It’s October and a new academic year is underway. In Britain, students are taking diversity classes; in France, they are rioting. And in America, they are panicking about campus rape culture. Plus ça change…

The legacy of the almost decade-old Me Too movement is that we ‘believe all women’ but, as the Cornell case shows, sometimes reality is more complex

The case of the “Cornell Seven” has been making headlines across the US this week after a female student, known only as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit alleging she was drugged and raped by seven male students in the Chi Phi university fraternity house in October 2024.

At first glance, the facts are horrific. A woman, who was 20 years old at the time, claims she was coerced into taking drugs and abused, assaulted and raped by a group of young men. One of those present sent a crude Snapchat message advertising free sex and inviting others to join in. Traumatized, Doe reported her attack to the university police, who refused to prosecute. A campus disciplinary committee took up Doe’s case and, after a hearing, expelled two students, but others, according to her lawsuit, were “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays” (a claim the university denies). This weak response is, apparently, behind Doe’s latest attempt to secure justice.

Now outrage at details of the attack, and Cornell’s handling of the situation, has been fueled by the university newspaper naming the accused men. The retrial may not have begun, but activists and celebrities have picked sides. This week, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to students and condemned a “culture of rape” at elite institutions. Doe, she complained, “had to lose her education, and those men were protected by an institution and granted an Ivy League degree as a reward. Never again.” Hollywood icon Florence Pugh told her 10.8 million Instagram followers that she felt “uneasy and sick and anxious” about the “horrific act that happened at Cornell College in 2024.” “This makes me feel enraged,” she has added this week, “as it should every person on this earth.”

For feminists like Pugh and AOC, the Cornell case is straightforward: a traumatized young woman bravely fighting for justice against the men who raped her and an establishment that let them get away with it. But scratch the surface, and things are more complex.

Three weeks passed between the night of Doe’s alleged attack and her decision to inform campus police that she had been sexually assaulted and coerced into taking ketamine. Newly released files compiled as part of the university’s investigation reveal that during this time, Doe told her roommates what had happened, but did not describe herself as a rape victim. The next day, she told her sorority mentor that rumors were circulating that she was a “slut” before adding with a laugh that “unfortunately they are true.” When one of the men she would go on to accuse of assaulting her messaged to apologize for how the evening had panned out, she replied: “At the end of the day non of the sexual stuff was illegal and honestly i really liked being w u and matt.” The pair exchanged more friendly messages in the days that followed. Only as campus gossip grew did Doe begin to see herself as a rape victim.

Anger at the police for deciding not to prosecute may also be misguided. Papers now seen by UnHerd include Doe’s initial statement, in which she says that she agreed to have sex with two men, and consented to taking drugs, including snorting ketamine off the erect penis of one of the accused and allowing others to snort drugs off her naked body. By the end of the evening, Doe, now more intoxicated, claims she was aware of having sex with other men but could not “remember how it started.” It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the police decided her behavior met the legal standard for voluntary consent, and there were insufficient grounds for bringing a prosecution.

Neither is the subsequent disciplinary hearing, carried out by the university, a straightforward story of male privilege. All seven men faced very serious accusations in what has since been described as a “kangaroo court.” Two of the men, found guilty by the university, were eventually suspended from the university. Yet, in her initial statement, Doe describes one of the men involved as struggling to maintain an erection and needing a “nap,” and another as “dry-heaving” during their encounter. It is hard not to conclude that Doe and these two men were intoxicated, yet only the woman was deemed unable to consent.

Another man, Scott Kretzschmar, stood accused of sexually assaulting Doe by snorting ketamine off her naked body. He protested his innocence and provided the results of a drug test, which proved negative for the drug. Yet, after being tried over a Zoom call, during which his lawyer noticed that one committee member was apparently in a car and driving during the proceedings, he was found guilty of attempted sexual exploitation, a charge he says he did not even know he was facing.

These new details cast doubt on the narrative now being promoted by Doe’s celebrity backers. The legacy of the almost decade-old Me Too movement is that we “believe all women” but, as the Cornell case shows, sometimes reality is more complex, and we need to think critically. Rape is horrific and undoubtedly utterly devastating for the victim. But false allegations must also be taken seriously.

Rather than rushing to pass judgment on the Cornell Seven, we should ask why men and women are held to different standards on consent, and why university disciplinary committees should play any role at all in trying such serious accusations as rape. 

Joanna Williams, The Spectator

The Red-Green alliance of leftists and Muslims is staging a show of force, rioting in the streets of France. Pay attention, we’re next.

The riots in France last week stand as a warning to the United States and all western countries: mass immigration will split your country in two, and the two sides will eventually go to war.

