Pope Francis the Communist taught that the central purpose of life is to live for others. Since he saw servitude as a moral obligation, to serve mankind and not fulfill your own desires, it didn’t seem like a stretch for him to embrace Communism. Communism makes self-sacrifice an obligation for everyone, through the force of law–an obligation for all, except the elites in power and the connected, of course.

It’s little wonder the media adored Pope Francis. The leftist people who work in media are prepared to impose totalitarian slavery and obligation on everyone but themselves. It’s the most vicious, suicidal and unhealthy creed mankind could ever devise. Yet our cultural and governmental institutions have yet to shed it. America’s founders, the men of the Enlightment and Renaissance era that preceded them, came the closest. They inspired us to embrace freedom, for a time.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!

Democrats are scrambling to craft new strategies to get back into power after their ignominious defeat in 2024.

Folks on the left have finally decided to give up on identity politics and focus on solutions – okay, I can’t finish this sentence with a straight face. But I tried, and that should count for something, shouldn’t it, dear reader?

The truth is, Democrats continue to show they have failed to learn their lessons after Republicans beat them like Mike Tyson whupped Peter McNeely in last year’s elections. Instead of looking inward and figuring out where they went wrong, the left is jumping headfirst into the definition of insanity, thinking things might just be different next time.

And this, ladies and germs, is where the “dark woke” phenomenon has emerged. The New York Times, as well as other media outlets, have touted this supposed change as a way for the left to “get their groove back.”

TipsheetHave You Heard of This ‘Dark Woke’ Phenomenon?

Jeff Charles https://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.2f70fb173b9000da126c79afe2098f02.en.html#dnt=false&id=twitter-widget-0&lang=en&screen_name=jeffcharlesjr&show_count=false&show_screen_name=false&size=m&time=1745278777459 | April 21, 2025 3:30 PM

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Democrats are scrambling to craft new strategies to get back into power after their ignominious defeat in 2024.

Folks on the left have finally decided to give up on identity politics and focus on solutions – okay, I can’t finish this sentence with a straight face. But I tried, and that should count for something, shouldn’t it, dear reader?

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The truth is, Democrats continue to show they have failed to learn their lessons after Republicans beat them like Mike Tyson whupped Peter McNeely in last year’s elections. Instead of looking inward and figuring out where they went wrong, the left is jumping headfirst into the definition of insanity, thinking things might just be different next time.

And this, ladies and germs, is where the “dark woke” phenomenon has emerged. The New York Times, as well as other media outlets, have touted this supposed change as a way for the left to “get their groove back.”

As liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump’s no-holds-barred version of politics.

It’s an attempt to step outside the bounds of the political correctness that Republicans have accused Democrats of establishing. And it requires being crass but discerning, rude but only to a point.

Online, it has a name: “Dark woke.”

Bhavik Lathia, former digital director for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, told The Times that the GOP has “essentially put Democrats in a respectability prison” and that “There is an extreme imbalance in strategy that allows Republicans to say stuff that really grabs voters’ attention, where we’re stuck saying boring pablum.”

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The Sad Trombone Blows for Letitia James – Whomp! Whomp!Kurt Schlichter

“Dark woke” is a particularly online phenomenon – at least for now. It can trace its origin back to the days when leftists dubbed former President Joe Biden “Dark Brandon” in memes and other online silliness.

And which Democrat darling best exemplifies the “Dark Woke” trope today? I’ll give you three guesses and the first two don’t count.

Yep, you got it: Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), the low-rent AOC who is more interested in snappy sound bites and cringeworthy performances on the House floor than actually pushing policy.

Crockett has made a spectacle of herself on numerous occasions. She famously told Elon Musk to “f*** off” and ranted about “white tears.” I have to say, if Democrats want to beclown themselves with this Dark Woke movement, they couldn’t have a better figurehead than the profanity-using, code-switching, heavy eyelash-wearing Crockett.

Just take a quick look at her pretending to be a “very serious lawmaker” because she is “truly a black woman.”

Yet, Democrats seem to be highly enthused with Crockett’s brand of political theater, according to The New York Times.

Ms. Crockett’s moment became a meme. It was printed on T-shirts. It got her an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel. And now, Democratic strategists say, it has become a perfect example of “dark woke.”

The reach of Ms. Crockett’s comment seemed to show that Democratic clapbacks could permeate into cultural spaces, giving the leaders who delivered them new platforms to spread their ideas. To a new, younger generation of Democratic staffers, this was exactly the link they had seen their opponents exploiting for years.

