The BLT that broke my brain (and exposed a bigger problem)



When the system can’t make a sandwich, what else is it failing to do?

My wife had just come out of her 98th surgery. It was 10:30 p.m. She hadn’t eaten in nearly 24 hours — and all she wanted was a BLT.

Something simple. Familiar. A sandwich she’s ordered many times before from the patient menu when things ran on schedule.

But this time, the kitchen had closed.

She’d been NPO for nearly 24 hours. (That’s short for nil per os — Latin for “y’all don’t eat or drink nothin’.”)

No food. No coffee. No comfort. Just waiting around with dry lips and an empty stomach until anesthesia wears off and the all-clear is given.

So she turned to me and asked, “Can you go down to the grill and get me one?”

I went downstairs to the hospital’s after-hours grill — the one that stays open for staff and visitors — and asked the cook, “Hey, could I get a BLT?”

Fixing this begins by teaching people that they’re allowed to see the person in front of them.

Let me paint the picture for you.

There was a giant pan of cooked bacon right in front of me. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Bread. All present. All visible. All just sitting there.

But instead of a sandwich, I got a blank stare — followed by: “That’s not on our menu. We don’t have a way to charge for that.”

I even tried to explain: “I’ve got money. Please. Just make the sandwich and charge me whatever you want.”

Nothing. Just more blank stares and quiet helplessness — as if I had asked them to get Prince Harry back into the will.

That was the moment bureaucracy made me want to walk into the sea.

And I was in Colorado!

A little humanity, please

I wasn’t trying to be difficult. I wasn’t asking for seared ahi tuna with a drizzle of truffle oil. I was just trying to bring a woman — who had just survived her 98th surgery — the comfort of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich at the end of a long, painful day.

They had the bacon.

They had the bread.

They had the hands.

But because there wasn’t a billing code for it, it could not be done.

I didn’t argue — much. I didn’t throw a fit. I just didn’t have it in me.

Sure, I could have ordered the bacon cheeseburger and said, “Hold the burger and cheese.”

RELATED: When the soul flatlines, call a ‘Code Grace’

  LattaPictures via iStock/Getty Images

But I was tired — besmirched by 13 hours of hospital noise and fluorescent lights. I wasn’t thinking like a work-around guy. I was feeling like a husband who had just watched his wife survive another operation — and who just wanted to bring her comfort food before midnight.

The manager on duty saw me trying to explain — saw the look on my face, probably — and graciously had mercy on me.

No forms. No debate. Just a sandwich.

I left with a BLT, deep gratitude for that manager — and a sigh. One person made it right, but the system still made it harder than it should have been.

If we can’t make a sandwich for a post-op patient, what else aren’t we doing?

The bigger problem

That moment wasn’t just about a sandwich. It was a snapshot of the country we’re living in — where solutions exist, but systems won’t allow them.

  • You want to fix a clerical error with the IRS? Good luck.
  • You want to talk to a live representative? You might have better odds getting RFK Jr. to share an Uber with Anthony Fauci.

America was built by people who hated “we can’t” — and yet we now tolerate “that’s not how we do it.” And somehow, we’ve come to accept this as normal.

There’s something spiritually corrosive about a system that erases people to elevate process.

We see it everywhere — health care, government, schools, even churches.

But what if “good enough for government work” isn’t good enough any more?

Where reform begins

Systems don’t change just because we complain. They change when people remember how to care.

The problem isn’t just that the forms are too long (which they usually are).

It’s that no one feels responsible.

Of course, deflection of responsibility goes all the way back to the garden — where Adam and Eve tried to pass the blame instead of owning their failure.

Fixing this doesn’t begin with a new workflow diagram or a subcommittee hearing.

It begins by teaching people that they’re allowed to see the person in front of them. See the need. See the moment. See the opportunity.

When Jesus saw people, He didn’t ask if they had a referral or a code. He didn’t ask what department handled the lepers.

He stopped. He touched. He healed. He saw the person, not the system.

If we want to model that — whether we’re surgeons, pastors, nurses, cashiers, representatives, senators, or grill cooks — we start by doing the simplest, most human thing: We see the person in front of us. And we make the sandwich.

Even if it’s not on the menu.

Agree to disagree? More like surrender to the script



Wouldn’t you know it? It was bound to happen.

You’re chatting with a friend about this, that, and the other thing — carefully steering clear of politics, just like always.

You both know you don't see eye to eye when it comes to today’s contentious political landscape, so you do your best to keep things light. But then, out of nowhere, the forbidden topic appears. It sneaks into the conversation, innocently enough — until suddenly, it’s front and center.

