You see it constantly, some version of this claim: “The cost of child care is the single biggest obstacle to working women and families.”

From there come the familiar conclusions: “The state needs to subsidize child care.” “We need affordable day care for working moms.”

No, we don’t.

While claiming to elevate women, feminism has steadily lowered the status of motherhood and homemaking.

What we need is to recognize that it’s not normal — nor healthy — for children to be farmed out to strangers during their earliest years so that Mom can be “more than just a mom” with her career.

Yes, there are millions of families in which both parents must work to keep a roof over their heads. But there are millions more who don’t need two incomes. What gets called “need” is often just lifestyle expectation. What children actually need rarely enters the calculation.

Luxury expectations

Modern expectations in 2026 America look less like necessity and more like luxury — something closer to the “hands-off” child-rearing of aristocratic households than to ordinary family life.

People talk about “affordable day care” as if it were self-evidently necessary. It isn’t. It only sounds that way because repetition has made it seem normal.

Behind it sits an unspoken belief: “It is right and proper — even ideal — to leave our children with hired strangers for most of the day.”

Even 40 years ago, that would not have sounded normal. Most people still believed that all else being equal, children were best raised by their mothers (and with a father in the home). Day care might be necessary — but it was understood as a regrettable second-best option.

Today, even many conservatives won’t question it. To do so invites accusations of harming mothers or failing to support “hardworking single moms.”

But prolonged parental absence is not neutral. Children need their mothers, especially in their early years. We can cite studies, but we don’t need them to see what’s plainly in front of us.

Strikingly, the people who claim to “need” day care are often those who don’t. What they want is a standard of living that would have been considered extravagant a generation or two ago.

Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Maxed-out minimums

Take Democrat Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado. She has cultivated an image as a sainted working mother, bringing her small child onto the House floor while lamenting the lack of day care for “working moms.”

There’s just one problem: Congress has had full-time day care on Capitol Hill since 1987.

What’s happening here isn’t necessity — it’s performance. The question she avoids is whether her child’s needs might outweigh the demands of a camera-facing career.

And it’s not just politicians. Middle-class Americans have adopted a set of “minimum” expectations that earlier generations would have recognized as indulgent:

Two cars (preferably full-size SUVs).
Separate bedrooms for each child.
A full slate of extracurriculars.
No trade-offs between career ambition and motherhood.
Children’s needs subordinated to adult preferences.
Government support for single parenthood without fathers in the home.

Modern-day Tudors

In the feudal world, there was a distinction between a woman and a lady. A woman belonged to the working class; a lady to the aristocracy.

Women raised their children directly — feeding them, caring for them, folding them into the rhythms of daily life. Ladies did not.

In the Tudor royal court, for example, a noblewoman did not breastfeed. A wet nurse was hired in advance and took over immediately. Children were raised by nurses, governesses, and tutors, with parents appearing only intermittently.

The result was distance — emotional, developmental, and often moral.

For all our technological differences, the psychology isn’t so different today. The aristocratic habits of detachment have been democratized. What was once a marker of nobility is now treated as a baseline expectation.

There are better models to follow.

An old-fashioned approach

I have a friend, Tasha, a Catholic mother of nine. Her husband works full-time; she manages the home.

They don’t have two SUVs. They don’t have a large house. But they have what they need: a home, a van that fits everyone, good food, clean clothes, and a stable, loving family life.

How does she do it? The way families did for generations — before the late-20th-century promise that women could “have it all” and should expect it immediately.

She shops carefully. Buys in bulk. Reuses what she can. She hasn’t outfitted each child with personal screens to keep them isolated. Her household is structured around shared life, not individual consumption.

Degraded status

While claiming to elevate women, feminism has steadily lowered the status of motherhood and homemaking. For decades, we’ve heard that women are “more than just mothers,” that raising children prevents them from “being someone.”

Consider what that sounds like to a child.

The desire for status is natural — for men and women alike. Motherhood once carried that status. As it has been stripped away, many women seek it elsewhere.

But the substitute — career-first identity combined with outsourced child-rearing — is narcissistic, materialistic, and ultimately unsatisfying. It can be hard on families and hard on children.

It's also hard on mothers themselves. I’ve known many women who report that their contentment increased when they let go of "girlboss" career-woman expectations to concentrate on raising their children and making the home a nurturing place for their families.

Where now?

How do we fix this? I don’t know. Many Western families can’t get by on a single income. Men who want to be good providers can work hard and it’s still not enough. Some mothers need to work.

But we can acknowledge that economic reality without accepting how it has distorted us. We can stop demanding a government solution to what is fundamentally a problem of values. We need to reacquaint ourselves with what we really are as men and women and what we really need. I can’t give a road map for how to achieve this. But it has to start by hauling our aristocratic assumptions into the sunlight and seeing them for what they are.

Kodachrome and 4 other things I want back from the 20th century

Buckle up, Boomers and Gen Xers, because I’m going to serve you up some nostalgia bait. Stop at the concession booth to pick up your complimentary rose-colored glasses, and don’t feel shy.

Generation X was born between 1965 and 1980. We are the last generation who experienced the real, physical world the way most humans have experienced it. We came along when generational transitions were gradual. We knew our Boomer parents’ music and movie stars, and we know our Silent Generation grandparents’ music and movie stars. As a kid, I knew who the Andrews Sisters were, and I could sing along because my grandmother played their records.

There will be Slant Six engines running in good health long after I’m dead, just as God intended.

