I grew up around the evangelical Christian subculture. My sister and I were the only kids our age at our church, so I ended up visiting various other youth groups, going to the pizza parties, lock-ins, concerts, and mission trips.

My first-ever concert was Amy Grant with Michael W. Smith as the opener. A few years later, Smith was the headliner with a dynamic up-and-coming opening act called DC Talk that electrified a crowd of teenage Christian kids. Hearing “Flood” by Jars of Clay on secular radio was so exciting that I almost thought the millennial reign of Christ had arrived. I remember seeing my first episode of “VeggieTales” while on a retreat, which is also where I heard “Big House” by Audio Adrenaline for the first time. I was a big fan of Caedmon’s Call in college, particularly enjoying Derek Webb’s gravelly vocals and edgy songwriting.

We are not faced with a binary choice between authenticity and hypocrisy.

As the years have gone by, some of these people have turned out to be hypocrites. Lots of kids looked to them as spiritual role models, not knowing they weren’t who they seemed to be. I hear reports that the contemporary Christian music industry is pretty messed up. Artists whose CDs I purchased now identify as LGBTQ in some way. Some have abandoned all semblance of orthodox Christianity, while others have rejected Christ outright.

The fallout caused by all these defections from the true faith is often blamed on cultural Christianity, which enabled talented people to get paid for entertaining Christian kids. Now that their hypocrisy has been exposed, some have become openly hostile to cultural Christianity altogether.

What a difference a year makes

Here’s a recent example from the last two Easter Holidays.

Last week, the White House issued a number of pro-Christian, Easter-themed posts and videos from President Donald Trump, who openly celebrated the “Resurrection of Jesus Christ” and proclaimed in his hallmark all-caps style, “HE IS RISEN!!”

Last year, Easter happened to coincide with “Transgender Day of Visibility,” which was celebrated by a White House press release. The White House’s Easter acknowledgement was quite muted in comparison.

The administration denied any deliberate attempt to subvert Easter with transgenderism, but the graphic design department must not have gotten the memo. The transgender statement had an Easter bunny in the White House logo.

Two Easters, one year apart. What a difference a year makes.

This Easter felt like living in another world compared to last year. Why? Because last year, it felt like the entire culture and our government were hostile to Christianity. This year, Trump proclaimed the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ through the world’s biggest microphone.

Two different White House occupants were leveraging their influence to promote two different visions of “the good” for our society. Whichever vision of “the good” our society adopts can have a great impact on the church and her mission.

Simply put: A society that broadly believes “Transgender Day of Visibility” is worth celebrating will inevitably persecute the faith that condemns it as sin. A society that broadly believes “HE IS RISEN!!” will not.

The hypocrisy of cultural Christianity

I’m sure some people would object that Trump didn’t really mean what he said and was just pandering to his Christian base. They’d say, “He’s not a real Christian! That’s just cultural Christianity! It encourages nominal Christianity and hypocrisy!” For this reason, some say, cultural Christianity is just a celebration of hypocrisy. Thus, insincere overtures celebrating Christianity are wrong and harmful.

Pastor Ray Ortlund, for example, openly celebrated the decline of cultural Christianity in a since-deleted tweet which said, “I rejoice at the decline of Bible Belt Religion. It made bad people worse — in the name of Jesus. Now may we actually believe in Him, so that our churches stand out with both the truth of gospel doctrine and the beauty of gospel culture. To that end, I gladly devote my life.”

In other words, Ortlund presented the issue as a binary choice: You can either have the hypocrisy of “Bible Belt Religion” or you can have “the truth of gospel doctrine.”

Given these options, the choice is clear: We must “rejoice at the decline” of cultural Christianity because that gives rise to “the beauty of gospel culture.”

Hypocrisy vs. persecution

This is a false dichotomy. We are not faced with a binary choice between authenticity or hypocrisy. Rather, we are faced with a different kind of binary: hypocrisy or persecution.

True Christianity can thrive in either condition, but one is better than the other. Let me explain.

Have you noticed that Jesus condemned the sin of hypocrisy far more frequently than the rest of the New Testament? Why is this? The disparity can be explained by the divergent contexts of Jesus’ Jewish-focused ministry and the later church’s Gentile-focused ministry.

The Pharisees feigned godliness as a kind of insincere performance. Hypocrisy is playacting for an audience, and Jesus called them out for it. They were fake. Posers. Insincere. They didn’t really follow God; they had their own agenda. But their personal agendas were enabled by the expectations of the Jewish community they belonged to. They wanted to enjoy the benefits of being Jewish leaders within the Jewish subculture that rewarded them and gave them power.

In other words, hypocrisy only works when there’s an audience that values the genuine faith you’re counterfeiting. Said in another way: Hypocrisy is a byproduct of gospel influence.

When persecution broke out in the early church, Christians fled Jerusalem and scattered into pagan, idol-filled Gentile areas that were more hostile to the gospel (Acts 16:16-23, Acts 19:21-41). Thus, persecution became a major concern that moved more prominently into focus of apostolic teaching.

In other words, persecution is a byproduct of gospel decline.

When Christians are constantly harassed and threatened by hostile forces, faithfulness under persecution replaces hypocrisy as the greater discipleship concern (1 Peter 4:12-14). When everyone hates Christianity, there is no reward for being a fake one. God uses persecution to purify and strengthen his church.

Persecution is not a sacrament

This brings me to a modern tension. Christians are divided as to which is the preferred state of affairs.

Is it better for us to adopt a strict “exile” mentality, where we prefer being a persecuted yet faithful minority? Or is it better to assume Christianity and the culture it produces as a normative good, despite the hypocrisy that inevitably accompanies it?

The “victorious Christian” favors strong, public assertions of Christian truth and morality, knowing that some will parrot the pro-Jesus talking points insincerely.

The “Christian in exile” favors persecution as a purifying agent to rid the church of hypocrisy and all other vestiges of insincerity.

Here’s the thing: Hypocrisy is a sin, but it’s not so uniquely intractable that it demands dismantling cultural Christianity and embracing secular hostility as the sole remedy. Put another way, persecution is not a sacrament. We need not seek it as a good in and of itself.

Christians
can thrive under persecution, but scripture does not require persecution in order to thrive. That’s a big difference.

Some Christians are afraid that the inevitable hypocrisy that would result from a victorious Christianity is so bad as to spoil any positive good that might come from cultural Christianity. Thus, the church should adopt an embattled minority posture, in which believers are few but true. Persecution is a necessary condition to prove their devotion. Christianity on the whole must lose to prove they’re the ones who really mean it.

I’ve known many people who romanticize the genuineness of the early church that faithfully endured great persecution, or the hardships of third-world missionaries in faraway hostile lands. Those are the
real Christians.

What a miserable way to live!

Many Christians face this conundrum with tortured consciences and irrational moral standards while consoling themselves with gospel platitudes. They tell themselves “this is the way of the cross,” “true Christian power often looks like defeat,” and “this is the power and wisdom of God.” Of course, when we lose, we can take comfort in those truths.

But the Bible does not require that we live this way.

Persecution is intended to slow, stop, or reverse the advance of the gospel. It happens because it works. It is very difficult for the gospel seed to bear fruit when it is constantly being choked by thorny soil. People don’t seem to realize that many of our pioneering missionary heroes labored under grueling conditions for
years before winning a single convert.

Celebrating persecution as a cure for hypocrisy is like gargling bleach to cure bad breath. Less extreme remedies are preferable.