I knew my friend Jeffrey didn’t like Trump, so I always tried to avoid politics when we talked. But somehow, I found myself on the phone with him getting a lecture on “how bad Trump is for democracy.”

What happened?

All I did was mention a film I thought we both appreciate: “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.”

With people in general justifying the absolute obvious craziness of the far left by being silent and looking the other way, we can announce a brand-new term: ‘political immaturity.’

I genuinely believed it was a safe topic. We’re both Christians, both admirers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his courageous stand against Hitler and the Nazis. We also share respect for Eric Metaxas, whose book on Bonhoeffer many consider the definitive biography and which inspired the film adaptation.

Plus, Jeffrey knows I was Metaxas’ radio producer for many years. So really, I thought we were on solid, non-controversial ground.

But Jeffrey immediately jumped in to point out that Bonhoeffer’s descendants don’t support Eric Metaxas — because Metaxas supports Trump. That, in his view, proved just how awful Trump is and, dare I say it, how Hitler-like. From there, it was only a short leap to his inevitable conclusion: Trump is bad for democracy.

I calmly responded that descendants of historical figures, while entitled to their opinions, are just as influenced by the culture of their time as anyone else. Then I added what I considered the most glaring problem with his argument: the United States isn’t a democracy — we’re a constitutional republic.

I suggested that, in many ways, democracy can be a lousy form of government. After all, it allows 51% of the people to impose their will on the other 49%, forcing them to live under rules they didn’t choose and might not benefit from. In my quick tutorial on democracy versus the American system, I didn’t even get into the brilliance of the framers’ creation of the Electoral College — a safeguard that gives individual states real power and influence.

To my surprise, Jeffrey actually agreed with me on that point. But then he pivoted, arguing that Trump was just doing whatever he wanted — like sending back all the “asylum-seekers” who crossed the border during Joe Biden’s presidency.

I asked him how he knew all 15 million migrants (give or take) were asylum-seekers. Who vetted them? And I reminded him that Trump had nearly been blocked from deporting even the worst of the worst — violent criminals — by an unelected judge from ... well, somewhere.

Then I said, “It’s hard to imagine the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Democrat’ even appearing in the same sentence these days.”

That didn’t go over well.

I listed just a few of the issues Democrats continue to support. I left out the wide-open borders — which my friend seemed fine with, even after I brought up the rise in sex trafficking, fentanyl deaths, and inner-city crime — and focused on other examples. I mentioned sex-change procedures for children, drag queen story hours in public libraries, and men competing in women’s sports.

That’s when Jeffrey cut me off.

“Of course I don’t agree with those things,” he said.

And then came the words every far-left friend says when he's on the brink of losing an argument to inconvenient facts: “Let’s just agree to disagree.”

End of discussion.

Since Jeffrey is a friend, I let the conversation fizzle out. We exchanged a few more pleasantries and then said our goodbyes.

But not long after I hung up, I realized how disingenuous “agree to disagree” can be in a discussion or debate. That phrase shuts down dialogue. It signals that neither side will reconsider his position and, worse, that neither side is allowed to keep making his case or challenging the other’s facts.

What struck me even more was how casually Jeffrey used the phrase — not just with me, but seemingly with his own party. It was as if he could personally find things like child gender surgeries or men in women’s locker rooms repugnant — especially as a Christian — but still wave it all off because Democrats “stand up for the little guy.”

To avoid making waves, many Christians stepped onto the slippery slope of so-called “political correctness” years ago. The idea was simple: Being on the “right side” of politics meant standing up for marginalized people. And what Christian wouldn’t want to be seen doing that? After all, didn’t the Bible and the saints speak out for the disadvantaged?

But over time, political correctness evolved. Or rather, it escalated. “PC” gave way to “woke,” and suddenly we were all expected to embrace a new worldview — one in which anyone with a shred of sanity and compassion would naturally join the swelling ranks of the awakened. Christians, of course, were included in that expectation — if they knew what was good for them and wanted to belong to the era’s grand new “Awokening.”

So what’s next?

With people in general justifying the absolute obvious craziness of the far left by being silent and looking the other way, we can announce a brand-new term: “political immaturity.”

When you ignore common sense to do whatever you are told is “correct” and “woke,” you have not matured into rationally thinking for yourself. You might start with a wish to "go along to get along," and now you are being led around and told what to think and do like somebody's child.

The only hope for America over these next few critical years is a true Great Awakening to the truth within the church that can lead to a foundational restoration within this great country.