“All these new staffers, we grew up seeing extremely vile content overflowing from right-wing spaces into regular spaces,” said Caleb Brock, 23, the director of digital strategy for Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California. “We’re ready to combat that by any means necessary.”

So, to put it simply, Democrats want to become more Trumpy. It makes sense given that Trump’s bombastic nature won him favor with the right over a decade ago. Now, media outlets are claiming this is something of a sea change in how Democrats will approach politics.

But there’s a problem.

See, the thing is, Democrats never actually changed. They have always been nasty to their political opponents. Hop in the Delorean with me and let’s go back to 2024 when leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker blamed Hamas’ October 7, 2023, massacre of Israeli civilians on President Donald Trump.

He said the attack was “a direct consequence of the Abraham Accords and many of Jared Kushner’s and Donald Trump’s administration’s actions, like moving the embassy to Jerusalem.”

You might also remember how Democrats incessantly compared George W. Bush to Hitler, right? Also, didn’t Biden claim Mitt Romney wanted to put black people “back in chains?”

Clearly, this Dark Woke nonsense does not signal that Democrats are changing their ways. Instead, they are simply doing what they have always done. In fact, one of the reasons why Trump became popular on the right is that he gave the left the same treatment Democrats have been giving conservatives for decades.

Moreover, this line of attack won’t work without a leader with the charisma of Trump. So far, they don’t. Folks like Crockett aren’t going to cut it with anyone who isn’t already a passionate Democrat. But, at least it will be entertaining, right?

We’ve all watched the way paying for things has changed over the years. First it was coins, then cards, then phones and smartwatches.

But now, it looks like the next big step is… you. Literally. Your face, your fingerprint, even your eyes could soon be all you need to pay for your next coffee, your weekly food shop, or even your pharmacy run.

It might sound futuristic, but this is already in the works here in Spain. Banks and big-name retailers are gearing up for pilot programmes as soon as 2026, and if all goes well, we’ll be seeing biometric payments in places like supermarkets, chemists and corner shops before we know it.

How biometric payments in Spain work—and why they’re so convenient We’re not talking about sci-fi implants or microchips under the skin. This new system works with biometric identification: your fingerprint, your face, or even your iris. You register once with your bank (probably through the same app you’re already using), and that’s it. No more digging through your bag for a card or typing in PINs. You just show up, scan your finger or face, and the payment goes through. Done.

And because it doesn’t rely on internet connection, it’s especially handy in places with poor signal — think rural villages or busy festivals where everyone’s on their phones at once. No card, no phone, no problem.

Are biometric payments safe in Spain? Most people think so It’s fair to ask: can someone fake your face or steal your fingerprint? But this system is built around the idea that your biometric data is uniquely yours and far harder to steal or lose than a wallet or a phone.

In fact, a recent survey by Visa shows nearly half of Spaniards think this way of paying is safer than cards or mobiles. And around 36% say they’d be happy to start using it within five years.

No PIN to forget. Nothing to leave at home. Nothing to be snatched out of your pocket. It’s kind of hard to argue with that.

When will biometric payments launch in Spain? If all goes to plan, 2026 will be the year it starts popping up for real. Supermarkets, pharmacies and smaller shops are the first in line to test it. All they’ll need is a special scanner — which many are already looking into installing.

And let’s be honest: most of us already use face or fingerprint ID to unlock our phones or log into our bank apps. So the leap to paying this way might not feel quite as sci-fi as it sounds.

The bottom line? Your body might soon be all you need to buy a loaf of bread. No card. No phone. Just you. Welcome to the future.

Farah Mokrani, Euroweekly News

Did you know that your tax dollars funded the housing and transportation of illegal aliens across the country? President Donald Trump has moved to stop this phenomenon, and his efforts recently met with an important success.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that it would not renew agreements with the federal government relating to children’s services and refugee support.

As I wrote in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the USCCB formed one arm of the Immigration Industrial Complex, the network of NGOs receiving federal funds to move illegal aliens across the country.

Some of this work may be noble—it involved finding homes for unaccompanied alien children and those freed from human trafficking—but it also abetted the border crisis, on an industrial scale.

The Immigration Industrial Complex

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in an April 2022 memorandum that his plan for “border security” involved “bolstering the capacity of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to receive noncitizens after they have been processed by [Customs and Border Protection] and are awaiting the results of their immigration removal proceedings.”

The Biden administration released millions of illegal aliens on parole, giving them court dates to adjudicate their immigration status, but these aliens routinely miss their court dates and move to live elsewhere in the country.