The blessing of cultural Christianity

Hypocrisy is a sin “in the camp,” so to speak. It is the kind of sin that arises when Christianity is culturally dominant, forming everyone’s expectations, norms, and behaviors, such that it exerts social pressure to conform to Christian standards. The exhortation to a hypocritical person is to be
more Christian, not less. Jesus corrected the hypocritical Pharisees by calling them to live more in line with the faith they outwardly professed.

Any gospel field will yield wheat and tares. The most fertile soil for gospel seed is a field already pre-tilled with cultural Christianity. As we have seen in recent decades, some people will present the “appearance of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5), but others will authentically accept Christ as savior and Lord. When insincere people want to enjoy the social benefits of pretending to be Christian, they can be corrected of their hypocrisy and called to live more gospel-aligned lives (Galatian 2:11-14).

Cultural Christianity creates upward pressure that encourages people to outwardly conform to Christian expectations, which is a way of preaching law through social standards that can highlight their sin and need for Christ. Like a zero-entry pool, cultural Christianity helps newer believers observe the Christian life within a community, framing spiritual realities in familiar terms, and pre-evangelizing them in ways that may later produce true faith.

Don’t get me wrong: Cultural Christianity doesn’t save anyone. It can even produce false converts. But many false converts are simply pre-converts who have yet to fully apprehend and apply, by faith, the teaching they’ve received. The Bible Belt religion of the American South, for example, has produced both hypocrisy and spiritual fruit.

In other words, persecution is not the only remedy for hypocrisy. Christianized cultures can amplify gospel impact, and hypocrisy will always be a fruit of thriving Christian communities.

Hypocrisy is inevitable. It will always exist anywhere authentic faith thrives. However, persecution is
not inevitable. Cultural Christianity may even be the means God uses to prevent persecution from arising in our society that would threaten to destroy our faithful churches.

Conclusion

As I’ve reflected on the vivid contrast between Biden and Trump’s Easter Week statements the past two years, I’ve found myself being grateful for the political cover of having a president openly celebrating the “crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” It’s good to see the faith that I teach and uphold as a pastor being loudly affirmed in our nation’s highest office.

Ultimately, cultural Christianity is a double-edged sword. It can breed hypocrisy when one’s faith turns performative, yet it can also lay a foundation for the gospel to flourish.

Persecution may be a refining fire, but Christians never celebrate it as an opportunity to demonstrate our Christian sincerity. Persecution is not God’s only tool to correct hypocrisy. Christianity has its own tools of ongoing reform, such as teaching, reproof, correction, and training in the word of God (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

We need not wring our hands about hypocrisy evident in cultural Christianity. We certainly need not pine after persecution as the sole remedy. We faithfully endure persecution, if it comes. Otherwise, we work like crazy to prevent it as much as possible.

President Donald Trump is taking more action on behalf of Christians, making good on his promise to defend the faith.

On Tuesday, prominent Christians and members of the Trump administration convened for the first meeting of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. Trump established the task force to correct the “egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians, while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses” that he said occurred in the Biden administration.

The Trump administration is exposing the rotten fruit of the negative world.

Shocking evidence to prove those allegations was presented at this week’s meeting.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, presented evidence of bias against Christian foreign service officers who homeschool their children. Rubio said the Biden administration threatened the officers with allegations of child abuse or IRS investigations if they insisted on homeschooling. He also said Christians in the Biden administration were discriminated against for opposing DEI and LGBTQ ideology, stigmatized for opposing the COVID-19 shot, and had their religious holidays downplayed while non-Christian holidays were openly celebrated.

This is what other officials testified to:

• FBI Director Kash Patel spoke about the anti-Catholic memo the FBI, under then-President Joe Biden, issued.
• HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about how the Biden administration targeted a Catholic hospital and exposed “progressive rules” the administration enacted against Christians hoping to become foster parents.
• Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke about discrimination against Christians who oppose the LGBTQ agenda in education policy.
• Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender discussed “financial surveillance” of Christian organizations under the Biden administration, which allegedly included weaponization of tax classification statuses, de-banking, and labeling certain organizations as “hate groups.”
• Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins revealed how the Biden administration allegedly punished a chaplain for preaching from the Bible.
• Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley spoke about the Biden administration’s campaign to advance anti-Christian gender ideology on children.

The task force also heard allegations that the IRS under Biden targeted churches under the guise of the Johnson Amendment and claims that Liberty University and Grand Canyon University were targeted for fines over their Christian worldview.

“As shown by our victims’ stories today, Biden’s Department of Justice abused and targeted peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.

Michael Farris, a celebrated attorney, said he thought the meeting would be “small” and “informal.” But he was surprised when he learned just how serious the Trump administration is about defending Christians.

“I have been in a lot of high ranking meetings in my 40+ years in DC but this was over the top,” Farris said.

“I was absolutely blown away. We heard frank stories of terrible treatment of Christians by the prior administration. In the military, by the FBI, by the State Department, by the Justice Department, the Education Department and more. And the solutions were swift, real, and incredibly inspiring,” he continued.

“I have chaired meetings in the past where the top Christian litigators shared our most outrageous cases and where we were making plans to fight back,” Farris explained. “Today’s meeting had that same spirit but with one major difference. These people actually run our government and were swiftly taken the kind of action that for a long time Christians have believed were demanded by justice. I was amazed and encouraged deeply in my soul.”

The task force, Farris added, is proof that the Trump administration is following through on campaign promises “quickly” and “vigorously.”

“If every believer could have seen this in person their hearts would be overflowing tonight,” Farris said.

Not only is the Trump administration exposing instances of anti-Christian bias that happened in the Biden administration, but it is taking proactive measures to prevent such discrimination from continuing.

Earlier this month, the State Department and VA deployed memos to employees asking them to report incidents of anti-Christian bias. The goal is to completely eliminate all forms of anti-Christian discrimination from the federal government.

For a generation, American Christians have existed in a “negative world.” Aaron Renn, who coined the phrase, explains:

Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.

Our faith has been mocked. Our values have been eroded and stigmatized. In a progressive world, faithful Christians have increasingly become an “other,” the target of scorn and public ridicule.

But now, the Trump administration is exposing the rotten fruit of the negative world.

Clearly, Trump means business. The task force is more than a nod or gesture; it’s a signal that anti-Christian bias will no longer be tolerated in the federal government. More importantly, Trump is sending a message to Christians everywhere: I see you. I hear you. I am willing to fight and to defend you.

Christians should celebrate this moment. Not because our hope is found in Washington, but because faithful Christians and biblical values have increasingly become stigmatized in the halls of powerful institutions. And now, that is changing.

Perhaps we are finally witnessing a reversal of the negative world.

Like the “Free Tibet” campaign of the late 1990s, concern for China’s Uyghur population has faded into the background. In the mid-2010s, Beijing faced a short-lived wave of international criticism after General Secretary Xi Jinping created a vast network of internment camps. Nearly three million Uyghurs have been detained and subjected to brutal conditions.

Republicans looking to push back against anti-tariff Democrats should take note. This humanitarian catastrophe continues today, yet receives little sustained attention. It ranks among the most severe human-rights abuses on the planet — and American free-trade policies may have helped enable it. For decades, U.S. leaders embraced open commerce with China while ignoring the costs. That strategic blindness now carries a moral price.

Has our refusal to implement strong tariffs created a monster?

Beijing has long portrayed Xinjiang separatists as Islamic terrorists. This year marks a decade since their last major act of violence — a brutal knife attack at a coal mine that left 50 people dead, mostly Han Chinese workers and police. Horrific as it was, critics argue the assault, like previous incidents, reflected a desperate backlash against the Chinese state’s colonial-style repression.

Since Xi Jinping’s crackdown, no similar attacks have occurred. But the sheer scale of the regime’s response pushes China into apartheid territory — arguably beyond.