Compare to today: The average Gen Z kid has no idea who Michael Jackson, Madonna, or Lucille Ball are. Starting with Millennials, a chasm opened up between generations. People a generation younger asked who some of the most world-famous stars were when they were working and alive just 20 years earlier.

With Gen Z it’s even starker. They were given digital poison in the form of smartphones in their tender years, and the entire cultural landscape fragmented into a billion bespoke Balkan states.

It’s hard to convince young people that some of the technologies from the bad old world of analog were actually superior to what we have today. They don’t believe that phone calls on copper wire were clear and never dropped (it’s true, though). Hilariously, they think film photography was always blurry and little better at capturing detail than an Impressionist painter.

Well, some of these things were better. And I want them back.

1. Kodachrome film

Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

I trained as a photographer in college, and that was going to be my career. But then digital came along. I was in romantic love with the hands-on craft that was film photography. When computers took over, I packed it all away because I was in love with silver gelatin emulsions, not silicon chips.

The loss of Kodachrome color slide film was the worst, and I shed real tears when Kodak pulled the plug. There was no color film in history that reproduced color as well as Kodachrome did; there’s a reason Paul Simon wrote the song. He was right.

Kodachrome was actually a black-and-white film with no built-in dyes like all other color films. Instead it captured the blue, red, and green light on three layers in the film separately. The color dyes were added during the wet chemical processing, and those dyes were richer and more time-stable than ordinary color film. This is why a Kodachrome slide from the 1940s looks like a high-quality photograph taken today — there’s no fading or washed-out colors like many of us see in old color photos in our family albums.

It was also the sharpest film with the highest resolution. A scene taken on Kodachrome was reproduced in such detail that looking at the slide was nearly like looking at real life through a window.

Because you’re reading this on a computer screen, you and I can’t see what the slide “really” looks like. It’s mediated by an electronic screen. But you can still see the rich color and fine detail that no other film could achieve.

2. Three-strip Technicolor

People today talk about bright hues looking like “Technicolor,” but few people understand what that really meant. For decades in Hollywood, the patented Technicolor film process was different from every other color film technology, and it reined supreme. Motion pictures shot in Technicolor were brighter and more vivid than any other process. They made real life look like the Land of Oz.

The quality came at a price. Like Kodachrome, Technicolor used black-and-white film, adding stable, rich color dyes later during processing and printing. This made the shooting process difficult. The film was “slow,” requiring so much light on set that actors sometimes got eye damage. They certainly sweat a lot.

Technicolor cameras ran three separate strips of black-and-white motion picture film through the camera at the same time. A “beam splitter” separated the light into red, green, and blue, directing one color only to each of the three strips of film. The cameras were heavy and needed to be sound-baffled during a shoot.

Striking the final print for projection required precision machines that could line up each of the three strips of film in perfect registration to lay down cyan, yellow, and magenta dyes. It took precision-machining, skill, time, and money. That’s why the process was abandoned when cheaper, easier all-in-one color motion picture film became available.

But that’s also why the Technicolor process was so beloved that songs were written about it. This is from the Technicolor production "Silk Stockings" with Janis Paige singing to Fred Astaire.

3. Air-cooled Volkswagen engines

I went outside to play in 1978 and came upon my stepfather on his knees behind the 1967 beige VW bug that was our family car. “God — son of a *@^%!” he cussed as the engine cranked and cranked and wouldn’t fire up. He was trying to gap the points in the distributor, a job he was never good at. I learned to do it decades later from a classic butch lesbian, and it didn’t seem that hard to me.

My stepdad was doing this because that’s what normal people did in those days. You tuned up your own car. Most dads had a toolset and the know-how to do car maintenance at home. Repairs were less expensive, and you didn’t have to have a computer technician “scan” your engine to figure out what the bloody computer thought was wrong with it.

Sure, the old VWs were simple and had few features. The heaters were so bad that winter driving required an ice scraper for the inside of the windscreen. The bugs were tiny compared to modern cars, but you could get a surprising amount in there if you were clever.

Sure, they were light (some people call them death traps), but that was great when my mother went off a snowy road in Upstate New York, and four boys from the local college fraternity just picked it up out of the ditch and set it back on the road.

I’d give anything to hear that musical, metallic tinkle of the exhaust pipes on America’s roads today.

4. The Chrysler Slant Six engine

If you know, you know. America never built a more durable engine than the famous Chrysler Slant Six. The engine got its name because the designers tilted it 30 degrees to fit the block under the lower, sleeker hoods that became stylish in the early 1960s.

This six-cylinder may not have had the raw horsepower of a big block V8, but it produced a surprising amount of oomph for its size, and it was an engine that never died. If you’ve owned one, you can hear the sewing machine-like purr and tick in your mind.

We had two Slant Six-powered family cars growing up. As an adult, I’ve had a Dodge Dart and a Plymouth Belvedere powered by this motor. There’s no better way to spend an afternoon than adjusting the valves on a Slant Six while it’s running. I miss how easy it was to work on these engines, made in the days when you could move around under the hood and adjust something without taking off 15 components just to get enough room to put a finger in the engine bay.

There will be Slant Six engines running in good health long after I’m dead, just as God intended.

NBC/Getty Images

5. Customer service

This is a social technology that needs to make a comeback. My first jobs as a teenager were running the cash register at a Wegman’s grocery store and bringing burgers to tables at a Big Boy restaurant. Friendly, efficient customer service was mandatory. It was expected by every customer and every employer.