In 2022, The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center teamed up with the Oversight Project to track where illegal aliens move. They traced cell phones detected at federal immigration facilities, finding that these devices moved across the country.

Illegal aliens in facilities maintained by Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, for example, moved to 433 out of America’s 435 congressional districts.

As a reminder, at least 9 million illegal aliens entered the United States under President Joe Biden. Only 11 U.S. states have populations greater than 9 million, and even left-leaning “sanctuary city” mayors lamented their inability to deal with the influx of illegal aliens.

Many faith-based NGOs that launched to help legal immigrants in previous eras of U.S. history revamped their efforts in recent years, helping immigrants apparently regardless of legal status. These Immigration Industrial Complex groups likely would not exist without federal funding.

Global Refuge, formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, for example, received $180 million in government grants, more than seven times what it received in “all other contributions” ($25 million), in 2022. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants reported receiving the vast majority of its revenue ($117.4 million of $121.7 million) through government grants in 2020.

Chapters of Catholic Charities received at least $1.13 billion under Biden through the Refugee and Entrant Assistance State/Replacement Designee Administered Programs grant from the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services, for example. Catholic Charities USA received $1.4 billion of its $4.7 billion in revenue from government support in 2022—more than the $1 billion it received in private donations.

The Trump Freeze

The Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars in grants in order to conduct a program integrity review. This seems eminently reasonable. While Americans of faith like myself may support programs that care for the less fortunate—particularly legal immigrants and refugees— we should not be forced to pay for these charitable programs with our tax dollars, much less have our tax dollars spent to help relocate illegal aliens across the country.

The administration should ensure that these programs do not abet the immigration crisis and incentivize more illegals to enter the country.

Predictably, however, the Immigration Industrial Complex responded with lawsuits.

USCCB sued the State Department in March to challenge the freeze on around $65 million in federal funding for refugee services. The Biden administration had provided the USCCB with $100 million annually, and the funding covered more than 95% of the bishops’ spending on those programs.

The State Department canceled two multimillion-dollar refugee resettlement contracts with USCCB last month, directing the bishops to “stop all work on these program[s] and not incur any new costs.”

Only in this context did the USCCB finally announce the end of its work with the federal government.

“Today, the USCCB makes the heartbreaking announcement that we will not be renewing existing cooperative agreements with the federal government related to children’s services and refugee support,” the bishops said. “This difficult decision follows the suspension by the government of our cooperative agreements to resettle refugees.”

In other words, the USCCB is claiming to take a pro-active action, but the announcement actually represents the USCCB’s recognition of reality—the administration had already made the determinative steps.

‘Rigorous Screening’

Notably, USCCB claimed, “All participants in these programs were welcomed by the U.S. government to come to the United States and underwent rigorous screening before their arrival.”

The Biden administration “welcomed” many immigrants outside the legal channels established by Congress, particularly through the program that imported people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The Biden administration chartered planes for these aliens and granted them parole to remain in the country, a protection the Trump administration will remove later this month.

Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, contested the vetting claim.

“The Biden administration demonstrated repeatedly that aliens and sponsors were not adequately vetted, whether that was Afghan evacuees, sponsors for unaccompanied children, sponsors for parolees, or others,” she told The Daily Signal.

“Lack of vetting was the reason for multiple Inspector General reports and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services pause of one of its parole programs,” Ries added.

A Critical Admission

Bill Canny, the executive director of USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services program, told EWTN News that the program cannot continue without federal funding.

“You can’t replace the generosity of the [United States] taxpayer and how they help either needy people overseas or needy people domestically,” Canny told EWTN. “You can’t replace that, in this case, some $200 million a year, which it would have been this year. So we can’t replace it with private [money].”

Perhaps USCCB should create a new program that can be funded with private donations, to address the real human concerns that justified the original program. In that case, not only would the program be directed to the people who most need it, but it would also be able to survive without federal strings attached.

USCCB was fulfilling a few important charitable functions, but its old program formed part of a noxious Immigration Industrial Complex. I pray that it can establish a new program dedicated to helping legal refugees and human trafficking victims, without abetting the border crisis.

Americans of faith in general—and Catholics, in particular—are a generous people. Let’s allow them to fund charity with their own dollars, not by using the power of the state to force them to fork over the cash.

Tyler O’Neil, Daily Signal

Any LGBTQ who actually believes Muslims offer a “shining light” for their rights should be invited to go live in those societies, immediately. The ignorance of their position is simply too stupendous to suggest innocence.

*******

I am sick of leftists talking about “due process” for illegal alien terrorist gang members being deported out of the United States.