Reports estimate that up to three million of China’s 10-million-strong Uyghur population are now detained in so-called re-education camps. These camps aim to strip the Sunni Muslim minority of its identity and recast them as loyal subjects of the Chinese Communist Party.

Other reports indicate that many Uyghurs held in China’s re-education camps are forced to work in factories under conditions tantamount to slavery. Even more disturbing, some evidence suggests that, after “re-education,” Uyghurs are sold online in batches to employers across the country. Xinjiang produces one-fifth of the world’s cotton, and estimates say half a million Uyghurs are forced to pick it. That “free labor” gives Chinese manufacturers a competitive edge — one reportedly tied to the bankruptcy of major U.S. retailer Forever 21.

Democrats may oppose forced labor in theory, but where is the push to penalize what amounts to a 21st-century plantation economy? Would they stay silent if Russia did the same?

One of the most chilling aspects of Beijing’s ethnic campaign is its attempt to re-engineer Xinjiang’s population. This isn’t new. Seventy years ago, Mao Zedong launched a mass migration project to dilute the region’s Uyghur majority. The “Great Leap West,” introduced in 2000, revived the strategy — this time using financial incentives to bring Han Chinese into Xinjiang and offering jobs reserved for Han applicants outside the region. The policy remains in effect, along with forced out-migration of Uyghurs to other parts of China.

Even Western media outlets — usually quick to denounce any effort to reduce immigration — have expressed alarm over Beijing’s demographic engineering in Xinjiang. Many now acknowledge the regime’s mass Han migration into the region as a deliberate attempt to dilute the Uyghur population and strip the minority of any political influence.

More disturbing still are reports of mass sterilization campaigns. Chinese authorities have allegedly targeted Uyghur women to suppress birth rates. In 1990, hundreds of Uyghur men stormed a government building to protest forced abortions — a clash that ended with nearly 20 people dead.

The demographic consequences are staggering. In 1955, Uyghurs made up 90% of Xinjiang’s population. Today, they account for less than half.

Pro-Trump conservatives should grasp the strategic value of highlighting China’s use of migration as a political weapon. Doing so forces the left to confront a reality it usually denies: replacement-level immigration exists, and it carries consequences. Group identity rights don’t just apply to favored minorities — they apply to everyone, including the West.

Consider the demographic parallels. America’s historic, European-descended majority has dropped from 90% after World War II to 57% today. The left has openly — and at times grotesquely — celebrated that decline.

Like Beijing, the Democratic Party understands that demography is destiny. China aims to dominate its non-Han regions. Democrats aim to secure permanent political dominance over what they call “our democracy.”

By exposing the left’s selective outrage — condemning China’s demographic manipulation while applauding similar trends in the West — conservatives can force a reckoning. If it’s wrong in Xinjiang, it’s wrong here, too. And no amount of rhetorical gymnastics can cover up the left’s inconsistency, arbitrariness, and odious bigotry.

China’s mass enslavement of millions should spark outrage at least equal to what the West once directed at apartheid South Africa. That regime was boycotted into submission. Why shouldn’t the same standard apply to Beijing?

As President Trump has rightly asked: Why did we admit China into the World Trade Organization in 2001? What made anyone believe it would ever play by WTO rules — rules it had already vowed to ignore behind closed doors? Was George W. Bush’s administration, along with the now-defunct neoconservative GOP, truly naïve enough to think trade would transform China into a democracy?

More to the point, have we — not just our leaders, but the American people — enabled this? By enriching China through free trade, have we given it the means to carry out apartheid-level abuses against its Turkic Muslim minority?

And has our refusal to implement strong tariffs created a monster?

The anti-Trump, anti-tariff chorus must answer these questions. Its blind faith in globalization didn’t just cost us factories and jobs. It helped fund a regime that builds camps, crushes dissent, and rewrites humanity in its own image.

California’s economic, academic, media, and political establishment still embraces the notion of the state’s inevitable supremacy. “The future depends on us,” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) said at his first inauguration, “and we will seize this moment.” Others see California as deserving and capable of nationhood — a topic that has resurfaced with President Donald Trump’s presidency, as it reflects, in the words of one New York Times columnist, “the shared values of our increasingly tolerant and pluralistic society.”

Critics say this vision is at odds with the facts on the ground. Rather than the exemplar of a new “progressive capitalism” and a model for social justice, California both accommodates the highest number of billionaires and the highest cost-adjusted poverty rate. It has the third-highest gap, behind just Washington, D.C., and Louisiana, between middle- and upper-middle-income earners of any state. Nearly one in five Californians — many working — live in poverty (using a cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate); the Public Policy Institute of California estimates another one in five live in near-poverty — roughly 15 million people in total.

Barely one in three state residents consider California a good place to achieve the American dream. Increasingly, California is where this dream goes to die.

“California” is a model that no longer delivers. Sure, California has a huge gross domestic product, paced largely by high real estate prices and the stock value of a handful of huge tech firms. It retains the inertia from its glory days, particularly in technology and entertainment, but that edge is evaporating as tech firms flee the state and Hollywood productions are shot around the world. For all its strengths, California has the nation’s second-highest rate of unemployment, with lagging job growth, particularly in comparison to its neighbors and chief rivals — notably Texas, Arizona, and Nevada.

The signs of failure are evident on the streets. Roughly half the nation’s homeless population lives in the Golden State, many concentrated in disease- and crime-ridden tent cities in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Barely one in three state residents — and only one in four younger voters — now consider California a good place to achieve the American dream. Increasingly, California is where this dream goes to die.

‘San Francisco gentry liberalism’

The roots of California are long and deep. In August, for example, the New York Times reported how its development into a one-party state controlled by progressive Democrats has made it the country’s center of political corruption.

“Over the last 10 years,” the Times reported, “576 public officials in California have been convicted on federal corruption charges, according to Justice Department reports, exceeding the number of cases in states better known for public corruption, including New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.”

Ironically, the state’s corruption and decline have been expressed through policies long touted as symbols of progressive enlightenment and virtue — the odd marriage of oligarchal wealth and woke political consciousness some describe as “San Francisco gentry liberalism.”

Under this regime, personified by Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), progressivism has lost its historic embrace of upward mobility and replaced it with an ideology obsessed with race, gender, and climate. It has produced a political leadership class that, for the most part, is largely made up of longtime government or union operatives. In the legislature, the vast majority of Democrats have little to no experience in the private sector. The failure may have been accelerated by the secular decline of the once-powerful Republican Party over the past two decades. This decline removed the incentives for Democrats to concern themselves with moderate voters of either party.

This development represents a distinct break even with California’s pro-growth progressive past, which helped make the Golden State a symbol of American opportunity, innovation, and prosperity. The late historian and one-time state librarian Kevin Starr observed that under the governorship of Democrat Pat Brown in the late 1950s and early 1960s, California enjoyed “a golden age of consensus and achievement, a founding era in which California fashioned and celebrated itself as an emergent nation-state.” In 1971, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith described the state government as run by “a proud, competent civil service,” enjoying some of “the best school systems in the country.”

This may seem something like ancient mythology to most Californians today. If the builder Pat Brown was an exemplar of “Responsible Liberalism,” California’s government today has been ranked by Wallet Hub as the least efficient in delivering services relative to the tax burden. Pat Brown’s son, Jerry, the Democratic governor from 1975 to 1983 and then again from 2011 to 2019, and his successor, Gavin Newsom, epitomize the triumph of ideology over effectiveness. Theirs is a kind of performative progressivism that shrugs about things like roads that are now among the nation’s worst, a high-speed bullet train plagued with endless delays and massive cost overruns, and a failure to boost critical water systems in a perennially drought-threatened state.