The unrest, which quickly spread from the suburbs of Paris to encompass much of the country, were a stark contrast to the scenes just a few days earlier when Pope Leo XIV drew massive crowds at every stop on his four-day papal visit. Some 800,000 people lined the Avenue des Champs-Élysées for an open-air Mass in Paris, catching the media and civil authorities by surprise. France is supposed to be a secular country, after all.

But the pope’s popularity on the one hand, and on the other, the riots that erupted across France a few days after his departure, illustrate the extent to which France today is not a single country or nation. It is not one people. There is ancient France, the true France, which despite the French Revolution and state-enforced secularism is still deeply Catholic, “the eldest daughter of the Church.” That is the France that showed up for Pope Leo.

The other France is the one we saw rioting in the streets last week. News reports said the unrest began in Créteil, a suburb of Paris, over the poor condition of the public schools, and that disaffected high schoolers, fed up with overcrowded classes and dilapidated buildings, took to the streets spontaneously. From there, the rioting supposedly spread organically across the entire country in a matter of days.

There are a few problems with this narrative, beginning with the images and footage of the riots posted all over social media. What we see are not protests of the state of public education, but the wanton destruction of schools, violent attacks on firefighters and police and even teachers, and all the indications of central organization and planning.

Among the “protesters,” we don’t see a broad cross-section of French society but overwhelmingly nonwhite males, immigrants and the children of immigrants. The barricades are being raised largely by Muslims of North African and Middle Eastern descent. Outside many schools, students weren’t chanting about funding cuts or classroom conditions, they were chanting “we are antifascists” and other such slogans. In Marseille, rioters flew the flag of Algeria and Hamas, not the tricolor. It was the same at a number of high schools that saw rioting. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on, and who is behind the unrest.

This is the Red-Green alliance of the socialist/Antifa left and Muslim immigrants, operationalized to bring the country to its knees through widespread rioting ahead of national elections next year. Indeed, the office of France’s prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, on Friday made public that French intelligence is assessing the riots as orchestrated by proxies of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party La France Insoumise (“France Unbowed”), or LFI. Mélenchon, who has denied LFI’s involvement, is running for president.

In short, what is happening in France is that the communists and the Muslim migrants are joining forces, testing their strength on the eve of national elections. It might be illegal to say so in France, but these are ethnic riots, a show of force by unassimilated Muslim migrants and their hard-left revolutionary allies, who believe they are strong enough to overpower the native majority.

France has always been a tangle of contradictions and a center of spiritual conflict. It was the heart of Catholic Europe but also the cradle of revolutionary terror. It has been both the defender of Christendom and the Catholic Church’s greatest enemy, home of both the Jacobins and the Vendée. Today it is the same: a nation whose majority is still defined by its Catholic faith and heritage, but whose leaders have opened the country to civilizational enemies from the Muslim World that seek to destroy the true France and replace it with something else.

But this isn’t just about France. The events unfolding across the Atlantic should cause alarm to us here in America, because the same forces at work there are at work here. An alliance of leftist and Muslim immigrants are emerging as a potent political force in the United States. This alliance is responsible for elevating people like Zohran Mamdani to the mayorship of New York City. It’s responsible for the U.S. Senate candidacy of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

Muslim immigrants to the West of course do not share everything in common with the radical left. Especially on issues like women’s right, transgenderism, gay marriage and the sexual revolution in general, they are not aligned. But those are disagreements for another day. For now, they are aligned above all in their desire to tear down western institutions and the Christian faith on which they were built.

What that will look like in America we have yet to see in full. But if you want to get a rough idea, look at the riots in France. If we don’t put an end to Muslim immigration, that’s what our future holds.

John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist

Washington — Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who represented Illinois for two decades in Congress and was jailed for violating banking laws, has died, a coroner in Illinois said. He was 84.

Both the longest-serving Republican House speaker and the highest-ranking elected U.S. official to serve a prison sentence, Hastert’s stunning fall from grace came in 2016, when he was sentenced to 15 months in prison on charges related to his concealment of hush money payments made to cover up his sexual abuse of teenage boys during his time as a high school wrestling coach.

Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell confirmed Monday that Hastert died at his home over the weekend due to natural causes. No further details were given.

Born in 1942 in Aurora, Illinois, Hastert grew up in a farming community. He went on to graduate from Wheaton College, where he received a degree in economics, before earning a teaching degree from Northern Illinois University. Hastert married Jean Kahl in 1973. The couple had two sons.

Hastert worked as a teacher in Illinois for 16 years while coaching wrestling. In 1976, he was named Illinois Coach of the Year. Four decades later, he would admit to sexually abusing boys during his time as a coach.