You were to greet customers with a friendly hello and an offer to help. Smiles were either compulsory or strongly encouraged. If a customer needed to find an item, you found it for them and walked them over to the right aisle.

What do you get today when you walk into any retail store? Dead-eyed, silent stares from any staff younger than 35. Need to find a pipe fitting in a big store like Lowe’s? Try asking. You’ll get, “Um ... a what? If we had any, they’d be, like, over there,” as “Jonas” waves in a northeasterly direction.

Surprisingly, a young clerk at my local McDonald's reminded me of the good old days of customer service last week. Like so many places, McDonald's is making its restaurants hostile to humans. In addition to the ugly, gray, brutalist “updated” architecture, the lobbies are crammed with touch-screen kiosks, while the staffed registers have been reduced to one or two maximum. As recently as 15 years ago, McDonald's had a reputation for employing staff that were neater, tidier, and friendlier than the competition.

That’s gone now — except for this one young man at my local McD's. I walked past the kiosks and up to the register, expecting to be ignored for five minutes as is now McDonald’s standard. “Jeff” was about 22. His shirt was tucked in. He was neatly groomed. He smiled at me and said, “Welcome to McDonald's; how are you today?” He meant it. He was looking me in the eye. I was so pleasantly surprised I thought I was dreaming, and I made a point to thank him for being human and polite.

The other day, I saw this old early '80s commercial for McDonald’s Shamrock Shake. Take a look, and try not to tear up. If you’re 35 or under, you probably think the chipper and upbeat tone looks “fake.” You may not believe anyone ever acted that way. You might even find this level of cheer “cringe.”

Well, it was like that. I was there. And I want it back.

FBI investigating Joe Kent, ex-intel official who resigned over Iran strikes: Report

Sources have informed multiple publications that the FBI is investigating combat veteran Joe Kent over an alleged leak of classified information. Four individuals with direct knowledge of the probe told Semafor that it predates Kent's resignation on Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

A source familiar with the case told Axios that Kent was suspected of leaking information to Tucker Carlson and another conservative podcaster and that the bureau is looking into whether the allegedly leaked information pertained to Israel and Iran.

'Israelis drove the decision.'

When asked for comment, the White House referred Blaze News to the FBI. The FBI declined to comment. Blaze News reached out to Kent for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Kent — a retired Green Beret and former CIA officer whom President Donald Trump nominated to be NCTC director in February 2025 and the U.S. Senate confirmed in a 52-44 vote in July — wrote in a post accompanying his resignation letter addressed to Trump and published Tuesday that Iran "posed no imminent threat to our nation" and that "it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."

The ex-intel official said further in the letter:

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.

The president told reporters on Tuesday, "I read his statement — and I always thought he was a nice guy — but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security."

Photographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"When I read his statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out, because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat — every country realized what a threat Iran was. The question is whether they wanted to do something about it," said Trump.

Trump later shared an image of a tweet that Kent posted in January 2020, imploring Trump, then in his first term, to "wipe Iran's ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq — they are only targets now."

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed on Tuesday that Kent's resignation letter was replete with "false claims" and noted that "the absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable."

On Wednesday, Kent appeared with Tucker Carlson, who said about the Iran strikes: "Joe Kent was right. Therefore, Joe Kent must be destroyed. And there is, of course, this ongoing effort to do that — to dismiss Joe Kent as a tool of the Islamists or a leaker."

During the interview, Kent explained to Carlson his reasons for leaving the administration, his misgivings about the conflict with Iran, and his support for the president and Trump's previous policies.

Referring to remarks made earlier this month by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Kent told Carlson — who was denounced on March 5 by the president following months of criticism — that the "Israelis drove the decision" to attack Iran.

Intelligence showed that Iran was neither on the verge of obtaining a nuclear weapon nor planning "to launch this big sneak attack," Kent added.

He further claimed that Trump was siloed when it came to the issue of Iran, stating that "a good deal of key decision-makers were not allowed to come express their opinion to the president."

'He quit because he's under investigation.'

Kent also claimed that when it came to Charlie Kirk's assassination, "we're not really even allowed to look into that at all." Kent even intimated that the assassination might have something to do with Kirk's vocal opposition to a possible regime-change war in Iran.

"One of President Trump's closest advisers who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis, and then he's suddenly publicly assassinated, and we're not allowed to ask any questions about that — it's a data point," said Kent. "It's a data point that we need to look into."'

One of the sources reportedly familiar with the FBI investigation into Kent told Axios, "He left quite an online paper trail and he has been monitored for months."

"He's going to try to say this was in retaliation for his resignation," continued the source, "but it's the other way around: He quit because he's under investigation — and he knew it."

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How to be bored — and 4 more real-world skills you can give your kids

Recent research appears to confirm what many older people have been noticing for years: Younger generations are falling behind on cognitive skills. Measured IQs are dropping, and abilities like verbal fluency and nonverbal reasoning are declining as well.

If we’re going to reverse this decline in the young, parents and older adults are going to have to do what you might call “re-parenting.” We’re going to have to teach young people some basic skills.

Thank God for Mrs. McGonnigle. She sat with me during lunch for an entire week doing flash cards until I had my times tables burned into my brain.

These are skills that we largely seem to have absorbed by osmosis in our youths. For a number of reasons, these younger generations haven't.