Optimistically speaking, if we take this route, future generations might look back and say with joy: “Wouldn’t you know it? It was bound to happen!”

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

Bad grandfather



It wasa one of the formative experiences of my childhood. My grandfather was a stubborn, combative Midwestern WASP who helped start the Chicago options exchange. He had been a ball turret gunner in WWII, nicknamed “Sharpie" because he was always ready with a quick-witted barb, always a little edgier than his milieu of dedicatedly bland, upstanding citizens from the distant Chicago suburb of Geneva, Illinois.

My parents knew the request would be a point of conflict. In fact, it was a test, probably encouraged by my mother.

His cohort were well-to-do lifelong Democrats, library Anglos, historical society supporters, staunchly moral and naturally drawn to the task of building community and tribal memory, and thus deeply repelled by the slightest whiff of political selfishness.

He was no different. He died years before the 2016 election, but he would have hated Trump, just as my grandmother did, due to his bombast and bad manners.

But he did something once that upset everyone in the family, something that clearly presaged the Trump era.

A Christmas tradition

Every Christmas, my archetypal Boomer artist parents (so archetypal, in fact, that they were a Jewish/Protestant couple not just in academia but theater academia) would linger around waiting for my grandfather to cut them a check. Which he always did, begrudgingly, his “Sharpie” flak ever increasing as he got older.

Despite this family tradition, one year I found myself appealing to my grandfather's largesse on a different holiday: Easter.

I was about to undertake a 30-mile bike ride to raise money for multiple sclerosis; my parents thought I should ask my grandfather to "sponsor" me.

These days, there is a growing consciousness that the money contributed to these sorts of events — e.g. Susan Komen “pinkwashing” — tends to vanish into the void, becoming the currency of patronage farms for self-dealing parasites and other creepy NGO swindle machines. But at the time, everyone, even antisocial leftists, participated in these events with gusto and pride.

So I was induced to approach my grandfather at the right time and ask him, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for a large donation for my arduous MS ride.

Competitive empathy-signaling

I must have been around 12 or 13 years old, and I didn’t really understand what I was asking for. Why would someone give you money to do a bike ride? And once you got that money, why didn't you keep it, instead of sending it to people you'd never met and never would: an abstract population suffering from an abstract disease? It didn’t make any sense.

My parents knew the request would be a point of conflict. In fact, it was a test, probably encouraged by my mother.

Like many lapsed Jews, she had made a religion of competitive empathy-signaling. Her main rivals were her in-laws — supposedly "good" Christians who nonetheless exhibited moral deficiencies that were glaringly obvious to any member of the perennially oppressed Jewish people.

They shuffled me forward, and I made my pitch.

My grandfather became cross and silent in that atmosphere-disturbing way that only fathers and grandfathers can pull off. The air disappeared from the room.

“No,” he said.

A shocking refusal

It completely shocked me. I had been conditioned to believe that charity bicycle rides were the very definition of goodness. Anyone who would refuse charity, no less charity related to a healthy fitness activity, on behalf of his own grandchild was comically evil. Darth Vader-grade evil. Evil just for the sake of it. The type of person who would gladly torture animals and leave grocery carts willy-nilly in the parking lot. The absolute opposite of a responsible Christian grandfather. How could this be happening?

I choked up with bewilderment and forced out a “why?” with tears dripping down my face.

“Because I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” he responded.

My parents scrabbled around like spooked hyenas, but that was the end of it. There would be no more discussion. My grandfather sipped his bourbon and sat in his chair and read something, probably the New Yorker, and tuned out the awkwardness.

Later we probably searched for Easter eggs in the garden. I still remember the feel and the smell of the tomatoes in that garden, those little orange follicles that stick to your fingertips and, later, when you wash your hands, release their scent of pure summer.

The confidence of conviction

For years afterward, my grandfather's refusal was constantly referred to with great pain, one of those colossal betrayals that haunts families for decades and never gets resolved, even after the offender is dead. I am particularly susceptible to such resentments — I stopped speaking to my maternal grandparents for other betrayals and never went back.

Not with this grandfather. Even back then, I can remember my own pain over his blunt refusal dissolving even as my parents’ festered and grew. There was just something about it, something brave, that I couldn’t help but admire. The totally brazen refusal to play along — the confidence in one’s own convictions even when everyone else believes you’re stone-cold evil, the “against us” in the mind of our collective BPD.

And not just the conviction not to bend, but the open disgust about being asked to bend in the first place. There’s divinity in anti-collectivism — an irrational self-sacrifice just for the sake of it — that I think reaches up toward God.