Hastert then served in the Illinois legislature, before going on to be elected to represent Illinois’ 14th district in the U.S. House in 1986.

Hastert served in Congress from 1987 to 2007. With the mentorship of House Minority Leader Robert. H Michel, Hastert’s profile grew among the GOP ranks, and in 1995, he became chief deputy whip. When former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stepped down in 1998, Hastert became the conference’s second choice for his successor, following Rep. Bob Livingston’s decision to step aside amid a scandal over extra-marital affairs.

Known as the “accidental speaker,” Hastert would go on to become the longest-serving Republican speaker in history. During his tenure, Hastert, who had been a vocal critic of the Clinton administration, worked closely with former President George W. Bush on his policy agenda.

Among Hastert’s most enduring imprints on the chamber is the rule that bears his name, which informally requires that the House vote only on measures that have a majority of support from the majority party in the chamber. The rule, which has faced criticism for making Congress more partisan, has posed hurdles for Republican House leadership in recent years.

After House Republicans lost the majority in the 2006 midterm elections, Hastert opted to leave leadership, before resigning from Congress in 2007.

Dennis Hastert Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert on his way to the House floor to make his farewell address to Congress on Nov. 15, 2007. Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Hastert became a lobbyist and consultant after leaving office. In 2013, the FBI and IRS began investigating the former speaker surrounding suspicions that he was illegally structuring bank transactions. In 2015, Hastert was indicted for structuring bank transactions to evade reporting requirements and making false statements to the FBI.

Hastert pleaded guilty in 2015 to violating banking laws by making repeated large cash withdrawals, which were revealed to be going to one of his victims. During the hearing, Hastert admitted to sexually abusing boys during his time as their wrestling coach. At his sentencing, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin called Hastert a “serial child molester,” and sentenced him to 15 months in prison, a $250,000 fine and ordered him to participate in a sex offender program. Hastert was not charged with sex-related crimes, as the statutes of limitations had expired. He served 13 months in a federal prison before his release in 2017.

Zachary Farden, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said after Hastert was sentenced that there are “no winners in any of this.”

“Mr. Hastert’s legend and legacy are gone, and in its place are a broken, humiliated man,” Farden said. “That is how it should be.”

Kaia Hubbard, CBS News

The battle to control the House of Representatives has become more competitive, as the Democratic Party’s lead over Republicans has decreased for the second week in a row.

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Email The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that if the elections for Congress were held today, 47% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Democratic candidate, while 44% would vote for the Republican. Four percent (4%) say they would vote for some other candidate and another four percent (4%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The net advantage for Democrats has decreased since last week, when they led by five points, 48% to 43%.

The week before that, Democrats led by eight points. The position for Republicans is now a net six points worse than before the November 2024 election, when they led by three points (48% to 45%) and won just a razor-thin House majority.

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The survey of 1,794 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on September 24 and 27-30, 2026 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

The Democrats’ lead is due to a nine-point margin among independents. Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Democrats would vote for their own party’s candidate in the next congressional elections, compared to 89% of Republicans who would vote for the GOP candidate. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, 42% would vote for Democrats and 33% for Republicans, while 12% say they would vote for third-party congressional candidates and 13% are undecided.

The “gender gap” is a net eight points. Women voters prefer Democrats by a 48% to 42% margin, while men favor Republicans, 47% to 45%.

Forty-four percent (44%) of whites, 70% of black voters, 42% of Hispanics and 31% of other minorities would vote for the Democratic candidate, while 48% of whites, 16% of black voters, 50% of Hispanics and 45% of other minorities would vote Republican.

Democrats lead by 22 points, 54% to 32%, among voters under 30, while Republicans have a 10-point lead, 53% to 43%, among those 65 and older.

Ninety-five percent (95%) of self-identified Very Liberal voters favor Democrats, while 79% of Very Conservative voters would vote Republican. Among moderate voters, Democrats lead by 40 points, 62% to 22%.

Eighty-five percent (85%) of those who voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election would vote for Democratic congressional candidates, while 84% of Donald Trump supporters would vote Republican.

Left-wing commentator Hasan Piker isn’t familiar to many voters, but his support of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is overwhelmingly rejected.

Democrat state Rep. Josh Turek maintains a four-point lead over U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson in the race to fill the Iowa Senate seat vacated by the retirement of Republican Sen. Joni Ernst.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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Rasmussen Reports

Death rates among young Americans have surged dramatically, with the mortality rate for adults aged 25 to 44 jumping 71.2% between 2010 and 2021, the largest increase of any age group.  This rise is driven by a combination of external causes, such as drug overdose, and early-onset diseases.

Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for young adults and have multiplied sevenfold since 1999.  Suicides have risen more than 40% since 2000.  Homicides increased 75.5% between 2014 and 2021 and vehicle accidents rose 43.5% during the same period.

Deaths from diabetes, hypertensive disease and alcoholic liver disease have also spiked sharply.  Deaths from alcohol-related mental health disorders more than tripled between 2010 and 2023.

The following are extracts from an article published by Study Finds.  You can read the full article HERE.

Death rates for Americans between 25 and 44 years old jumped 71.2% in just eleven years, rising from about 140 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 to 239 per 100,000 by 2021. No other age group came anywhere close to that surge. Overdoses, suicides, car crashes and chronic diseases appearing at increasingly younger ages are now cutting down people in the prime of their lives.

Steven H. Woolf, a physician and researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, published the analysis in The Milbank Quarterly. He combined data from the United Nations, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and a US mortality database to show how far American life expectancy has fallen behind the rest of the developed world and, increasingly, much of the developing world too.

By 2023, US life expectancy ranked 38th among countries with populations over 1 million, trailing not just Western Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia but also Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Israel, South Korea and several Persian Gulf nations. Sixty countries had a lower risk of a person dying before age 40 than the United States did. That gap didn’t open overnight. It has been widening since the 1990s, and it sped up sharply after 2010.

What’s Driving the Rise in Death Rates Among Young Americans

Drug overdoses top the list. Among adults 25 to 44, the overdose death rate rose sevenfold after 1999, from about 7.7 per 100,000 to more than 54 per 100,000, and surpassed circulatory diseases (such as heart disease and stroke) in 2015 to become the leading cause of death in that age group. Suicide rates for this same group are higher than in any other age bracket and climbed more than 40% between 2000 and 2023. Homicides rose 75.5% between 2014 and 2021, and deaths from car crashes and other transportation accidents rose 43.5% over that same stretch.

What surprised even close followers of these trends is how much of the damage now comes from disease rather than injury. Deaths from diabetes and other metabolic and hormone-related illnesses rose nearly a quarter between 2010 and 2019 among young adults. Deaths tied to liver damage from drinking more than doubled between 2010 and 2023. Deaths from alcohol-related mental health disorders more than tripled in that same window. Even high blood pressure, historically a problem of later adulthood, saw its death rate more than double among 25- to 44-year-olds between 2000 and 2023.

Middle-aged adults, 45 to 64, saw many of the same patterns: rising deaths from drug overdoses, liver damage from drinking and diseases of the brain and nervous system, along with a covid-19 death rate that nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021 even after vaccines became available. Older adults largely avoided these steep increases, though deaths from brain and nerve diseases doubled between 2000 and 2023, and deaths from endocrine disorders and suicide also climbed.

Note from The Exposé: We have to question what “covid-19 death rate” means.  If the covid death rate doubled in 2021, after the mass vaccination campaigns began, was it due to covid? 

Mass covid vaccination began in the United States on 14 December 2020, when the first doses of vaccine were administered to healthcare workers and long-term care residents.  By 19 April 2021, all US states had opened vaccine eligibility to residents aged 16 and over.

President Joe Biden set an immediate goal of administering 100 million vaccine doses within his first 100 days in office and signed an executive order to increase vaccine supplies. This goal was met on 19 March 2021. On n 25 March 2021, he announced he would increase the goal to 200 million within his first 100 days in office. This goal was reached on 21 April 2021. By 4 July 2021, 67% of the United States’ adult population had received at least one dose.

Woolf’s study states:

“COVID-19 mortality among US adults ages 45–64 almost doubled between 2020 and 2021 (rising from 64.51 to 122.66 per 100,000).7 It was not until 2022 and 2023 that COVID-19 mortality at ages 45–64 began to decrease (to 37.14 and 5.16 per 100,000, respectively).”

Does it seem like a “safe and effective” vaccine was given to at least 67% of the American adult population?

Rhoda Wilson, The Expose

The U.S. military fired upon a suspected drug boat operating in the Caribbean Sea on Oct. 4, killing four.

“Confirmed intelligence revealed the vessel’s active involvement in narco-trafficking,” the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) said in a press statement announcing the strike. “The operation killed four narco-terrorists.”

Along with the statement, SOUTHCOM shared footage purporting to show the moment the suspect vessel was bombed.

The military command did not provide any additional identifying information about those killed aboard the vessel or their affiliations.

