operations that just don’t want to play ball, don’t want anybody in their sandbox.”While these major outlets whimper when the President calls out their reporting, they have no problem taking cheap shots at the Right. Bozell highlighted additional examples of this double standard:“We had a quote from Oliver Darcy, who works for CNN. He didn’t just want to ban Fox News from the pool. He wanted to ban Fox News from the cable spectrum. Brian Stelter said it wasn’t censorship to try to crush Fox News. It was harm reduction.”These hypocritical outlets should take the Right’s reaction in stride and acknowledge that “the media environment is changing faster than they can contend with,” Bozell argued. “There are going to be new players, and when the White House brings new players into the building, they should be welcomed.”Bozell concluded by exposing the legacy media’s duplicitous conduct and calling out their deeply entrenched, elitist attitude.Watch the full interview here:

A socialist city councilwoman running for mayor of Denver is sponsoring a measure that would restrict the city’s collection of its residents’ “actual or perceived sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression data,” a move she says is necessary to prevent the “targeting” of “trans folks.”
The ordinance, which was sponsored by Shontel Lewis, the Denver Democratic Socialists of America’s pick for mayor, would cover every city-run program and office, including the court system and law enforcement. It prevents those programs and offices from collecting “personal information” regarding an individual’s gender unless that information is required by federal, state, or city law. It also bars agencies from sharing such information with government agencies outside of Denver.
The proposal is similar to restrictions the city put on collecting and sharing immigration and citizenship information. Lewis and her cosponsor, Councilwoman Stacie Gilmore, said it’s necessary to “prevent city resources from being weaponized against trans and gender-expansive people.” They crafted the measure alongside the director of the prison abolition group Bread and Roses Legal Center, who goes by Z Williams. The Health and Safety Committee voted 5-0 on Wednesday to advance the legislation to the full city council.
“There were a number of concerns from that data being available to use in terms of people’s employment, that data being available to share among different counties and also being able to be shared with the federal government that has already been targeting trans folks,” Lewis said.
It’s unclear how the measure would work in effect, as it includes a litany of vague exemptions. Agencies must still compile and share “gender expression data,” for example, if it’s “necessary to effectuate an important city interest” like human services and criminal justice.
Several people voiced their support for the measure during a Wednesday city council hearing, though two individuals were opposed, Denver’s ABC News affiliate reported Monday.
“This is the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever seen this council bring forward, and I’ve been attending these meetings for over 10 years,” one opponent said. “You want us to engage in gender dysphoria.”
Lewis unveiled the legislation one month after announcing her longshot bid for mayor. She is best known for being convicted of stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of food stamps while working for the Colorado Department of Human Services East Food Stamp Office in 2008. Asked recently whether the conviction “is disqualifying for somebody who wants to serve as mayor,” Lewis said it “actually qualifies” her to lead Denver.
“I actually think that experience is what actually qualifies me,” Lewis said. “Twenty years ago, I was young, I was a young mom, I was grieving, I did something really silly, and I paid my restitution, I did my time, and I took care of what I needed to do while also navigating all the ills of poverty.”
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The internet probably needs a refresher on the meaning of the word “surviving.” The Washington Post is suggesting that Iran is “surviving” President Trump’s economic vice grip because the demagogic, death-worshipping regime leadership couched in luxury outside of the plight of the citizenry won’t budge.

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Post reporters Susannah George and Asal Abasian propped up the illusion that Iran proper is somehow weathering the economic firestorm brought on by the heavy U.S. naval blockade in the Persian Gulf and crushing sanctions. “Iran is suffering yet surviving under Trump’s economic warfare,” read the grossly misleading headline. Despite the ensuing shortages and economic erosion in the national currency, “Tehran appears to remain uncowed” as “there is little sign that the financial pain is translating into pressure on Iran’s leadership sufficient to force a return to talks and end the war.” Oh, really? Is that why Al Jazeera just reported the same day that the regime’s leadership has had to invent “creative solutions to energy shortfalls?” Does that somehow signal that Operation Economic Outcast has just been paper-tiger-ish?George and Abasian must have missed the Euronews exclusive published September 10 headlined, “‘The country is falling apart’: Iranians tell Euronews how war emptied their wallets.” In fact, Euronews stipulated that “While ordinary citizens previously weathered decades of international sanctions, the combination of ongoing war and a reinstated US naval blockade has paralysed everyday life, plunging the national currency into a historic tailspin and forcing families into drastic household austerity.” Since when has “The country is falling apart” and “surviving” become synonymous with one another just because Mojtaba Khamenei may have inherited the $100-$200 billion private fortune his father amassed before the war broke out while his citizens can’t even buy food?Using commentary from lefty Bourse & Bazaar Foundation CEO Esfandyar Batmanghelidj as a springboard, George and Abasian argued that “after withstanding U.S. sanctions for decades, Iran’s leaders have made structural changes to the country’s economy to insulate themselves from outside economic pressure.” Of course, George and Abasian didn’t bother disclosing that Batmanghelidj is the same schlub who argued in January that the reason the Islamic Republic failed as a political experiment is because it wasn’t redistributionist enough:The reason the political project of the Islamic Republic has failed is because of the failure to redistribute wealth successfully and sustainably, especially as sanctions stymied growth … We all know a democratic system will be better for Iran, but what economic system will break this cycle that pits the weakened poor against the strengthened rich? Not exactly the most neutral source, eh George and Abasian? Funnily enough, The Post buried 23 paragraphs down how “[w]ithout oil revenue, Iran’s ability to pay for imports and fund state functions, like salaries for its security forces, is steadily diminishing.” Again, “steadily diminishing” has literally nothing to do with the term “surviving,” especially since payment to “security forces” is no longer a guarantee. This is like saying an MMA fighter still has a shot at going the distance in a bout even after getting five of his teeth knocked out and breaking both of his arms. Apparently, for George and Abasian, the Islamic elitists’ insulated personal finances somehow screams proof Trump’s strategy is failing. Talk about a major logical overreach.