In exchange for all this, the progressive regime has stuck ordinary Californians and businesses with some of the nation’s highest taxes and greatest regulatory burdens. California’s business climate is rated at or near the bottom in most business surveys. The Tax Foundation’s 2019 State Business Tax Climate Index, which evaluates taxes in five categories, also lists California at No. 49, with only New Jersey trailing.

These policies have made California exceptionally expensive for both businesses and households. Indeed, according to current estimates, only Hawaii and Massachusetts have a higher cost of living. California has the highest average housing costs, the second-highest transportation costs, and the third-highest food expenses in the country. Much of this is invisible to the top 20% and 5% of California households, who enjoy median incomes of $72,500 and $129,000 — greater than their national counterparts — but is widely felt in the state’s less affluent areas.

Pell-mell into climatism

California progressivism today embraces many causes — undocumented immigrants, transgender kids, reparations for slavery — but nothing has shaped the state’s contemporary politics more in recent years than a commitment to what Newsom described in 2018 as “climate leadership.”

In embracing the catastrophism that defines climate change as an existential threat to life on the planet, Newsom has left behind the old progressive notion of focusing on materially improving people’s lives by embracing inherently uncertain computer models predicting danger.

In California, experts from what Bjorn Lomborg, a leading skeptic of climate catastrophism, calls “the climate industrial complex” provide the justification for staggeringly expensive, socially regressive mandates based on the conjured models. The state mandates greenhouse gas reductions but leaves implementation in the hands of state agencies closely aligned with the green lobby.

This allows the legislature to look the other way as state climate policies knowingly increase poor and working family costs and shift billions of dollars to the wealthy in the relentless pursuit of unilaterally modeled carbon emission targets that even advocates admit cannot possibly “fix” the global climate. Indeed, in 2023, the California Air Resources Board belatedly disclosed that current state climate policies would disproportionately harm households earning less than $100,000 per year while boosting incomes for those above this threshold.

Newsom’s dogged emphasis on climate change — and achieving “carbon neutrality” by 2045 — has meant massive subsidies for wind and solar, mandates to reduce personal car use by nearly three times the temporary cuts caused by pandemic lockdowns, electrification of home appliances at a cost of many thousands of dollars per household, and even cuts to dairy and livestock emissions with technology mandates, accelerating the relocation of these food producers to other states and increasing food prices.

To justify the pain, state regulators estimated that paying for these changes today would prevent future climate damage, all of which depends on highly uncertain projections spanning, in some cases, hundreds of years in the future. The problem is that even if damage projections are remotely accurate, California’s climate law recognizes that the state cannot affect the global climate unless everyone else in the world follows suit. In fact, global emissions are rising, especially from China, which exported over $120 billion in goods and services, notably manufactured goods, often produced with coal, to California in 2023.

Also based on “expert” opinion, the state has embraced a policy to force people to buy electric vehicles by 2035 — a policy increasingly questionable amid slowing demand for these vehicles. Once again, state officials relying on speculative projections proclaim that the policy will benefit the state’s consumers and the environment — although this seems questionable, given, as Volvo suggests, the energy demands of building such cars may take years to have a positive impact.

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

The price of climate delusion

The recent fires that incinerated a swath of Los Angeles revealed the shortcomings of the current climate-obsessed regime. To be sure, Trump’s claim that water policies created the conflagration is largely false, but the lack of attention to water delivery and forest maintenance, a consistent aspect of the Brown-Newsom era, clearly contributed to the intensity of the blaze.

In 2014, California voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure allocating $2.7 billion to increase state water storage capacity, including the building of new reservoirs. These facilities would not only improve an aging water system neglected for decades but also capture and store precipitation that may occur in less frequent, more intense storms. Yet even government apologists concede that 10 years later, progress has been too slow, with deeply entrenched bureaucracies issuing permits only at a “glacial” pace.

Rather than building on the achievements of Pat Brown, state officials spent a quarter of a billion dollars helping environmental groups destroy dams and hydroelectric generation along the Klamath River in Northern California. While this effort may yet improve fish habitat as intended, its initial results are sobering. Most of the river’s existing fish, crustaceans, and other organisms were killed by toxic sediment as the dams were removed, and unanticipated tar-pit-like mud exposure trapped large mammals, including protected wild horses. In March 2024, fish that state biologists confidently released into the restored river perished in a mass “die-off” within two days.

These misplaced priorities are also mirrored in Los Angeles, where reservoirs were left empty, leaving water unavailable and water hydrants without pressure. Both the state and local governments have failed to sufficiently fund fire-fighting operations — except for approving lavish pensions.

The climate catastrophists may promote fires as a sign of the coming apocalypse, but still consistently oppose effective fire management, as the Little Hoover Commission found as far back as 2018, discouraging such things as controlled burns and brush clearance. Policies of controlled burns, practiced by Native Americans and in areas like Western Australia, have been largely ignored.

Even as he rails against “misinformation,” Newsom blamed the recent Los Angeles fires, as he has regarding earlier blazes, on climate change. This claim has been widely debunked by scientists like Steve Koonin, Roger Pielke, and the U.S. Geological Service. Undaunted, Newsom’s neat solution appears to be to sue the oil companies for fires made far worse by Newsom’s own policies.

The greening of decline

Charred landscapes and burned houses reflect one legacy of California’s progressive obsessions. The impact of taxes and climate regulations on the overall economy has been more widespread, particularly for minorities and working- and middle-class households, who were once the focus of traditional liberalism.

This shift has been bolstered by the ascendancy of public employee unions and the remarkable growth of the state bureaucracy. California, under Pat Brown, largely avoided public employee unions, but Jerry Brown and other governors reversed this policy. Since 2022, even with budget shortfalls, California has among the highest rates of government sector growth in the country. Today, they are widely seen as a dominant force in Sacramento. Particularly powerful has been the 310,000-member California Teachers Association. Their numbers have continued to swell, even amid budget shortfalls, at a faster rate than private-sector employment.

Public employees, or their union representatives, constitute a powerful part of California’s emerging class hierarchy. Increasingly, their livelihoods are tied to an agenda of ever more regulation and taxes. Public workers, of course, also share these costs, but more regulation also engenders more jobs for the bureaucracy.

Ultimately, California, the birthplace of youth culture, is getting old — with some places more resembling Hawaii than the entrepreneurial powerhouse of the past.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Californians, particularly the working class, do not enjoy such benefits. In assessing the impacts of climate policies, environmental and civil rights attorney Jennifer Hernandez has dubbed these policies “the Green Jim Crow,” linking the state’s climate regulatory effort to the impoverishment of millions. California has the highest energy prices in the continental U.S., double the national average, which has exacerbated “energy poverty,” particularly among the poor and those in the less temperate interior.

In 2023, Chapman University researcher Bheki Mahalo found that the tech and information sector accounted for close to two-thirds of state GDP, compared to 8.5% in 1985. Virtually every sector associated with blue-collar employment — manufacturing, construction, transportation, and agriculture — has declined while most others have stagnated.

Consider California’s once-vibrant fossil fuel industry. The state’s last major oil firm, Chevron, recently moved to Houston. In 1996, California imported less than 10% of its crude oil from foreign sources. In 2023, foreign suppliers such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia accounted for over 60% of the state’s supplies. This continued shuttering of the state’s fossil fuel industry will cost California as many as 300,000 generally high-paying jobs, roughly half held by minorities, and will devastate, in particular, the San Joaquin Valley, where 40,000 jobs depend on the oil industry.