Digital deprivation

It’s not that kids are being born with fewer “hard-wired” smarts than before; it’s not that raw intelligence at birth is declining. Instead, it looks environmental, and the biggest culprit appears to be the “the rapid integration of digital technology into education.”

Bioinformatics researcher Shibasis Rath does a good job of putting complicated studies into plain English in his article “Is Gen Z the first generation less intelligent than their parents?”

The research in both Europe and the U.S. finds that younger generations show noticeable declines in their ability to reason abstractly, to solve novel problems on their own, and to engage in numerical/mathematical reasoning.

As Rath writes:

A large analysis of nearly 400,000 American adults tested between 2006 and 2018 found declines in verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, and matrix reasoning — key markers of fluid intelligence, or the ability to solve novel problems. Spatial reasoning showed modest improvement, but overall composite scores fell, with the sharpest declines among young adults aged 18 to 22.

What does the research suggest is the biggest culprit? Anyone who has watched a smartphone generation struggle with basic tasks will not be surprised.

Those interested in digging into the data can read some pertinent studies here and also here. To summarize, research on intelligence, measured by IQ and other tests, used to find a consistent upward trend over time. This is called the “Flynn Effect.”

From the 1930s to about 2000, researchers found IQs and mental skills rising in each subsequent generation. But then it flattened out. Worse, though, the curve started to decline around 2010; this was just a few years after the introduction of the smartphone.

Many people remarked that giving young people phones that let them outsource their thinking to a machine would lead nowhere good. But the pushback was, and is, loud and boisterous. Those who made such warnings were called “Luddites” and “Boomers.”

Math muddle

Well, it did happen. Think about how you’ve noticed that younger people are confused about how to deal with cash at stores. If they key in the wrong amount, they don’t know how to make change. This means they can’t do the simple arithmetic in their heads that people my age (51) and thereabouts do automatically. They don’t even know how to do simple subtraction on paper, because schools teach “new math.”

If you want to go down a nightmare rabbit hole of what public school math instruction looks like, start here.

This problem with math is mirrored in the ways reading is taught today, like using the discredited “whole language” approach instead of phonics. The series “Sold a Story” tells the tale in a compelling way.

If you still don’t believe today’s young people are floundering and adrift without basic skills, check out this demonstration from a college classroom. Before you watch this short video, understand that it’s not from a bottom-tier community college. These are Duke University students who have no idea which direction is north and who struggle, and fail, to read a simple road map.

The professor in that video is fighting the good fight with humor as he tries to skill-up his college students with the kind of knowledge older generations had by third or fourth grade. But he can’t do it alone. Teachers can’t do it alone, because the problem doesn’t start at school — it starts at home.

Phoning it in

It starts with parental mistakes. Not malice, not abuse, just honest mistakes. This is hard for parents to hear. Heck, it’s hard in 2026 for anyone to hear that they made a mistake or made the wrong choice. But we have to face the truth if we’re going to do better by our kids.

The first and biggest mistake was giving children smartphones at all. And no, they don’t “need” them. If a child needs to be able to call his parents wherever he is, a flip phone will do that without the collateral damage of instant access to violence and pornography right in Johnny’s pocket.

But it’s not just the obscene and damaging internet content that’s the problem. It’s deeper. When Johnny has a GPS system, a calculator, an AI “write my email” program in his hands, he’s going to use them instead of his brain.

So what are we to do? It’s time to be “old-fashioned” again. Wise parents will put their youngsters back in time and take away the digital crutches that have stunted their growth.

1. How to be bored

Take that smartphone away. No child 16 or under should have a smartphone. If you’re not willing to do this, close this tab and stop reading, because you’ve already decided you’re not going to help your kid grow. Yes, other kids, and other parents, will point out to your kid that “you’re the only one who doesn’t have one.” This is an excellent opportunity to impart that timeless parental wisdom: "If every kid jumped off a bridge ..."

For Gen X kids, boredom was the training ground of childhood — the quiet stretch of time that forced you to invent games, pick up a book, wander outside, or simply learn how to be alone with your own thoughts.

2. How to read a map

Buy your child a map of your city, and then expand to an atlas of your state. Sit down and show your kid how to read the map’s instructions (the legend that explains symbols), and plot out the route from your house to your kid’s school. Then have your child plot a route from his school to whatever his favorite destination in town might be. This has to be done by hand, writing down steps by hand, on real paper. Yes, it matters. No, typing doesn’t form the same neural connections. Then keep going to more complicated routes.

3. How to memorize math facts with flash cards

Does your daughter struggle with math? Does she have a hard time with arithmetic? It’s time for flash cards.

In third grade, I was the only kid in class who struggled to memorize his multiplication tables. Thank God for Mrs. McGonnigle. She sat with me during lunch for an entire week doing flash cards until I had my times tables burned into my brain. This kind of rote memorization is the nonnegotiable, must-have building block for moving on to long division, algebra, and more.

4. How to get places without a chauffeur

This one’s easy, and it will save you time: Stop driving your kid to school and everywhere else he wants to go. If school is a mile away, he can walk. I did, and most of you reading did too.

No, it’s not true that it’s “mostly too dangerous in these modern times.” That’s only true in some areas, but even parents in safe neighborhoods have fallen prey to hysteria; they won’t even let their kids ride bikes until sunset. Reverse that.

5. How to cook

Teach them basic cooking.

Not by directing them to a website with GPS-style “turn-by-turn” steps and directions — by showing them and getting them to put their hands on the mixing bowl and the stove along with you. You don’t need detailed recipes to teach basic cooking like pasta, grilled sandwiches, meat loaf, and other home staples.