Since early 2025, the State Department has designated several Latin American drug trafficking cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

In September 2025, U.S. forces launched a new campaign of lethal strikes on suspected drug boats, dubbed Operation Southern Spear. In the past year, U.S. forces have claimed responsibility for at least 70 such lethal strikes in the Caribbean and East Pacific, killing more than 200 people.

Amid this ongoing campaign of strikes on suspected drug boats, the United States has led in the formation of a new multinational effort known as the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition. Eighteen Western Hemisphere nations have since partnered with the United States on this countertrafficking effort.

“We’re definitely expanding our presence and our footprint in Central and South America with partners,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told reporters on Oct. 3, while visiting the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Hegseth said the United States has expanded options for its military posture in Central and South America after capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a special operations raid on Jan. 3.

He said growing partnerships with Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Panama have also strengthened U.S. influence in the region.

“We are at war with the drug cartels … the president has been clear about that,” Hegseth said. “So, we’re going to posture and base as necessary to ensure that we have our foot on the pedal and are taking the fight to those ISIS and Al Qaeda of our hemisphere.”

While President Donald Trump and other members of his administration have said strikes on suspected drug boats are a necessary measure in a war against narcoterrorism, some critics have raised concerns about the legality of the strikes and the lack of clarity about who has been killed in these operations.

In January, the families of two Trinidadian nationals who have been missing since October 2025 filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the United States. The plaintiffs alleged the two missing men had been working as migrant laborers in neighboring Venezuela, and were likely killed by U.S. forces in an Oct. 14 strike as they tried to return to Trinidad and Tobago. “Congress and the American people have yet to see any evidence to support the president’s unilateral determinations that these vessels, or the activities of those on board, warrant lethal military force rather than law enforcement-led interdiction,” House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said last month as the campaign of boat strikes crossed the one-year mark.

Outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) cited the ongoing campaign of drone strikes in a set of impeachment articles he brought against Hegseth last month. Massie said the campaign of strikes on suspected drug boats replaced regular maritime law enforcement with extrajudicial killings.

Ryan Morgan, Epoch Times

Flávio Bolsonaro defied the polls by finishing ahead of Lula, forcing an October 25 runoff as conservative candidates captured major victories across Brazil and strengthened their position in the nation’s Senate.

==================================================================

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Flávio Bolsonaro led Lula 47.24% to 44.91% with 99% of reporting completed Sunday night.

The presidential contest will proceed to an October 25 runoff after Flávio fell below the 50% needed for an outright victory.

Conservative candidates scored major victories across São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina.

Michelle Bolsonaro won a Senate seat, while the Liberal Party appeared positioned to hold the Senate’s largest bloc.

========================================================================

Brazil’s presidential election produced the kind of surprise that sends pollsters scrambling and conservatives cheering. For the year leading into the vote, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had led the polls, even as his advantage narrowed in recent months.

Those polls missed the mark. With 99% of reporting completed around 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, Flávio Bolsonaro stood on top with 47.24% of the vote, compared with Lula’s 44.91%.

The margin was close, but the outcome was far better for Flávio than polling had suggested. Early in the night, he appeared to have a chance to capture the presidency without going through another round of voting.

Flávio held something like 51% of the vote at that stage. A candidate needs 50% to win without a runoff, but the more conservative states reported their results faster, and his share eventually declined.

The presidential contest will therefore proceed to a runoff on October 25. The result still left Flávio looking very likely to win and raised the prospect of Brazil turning right, as numerous other Central and South American countries have done in recent years.

Such a shift would carry political and economic consequences across the region. Donald Trump and Marco Rubio would gain a new ally who would likely join the Shield of the Americas and assist the fight against cartels and other criminal organizations plaguing the Americas.

Brazil also has the largest economy in Latin America, making the result a potentially significant economic victory. A Flávio win would further isolate the remaining socialist governments in the region, including the government of Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, while likely increasing pressure on Cuba and Nicaragua.

Argentine President Javier Milei celebrated Sunday night with a caption translated from Spanish: “FREEDOM ADVANCES IN BRAZIL. Congratulations, dear friend @FlavioBolsonaro, on this historic election against the communist Lula. The American continent belongs to citizens who want to live in freedom. I hope that soon we can start working together so that Argentina and Brazil continue to be great trading, cultural, and political partners. The opportunities for our nations, working together, are infinite. LONG LIVE FREEDOM, DAMN IT…!!”

Neither Trump nor Rubio had publicly addressed the result by Sunday night. Several Republican members of Congress had already praised the news, however, including Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez of Florida and Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio.

The presidential race was only one piece of Brazil’s sweeping election night. Voters were also choosing all 27 governors, the entire Chamber of Deputies with its 513 seats, 54 of the Senate’s 81 seats, and state legislatures.