And, of course, he ended up being entirely correct.

Societal cancer

These nonprofit rackets are in fact societal cancers corroding the fabric of beautiful, historic, human-centric places like Geneva, Illinois. Public-private corruption systems, probably propped up by USAID or the equivalent, feeding off the gentle goodness of the native Midwesterner in order to generate instability, profit, and global grayness for the benefit of definitely not religious Christians.

I remember once walking down the street on a beautiful fall Sunday in Geneva and being shocked by how many healthy, beautiful, shining, hand-holding families were out strolling under the fiery leaves — as if transported back to a time before cars and phones and crime, when everyone was just out and connected and together in the town square.

You could almost see the connection between them in the air. It was so thick as to become a substance, the natural state of what humanity can be when not interfered with.

I haven’t been back in a while, but I can promise you that connectedness is a lot less thick in Geneva today. And there are a lot more charities and a lot more charity rides.

I never got to know my grandfather well, probably in part because he was meant to serve as a Grinch figure. He had four handsome, smart, white suburban sons, but among them, they had only had two grandchildren, my cousin Louise and me.

I couldn’t tell you why that happened, besides to say that it is certainly a very Boomer phenomenon and thus almost certainly related to the sterilizing self-hatred that crept into the white American population around that time, a self-hatred that would go basically unacknowledged until Trump.

Pale blue eyes

He died when I was 15. I remember him crumpled up in the hospital bed, barely able to speak or move, but his eyes were glued on me. Fixed. His pale blue eyes, very pale, almost white, this very prototypical Midwestern WASP sort of eye blue paleness. His eyes always had a deeply piercing quality, like they were looking through you, or more like you were looking through him. And I remember him staring at me and not looking away.

Saying nothing, just staring — like an inanimate bump on a log with two pale blue portals to the afterlife. It became awkward for everyone else because he was staring so hard and unblinkingly, but he didn’t seem to care what anyone thought. I flittered around uncomfortably and ultimately left the room (one of my biggest regrets to this day). But I remember interpreting it as a sign, as a statement: “It’s on you now, Sharpie."

Vatican Thinks ‘Charity’ Means Championing Democrat Causes And Taking Money To Flout Immigration Laws

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in accord with Pope Francis, opposes Trump’s resolve to curtail illegal migration.

Use The DOGE Playbook To Expose The Corporate Activism Destroying America

American corporations and their government regulators serve radical left-wing interests rather than the common good.

'I'm gonna cry': Barstool Sports' Dave Portnoy saves veteran-owned pizza place



It's a Christmas miracle — with all the toppings.

Thanks to Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy's last-minute stop at a struggling Baltimore pizzeria, the veteran-owned shop can stay in business

Portnoy is the founder of the Barstool Sports empire but has branched off into doing his popular "one bite" pizza reviews.

'We received record numbers of sales and donations yesterday and today.'

His "One Bite Pizza Reviews" YouTube account has nearly 1.5 million subscribers and almost a billion views. There is also a popular "One Bite" app with all of his pizza review scores.

One more slice

Earlier this month, Portnoy traveled to Maryland for the Army-Navy football game.

Portnoy and his producer had been driving been in the car for about eight hours and did about 10 pizza reviews. They were ready to call it a day; however, Portnoy wanted to visit a small pizzeria in Baltimore.

One Bite Pizza Reviews producer Austin Jenkins wrote on the X, "As we were driving out of Baltimore to our hotel in D.C., Dave found TinyBrickOven on the One Bite app. He asked if it was on our way, but it wasn’t. He said let’s just do it anyways, looks like it could be good pizza to review. A One Bite Christmas Miracle."

Portnoy visited the TinyBrickOven pizzeria in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore.

TinyBrickOwner owner Will Fagg — a Navy veteran — was working when Portnoy went to pick up a pizza pie.

Fagg explained that the government was preventing him from acquiring a liquor license that could greatly benefit his business.

“We can’t get our liquor license here,” Fagg told Portnoy. “Our politicians gave this market down here their liquor license, but they won’t give us ours. ... It’s really disappointing.”

Christmas closure

He explained that his business had been struggling, which would force him to shutter his pizza joint on Christmas Day.

In a video posted to the TinyBrickOven website, Fagg says: "I must share the most devastating news of my life — TinyBrickOven is scheduled to close permanently on Christmas Day. My heart is shattered, not just for myself, but for all of us. This isn't just an end of a business, it feels like the end of a shared dream."