Gen Z thinks DoorDash is “how food happens.” Teaching them kitchen skills will give them better physical health, it will save them money, and it will show them how much more affordable (and tasty) food can be. If you need a reference cookbook, I recommend the "Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook" (a 1980s version if you can find it). The book explains basic techniques in food preparation that make sense and all fit together.

The Print Collector/Getty Images

Parents: I know it’s not easy. You’re swimming against a huge cultural and commercial tide that wants to swallow your kids’ minds and money. Tech companies don’t want to improve your kids’ quality of life — they want them dumbed down and dependent, and they’re doing a very fine job. Only you can stop this.

It will be lonely for a lot of you. Other parents will think you’re that kooky, crunchy mom or the too-strict dad. All your kids’ friends will poke fun if your daughter doesn’t have an iPhone. Yes, I’m afraid those things will happen.

But so what? You can handle this. Yes, you can. You know you can, because you know that you did when you were growing up.

You can turn this into a lesson for your children too. Model good responses for them. Be confident in how you let silly jabs roll off your back. Explain that there’s value and confidence in knowing how to help yourself. Yeah, your kids will roll their eyes a few times. But in 10 or 15 years, they’ll say, “Thanks, Mom and Dad.”

How Jamie Foxx made Tourette's advocate the latest Hollywood villain

Here in America, we tend to treat racism as our defining moral emergency. Careers collapse over it, and institutions reorganize around preventing it.

Yet we seem unable to distinguish deliberate racial animus from the mere presence of a forbidden word. The recent ugly incident at the BAFTAs — and its even uglier aftermath — makes this painfully clear.

Forced into public contrition to satisfy a ritual demand for outrage.

One of the films honored at this year's ceremony was "I Swear," a dramatized biography of Tourette syndrome advocate John Davidson. In attendance was Davidson himself.

Disruptive and involuntary

Tourette syndrome is a neurological disorder marked by involuntary motor and vocal tics that range from mild movements to disruptive speech; Davidson suffers from coprolalia (essentially Latin for "sh**t-talking") — the rare but notorious form involving uncontrollable obscenities that, in the popular imagination, has come to stand in for the entire condition.

"I Swear" portrays the trials of living with such a condition, which at one point led Davidson to attempt suicide by walking into a river. It depicts a man who has been bullied, punched, and otherwise assaulted throughout his life because he can’t stop himself from saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Even in his moment of triumph — with the film about his life winning five awards, including Best British Film, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay — Davidson's Tourette syndrome came back to haunt him.

'The opposite of what I believe'

Throughout the evening, Davidson experienced multiple vocal tics. While actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award, one of those involuntary outbursts included the N-word. As Davidson would later tell Variety, he “ticked perhaps 10 different offensive words” that night; the racial slur was one among several.

Davidson added, “What you hear me shouting is literally the last thing in the world I believe; it is the opposite of what I believe. The most offensive word that I ticked at the ceremony … is a word I would never use and would completely condemn if I did not have Tourette’s.”

The audience had been warned in advance that vocal tics, including involuntary swearing, could occur.

Insult before injury

Host Alan Cumming addressed the incident from the stage, asking for “understanding” and apologizing “if you were offended.” Not long after, Davidson chose to leave the auditorium, later explaining that he was aware that his condition was causing distress.

But in the aftermath of the incident, some black Hollywood elites were quick to ignore the medical context in favor of moral condemnation. Actor Wendell Pierce wrote on X that “it doesn’t matter the reasoning for the racist slur,” insisting that “the insult … takes priority.”

Jamie Foxx, commenting on an Instagram post, was blunter: “Nah, he meant that s**t."

"Sinners" production designer Hannah Beachler, who attended the ceremony, argued that the apology fell short, calling it a “throw away” response.

But the awkwardness of Alan Cumming’s on-stage apology — “if you were offended” — reflected an unusual moral dilemma To apologize unequivocally on Davidson’s behalf would have implied agency and culpability, as though a neurological disorder were a character defect. Yet to say nothing would have signaled indifference to the inflammatory power of the word.

Davidson himself drew the line the following day. “Whilst I will never apologize for having Tourette syndrome,” he said, “I will apologize for any pain, upset and misunderstanding that it may create.”

Permissible sin

Davidson was a careful to separate regret from guilt. But such nuance is apparently not possible where this particular slur is concerned. In America, we are expected to believe that uttering the N-word — regardless of intent or context — is one of the worst moral assaults any person can commit.

And so a man whose disorder makes him incapable of controlling certain outbursts was forced into public contrition to satisfy a ritual demand for outrage. The reaction was less about justice than about reaffirming the hierarchy of permissible sin.

You could ask for no better illustration of the kind of race-based narcissism our country has encouraged in attempting to atone for its genuinely racist past. By treating black Americans as permanently wounded and permanently aggrieved — so that even a wealthy and powerful celebrity like Foxx can feel victimized by someone like Davidson — we see them not as individuals, but as almost sacred symbols.

This attitude is dehumanizing. It denies agency. We all know that Foxx's accusation is wrong; Davidson didn't "mean" to offend. But there's a sense in which we assume Foxx himself "can't help" but react the way he did. After all, this is the N-word we're talking about.

This is the same infantilizing impulse that makes honest discussion about persistent dysfunction in parts of the black community — crime, family instability, educational failure — feel radioactive.