Results beyond the presidential contest offered additional encouragement for Brazil’s right. Lula’s side lost in the three states that typically decide Brazilian elections, adding to the evening’s broader conservative success.

São Paulo, Brazil’s largest state, reelected Tarcísio de Freitas as governor with about 63% of the vote. De Freitas previously served as infrastructure minister under former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Minas Gerais, the second-largest state, elected Bolsonaro ally Cleitinho Azevedo with about 55%. Sérgio Moro, the judge who once sent Lula to prison, won Paraná while running on Bolsonaro’s party line.

A former army officer allied with Bolsonaro won Rio Grande do Sul with about 58% of the vote. Santa Catarina also reelected its governor from Bolsonaro’s party with about 68%.

Former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, won a Senate seat in the capital, Brasília, during her first run for office. Two more of Jair Bolsonaro’s sons and his brother also won elections, while the Liberal Party appeared positioned to hold Anything could still happen before the October 25 runoff, but conservative excitement was already unmistakable. Brazil’s voters delivered a far stronger showing for the right than expected, bringing another Latin American rejection of socialism tantalizingly close.

RVM News

Former-banker-turned-tiny-French-President Emmanuel Macron blasted what he called “American free speech” while speaking to reporters last week. Defending the European Union’s robust censorship policies, le petit fromage insisted that Europe’s speech-policing Digital Services Act should censor information that governments consider false “much more extensively, much faster, and much more forcefully.”

Macron then did his Orwellian best to condemn free speech as oppression and praise censorship as liberation: “So-called American ‘free speech’—at least as it exists today and has been promoted by some people—is the opposite of free speech.” The terribly disliked French leader continued, “My freedom cannot mean that I am free to…insult you or vandalize the public square that belongs to everyone. Yet that is some people’s idea of ‘free speech.’”

Then the little mouse of a man roared, “Until we hold those who disseminate content on social media accountable, we will not be able to regulate it.” Furthermore, if “someone writes something” that is “false,” then that person should be “held accountable.” Tough talk from an insecure man afraid of words.

What is going on in Europe? Why is the whole continent so scared of public debate and dissent? If the political Establishment is unable to defend its ideas and policies without censoring the opposition, then its ideas and policies are absolute rubbish! The people who have willed their way to power across Europe apparently believe that they cannot win an argument unless they are the only ones permitted to speak!

That’s a bit like a puny pugilist demanding that referees tie another boxer’s hands behind his back before declaring himself world heavyweight champion!

Personally, I think mini-mouse Macron is just tired of people pointing out that he married his grandmother (or his grandfather, as the case might be). We used to teach our children, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Now Western leaders are so terrified of words that they’d rather imprison everyone with an opinion than learn to take a joke or hear a contrary point of view.

Here’s the truth that Macron and his fellow Euro-weenie censors refuse to understand: Free speech is free only when a speaker can say something offensive or controversial without fear of the State’s wrath.

The most hate-filled among them accuse me of being a fake scientist and/or fake Christian. Their minds simply cannot comprehend the possibility that science and Christianity are entirely, comfortably compatible.

In science-speak, these skeptics have a “classical” worldview. It’s a perception of reality that is purely logical, material, and mechanistic — very much like Newton’s classical physics.

For these classicists, a body is just flesh and blood, a mind is just the product of the brain’s electrical activity, and the entire universe is just one big, awesome accident of nature. It’s a blinkered perspective that led the late Stephen Hawking to say: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no Heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

When I was a young atheist, I shared this machine-like view of reality. But I was quickly disabused of it when I started studying quantum physics.

Quantum physics turns logic on its head. Suddenly and enigmatically, the solid, material world becomes a ghostly cloud of probabilities, supernatural behavior becomes natural, and complete opposites become unified realities.

It’s precisely that utterly illogical strangeness that seized my attention when I read the New Testament for the first time. I could scarcely believe it! This alleged, Iron-Age Jesus of Nazareth spoke like a modern-day quantum physicist.

Unlike the instructions on how to live from any other sacred figure I’d ever read (by then, I had immersed myself in all the major religions), Jesus’s teachings turned logic on its head. During His Sermon on the Mount, for example, he admonished the crowd to love their enemies, that in order to live they first must die, that the first among them were, in fact, the last, and on and on.

This quantum-like language is what made me rise to the bait. It’s what caused me to further investigate Christianity with an open, analytical mind.

In the end, several decades later, more than just quantum physics convicted me that Jesus was the real deal. A critical, unblinking exploration of the Bible, an intellectually candid appraisal of what modern science was discovering about the universe and our species, and a series of stunning personal experiences left no serious doubt in my once-classicist mind that the biblical God was, indeed, the creator of the universe I was devoted to studying.