The TinyBrickOven website states that the company has organized fundraisers for veterans, fed the homeless, raised money for the Maryland Food Bank, and hosted a volunteer event for the staff of the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Before tasting the pizza, Portnoy declared: "We’re gonna have to keep this place open."

Portnoy stepped out of the restaurant to do his review of the pizza. After being impressed with his slice, Portnoy went back inside the TinyBrickOven pizzeria to talk to Fagg.

An offer he couldn't refuse

Portnoy asked the pizzeria owner, "Can I ask you something? How much money do you need to stay open for like a year?"

Fagg said he wasn't sure of the exact amount to save his business.

Portnoy pressed, "Well, if there’s somebody super rich right in front of your face who’s in the pizza business, and by serendipity is like, ‘What do you need to stay open for a year,’ you’ve got to give him some figure, because then he’s going to walk away."

Fagg replied, "I know it. Listen, I think we could probably get our liquor license and continue to stay open if we had $60,000."

Without hesitation, Portnoy fired back: "Done."

'I'm gonna cry'

A gobsmacked Fagg exclaimed, "Oh, my gosh, man, this is unbelievable. Wow! I'm gonna cry."

Portnoy assured Fagg that he'll send him the money "before Christmas."

"We'll keep you open for a year," Portnoy declared.

Portnoy admitted that it cost him $60,000, but stressed: "But whatever, I'm a nice motherf***er."

Portnoy's pizza review went viral, racking up nearly 15 million views on Twitter, almost 400,000 views on YouTube, and notching 70,000 likes on Instagram.

The viral video has caused business to skyrocket for the fledgling pizzeria.

Fagg told CBS News that the TinyBrickOven had a line out the door and phones ringing off the hook on Christmas Eve.

"We've never had a crowd like this," he said.

A GoFundMe campaign for the pizzeria has raised nearly $130,000 at the time of publication.

"The very generous Barstool review basically broke the internet (our email server instantly crashed due to overwhelming email volumes)," the campaign reads. "We received record numbers of sales and donations yesterday and today."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

When a theologian's damning prediction comes true almost 100 years early



Anti-Christian antagonists love to define Christians by what they think Christianity stands against. But Christians must define themselves by what they stand for.

Now is an especially important time to remember this axiom.

As Americans celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday last week, its geopolitical cousins in Britain crossed the Rubicon and embraced death, legalizing so-called "assisted suicide" in England and Wales. Now, Britons over 18 who have been diagnosed with a "terminal illness" and supposedly have fewer than six months to live can receive approval from two physicians and a judge to self-administer fatal drugs.

Supporters of assisted suicide argue it is a compassionate means of ending suffering. One British lawmaker, Peter Prinsley of the Labour Party, claimed in support of the bill, "We are shortening death, not life, for our patients. This is not life or death; this is death or death."

(Let it not be lost on the reader that this justification serves to lessen the now-deceased's burden on Britain's welfare state and its National Health Service.)

The death culture that celebrates "assisted suicide" has succeeded in Western culture because we have eroded, in the view of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler Jr., "moral absolutes [that] rest on explicitly Christian foundations."

In a world that increasingly prescribes death for the undesirables — the unborn, the sick, the elderly — Christians must hold true to their core value of protecting life.

In this context, the most important moral absolute is that each and every human being is intrinsically valuable because humans are the Imago Dei, created in the image and likeness of God, the author of life.

"A society that honors this foundational truth could not contemplate the subversion of human life and human dignity by assisted suicide. A society that denies this essential truth will eventually rationalize anything, given time and motivation," Mohler observes.

When the moral absolute of the Imago Dei is discarded, no longer does a terminally ill person have value, and no longer do humans limit the power of giving and taking life to God. In such cultures, the state becomes like God, determining whose live is valuable and whose life is worth preserving.

In 2012, theologian Stanley Hauerwas offered a prediction about Christians and the culture of death that turned out to be extremely prescient.

He said:

I say in a hundred years, if Christians are known as a strange group of people who don’t kill their children and don’t kill the elderly, we will have done a great thing. I mean, that may not sound like much, but I think it is the ultimate politic. I mean, if we can just be a disciplined enough community, who through the worship of God has discovered that we are ready to be hospitable to new life and life that is suffering, then, as a matter of fact, that is a political alternative that otherwise the world will not have.

This, of course, is something that Christians have always done.

Christians cared for the widows and the orphans. Christians cared for the sick. Christians cared for the unwanted children. Christians cared for those whom society deemed as burdens. Christians essentially invented the hospital. Christianity accommodates all human life because every life is inherently valuable.