Aurore Marechal/Getty Images

Grandiose traits

The theory seems to be that black people have been so oppressed by pervasive "systemic racism" that it isn't possible to hold them morally accountable in the same way you would anyone else. We've spent the last decade hearing about the "white supremacy" at the heart of America. This isn't just an opinion — it's actual science!

But there is some other science that complicates this story of permanent psychic injury. Decades of research have found that black Americans report higher average levels of self-esteem than white Americans.

And some research even shows that this can tip into pathology. A 2011 study in the Journal of Personality Research titled “Racial Differences in Narcissistic Tendencies” found higher self-reported levels of certain grandiose narcissistic traits among black participants.

Tourette’s-induced slurs are, of course, are not a widespread occurrence. But it's worth noticing how the BAFTA incident strips the issue to its essentials. A mature society should be able to hold two ideas at once: that racial slurs are degrading and historically charged and that neurological conditions are real and mitigating.

If we can't, we have a deeper problem. The woke era's tendency to see racism everywhere means our current moral reflexes are less about serving truth than they are about protecting a narrative. The more we allow this collective delusion to take hold, the harder it will be to speak plainly to each other. A society that cannot speak honestly about motive and meaning will not remain merely confused; it will grow brittle. And brittle things tend to break under pressure.

Sen. Sheehy steps in: 'Unhinged' activist's arm snaps as Capitol Police intervene in Senate hearing gone wild

A Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing regarding the readiness of the U.S. military was interrupted on Wednesday by a bone-breaking scuffle.

Brian McGinnis, a Marine veteran and firefighter who is running as a Green Party candidate to represent North Carolina in the U.S. Senate, noted in a video taken before the hearing that he intended to ask lawmakers "why they're going to send our men and women to harm's way when our elected officials said that there would be no world war."

Wearing his Marine Corps dress uniform, McGinnis interrupted the hearing with a condemnation of America's involvement in Iran, shouting, "No one wants to fight for Israel," and, "Stand up for America."

'This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one.'

The Capitol Police said in a statement obtained by the Daily Montanan, "This afternoon, an unruly man who started to illegally protest during a hearing, put everyone in a dangerous position by violently resisting and fighting our officer’s attempts to remove him from the room."

In footage captured by CBS News' Alan He, multiple USCP officers can be seen forcefully ejecting McGinnis from the room with the help of Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy (R), who can be seen grabbing McGinnis' leg and trying to pull him out the door.

Sen. Sheehy, a decorated Navy SEAL veteran who partook in numerous combat deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, said in a statement, "Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation."

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Footage of the struggle published by Code Pink, a leftist anti-war group co-founded by former Democratic political activist Jodie Evans, shows McGinnis insert his arm through one doorway while the rest of his person is being forced through an adjacent doorway.

Sheehy can be seen wrapping his arm around McGinnis' shoulder in an apparent effort to free the protester's arm — now trapped by the closing second door — while the officers tug at the protester's legs.

A loud snap can be heard, prompting an onlooker to yell, "His hand! His hand!" and another individual off-screen to utter, "Oh my God."

Amid groans from onlookers, a man off-screen yells, "The senator broke his hand! A sitting U.S. senator just broke the hand of a Marine."

Upon realizing that McGinnis' arm was indeed stuck, the officers momentarily stopped pulling to help Sheehy dislodge the broken limb.

When asked whether his hand was OK, McGinnis said, "No, it's not." He later noted on X that his arm was broken.

While being escorted out of the building, McGinnis — who married a Palestinian and volunteered in 2024 for the pro-Palestinian "Freedom Flotilla Coalition" — shouted, "Free Palestine! From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, Palestine will be free!"

The USCP confirmed that the protester was treated for an injury and now faces three counts of assaulting a police officer and three counts of "resisting arrest and crowding, obstructing, and incommoding for the unlawful demonstration."

Sheehy noted on X, "This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one. I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence."

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Lindsey Graham feverishly demands ANOTHER Middle Eastern conflict: 'Fly with Israel'

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has long been a cheerleader fo r U.S. military interventions and/or U.S.-orchestrated regime changes around the globe in countries such as Afghanistan, Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela. Iran appears, however, to have been a priority target for the senator.

Graham expressed great satisfaction when the U.S. and Israel resumed their bombardment of Iranian targets on Saturday, suggesting that "the biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us" and that "if the ayatollah goes down, historic peace advances."

After adding to reporters on Tuesday that regime change in Tehran opens "a gateway to peace," Graham animatedly indicated that he first wants to see the U.S. intervene militarily in another Middle Eastern nation.

'Settle the score, even the account.'

"One thing to President Trump, in case you're watching. In 1983, Ronald Reagan sent Marines and sailors to try to police and deal with the Lebanese civil war," said Graham. "They were at the end of the runway. Hezbollah attacked the Marine barracks, killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors, and wounded 100 others. Ronald Reagan, who I admire and love, withdrew and never did anything about it."

The senator suggested that President Donald Trump should settle the 43-year-old score.

"I'm calling on President Trump today: Join Israel to attack Hezbollah. Avenge the Marines. America never forgets," said Graham, identifying alleged Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps "assets" in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, as potential U.S. targets.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Tuesday that Beirut "must understand that Hezbollah is dragging them into a war that is not theirs."

Israeli forces have in recent days seized control of additional strategic positions and exchanged fire with Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces indicated that they have bombed numerous Hezbollah targets across the country and assassinated numerous hostile officials, including Abu Hamza Rami, the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Lebanon sector.