Democrat leftist totalitarians who censor, forcibly mask/vaccinate their fellow citizens, and lock up Trump supporters for 4 years over alleged misdemeanor charges on 1/6/21 DO NOT GET TO LECTURE US ON DUE PROCESS.

Totalitarians do not practice due process. They do not get to lecture about it.

*******

Is it possible to be both pitiful and an asshole — at the same time? Absolutely. It’s not a contradiction. Consider the type of person who brings all his own troubles on himself — and yet tenaciously clings to his self-perception as a “victim.” If you wish to use the term “loser” in an entirely justified way, this is it.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Charleston SC). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on X at @MichaelJHurd1, drmichaelhurd on Instagram, @DrHurd on TruthSocial. Dr. Hurd is also now a Newsmax Insider!

Don’t let high paid TikTok and YouTube influencers fool you with videos of Chinese skyscrapers caked with LED lights or lavish parties with dancing robots.  This is not the true China.  Underneath the facade is a nation on the brink of disaster.   

Official economic data from any government is always treated with suspicion by anyone with common sense.  The US, for example, witnessed some of the most egregious statistical tinkering imaginable under the Biden Administration, not to mention outright lies and propaganda from the establishment media on the health of the economy.  To this day no one has been fired (or tarred and feathered) for hiding the reality of the stagflation crisis.  Any government or corporate economist that called the threat “transitory” should be stripped of their financial prestige and banished to a cash register at Arby’s.

And let’s not forget Biden’s misrepresentation of the labor market, portraying millions of new jobs for illegal migrants and visa holders as if they were jobs benefiting American citizens.  In the US and across the western world, lying about the economy is generally seen by politicians as a temporary solution to secure reelection.  However, in China, lying about the economy is treated as a national security imperative.  If there’s anything in the world that gives communists a feeling of existential dread, it’s the fear that their ideological enemies will discover proof that communism doesn’t work.

The Trump Administration’s tariffs on China are not the initiator of the nation’s troubles, they are more a bookend to a process of decline that has been ongoing for years. 

Overall tariffs on Chinese goods currently sit at 124%, but some goods will be taxed as high as 245%.  Trump has given a 1 month exemption on electronic parts and devices, perhaps to offer manufacturers like Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft time to arrange sourcing from alternative vendors.  The problem for Chinese manufacturers is not just the tariffs but the uncertainty of timing and sudden changes to policy.  They say no one is willing to make a big move on production or shipments until the trade landscape becomes more predictable.  This means most Chinese factories are frozen in stasis.

Trump’s tariff actions are widely criticized by the media as erratic or poorly planned, but what they don’t understand is that uncertainty is the real leverage, not the tariffs.  What seems like a spur of the moment decision or a sudden capitulation on Trump’s part can be highly effective at throwing foreign governments and corporations off balance.  Globalism requires a perpetual status quo, change of any kind is like holy water to a vampire.

Chinese shipments are on standby and orders are frozen.  Nothing is moving.

At bottom, China will not be able to survive tariffs on the current scale for long (a single year of 124% tariffs would crush China’s economy beyond repair).  The US is 15% of China’s export market, which may not sound substantial but their next largest trading partner (outside of Hong Kong) is Vietnam at 4% of exports.  In terms of domestic buying, China is 11% of the global consumer market which is not too shabby, but compared to the US with its 30%-35% global consumer market share there is no chance that the Chinese will be able to fill the void domestically and stay afloat.

But the situation is far worse than most people know…

China has been suffering from a deflationary crisis since 2023.  An uptick in exports during the pandemic was offset by the CCP’s draconian lockdowns.  This was, essentially, fiscal suicide on the part of the government and China has been struggling ever since.  Their property market has imploded, partially due to overbuilding through government subsidized infrastructure programs that flooded the market with poorly constructed homes and buildings that were then left to rot.  Corporate defaults have run rampant and left investors with nothing.

There was some optimism that the government’s measures to end the crisis had been working to reinvigorate the market, but on Mar 31st, government-linked developer Vanke reported a record 49.5 billion yuan (S$9.1 billion) annual loss for 2024.  It’s the company’s first full-year loss since its initial public offering in 1991, reigniting concerns about the sector and showing just how deep the problem runs.

When these projects do finally see some progress it is often due to dangerously poor construction standards and subpar workmanship; what many now refer to as “Tofu Dreg” buildings.

The deflationary spiral has been eating away at employment and has also resulted in numerous factories refusing to pay their workers on time (or at all).  Unpaid wages are leading to frequent protests and a disturbing trend of factory fires.  The government is limited in how it can respond to the problem.  Stimulus is an option, but China’s overall non-financial debt is well over 300% of GDP already. 