In a world that increasingly prescribes death for the undesirables — the unborn, the sick, the elderly — Christians must hold true to their core value of protecting life. Put simply: Caring for the vulnerable and protecting life is who Christians are; it's core to the Christian identity.

Christianity's institutionalized charity transformed the ancient world, and it can renew ours.

In a culture that celebrates death, Christians must be the strange group of people who stand for life — no matter the cost.

May Christians continue to be — as they have always been — in the words of Hauerwas, "the political alternative" this world otherwise does not have.

Amalgamated Bank’s ‘hate’ crusade hypocrisy exposed



Amalgamated Bank is one of the smaller and lesser-known U.S. financial institutions, controlling less than $10 billion in assets. Yet it has scored numerous high-powered clients, such as Harris for President and the Democratic National Committee, plus a host of Democratic legislators and candidates.

That’s no coincidence: Amalgamated is a partisan, agenda-driven institution. But given that it is both attempting to gaslight America on hate and trying to interfere with contributions to causes with which it disagrees, Amalgamated’s deep associations and influence within the Democratic Party are not only problematic but dangerous.

Democratic donors may be unknowingly supporting hate in America, and it’s up to the campaigns to put an end to it.

Amalgamated presents itself as not merely above reproach but morally advanced. It provided seed funding for the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, claiming its mission is to “redefine philanthropy,” while, unlike many foundations, it has commingled its leadership, with Priscilla Sims Brown, president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank, also serving as the chairman of the ACF’s board.

It also claims to be in a position to lecture others. Besides operating a donor-advised fund of its own, the ACF also sponsors a campaign called “Hate Is Not Charitable,” directed at other DAF providers. Though it presents itself as reasonable, appropriate, and humanitarian, this campaign is an effort to suppress support for those who oppose Amalgamated’s partisan and even bigoted views.

Donor-advised funds are a common vehicle for donors, desirable for convenience and anonymity. Donors give to a DAF, receive an immediate receipt for their gift, and, over time, instruct the fund to disburse parts of the deposited money to causes of the donor’s choice. Besides permitting donors to schedule tax deductions to maximal advantage, having a DAF write the check means the donor’s contribution to an organization never shows up on the donor’s 1040 or the recipient charity’s Form 990. DAFs routinely reveal the donor’s identity only to the beneficiary; this information is not made public, and thus donors cannot be identified or targeted for the charities that they support.

Where is the IRS?

This is where Hate Is Not Charitable comes into play. Although it claims to be “deeply concerned” that charitable funds can be used to fund “organizations that foment hatred,” Amalgamated’s Hate Is Not Charitable campaign targets other DAFs rather than the organization certifying American charities: the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

“Donor Advised Fund providers,” Amalgamated intones, “should filter out hate,” but not by using the neutral standards of the IRS, which, of course, DAFs are already required to do. Amalgamated arrogates to itself and its partners the ability to decide whom others should consider hate groups. It knows that if deprived of the anonymity of a DAF, donors could be easily targeted and shamed by Amalgamated’s “empowered” activists for supporting unfavored causes.

Amalgamated claims that Hate Is Not Charitable was prompted, in part, by “white nationalist violence in Charlottesville,” where marching neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Yet a site search of Amalgamated returns no mention of anti-Semitism in its literature, and it isn’t mentioned as an issue the bank cares about. Instead, the campaign concerns itself with allegedly “anti-LGBTQ groups, anti-Muslim groups, anti-immigrant groups, [and] a white nationalist group.”

Amalgamated’s main resource is the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC’s “Hate Map” is hardly neutral; it was used in a hate-fueled terror attack on the offices of the Family Research Council in 2012. According to the Coalition for Jewish Values, the organization I serve as managing director, the Hate Map is inherently “detrimental and even dangerous to the Jewish community.” The SPLC fails to identify radical Islamic groups as hateful, while besmirching those who confront the dangers posed by those groups as “anti-Muslim.”

The SPLC worked together with the Council on American-Islamic Relations on a 40-page guide to “Hate-Free Philanthropy,” which recommends, among other things, Amalgamated’s Hate Is Not Charitable campaign. CAIR was originally identified as a partner in the Biden administration’s national strategy to counter anti-Semitism, only to be unceremoniously dumped after it blamed Israel for the Hamas atrocities of October 2023, a pogrom that CAIR’s director celebrated with glee.