Quantum superposition

Skeptics routinely mock Christians for believing glaring contradictions such as: A.) God is both universal and personal and B.) Jesus is both fully man and fully God. These beliefs don’t make sense. They protest.

They’re right. These beliefs don’t make any sense, but neither do the truths of quantum physics. As the late physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once confessed: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

According to quantum physics, for example, light is both fully solid as a rock and fully supple as a ripple of water, which is as nonsensical as saying something is both fully black and fully white. Scientists call this illogical — but, as it happens, far from absurd — chimeric entity a “photon.”

“We are faced with a new kind of difficulty,” Albert Einstein once admitted. “We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.”

Like quantum physics, Christianity has the same kind of “difficulty.” For starters, the Old Testament depicts God as having two opposing natures: universal and personal.

In Genesis 1, the universal God — the Creator of the universe — is called “Elohim” (אֱלֹהִים). In Genesis 2, the personal God — the one who walks and talks intimately with Adam and Eve — is called “YHWH” (יהוה), a four-letter, vowelless name that scholars call The Tetragrammaton.

The New Testament, too, has the same “difficulty.” Jesus is depicted as having two conflicting natures. On the one hand He’s fully human, as demonstrated when he weeps (John 11:35), sweats blood (Luke 22:44), and dies on the cross (John 19:30). On the other hand, He’s fully God — as when He transforms water into wine (John 2:1–11), heals the leper (Mark 1:40–42), forgives the paralytic’s sins (Mark 2:5–12), and is explicitly equated with YHWH (John 8:58, Romans 10:13, and elsewhere).

Quantum physics resolves all these apparent “difficulties” by explaining that a single entity can have multiple identities. This profound truth is represented as a mathematical “superposition” of different possible states.

This explains how Schrodinger’s famous cat can be dead and alive at the same time; how light can be both fully solid and fully supple; how God can be both fully universal (Elohim) and fully personal (YHWH); and how Jesus can be both fully human and fully God.

And while we’re on the subject, quantum superposition also offers us a modern scientific explanation for how the one, true God can be both fully one and fully three — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Where would I be now if I hadn’t been a scientific geek when I first broke open the Bible? I’ll never know, but one fact is undeniable — because of quantum physics and Jesus, I renounced my classical worldview, ditched my atheism, and ultimately became the seemingly impossible creature I am today: a man who is fully a scientist and fully Christian.

“One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25 NIV).

Michael Guillén, PhD, taught physics at Harvard and for fourteen years was the Emmy-winning Science Editor at ABC News. Go to www.michaelguillen.com for information about his new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, and upcoming novel, Picture-Perfect Christmas.

Skeptics question my honesty when I say I’m both a scientist and a Christian. They refuse to take seriously someone who believes in quantum physics and calls Jesus his Lord and Savior.

The most hate-filled among them accuse me of being a fake scientist and/or fake Christian. Their minds simply cannot comprehend the possibility that science and Christianity are entirely, comfortably compatible.

In science-speak, these skeptics have a “classical” worldview. It’s a perception of reality that is purely logical, material, and mechanistic — very much like Newton’s classical physics.

For these classicists, a body is just flesh and blood, a mind is just the product of the brain’s electrical activity, and the entire universe is just one big, awesome accident of nature. It’s a blinkered perspective that led the late Stephen Hawking to say: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no Heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

When I was a young atheist, I shared this machine-like view of reality. But I was quickly disabused of it when I started studying quantum physics.

Quantum physics turns logic on its head. Suddenly and enigmatically, the solid, material world becomes a ghostly cloud of probabilities, supernatural behavior becomes natural, and complete opposites become unified realities.

It’s precisely that utterly illogical strangeness that seized my attention when I read the New Testament for the first time. I could scarcely believe it! This alleged, Iron-Age Jesus of Nazareth spoke like a modern-day quantum physicist.

Unlike the instructions on how to live from any other sacred figure I’d ever read (by then, I had immersed myself in all the major religions), Jesus’s teachings turned logic on its head. During His Sermon on the Mount, for example, he admonished the crowd to love their enemies, that in order to live they first must die, that the first among them were, in fact, the last, and on and on.

This quantum-like language is what made me rise to the bait. It’s what caused me to further investigate Christianity with an open, analytical mind.

In the end, several decades later, more than just quantum physics convicted me that Jesus was the real deal. A critical, unblinking exploration of the Bible, an intellectually candid appraisal of what modern science was discovering about the universe and our species, and a series of stunning personal experiences left no serious doubt in my once-classicist mind that the biblical God was, indeed, the creator of the universe I was devoted to studying.