Other blue-collar industries — construction, manufacturing, logistics, and agriculture — are also suffering under California’s climate policies. Over the past decade, it has fallen into the bottom half of states in manufacturing sector employment, ranking 44th in 2023. Its industrial new job creation has paled in comparison to gains from competitors such as Nevada, Kentucky, Michigan, and Florida. Even without adjusting for costs, no California metro area ranks in the U.S. top 10 in terms of well-paying blue-collar jobs. But four — Ventura, Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego — sit among the bottom 10.

But not all the damage has been limited to “the carbon economy.” Progressive climate, labor, and tax policies have chased a broad range of companies out of the state, including an array of leading companies tied to professional services and engineering: Jacobs Engineering, Parsons, Bechtel, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Charles Schwab, and McKesson. Even Hollywood is hemorrhaging jobs, and recently, In-N-Out Burger — the state’s widely beloved fast food chain — announced it is planning a move to Tennessee. California is increasingly losing ground both in tech and high-end business services to sprawling, low-density metro areas like Austin, Nashville, Orlando, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, and Raleigh.

California, once the land of opportunity, is the single worst state in the nation when it comes to creating jobs that pay above average, while it is at the top of the heap in creating below-average and low-paying jobs. The state hemorrhaged 1.6 million above-average-paying jobs in the past decade, more than twice as many as any other state. Since 2008, the state has created five times as many low-wage jobs as high-wage jobs. In the past three years, the situation worsened, with 78.1% of all jobs added in California from lower-than-average-paying industries versus 61% for the nation as a whole.

The only sector that has seen big growth in higher-wage jobs has been the government, which is funded by tax receipts from the struggling private sector. Public sector employment is growing at about the same pace as jobs overall in California, but over the decade at twice the national pace. The average annual pay for those public sector government jobs is now almost double that of private sector jobs.

The housing crisis: Middle-class kill shot

The lack of well-paying jobs meshes poorly with high living costs, notably in terms of housing. Here again, climate politics play a critical role in driving high housing prices in California. In the late 1960s, the value of the typical California home was more than four times the average household’s income. Today, it’s worth more than 11 times. The median California home is priced nearly 2.5 times higher than the median national home, according to 2022 census data.

A key driver of this price hike is climate policy restraints on suburban development and single-family housing, supposedly to cut residential emissions. These restrictions push putting new housing close to transit in a state where barely 3% of employees use it to get to work, according to the American Community Survey. Perhaps more to the point, these policies are not what most Californians want. One recent Public Policy Institute of California survey has found that 70% of Californians prefer single-family residences, according to a poll by former Obama campaign pollster David Binder, and oppose legislation, written by state Senator Scott Wiener (D), that banned single-family zoning in much of the state.

The state has tried to sell its density dream as a means to boost production as well as lower prices. It has not worked out. From 2010 to 2023, California’s housing stock rose by just 7.9%, lower than the national increase of 10.3% and well below housing growth in Arizona (13.8%), Nevada (14.7%), Texas (24%), and Florida (16.2%). These states are also the primary beneficiaries of California’s out-migration. An unusually large pool of affluent households is “stuck” and bids up prices in urban rental markets.

Today, home ownership is becoming rarer among California residents. The state now has the nation’s second-lowest home ownership rate, at 55.9%, slightly above New York (55.4%). High prices impact young people, particularly on the home ownership rate.

Home ownership for Californians under 35 has fallen by more than half since 1980 and is plummeting even among people in their 40s and 50s. These initiatives particularly impact minorities. Based on census data analyzed by demographer Wendell Cox, the state’s African-American home ownership rate is 35.5% — well below the national rate of 44% — and the state’s Latino home ownership rate ranked 41st nationwide.

Alessandro Biascioli via iStock/Getty Images

From surfboard to walker?

If you think of California’s wealth-creation machine as a conveyor belt, continually providing generations with a stake in society through their homes, that belt has now stalled. Reduced economic opportunity and lack of affordable housing have created something once thought impossible — population growth well below the national average. In virtually every survey exploring why residents are leaving the state, housing costs are at the top of the list.

Increasingly, California’s demographics resemble the pattern of out-migration long associated with Northeastern and Midwestern states. Since 2000, more than 4 million net domestic migrants, a population about the same as the Seattle metropolitan area, have moved to other parts of the nation from California. Since 2020, the pace has picked up, with almost 1.5 million domestic migrants in just four years.

Many leaving the state are in their 30s and 40s, precisely the group that tends to buy houses and start businesses. In 2022, California lost over 200,000 net migrants older than 25, the bulk of whom had either four-year or associate degrees. The groups showing the biggest tendency to leave, according to IRS numbers, are those in their late 30s to late 50s, which includes people who tend to have families.

At the same time, international migration, long a source of demographic vitality, has lagged behind other key states, notably Texas. As the Brookings Institution has noted, from 2010 to 2018, the foreign-born population of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Columbus, Charlotte, Nashville, and Orlando increased by more than 20%, while San Francisco’s foreign-born population grew only 11% and New York’s by 5%.

The state retains by far the nation’s largest foreign-born population, but even the massive movement allowed under Biden’s open-border policy since 2021 failed to reverse population declines in big California cities. With the border now effectively closed, this last source of population growth is likely to decline.

By losing immigrants and younger people, the state is effectively consuming its “seed corn.” The state’s total fertility rate, long above the national average, is now the nation’s 10th lowest and falling faster than the national average and than its key competitors. Los Angeles and San Francisco rank last and second to last in birth rates among the 53 major U.S. metropolitan areas. In California, only the Riverside and San Bernardino metroplex exceeds the national average for births among women between ages 15 and 50, according to the American Community Survey.

Ultimately, California, the birthplace of youth culture, is getting old — with some places more resembling Hawaii than the entrepreneurial powerhouse of the past. From 2010 to 2018, California aged 50% more rapidly than the rest of the country, according to the American Community Survey. As of 2022, 21% — or 8.3 million people — were over the age of 60 in California, and according to the California Department of Aging, this population is expected to grow by 40% in the next 10 years.By 2036, seniors will be a larger share of the population than kids under the age of 18. California is gradually ditching the surfboard and adopting the walker.

Needed: A new California agenda

Newsom’s response to the state’s decline, rather than a call for major reform, has been for “Trump-proofing” the state, spending tens of millions on lawsuits. Such gestures do not address how California can maintain its status as the epicenter of “the new economy” and address the vast divides between the elite and highly educated and the vast mass of our residents.

Rather than fight the president at every turn, California can find ways to take advantage of the new regime. After all, hanging on to the climate agenda is doing very little good for Californians or the planet. California has reduced its emissions since 2006 at roughly the same rate as the rest of the country. The fires have largely erased even these gains, as does the fact that when people or companies flee the state, their carbon signature tends to increase.

Oddly, Trump could force needed policy changes in order to bring in federal help — something Newsom has already done in regard to water policy. The notion that California has a better model — the rationale for the Newsom-led “resistance” — does not sell in the rest of the country, much less at the White House. In a national 2024 survey conducted for the Los Angeles Times, only 15% of respondents felt that California is a model other states should copy; 39% said the state was not a model and should not be emulated; 87% said the state was too expensive; and 77% would not consider moving to California.

Yet for all its problems, California is far from hopeless, and its promise is not extinguished. It remains uniquely gifted in terms of climate, innovation, and entrepreneurial verve. Sitting at the juncture of Asia, Latin America, and North America, it can once again become, as Kevin Starr noted, America’s “final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

Your new car has all the usual shiny new entertainment tech, but you’re in the mood for an old favorite. You skip past the buttons for satellite radio and Bluetooth connectivity to tune in to your ever-reliable source of news, sports, and even lifesaving alerts in a crisis.