Amalgamated not only touts CAIR as a charter signatory of its campaign but also gave the organization at least $175,000. And this is far from Amalgamated’s only association with groups inciting anti-Semitism and endorsing terrorism.

Ties to October 7

Earlier this month, U.S. and Canadian authorities identified Samidoun, an organization that helped organize anti-Semitic protests on American college campuses and the Freedom Plaza protests that called for “Death to Israel,” as a “sham charity” that existed to support the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a participant in the October 7 attacks. Samidoun is not independent. It is a project fiscally sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice, a charity that also sponsors campaigns to boycott Israel and other left-wing causes.

According to its own public filings, Amalgamated Charitable Foundation gave over $1 million to AFGJ between 2020 and 2022, the most recent year for which records are available. The Capital Research Center also identifies Amalgamated’s donor-advised fund as a key money conduit for AFGJ. This is especially troubling because, since 2020, credit card companies have blocked donations to Samidoun, and in 2023, several credit providers, including Stripe, PayPal, and Salsa Labs, stopped serving AFGJ directly.

House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) in September called for the IRS to strip AFGJ of its tax-exempt status due to its role as the sponsor of Samidoun’s efforts “to incite violence and instill chaos.” If Amalgamated truly wanted to fight hate, it would have already cut ties with AFGJ, Samidoun, CAIR, and other organizations that celebrate or sponsor terrorism.

Instead, Amalgamated targets neutral groups to advance its partisan agenda — an agenda partially funded through its financial relationships with major Democratic campaigns and the Democratic National Committee. It’s regrettable that Democratic donors may be unknowingly supporting hate in America, and it’s up to the campaigns to put an end to it.

Trump delivers a master class in comedy — and demolishes Harris



President Donald Trump helped raise money for New York City's most vulnerable women and children Thursday evening by bashing Kamala Harris, suggesting that some of her remaining male supporters are cuckolds and insinuating that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) was a direct beneficiary of the tampons he put in boys' restrooms.

Trump's humorous critique of his opponent and the Democratic Party — which had the crowd in stitches and subsequently prompted many a meltdown in the liberal media and among Harris boosters — was thematically reinforced at the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner by an unlikely source: Jim Gaffigan, a left-leaning comedian who called Trump a "fascist" in 2020.

Although Gaffigan made sure to poke fun at Trump, he risked the ire of his leftist peers by similarly knocking Harris — questioning her decision to blow off the event and suggesting that she became the Democratic candidate by undemocratic means.

"The Democrats have been telling us Trump's re-election is a threat to democracy," said Gaffigan. "In fact, they were so concerned of this threat that they staged a coup, ousted their democratically elected incumbent, and installed Kamala Harris."

Early in his speech, Trump emphasized his appreciation for the dinner, which Harris refused to attend — an event hosted by the Archdiocese of New York that he frequented with his late father, raising money for kids with special needs, foster children, low-income single mothers, and other vulnerable persons in the city.

After noting that he was happy to participate in a New York event that he wasn't summoned to by subpoena, Trump unleashed on Harris, noting that her absence, which she tried to remedy with a four-minute video submission featuring former "Saturday Night Live" star Molly Shannon, was "weird" and "deeply disrespectful" — an assertion that was audibly well received by the audience, who booed her in absentia.

Trump joked that Harris was likely hunting with Walz, referring to the governor's embarrassing hunting-themed photo op last weekend, or alternatively "receiving communion from Gretchen Whitmer," the Michigan governor who recently shared a video apparently mocking Catholics and the Eucharist.

Echoing a previous statement from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the organizer of the dinner, Trump pointed out that the last major party candidate not to attend the event was Democratic candidate Walter F. Mondale, who lost 49 out of 50 states, securing only 13 electoral votes in the 1984 election against Ronald Reagan.

Earlier in the evening, Gaffigan said, "This event has been referred to as the Catholic Met Gala. 22% of Americans identify as Catholic. Catholics will be a key demographic in every battleground state. I'm sorry, why is Vice President Harris not here?"

'Governor Walz isn't here himself, but don't worry, he'll say that he was.'

Trump, who sardonically suggested that Harris' laugh was "beautiful" and recommended keeping her husband, Doug Emhoff, away from the nannies, suggested that if the organizers of the event really wanted the vice president to accept their invitation, they should have "told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed."

Prior to roasting some of Harris' allies, Trump suggested that the country needs new leadership, noting:

We have someone in the White House who can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have mental faculties of a child. It's sad. This is a person who has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever — but enough about Kamala Harris.

