This is so devastating. Imagine being a black parent tonight. How do you protect your children? If they go out and stab just one person, they might go to prison. It’s like a black man in America can’t even murder anyone anymore. Unimaginable. Jim Crow all over again. I’m furious.
What was the end result of Democrats’ DHS shutdown?
Zero ICE reforms, and ICE and CBP are now funded with an additional $70 billion through the rest of Trump’s presidency.
After negotiations fell apart in the Senate, Republicans simply went around Dems and funded Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda on their own, & Dems were powerless to stop it.
And this is *on top* of the money ICE & CBP already got in the One Big Beautiful Bill last year.
ICE & CBP now have more money coming to their coffers than they ever would have if there had been no DHS shutdown.
The Overton has moved well right on this politically but there are still millions of Christians who've been trained to think it's sinful to study the world and come to the conclusion that smashing every people group on earth into a single place isn't the best way for man to live.
Next we need to push for legal reforms that would have made Anthony eligible for the death penalty. Even in Texas, which most people think of as very aggressive on the death penalty because they actually carry executions out, is very limited. Shouldn’t be in clear cut cases.
For the record, this is the message Mormons advertise to the general public. Once inside, the doctrine gets progressively stranger and the exits get progressively harder to find. This is the same architecture as Freemasonry (where Smith got it); an exoteric face for public consumption and an esoteric core revealed only to initiates who have already invested enough to make leaving costly.
Once you convert, you’ll see increasing levels of bizarreness. If you’re selected for mission or undergo marriage, you’ll see the Endowment wires Joseph Smith took from the Masonic lodge he joined in March 1842, complete with secret handshakes, passwords, ritual garments, penalties for revealing the secrets, and degree-by-degree progression through escalating knowledge. They don’t give the deep magic to newbies.
The public gets “God loves you and wants you to be like him.” The “investigator classes” get the Word of Wisdom and family values. The convert gets tithing requirements and Sunday commitment. The temple recommend holder gets the endowment ceremony with its ritual drama, sacred undergarments, and covenants made under oath. The deepest initiates eventually get the doctrine of Eternal Progression. Nothing is “simple” about it.
By the time you learn that your God was a mortal man on another planet who earned his divinity, you have a temple marriage, a social network composed entirely of fellow members, family relationships that depend on your continued faithfulness, and the institutional teaching that leaving means forfeiting your eternal family. The information was always there. They just made sure you were sufficiently trapped before they handed it to you.
Salvation, or “exaltation” in the Mormon faith is the most complicated combination of ritual, extenuating rules, pietistic demands, and requirements to both obtain salvation and keep it that it will exhaust you to despair.
Compare this to Christianity, in which salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. In Christianity, nobody hides from you what the church really believes. We will tell you from day 1. There’s no secret elaborate ceremonies. There are only two rites, one use only nothing but water and Word, the other, nothing but bread and wine. The burden is light and yoke easy, with two commands; to love God, and neighbor. And there’s no additional eternal merit badge to obtain, no degrees to achieve, a salvation that is full, free, and total from the day that you believe.
A true religion doesn’t have to falsely advertise.
Celebrations all over the timeline that a red state Texas jury found a young black man guilty of murder for killing a young white man after seeing the young black man commit the murder on video.
When this is seen as the most obvious thing in the world - that will be progress.