China’s attempts to hide the decay from the outside world are becoming less and less effective.  With Chinese citizens able to access the internet beyond the “Great Firewall”, more and more videos are being leaked by people within the country who are tired of the misinformation.  Again, the CCP views negative economic data as a national security threat and any citizen caught leaking this info could be subject to harsh punishment.  Chinese citizens have taken substantial risks to get the truth out there.  

It cannot be stressed enough that the global economy is largely a farce, but China is closest to the edge of the cliff in terms of consequences and crisis.  The interdependency of globalism has left many nations without the ability to weather a trade dispute and China’s survival is almost entirely based on steady exports to the west and the US in particular. 

Don’t let high paid TikTok and YouTube influencers fool you with videos of Chinese skyscrapers caked with LED lights or lavish parties with dancing robots.  This is not the true China.  Underneath the facade is a nation on the brink of disaster.   

Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge

The Bishop of Rome and earthly head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has passed away. He was 88 and has died after a lengthy, lingering illness.

He was the first Jesuit pope and the first pope to have been born in South America (he was born into an Italian family in Argentina). As the Jesuit order and the Roman Catholic Church in South America both tend to lean to the left, so also did the twelve years of his papacy. 

Pope Francis’ papacy often sparked controversy, much of which he himself sparked. He received much criticism over one particular comment, which the Vatican later explained was his own personal opinion and not the Church’s position. The Catholic Herald reported in September 2024 that Pope Francis had declared that “all religions are a path to God.” He explained: “They are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God. If you start to fight, ‘my religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t’, where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are [Sikh], Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].” 

Francis was apparently contradicting both Jesus’ statement: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6), as well the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church’s Second Vatican Council, which emphasized that it was “the burden of the Church’s preaching to proclaim the cross of Christ as the sign of God’s all-embracing love and as the fountain from which every grace flows.” (Nostra Aetate 2, 4) The Catholic Herald noted that in making these remarks, the pope had set aside his prepared remarks and was speaking extemporaneously. 

Even his official papal statements, however, also included a great deal of material that led people to wonder if the age-old question that was supposed to imply that the answer was obvious—“Is the Pope Catholic?”—actually now admitted of a negative response.

Argentine President Javier Milei derided him as a “Communist” and even as “the representative of the evil one on earth.” In 2023, Pope Francis responded to a series of dubia (“doubts”) that Cardinals Walter Brandmüller and Raymond Leo Burke, along with the support of three other Cardinals, Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Robert Sarah, and Joseph Zen Ze-kiun, had sent him the previous year, asking him to clarify his position on five issues where he had appeared to depart from the actual teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Vatican News identified these as “the interpretation of Divine Revelation, the blessing of same-sex unions, synodality as a constitutive dimension of the Church, the priestly ordination of women, and repentance as a necessary condition for sacramental absolution.” 

The most striking aspect of this incident was neither the questions nor the pope’s answers, but the fact that it had happened at all, and that it had been necessary to question the guardian and anchor of the Roman Catholic faith over his own adherence to that faith. There was no parallel to this in modern times, and it exemplified how much Francis was a very different kind of pope from the great majority of his predecessors.

Related: During Holy Week, the World Council of Churches Promotes Christianity — Nah, Just Kidding…

Francis also followed a leftist line on most of the burning political issues of our day. In 2016, he declared that someone who built a border wall was “not a Christian.” In February 2025, he sent a letter to the U.S. bishops, excoriating Trump for securing America’s southern border. He repeatedly insisted that welcoming any and all migrants was a Christian duty, and rejected “any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.”

The pope worked hard also to build bridges with the international Islamic community, downplaying Islamic jihad terrorism, ignoring the rampant Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa, and even obliquely justifying the 2015 murders of cartoonists of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo who had lampooned the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Francis said that “it is true that you must not react violently, but although we are good friends, if [an aide] says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t make a toy out of the religions of others. These people provoke and then (something can happen). In freedom of expression, there are limits.” This was, in essence, a submission to Islam’s blasphemy laws, which would, if followed, mean the end of free societies. 

Before his final illness, Pope Francis had been planning to travel to Nicaea, the site of the first ecumenical council in the year 325, for the 1700th anniversary of this all-important council, and for joint Easter celebrations with the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. “His Holiness Pope Francis wishes for us to jointly celebrate this important anniversary,” Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew explained, and there had even been talk of the two Churches, which have been in schism with one another since 1054, agreeing to a common date for Easter, or even reuniting. But this was not to be.