Quantum superposition

Skeptics routinely mock Christians for believing glaring contradictions such as: A.) God is both universal and personal and B.) Jesus is both fully man and fully God. These beliefs don’t make sense. They protest.

They’re right. These beliefs don’t make any sense, but neither do the truths of quantum physics. As the late physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman once confessed: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”

According to quantum physics, for example, light is both fully solid as a rock and fully supple as a ripple of water, which is as nonsensical as saying something is both fully black and fully white. Scientists call this illogical — but, as it happens, far from absurd — chimeric entity a “photon.”

“We are faced with a new kind of difficulty,” Albert Einstein once admitted. “We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do.”

Like quantum physics, Christianity has the same kind of “difficulty.” For starters, the Old Testament depicts God as having two opposing natures: universal and personal.

In Genesis 1, the universal God — the Creator of the universe — is called “Elohim” (אֱלֹהִים). In Genesis 2, the personal God — the one who walks and talks intimately with Adam and Eve — is called “YHWH” (יהוה), a four-letter, vowelless name that scholars call The Tetragrammaton.

The New Testament, too, has the same “difficulty.” Jesus is depicted as having two conflicting natures. On the one hand He’s fully human, as demonstrated when he weeps (John 11:35), sweats blood (Luke 22:44), and dies on the cross (John 19:30). On the other hand, He’s fully God — as when He transforms water into wine (John 2:1–11), heals the leper (Mark 1:40–42), forgives the paralytic’s sins (Mark 2:5–12), and is explicitly equated with YHWH (John 8:58, Romans 10:13, and elsewhere).

Quantum physics resolves all these apparent “difficulties” by explaining that a single entity can have multiple identities. This profound truth is represented as a mathematical “superposition” of different possible states.

This explains how Schrodinger’s famous cat can be dead and alive at the same time; how light can be both fully solid and fully supple; how God can be both fully universal (Elohim) and fully personal (YHWH); and how Jesus can be both fully human and fully God.

And while we’re on the subject, quantum superposition also offers us a modern scientific explanation for how the one, true God can be both fully one and fully three — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Where would I be now if I hadn’t been a scientific geek when I first broke open the Bible? I’ll never know, but one fact is undeniable — because of quantum physics and Jesus, I renounced my classical worldview, ditched my atheism, and ultimately became the seemingly impossible creature I am today: a man who is fully a scientist and fully Christian.

“One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” (John 9:25 NIV).

Michael Guillén, PhD, taught physics at Harvard and for fourteen years was the Emmy-winning Science Editor at ABC News. Go to www.michaelguillen.com for information about his new movie, The Invisible Everywhere, and upcoming novel, Picture-Perfect Christmas.

Rejoining would be a disaster. We’re ready to stop him, with your help.

Andy Burnham wants to talk about rejoining the European Union. After 11 weeks in the job he’s given up on his devolution agenda and landed back in the Left-wing safe space of centralising power again in Brussels.

His cynical political calculation is obvious, especially after the raid on pensions he signalled at the Labour conference last week. He’s trading older, white working class voters for younger, city-dwelling left-wing activist-types.

He desperately wants to beat Zack Polanski and his Green Party in the Holborn by-election this week, and carry that momentum through to a general election which I believe he’ll have to call early next year.

Why else would his Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband and his Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood have caved in to the ‘free Palestine’ mob in the past week, especially straight after the RAF Fairford incident?

It is pure political posturing from a man who who just three months ago told Makerfield voters he would not “re-run” Brexit arguments.

Well, as someone who spent two decades in the European Parliament, no one knows this issue like I do. And if Burnham now wants to re-hash the big issues of sovereignty, independence, and EU contributions, I say bring it on.

Rejoining the European project would cost Britain anywhere up to £40 billion a year when you consider the new proposed EU budgets and projected inflation between now and 2028. Think about that. When we voted to leave in 2016, we were paying £19 billion, and we had a rebate!

But there’d be no rebate this time. Only more free movement of people, more demands for Britain to throw in our defensive lot for a Europe-wide military project, and it is highly likely they’d demand we join the Euro, too. Even just implementing that would cost up to £60 billion. There’s no way this country could afford to pay such a price. We just don’t have the money.

Even if we did, if Burnham took us crawling back to Brussels the EU would use every bit of leverage to force us to fund their increasingly unstable economies.

Reentering the Single Market would mean accepting EU diktats that strangle small businesses and crush domestic innovation. We would likely immediately lose the right to set our own tax rates, control our own energy policies, or sign any more trade deals.

Nigel Farage