That’s when it hits you: There’s no AM radio.

Think back to the 1960s, when seatbelts weren’t standard. Automakers fought mandates then, too, calling them costly and unnecessary — until lives saved proved them wrong.

As I’ve reported here before, carmakers like Tesla, Ford, and BMW have been quietly dropping in-vehicle AM radios for years, claiming it’s no longer practical or financially viable to include it.

But don’t turn that dial just yet.

Poor reception

The AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act is heading toward a Senate vote after clearing the Commerce Committee back on February 5. With bipartisan support and an endorsement from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, this bill could ensure that AM radio stays in every new car.

But why is this even a fight?

It starts with cost. Adding an AM receiver might only run a few dollars per vehicle, but multiply that by millions of cars and it’s a hit to the bottom line.

Then there’s the tech angle — electric vehicles dominate the future (for now), and AM signals can get scrambled by the electromagnetic hum of EV batteries and motors, creating annoying static.

Plus, with dashboards turning into touchscreens and younger buyers streaming music or podcasts via Bluetooth, they argue that AM is outdated and unnecessary.

Automakers would rather upsell you on satellite radio subscriptions or internet-connected infotainment systems — options that pad their profits but leave you without an AM signal when you want or need it.

The trouble is that rural roads and disaster zones don’t care about your Wi-Fi plan, and that’s where AM comes in.

Last resort

I’ve been tracking this on Congress.gov. Senate Bill 315 moved out of committee for a floor vote this month. It’s described as a push “to require the Secretary of Transportation to issue a rule ensuring access to AM broadcast stations in passenger motor vehicles.”

If passed, it would mandate that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require automakers to include AM radio in all vehicles sold in the U.S. — at no extra cost. Until that rule kicks in, any cars without it must be clearly labeled.

The National Association of Broadcasters cheered the progress, pointing to disasters like the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene, where AM’s reach delivered evacuation orders and recovery info when cell networks crumbled. Over 125 groups, from the American Farm Bureau to the AARP, back it, citing safety and community access.

Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) of the Commerce Committee teamed up across the aisle, saying, “Today’s vote broadcasts a clear message to car manufacturers that AM radio is an essential tool for millions. From emergency response to entertainment and news, it’s a lifeline we must protect.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr added, “I saw it firsthand after Hurricane Helene — people relied on AM for lifesaving updates when everything else was down. Unlike streaming apps that need a signal or a subscription, AM is free, far-reaching, and works when nothing else does.”

Audio seatbelt

This bill is bigger than just radios — it’s about innovation, safety, and government’s role in the auto industry. Think back to the 1960s when seatbelts weren’t standard. Automakers fought mandates then, too, calling them costly and unnecessary — until lives saved proved them wrong. Today, AM radio is the seatbelt of communication: low-tech, sure, but a proven lifesaver.

If it passes the Senate, it could set a precedent for regulators to prioritize public good over corporate trends, maybe even nudging carmakers to rethink other cuts — like physical buttons that were swapped for slow screens.

It’s a signal that tech’s march forward doesn’t have to leave reliability behind, especially as disasters make resilient tools more crucial than ever.

Static from lobbyists

Unfortunately, this bill has some hurdles to get over. Automakers aren’t accepting this quietly; they’ve got deep pockets and powerful lobbyists, and groups like the Alliance for Automotive Innovation could lean on senators to water it down or kill it. They might argue it’s unfair to force a feature not every buyer wants or that EVs need exemptions for technical reasons.

Then there’s the Senate itself — gridlock is normal, and with budget battles and post-election-year posturing, a floor vote could easily be delayed. Even supporters admit it’s faced delays before; earlier versions never passed in Congress despite broad support. The difference now? High-profile disasters and bipartisan unity might just tip the scales.

AM remains the backbone of the Emergency Alert System, a resilient lifeline delivering local news, diverse voices, and critical info when it counts. Now that this bill’s racing through, it’s a sign that it could soon be law — unless the opposition shifts gears.

Prominent voices on the left and within movement conservatism have argued that President Trump’s approach to foreign trade is strange, unorthodox, and even un-American. This is not surprising. After all, doctrinaire commitment to free trade — and doctrinaire distaste for protecting American industry — has been the dominant view among elites of both major political parties for at least a generation.

Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Trump’s actions on trade appear as a wholly irrational disruption of a system that, according to our political elites, does not need to be discarded.

Hamilton would find it perfectly sensible of Trump to hold that other nations should give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market.

This view of the matter, however, is based on an incomplete understanding of the American political tradition. Trump’s approach to trade policy has deep roots in American history, as we can see if we cast our gaze further back than we are accustomed to doing. It does not go too far to say that America’s founders would find Trump’s approach to international commerce perfectly intelligible and respectable.

The most obvious way to link President Trump to the founders is to invoke the justly celebrated name of Alexander Hamilton. The “Report on Manufactures,” Hamilton’s most famous state paper during his tenure as George Washington’s treasury secretary, laid out policy objectives that are essentially the same as those being defended by Trump and the members of his Cabinet who are responsible for trade policy.

It was necessary, Hamilton contended, to exert the government’s authority to promote American manufacturing to counteract the “artificial policy” of other nations that sought to exclude or disadvantage American goods. The ultimate aim of such a policy, he explained, was not the “vain project of selling everything and buying nothing” — it was instead to secure America’s vital national interests.

Hamilton argued that national “independence and security” are the “great objects” of all governments, thus requiring each country to “possess within itself all the essentials of national supply,” especially “the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense.” Having such goods available within one’s own country, he continued, “is necessary to the perfection of the body politic, to the safety as well as the welfare of the society.”

No strange departure

It is hard to see much daylight between Hamiltonian trade principles and President Trump’s desire to have the products necessary to American security and prosperity built in the United States.

The nationalist character of Hamilton’s thinking about trade policy, moreover, did not emerge after the founding as some strange departure from its essential principles. Rather, such nationalism was evident earlier, especially in the prominent part Hamilton played in the debates over the ratification of the Constitution.

Writing in “The Federalist Papers,” Hamilton observed that one of the great advantages of a union of states under one government was the power it would confer on the nation to “oblige foreign countries to bid against each other for the privileges of our markets.” Elsewhere in “The Federalist Papers,” Hamilton suggested that the restrictive trade policies nations sometimes pursue are not properly viewed as “injuries” but simply as “justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest.”

Hamilton, then, would find it perfectly sensible of President Trump to hold that other nations should be willing to give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market. His arguments similarly anticipated Trump’s frequent remarks that while other nations will inevitably act in their own interest, they likewise must understand that we intend to act in our own interest as well.

The preceding argument is enough to show that Trump’s thinking about trade policy has venerable roots in the American political tradition. After all, who is more American than Alexander Hamilton?

We can go further, however. Trump’s approach broadly represents not just the Hamiltonian strain of American economic nationalism but the common sense of the founding-era generation itself. Indeed (and as I have observed elsewhere at greater length) the authority to regulate trade with foreign nations was included in the Constitution precisely for the purposes for which the Trump administration is now wielding it.

Regulating commerce was uncontroversial

In his massive and highly regarded “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” Joseph Story — John Marshall’s great colleague on the early Supreme Court — observed that the power to regulate foreign commerce was so obviously necessary in a complete and effective government that it was hardly even a matter of controversy at the Constitutional Convention.

Commerce, Story suggested, is important to “the prosperity of nations.” Nevertheless, the prosperity of American commerce had been thwarted by the restrictive policies of other nations during the time America was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which conferred on the government no authority to regulate America’s foreign trade.