What will the Roman Catholic Church do now? Will it continue to follow in the way of Pope Francis, or will it heed the call of millions to return to a more traditional approach to the faith? The world watches and waits.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 29 books, including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad, The History of Jihad, and The Critical Qur’an.

ChatGPT is warping undergraduate brains.

By now, most North Carolinians are at least somewhat familiar with Generative AI (GenAI). As tech journalist George Lawton explains, GenAI “uses sophisticated algorithms to organize large, complex data sets into meaningful clusters of information in order to create new content, including text, images and audio, in response to a query or prompt.” It is the foundation of numerous platforms, including Open AI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E, as well as Google’s Gemini. And it is either a bane or a boon, depending on one’s perspective—especially, perhaps, in the field of education.

GenAI is either a bane or a boon, depending on one’s perspective.Since OpenAI publicly released ChatGPT-3.5 in November 2022, students have increasingly relied on GenAI to complete assignments. According to a recent survey, 88 percent of full-time undergraduates admitted to using GenAI for assessments. Administrators and instructors are still struggling to meet the challenges that GenAI presents. (When) is it acceptable for students to use GenAI? (How) should students be permitted to use it? (How) should we address GenAI in our classes? (What) should we teach our students about it?

Responses at the institutional level in North Carolina seem to have been, generally speaking, prudently cautious.Responses at the institutional level in North Carolina seem to have been, generally speaking, prudently cautious: providing overviews of the technology, recognizing its shortcomings, situating it within the context of academic integrity, and ultimately deferring to individual instructors to make their own specific policies. See, for example, Duke University’s statement on Artificial Intelligence Policies, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Research Generative AI Guidance, Wake Forest University’s Academic Integrity FAQ, and Wake Tech’s Generative Artificial Intelligence policy.

Instructors’ attitudes toward student use of GenAI run the gamut, but they seem to fall into either of two broad categories.

• The Alarmist Attitude: This response is grounded in the view that GenAI is more than merely disruptive of current practices but is potentially apocalyptic in its consequences for education as a field. Policies and approaches revolve around preventative and punitive measures, the underlying goal being, essentially, to criminalize GenAI.
• The Accommodationist Attitude: This response is grounded in the view that GenAI is a revolutionary breakthrough that not only can and will but even should be used by students for greater efficiency and increased productivity. Policies and approaches revolve around incorporating GenAI training into the curriculum, the underlying goal being, essentially, to embrace GenAI.

As things currently stand, a strictly alarmist approach is untenable, a never-ending game of whack-a-mole that the instructor is destined to lose. On the other hand, rushing to embrace GenAI through an overly optimistic, accommodationist approach can lead only to unintended consequences that we can neither predict nor even imagine. At this time, the most prudent approach to take with students would seem to be this: Recognize that GenAI is a potentially beneficial tool but actively discourage students from using it by focusing on the very real costs of such reliance.

Educating students on the limitations and liabilities of GenAI is a good way to start. So-called AI hallucinations are the most glaring example, but they are far from the most significant. Even more consequential are the various biases baked into many GenAI platforms. A 2024 UNESCO analysis suggests that “AI-based systems often perpetuate (and even scale and amplify) human, structural and social biases,” particularly with respect to gender. A 2024 paper published in the journal Nature similarly argues that certain platforms “are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans.”

On the other hand, as the authors of a widely-reported U.K.-based study observe, “OpenAI’s wildly popular ChatGPT artificial-intelligence service has showed a clear bias toward the Democratic Party” in the U.S. and leftist political parties in other countries. And a 2023 study conducted by German researchers similarly found that ChatGPT has a “pro-environmental, left-libertarian orientation.”

The agonizingly direct approach that GenAI takes in responding to prompts often results in painfully formulaic presentations.There are other, less easily measurable shortcomings, as well. The agonizingly direct approach that GenAI takes in responding to prompts often results in painfully formulaic presentations that follow predictable patterns and routinely employ the same, often slightly unusual, rote terms and phrases. These presentations also tend to be essentially expository in nature, even when the platform is prompted to “analyze” or “evaluate,” and are frustratingly superficial. ChatGPT’s “arguments,” for example, often comprise broad, vague generalizations with little to no context, support, or insight. In other words, the biggest problem with GenAI for students isn’t that it’s a serial fabulist, a sexist, a racist, or a leftist partisan: It’s that it’s a predictable writer and a shallow “thinker.” And it’s training our students to become the same—or worse.