Graham, who is running for re-election in America, implored Trump to "come up with a new operation called 'Semper Fi.' Fly with Israel and go after Hezbollah who has American blood on its hands."

"Not only take the mothership of Iran down," continued the senator, "also take the proxy of Hezbollah. Settle the score, even the account."

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) was among those who criticized Graham over his warmongering, stating, "Lindsey hasn't seen a fist fight that he hasn't wanted to turn into a bombing raid. So I just take it with a grain of salt, dude."

BlazeTV host Auron MacIntyre wrote, "Yeah, this is going well."

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Netanyahu denies forcing US into war after mixed messages from Rubio, Johnson

In his Monday appearance on Fox News' "Hannity," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended the latest U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran and denied the dominant interpretation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's and House Speaker Mike Johnson's recent remarks about the genesis of the attacks.

Compelled to act?

The Trump administration attempted on Monday to address the mounting confusion about the justification and objectives for the Iran strikes.

'We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces.'

As part of this broader effort, Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill, "Why now? The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States."

"The assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties," said Rubio.

"We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher [than] those killed," continued the secretary. "And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act."

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of the Gang of Eight who was briefed ahead of the resumption of strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, echoed Rubio, suggesting to reporters that the strikes were a "defensive measure."

"Israel was determined to act in their own defense here with or without American support," said Johnson, suggesting further that Iran posed an "existential threat" to Israel, and its missile production was outstripping "our allies in the region."

Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images

"Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander in chief and the administration and the officials I just named had a very difficult decision to make," continued Johnson. "They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S. — to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region and beyond — and they determined because of the exquisite intelligence that we had that if Israel fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then they would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets."

The suggestion that probable blowback from an ally's planned preemptive attack on another country forced America's involvement in a deadly conflict prompted outrage and debate — even on the right.

Conservative commentator Matt Walsh, for instance, said in response to Rubio's statement, "So he's flat out telling us that we're in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is basically the worst possible thing he could have said."

Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

On the flip side, National Review editor Philip Klein suggested that critics had misconstrued Rubio's meaning.

Klein noted that later in Rubio's press conference, the secretary of state said that the U.S. was not forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action and that "this operation needed to happen because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage."

'Nobody drags Donald Trump into anything.'

Democrats such as Sen. Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), and former Biden White House Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden made hay of Rubio's and/or Johnson's remarks as did Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who stated, "Mr. Rubio admitted what we all knew: U.S. has entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel. There was never any so-called Iranian 'threat.' Shedding of both American and Iranian blood is thus on Israel Firsters."

The outrage over the suggestion that America's hand was forced not by an enemy but by a friend appears to have prompted a response from President Donald Trump, who noted on Monday evening,

The Radical Left Democrats, a Party that has completely lost its way, are complaining bitterly about the very necessary and important attack, by the United States and Israel, on Iran. What most people understand is that they are only complaining BECAUSE I DID IT and, if I didn’t do it, they would be screaming — Why didn’t “TRUMP” attack Iran, he should do it, IMMEDIATELY?

Trump then urged his followers to watch Netanyahu's interview on Fox News, where Hannity asked the Israeli prime minister about the forced-to-act claim.

"There are people that say, 'Well, the prime minister of Israel dragged Donald Trump into it,'" said Hannity. "As somebody that's been friends with him over 30 years, nobody drags Donald Trump into anything, number one, but I want to get your reaction to that."

Netanyahu laughed, then said, "Well, you're right. I mean that's — that's ridiculous. Donald Trump is the strongest leader in the world. He does what he thinks is right for America. He does also what he thinks is right for future generations, and frankly, we're partners in that effort."

The Israeli leader suggested that it was necessary to strike because Iran "started building new sites, new places, underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb programs immune within months. If no action was taken now, no action could be taken in the future."

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Poll: GOP voters' lukewarm support for Iran strikes significantly lower than past conflicts

A Reuters/Ipsos poll that concluded on Sunday revealed that the joint U.S.-Israeli regime-change strikes are unpopular with most Americans.

While Republicans are apparently more supportive of the military campaign than their counterparts, the new poll found that such support is largely conditional and far less than for the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

The new polling is consistent with surveys conducted last month, which indicated that Americans were not particularly keen on the prospect of a new series of U.S. military strikes against Iran.

For instance, an SSRS/University of Maryland poll, conducted from Feb. 5 to Feb. 9, found that 21% of respondents favored an attack, 49% were opposed, and 30% were unsure. An Economist/YouGov poll found that 28% of respondents supported and 48% opposed the U.S. taking military action in Iran.

Despite strong public headwinds, the U.S. joined Israel in hammering the Shiite nation anyway, destroying numerous military assets and assassinating top Iranian officials over the weekend while sustaining numerous casualties.

According to the new Reuters/Ipsos poll, 27% of respondents said that they approved of the strikes, 43% signaled disapproval, and 29% said they weren't sure.

'We expect casualties.'

Broken down by party affiliation:

55% of Republicans approved of the strikes, 32% said they were unsure or skipped the question, and 13% said they disapproved;
7% of Democrats said they approved, 19% said they were unsure or skipped the question, and 74% said they disapproved; and
19% of individuals in the "other" camp said they approved, 38% said they were unsure or skipped the question, and 44% said they disapproved.

The support for the present conflict pales in comparison to American support for the Iraq war prior to and following the March 20, 2003, invasion.