On Story’s telling, before the Constitution was adopted, American commerce “was regulated by foreign nations with a single view to their own interests; and our disunited efforts to counteract their restrictions were rendered impotent by a want of combination.” Under the Constitution, however, the government of the United States has the power to control access to the entire American market and hence has the ability to retaliate against the excessively self-regarding trade policies of other nations.

The Trump administration is simply using this constitutional power in an attempt to secure an arrangement that is more mutually beneficial for the United States and our trading partners.

Just as the founders anticipated

Story’s understanding of these matters was by no means idiosyncratic or partisan. On the contrary, essentially the same views were expressed by James Madison, the “father of the Constitution.”

Writing to James Monroe in 1785, Madison expressed his personal wish that “no regulations of trade, that is to say, no restrictions or imposts whatever, were necessary.” “A perfect freedom” of trade, he continued, “is the system which would be my choice.” Nevertheless, he immediately added, for such a system to be “attainable, all other nations must concur in it.” And if any other nation imposed restrictions on American trade, Madison continued, it would be appropriate for America to “retort the distinction” — in other words, to impose retaliatory restrictions of its own. Indeed, Madison held that to question the propriety of such economic retaliation would be “an affront to every citizen who loves his country.”

Similarly, in the preface to his notes on the Constitutional Convention, Madison observed that the lack of a commerce power under the Articles of Confederation had “produced in foreign nations … a monopolizing policy injurious to the trade of the U.S.” and further suggested that the appropriate response would be a “countervailing policy on the part of the U. States.” Such a policy became possible because the new Constitution included a power to regulate trade with foreign nations — the power the Trump administration is wielding to secure more advantageous trade relations for America, just as the founders anticipated.

None of this is to say that the founders would have approved of the specific steps the Trump administration has taken in the last several weeks. No one can pretend to know how they would apply their principles to the changed circumstances of the present. Nor is it to say that the founders would approve the extent to which the Congress has delegated its foreign commerce power to the president. It is to say, however, that Trump’s aims, and the kind of tools he is using to achieve them, would be unobjectionable to those who founded our nation and established our form of government.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Modern medications have transformed health care, turning once-fatal diseases into manageable conditions. Statins have significantly reduced heart disease deaths. GLP-1 drugs are revolutionizing obesity treatment.

But the path to these breakthroughs has come at a callous cost — thanks to outdated, unnecessary regulations from the Food and Drug Administration.

Images of week-old puppies convulsing from drug overdoses may finally become a thing of the past.

Each year, U.S. labs use roughly 50 million animals in drug testing, including rodents, monkeys, dogs, and cats. Much of this often cruel experimentation stems from FDA mandates that require animal testing for drug approval.

At last, that’s beginning to change.

Thanks to the bipartisan efforts of Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act 3.0 in December. The bill allows sponsors to use alternative testing methods that don’t harm living things. The FDA has proven remarkably receptive to these efforts, recently announcing measures to phase out animal testing requirements. With continued momentum, animal testing may soon be gone for good.

Recent reforms have reignited a fierce and emotional debate over the role of animal testing in medical innovation. Many researchers still defend the practice. Jim Newman, communications director for Americans for Medical Progress, argues that alternatives remain in their infancy and won’t become fully reliable “for many, many years.”

While some animal testing may still serve a purpose, the FDA has long abused the practice, imposing requirements that are often cruel, costly, and slow-moving.

Take the case of Vanda Pharmaceuticals. The company pushed back when the FDA ordered it to euthanize dogs after testing its gastroparesis drug, Tradipitant. Vanda had already run extensive tests on rats and dogs, including prolonged exposure at doses up to 300 times higher than those intended for humans. No safety concerns emerged. The FDA had even approved human trials.

But when Vanda sought to extend treatment beyond three months, regulators demanded yet another round of dog testing — this time with mandatory euthanasia. The agency offered no scientific rationale, no public justification — only a bureaucratic decree.

The real cost wasn’t just animal lives. An estimated 1.5 million Americans suffer from gastroparesis and face delayed access to treatment. Yet the FDA prevailed in court, thanks to its unchecked power to require animal testing with no meaningful oversight.

Paul and Booker aim to disrupt the FDA’s outdated, inhumane testing regime. Their bipartisan reform would give companies like Vanda the power to reject animal testing when safer, more advanced alternatives exist.

One such alternative uses microchips that simulate the human body’s biological systems. These “organ-on-a-chip” technologies allow researchers to see how drugs affect human tissue — without harming a single animal.

Wider adoption of chip-based testing could cut research and development costs between 10% and 26%, while sparing countless animals from needless pain and death. Images of week-old puppies convulsing from drug overdoses may finally become a thing of the past.

These alternatives may also produce better science. A report from the National Institutes of Health found that animal models often fail to accurately replicate human disease or predict drug responses — delaying breakthroughs and wasting money while patients wait.

With the right pressure from Congress, the FDA can move away from a system rooted in cruelty and toward one grounded in modern science. The status quo is not just outdated. It’s indefensible.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s latest crusade as the Health and Human Services secretary includes a proposed ban on eight FDA-approved artificial food dyes across the United States.

While most conservatives are cheering on the crackdown, Stu Burguiere of “Stu Does America” isn’t so sure it’s as necessary as RFK Jr. claims it is.

“Obviously, as a conservative not really liking government intervention all that much, I’m much more comfortable with working with the food industry and letting them make their choices rather than revoking authorization for particular dyes,” Stu says.

An article in the Washington Post details what “the science says” about these artificial food dyes and their effect on children — and Stu isn’t so sure it’s as bad as we’ve been led to believe.

“Consumer advocacy groups said there is sufficient evidence that the dyes may cause some harm to some children,” Stu reads, noting that “consumer advocacy groups” are “not scientists.”

“Some may cause some harm to some children, which basically tells you pretty clearly, a lot of the studies show no harm. Some of the studies show a little bitty, tiny bit of harm, as it’s mostly associated with behavioral disorders,” he continues. “And then, finally, never in any of these studies does it hit all children. It’s a small percentage of children that it hits, even when it shows up in studies, which is not always.”

However, because artificial dyes contain no nutritional value, it doesn’t seem to be worth the risk to most parents.

“No one’s saying that you should be forced to eat artificial dyes. That would be insane,” Stu says, adding that if these dyes do get banned, there are alternatives that can be used — but they come at a price.

“They don’t use artificial dyes because they just love artificial dyes,” he says. “They use artificial dyes because they’re cheaper, they cost less money, and they are able to make a higher profit margin or charge you less.”

Want more from Stu?

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NFL Hall of Famer and ESPN football analyst Shannon Sharpe was recently hit with a $50 million lawsuit accusing him of rape, battery, and emotional abuse. The plaintiff, whom Sharpe has identified as OnlyFans model Gabbi Zuniga, has accused Sharpe of raping her twice, recording sexual encounters without consent, and threatening her.

Zuniga’s attorney, Tony Buzbee, who’s litigated against several high-profile black celebrities — including Jay Z, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and Deshaun Watson — released a short audio clip to TMZ, in which Sharpe can be heard telling Zuniga, “I’m going to f**king choke the s**t out of you when I see you.” Sharpe has vehemently denied all allegations, claiming the relationship was consensual and that the audio clip was intentionally edited to misrepresent a consensual interaction.

Now another audio clip has been leaked, pouring even more gasoline on the controversy. This clip from March 2025 allegedly captures former NBA player Matt Barnes claiming that Shaquille O’Neal was offering “top dollar” for incriminating information on Shannon Sharpe.