Trump subsequently singled out Ross Morales Rocketto's Democratic booster group White Dudes for Harris, saying, "I'm not worried about them at all because their wives and their wives' lovers are all voting for me. Every one of those people are voting for me."

After suggesting White Dudes for Harris were cuckolds, Trump roasted Harris' running mate, saying, "Unfortunately Governor Walz isn't here himself, but don't worry, he'll say that he was."

"I used to say that Democrats were crazy for saying that men have periods," continued Trump. "But then I met Tim Walz."

Although he acknowledged that speakers at the event customarily make some self-deprecating jokes, Trump noted there was no point taking shots at himself "when other people have been shooting at me."

Trump did, however, adopt a serious tone toward the end of his speech, noting that in the wake of two known assassination attempts, he has "a fresh appreciation for how blessed we are by God's providence and His divine mercy," adding that with God's help, "there is nothing that cannot be achieved."

When wrapping up his remarks, Trump noted that New York City needed the room for a "large group of illegal aliens coming in from Texas."

While Trump had the crowd laughing, including longtime critics Gaffigan and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Harris campaign tried spinning his speech as a failure.

Ammar Moussa, the Harris campaign's rapid response director, claimed in a joyless statement that Trump "stumbled over his words and lashed out when the crowd wouldn't laugh with him. The rare moments he was off script, he went on long, incomprehensible rambles, reminding Americans how unstable he's become. And of course he made it all about himself."

In her brief Al Smith dinner video submission, Harris went on the defense, suggesting that she would never say anything negative about Catholics despite previously suggesting the Knights of Columbus' Catholic faith disqualified them from serving as judges and introducing legislation aimed at forcing Catholic organizations to engage in activities that violate their religious beliefs.

After citing a verse from the Gospel of Luke, Harris closed her video by recommitting "to reaching across divides, to seek understanding and common ground."

Gaffigan responded to Harris' video saying, "As I watch that, I couldn't help but think of — now I know how my kids felt when I FaceTime into a piano recital they were at."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

How you can help the people of Haiti



The recent images of the violent, gang-led coup in Haiti are so lurid it's easy to forget about the innocent people caught in the chaos. But they're there, trying to go about their daily lives in a barely functioning society.

So are the many charities trying to help them. Sending money to Haiti can seem like a fool's errand; the country seems to attract more than its share of foreign grifters and bloated, ineffectual NGOs.

A doctor-priest finds hope amid the horror.

Nobody is getting rich from the organizations founded and/or run by Father Rick Frechette, but they have enriched the lives of thousands of Haitians.

In his more than 35 years in Haiti, Fr. Frechette has seen misery that few Americans can imagine. (Although this harrowing and vivid account written in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake will give you an idea.)

He moved there after meeting Fr. William B. Wasson, founder of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos/Nos Petits Frères et Soeurs (NPH), a mission helping poor children in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.

After working in a hospice for mothers dying of AIDS, the Connecticut-born Frechette went on to establish an orphanage. When he realized how badly his new home lacked doctors, he returned to America to get a medical degree, then came back to Haiti to oversee NPH's pediatric hospital, St. Damien's.

In 2000, Fr. Frechette worked with young Haitians (many of whom began their lives in the orphanage he started, some of whom he delivered at St. Damien's) to found the St. Luke Foundation, a Haitian organization that provides health care and education to the poorest of the poor.

Read Fr. Frechette's tribute to one such colleague and friend here.

Despite all the people the foundation has helped, the temptation to despair is always present. For a long time, much of Fr. Frechette's ministry was simply to provide the nameless dead crowding the streets and morgues with a dignified burial:

"Sometimes with horrible things, you really feel there is nothing you can do. Nothing. You’re just useless," Fr. Frechette has said. "But over time, you start seeing that to do the right thing no matter what has tremendous power.”

No doubt the current situation in Haiti has done nothing to dispel that sense of futility. But Fr. Frechette and his team soldier on. NPH USA representative Jennifer Rayno gave Align this update:

Despite the difficulty, St. Damien is one of few hospitals that continues to provide 24/7 care. We have implemented a rotation system that enables the staff, mainly medical personnel, to be on site for 24 hours or more to minimize moving back and forth as safely as possible. We have been in a red zone for some time and as a result we are receiving complicated and critical cases due to understandable hesitation.

With lack of supplies and increased demands, expenses have risen exponentially. We would be grateful for any attention you can bring to the good work at St. Damien Hospital and our current pressing needs for medical supplies, food, water, and fuel for the generators that keep the hospital running. Folks can be directed to: www.nphusa.org/helpStDamien