The recent past offers an analogous situation—and a cautionary tale—that we might learn from.The recent past offers an analogous situation—and a cautionary tale—that we might learn from. When Google really took off circa 2000, we were told with breathless excitement that it was “democratizing access to knowledge” and “putting information at our fingertips,” so that answers were never more than “a click away.” Students, it was said, had been liberated from the drudgery of rote memorization and arduous expeditions through library stacks. Now, the cheerleaders trumpeted, students and their teachers could focus on the real point of education: critical thinking.

The problem is that this has simply not been borne out. This is because, as tutor and author Erica Meltzer noted in a 2013 blog post, “factual knowledge is actually the basis for higher level thinking. […] Critical thinking emerges from the scaffolding provided by rote knowledge; it can’t be divorced from it.” Accordingly, students haven’t become stronger, deeper, more insightful critical thinkers simply because they have immediate, virtually unfettered access to information.

But it’s worse than that. In 2011, Betsy Sparrow, et al., published a seminal study in which they found that one of the “cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips” through Google is that we don’t remember the information that we use Google to access. A 2024 meta-analysis of such studies provides further evidence that this so-called “Google effect” (or “digital amnesia”) “may lead to changes in cognitive and memory mechanisms.”

In other words, Google disincentivizes and even impedes actual learning.

There’s already mounting evidence that something similar is at work with GenAI. Students and “knowledge workers” are increasingly relying on GenAI for “cognitive offloading.” That is, they are “outsourcing” to ChatGPT and similar platforms the tasks of acquiring and applying knowledge: the tasks, in other words, of critical thinking. GenAI cheerleaders, like the Google prophets of yesteryear, tell us that this is a good thing, because now students will be able to engage in even higher-order critical thinking. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Once again, the opposite seems to be the case. A recent study by Dr. Michael Gerlich “revealed a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading.” Furthermore, “younger participants exhibited higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older participants.”

Nor, according to Gerlich, are young people using “the cognitive resources freed up by AI for innovative tasks.” They’re passively consuming other content, mostly for entertainment. These findings are in keeping with those of a recent German study, which concluded that undergraduates who used GenAI “large language models” (e.g., ChatGPT) for information-gathering “demonstrated lower-quality reasoning and argumentation in their final recommendations compared to those who used traditional search engines.”

GenAI disincentivizes and impedes critical thinking.In other words, GenAI disincentivizes and even impedes critical thinking.

This is what students need to be taught about GenAI before they’re taught anything else—if, for the time being, they are taught anything else. But for this to mean anything to them, they must also be taught the value of critical thinking. They must be taught, for example (to take a 10,000-foot view), that

• Strong critical thinkers are better able to evaluate the credibility and reliability of information sources and to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate information;
• They are better able to recognize logical fallacies and cognitive biases—including their own—and are more immune to manipulation;
• They are more insightful, more self-aware, and more creative;
• They are more effective communicators and are better able to make persuasive, convincing arguments;
• They are better problem-solvers and decision-makers;
• They are more capable, more confident, and more independent.

Nor are the benefits of these things confined to the classroom or the workplace. They are far more important in our daily lives than students realize. Critical thinking enables us to do more than earn higher grades and find more lucrative employment; it empowers us to live easier, freer, more autonomous, more productive, more satisfying, more fulfilling, more fully human lives.

If there is a solution to the problem of GenAI, it doesn’t seem to lie in finding ever more creative ways of short-circuiting students’ use of it or exacting ever more severe penalties. It also doesn’t seem to lie in teaching students how to use it for “cognitive offloading” so that they engage in the kind of “better” critical thinking that they’ve never been equipped or trained to do. The solution is persuading students that the costs of relying on GenAI to minimize their cognitive load are more far-reaching than they know—and that they far outweigh the benefits.

David C. Phillips is an English teacher who lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Trump border czar Tom Homan said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that he found it concerning Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled to El Salvador on the “taxpayer dime” to meet Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Partial transcript as follows: 

JONATHAN KARL: Senator Van Hollen is obviously got a chance to meet with him, but he had to travel to El Salvador to get any information. Does that concern you at all? I mean, these are people sent by — I mean, in his case, sent by the United States, and not even a U.S. Senator, in his case, could get any information about his whereabouts or the condition of his incarceration without actually going down and making the trip to El Salvador himself?