– YouTube

“He said that Shannon did some s**t back to him a while back, and he’s been awful, so that’s why he’s doing this. But please, please, please keep his name quiet,” Barnes allegedly says.

Barnes has denied the authenticity of the audio clip, claiming it was AI-generated.

Despite his denial, Jason Whitlock says high-profile celebrities putting a “financial bounty” on those they don’t like is sadly very common.

“Shaq’s a billionaire, and he’s got a problem with Shannon Sharpe. He can put money out and say, ‘Anybody – I got 500,000 bucks or 50,000 bucks or 100,000 bucks or a million bucks if you got dirt on Shannon Sharpe,'” he says.

He recalls a conversation he had with his friend, former NFL player Derrick Thomas, in the “late 1990s,” during which Thomas told him there was “animus and beef” between Shaq and Sharpe over a woman.

Jason doesn’t know if this age-old rivalry has anything to do with Shaq allegedly offering a high price for dirt on Sharpe, nor does he know if the Zuniga lawsuit is connected in any way to Shaq’s alleged vendetta.

“I’m not saying Shaq is involved in the downfall of Shannon Sharpe here, but what I’m saying is, like, these guys at this level, when … you live as unrighteously as [Sharpe] has, you’ve left dirt out there for people to use to compromise and embarrass you and take you down,” says Jason.

“Shaq makes it no secret he’s some sort of mason,” he explains. He and those like him “make it no secret that they feel like they’re power players in control of the culture.”

This scandal, he says, shouldn’t surprise anyone.

“We love to celebrate these athletic billionaires without reflecting on how much power we’re granting them and then what cultures are they attached to,” Jason says. “When they all attach themselves to hip-hop — that degenerate, pagan, demonic culture … we should not be shocked at the ramifications of that and where that ends up leading.”

To hear more of Jason’s commentary, watch the clip above.

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On Friday, Saskatchewan truck driver Chris Barber took to X and posted a photo of “Big Red,” his 2003 Kenworth W900Lr. With it, he included a reminder of Canada’s upcoming federal election April 28.

“This is my livelihood, the breadwinner that has kept my family fed for years, and the crown seeks to destroy my life and future because we took a stand against tyranny. Government overreach at its finest. Our Canada under #Liberal rule!!!!! Vote smart #Canada”

The Convoy was the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history, and these proceedings now hold the title of longest mischief trial in the history of the nation.

As one of the faces of 2022’s Freedom Convoy, the largest and most effective populist uprising in recent history, Barber has been subject to three years of vicious lawfare from the Liberal-controlled Canadian government.

And now that same government wants to take “Big Red,” which has become a symbol of the Convoy.

The truck stops here

On Thursday, April 3, a ruling came down in an Ottawa courtroom against Barber and another prominent Convoy protester, Tamara Lich, a grandmother and musician from Alberta.

Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey gave her final judgments on a number of charges stemming from the three-week protest in February 2022, where Barber, Lich, and thousands of others exercised their once-cherished rights to freedom of expression, hurting no one and causing no property damage as they demanded to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his underlings and negotiate an end to Trudeau’s punishing COVID regime.

Perkins-McVey acknowledged the peaceful nature of the protest in her ruling, despite presiding over 45 days of government testimony spread across 20 months in a Kafka-esque show trial where the government argued over the minutiae of TikTok videos and the meaning of slogans such as “Hold the Line!”

Court-sanctioned ‘mischief’

This entire situation has been one for the record books. The Convoy was the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history, and these proceedings now hold the title of longest mischief trial in the history of the nation.

Prosecutors failed to convince Perkins-McVey of most of their cases against Lich and Barber, who were found not guilty of intimidation, along with other fraudulent and spurious charges.

Lich and Barber were, however, found guilty of mischief, and Barber additionally was found guilty of disobeying a court order regarding the honking of truckers’ air horns, which became a rallying cry of the protest and an instant online meme. Barber had made a video telling his followers to honk their horns in defiance of the order if, and only if, their trucks were approached by a large group of police officers. This context didn’t move Perkins-McVey.

The problem with mischief, as a criminal charge in Canada, is that it is a “property” crime, and a conviction can land you in prison for a maximum of 10 years.

What was the property here? The public property of the streets of Ottawa.

Hamas exception

In a very peculiar part of the ruling, McVey asserts that the public’s enjoyment of the use of city streets took precedence over the Convoy’s right to protest. It ought be noted that since the tragic events in Israel in October 2023, supporters of Hamas have protested every single week, unencumbered by the government, nor have they been accused of interrupting the enjoyment of those streets.

At the conclusion of the ruling, Justice Perkins-McVey sought to issue sentencing the following day, but on the objection of the prosecutors, a later date was set to … set another date.

Prosecutors wanted time to assemble more victim impact statements, as if three years of hearing from Ottawa’s bureaucrats about the delusions of phantom honking wasn’t enough to assemble them all. Maybe they needed to hear about the honking again, just one more time. In case anyone forgot.

‘Red’ notice

On April 16, we found out the punishment that the crown seeks against Lich and Barber is two years in a federal clink, and, in a request that is clearly vindictive and requires an essay of its own to unpack, the crown is seeking to seize “Big Red.”

Barber’s rig had become a symbol of the Freedom Convoy, featured in thousands of pictures, videos, and memes, as it led the Western Canadian Convoy to Ottawa. Barber has owned and operated that truck since 2003 and put 3.4 million kilometers (roughly 2.1 million miles) on it, mostly hauling heavy agricultural equipment across his home province of Saskatchewan and picking up new equipment from factories in America for his customers.

In the 22 years Barber has owned and operated that truck, he has raised his children in it over trips too many to count, and when his dog Buddy was approaching the end of his life, the poor old dog was put down while lying on the passenger seat: Buddy’s favorite place to be.

With the mischief conviction, Barber may not be allowed back into the United States to serve his customers, a pretty major blow to his business — and punishment enough, in a way.

A new low

What justice is served in this move by the Canadian government? In all the hundreds of prosecutions of other Convoy protesters, many of which remain ongoing, never has the government sought to seize anyone’s property.

Perhaps authorities did enough of that during the protest itself, when they froze hundreds of people’s bank accounts and locked them out of economic life altogether, something that likewise happened to Barber. The actions of the banks were so comprehensive that drivers working for Barber’s small company were calling him when the bank freezings started, to tell him the fuel cards for their trucks no longer worked.

It seems like the government is trying to send a message to every Canadian that dissent will not be tolerated at all and that if you defy the government diktat, the authorities will crush you, your family, and your very own business.

Barack Obama famously dismissed the efforts of American business owners with his comment, “You didn’t build that.” It seems that the Canadian government, under the Liberal Party of the very recently departed Justin Trudeau, is building on Obama’s attitude.

He built that

It doesn’t matter that Chris Barber did build something. Never mind the time and blood and sweat and sacrifice he put into his successful small trucking company. Our leaders can come and take it all away with the swipe of a pen.

Truly and terribly evil — and unbecoming a once supposedly free country.

Lawyers for Barber have filed for a stay of proceedings. It’s a pretty long shot, but if granted, this gross abuse of state power and capricious message-sending will be stopped.

Meanwhile, in a TikTok video thanking his supporters, Barber paid tribute to “Big Red:”

I bought this truck brand-new in 2003, November 26 to be exact, and I’ve got 3.4 million kilometers on this truck as of today. I have raised my children in this truck. I have trucked all over North America with this bad boy. It is a piece of me. It even has the little foot marks from where Jonathan as a toddler used to kick the dash with his little winter boots in the car seat.

Click here to watch the message in its entirety.

A version of this article previously appeared on the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.