A poll conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News just prior to the invasion of Iraq found that 71% of Americans supported going to war. An Ipsos-Reid poll conducted in the two days leading up to the invasion found that roughly nine in 10 Republicans and half of Democrats supported going to war.

The Pew Research Center revealed days later that "support for the decision to go to war has remained steady at about seven-in-ten since the fighting began."

A total of 56% of respondents said that Trump "is too willing to use military force to advance U.S. interests." Nearly a quarter of Republicans — 23% — agreed with this statement.

US Central Command

The poll found that 42% of Republicans would be less likely to support the military campaign against Iran if it leads to "U.S. troops in the Middle East being killed or injured."

U.S. Central command indicated that as of Monday morning, four American service members had been killed in action.

Six more service members were nearly killed on Sunday in an apparent friendly-fire incident in which three U.S. F-15E Strike Eagles were shot down over Kuwait. CENTCOM noted that all six aircrew personnel "ejected safely, have been recovered, and are in stable condition."

In an interview on Sunday with the New York Times, President Donald Trump discussed the casualties sustained so far in the conflict and suggested that there will likely be more.

"Three is three too many as far as I'm concerned," Trump said. "If you look at projections — they do projections — it, you know, it could be quite a bit higher than that."

"We expect casualties," Trump added.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that 45% of respondents, including 34% of Republicans and 44% of independents, would be less likely to support the campaign if domestic gas or oil prices spiked.

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Fetterman joins GOP lawmakers in praise of Iran strikes; Massie joins Democrats in condemnation

The latest joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes on Iran have been met in America with bipartisan praise and condemnation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of America's most vociferous advocates for regime change in Iran, rushed to celebrate the "historic operation," noting that he is "in awe of President Trump's determination to be a man of peace but at the end of the day, evil's worst nightmare."

'This is not "America First."'

Graham wrote in one of several emotion-laden commentaries, "My mind is racing with the thought that the murderous ayatollah's regime in Iran will soon be no more. The biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years is upon us."

Graham was hardly alone in his celebration of the regime-change strikes on the Shiite nation.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (R) provided a laundry list of reasons why this is a "vital mission of vengeance, and justice, and safety," noting, "Iran has waged war against the U.S. for 47 years: the hostage crisis, the Beirut Marine barracks, Khobar Towers, roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan that killed or maimed thousands of American soldiers, the attempted assassination of President Trump."

Photo by Mahsa/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images

"The butcher’s bill has finally come due for the ayatollahs," added Cotton, who signaled appreciation in a separate post for Trump's speech.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee with Cotton, thanked Trump for his "strong leadership," and characterized Operation Epic Fury as both a demonstration of "peace through strength" and "AMERICA FIRST."

Democrat Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) joined Graham and the other Republicans in lavishing praise on President Donald Trump for attacking Iran, stating, "President Trump has been willing to do what's right and necessary to produce real peace in the region."

"God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel," continued the Democrat.

Several of Fetterman's Democrat colleagues condemned the attacks and the president's perceived circumvention of Congress, which retains the authority to declare war.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) claimed that "single-handedly starting another war with Iran is dangerous and illegal" and expressed doubt about whether "America first" meant another foreign entanglement.

Democrat Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) raised concerns about the constitutionality of the strikes, noting, "The Constitution is clear: the decision to take this nation to war rests with Congress, and launching large-scale military operations — particularly in the absence of an imminent threat to the United States — raises serious legal and constitutional concerns."

Warner demanded that the administration "come forward with a clear legal justification, a defined end state, and a plan that avoids dragging the United States into yet another costly and unnecessary war."

While Congress was not formally briefed on the strikes, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with and briefed the Gang of Eight, which includes the Democrat and Republican leaders from both the Senate and the House.

A spokesperson for Johnson confirmed to NOTUS that Johnson was notified. Sources also told NOTUS that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) were notified along with Sen. Warner, Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), and Republican Rep. Rick Crawford (Ark.).

Photo by Stringer/Getty Images

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) — who recently filed a Senate resolution with Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) that would block a war against Iran unless approved by Congress — was less restrained than Warner in his criticism of the president.

Kaine accused Trump of waging an "illegal war," called the strikes a "colossal mistake," and implored his colleagues to "go on the record about this dangerous, unnecessary, and idiotic action" and vote on his war powers resolution.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a critic of the president who has similarly attempted to prevent Trump from going to war with Iran without congressional approval, referred to the attacks as "acts of war unauthorized by Congress."

In a subsequent post on social media, Massie stated, "I am opposed to this War. This is not 'America First.'"

"When Congress reconvenes, I will work with @RepRoKhanna to force a Congressional vote on war with Iran," continued Massie. "The Constitution requires a vote, and your Representative needs to be on record as opposing or supporting this war."

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Luxury expectations

Maxed-out minimums

Modern-day Tudors

An old-fashioned approach

Degraded status

Where now?

1. Kodachrome film

2. Three-strip Technicolor

3. Air-cooled Volkswagen engines

4. The Chrysler Slant Six engine

5. Customer service

Digital deprivation

Math muddle

Phoning it in

1. How to be bored

2. How to read a map

3. How to memorize math facts with flash cards

4. How to get places without a chauffeur

5. How to cook

Disruptive and involuntary

'The opposite of what I believe'

Insult before injury

Permissible sin

Grandiose traits

Compelled to act?

We’ll keep you informed with top stories for conservatives who want to become informed decision makers.