HOMAN: Well, he obviously knew his whereabouts because he went there to see him. But you know what bothers me more than that is a U.S. Senator traveled to El Salvador on taxpayer dime to meet with an MS-13 gang member, public safety threat, terrorist. I mean, in the meantime, the day before he traveled, an illegal alien was arrested for murder, was released to the streets rather than honoring an ICE detainer in his very own state. What concerns me is Van Hollen never went to the border the last four years under Joe Biden, when he had a 600% increase in sex trafficking in women and children. You have a record number of known inspected terrorists crossing that border. You had a quarter of a million Americans die from fentanyl overdose because of the open border. You had over 4,000 illegal aliens died making that journey, which is an historic record. What shocks me is he’s remained silent on the travesty that happened on the southern border. Many people died, thousands of people died. I met with hundreds of Angel moms and dads who buried their children that were murdered by illegal aliens. How many Angel moms and dads has he met in the state of — in the state of Maryland? That’s what concerns me.

KARL: He says that he has done this because the issue here is due process, and it’s following a court order. That — you know, the Supreme Court has said that the administration needs to facilitate his return so he could get through, have his chance at due process.

HOMAN: I think, and I understand the facilitate – but he’s also in the custody, he’s a citizen, and a national of the country, so El Salvador would certainly have to cooperate in that. But again, I’m out of the loop on that. I’m not an attorney. I’m not litigating this case. We’ll do whatever the, you know, the law says we have to do. What I think — I stand by the fact I think we did the right thing here. We removed a public safety threat, a national security threat, a violent gang member from the United States. ICE intelligence says he’s an MS-13 gang member. A confidential information says he’s an MS-13 gang member. The country of El Salvador says he’s an MS-13 gang member. I think he’s exactly where he should be.

Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN

It’s a good thing Rob O’Neil ventilated Osama bin Laden’s head and did not take him into custody, or else Democrats would be forming a conga line of stupidity to march into whatever prison he was being held in to demand his release. Not immediately, they’d wait until President Donald Trump expressed pride that the terrorist leader was no longer able to kill Americans, and that would be enough to set off the left, which has a policy of being against anything Trump supports, no matter how bad it makes them look. They’ll try to deny it, but we must ensure it is never forgotten and make them choke on what they’ve done and who they’ve become.

First off, people need to go to town halls Democrats are hosting across the country and publicly demand to know where these Democrats fall, with illegal alien gang members or with Americans?

More than that, since these illegal alien Democrats are now favoring every American, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, has been credibly accused of physically attacking his wife on multiple occasions, they need to be asked if they still “believe all women?” As I see it, there are only two options: Democrats are rallying to bring an illegal alien domestic abuser back to the country, or they are calling his “loving wife” a liar who filed a false police report, thereby necessitating the prosecution of her for that act. There is no third option.

Which is it?

They won’t answer that question because they likely won’t be asked it. Democrats only go on CNN and MSNBC; asking a question like that would get you fired.

The Supreme Court is siding with illegal aliens now. The court is lost, the “Justices” are not protecting the rights of Americans, they are siding with our enemies. Not only did I never think I’d see the day, but the concept of the day has seemed so foreign to me that contemplating it was impossible.

One user on X put it perfectly, “If a Democrat president can import 15-30 million immigrants each time they hold the White House… But Republicans can’t deport them…. That’s it for this country. It’s over. Your ‘conservative principles’ are meaningless because they pertain to a dead entity.”

…

The “progressive” left used just to be wrong, misguided, or whatever you wanted to call it. That philosophy has become a cancer on the country to the point that the few remaining semi-sane Democrats are terrified to speak out against it.

It doesn’t matter, the extremists are coming for them too, with the co-Chair of the DNC (formerly the co-Chairman, but they’ve wiped gender from everything) announcing he wants the party to fund challengers to Democrats who won’t obey the radicals. A purge – leftists love a good purge, just ask Stalin, Hitler, and Mao – is what they’re talking about. They aren’t calling for the deaths of their dissenting party members like their ideological forefathers did, but the road they are goosestepping down only leads one place, and it’s pretty awful.

If we don’t message better, and to everyone, to beat these progressive impulses before they seize power, it will get ugly, really ugly, trust me. Nothing good happens further down the road, nothing.

These people need to be thrown out of office; it must be made clear that their ideas have no place in a civil society. They are welcome to leave the country along with the people they favor, but individual liberty is the guiding principle in the United States of America. We’ll happily help them pack, I’d even favor subsidizing moving them to whatever leftist Utopia they think they can go to or create, but their fascistic instincts will be squashed here.

A big dose of their own medicine is long overdue, highlighting every dangerous aspect of their policies and turning everyone against them by any means necessary.

They have turned against Americans and America. If no Democrat is willing to stand up inside their party, everyone must stand up to their party. If that ship can’t be righted, it needs to be sunk.

Townhall, Derek Hunter