Jennifer Sey is an ex-gymnast, but she spent years swimming against the tide.

The former national champion once blew the whistle on abuse within the sport, a position she says drew plenty of internal fire. Powerful gymnastic voices dubbed her a “grifter and a liar,” Sey recalls to Align, long before the general public learned of horrifying cases like convicted predator Larry Nassar.

'I think there are a lot of young people who look at that time and see the course of their lives were altered forever. Democrats did that.'

She recalls receiving threatening voicemails at work from the head of USA Gymnastics, too.

“The sporting community really attacked me, teammates [did, too] … even the head of Gymnastics Australia tried to take me down,” Sey recalls of abuses chronicled in her memoir, “Chalked Up.”

The experience “strengthened my resolve,” she says.

From Levis exec to 'radical'

Jennifer Sey

Years later, Sey sat in a comfortable position as a Levi’s executive when another injustice forced her to speak out. She watched with alarm as leaders kept kids locked out of school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That stance eventually forced her exit from Levi’s corporate team and branded her a radical in the eyes of some pandemic hardliners. Years later, Sey’s position has been more than vindicated. Legacy media outlets confirm the damage done to students who couldn’t participate in school during the pandemic.

The cost of quarantine

Except she’s not willing to forgive and forget. She’s the driving force behind an upcoming documentary “Generation COVID,” focused on the innocents caught in the bureaucratic crossfire.

The film lets children share what they endured during the pandemic. Suicide attempts. Lost collegiate scholarships. Drug overdoses. Scholastic declines. Weight gain. Loneliness.

“It’s heartbreaking and devastating,” she says of those on-camera revelations. “I can’t tell you how many of the interviews I ended up crying and needed to collect myself.”

Sey’s children suffered, too.

“It’s why we moved to Colorado from San Francisco,” she says, recalling how one of her children went from being a boisterous kid to one who was “distant and lethargic.”

“I want him to establish a love of learning ... it broke my heart,” she says.

Rewriting history

She’s furious to see some who helped shutter schools attempt to rewrite history on the subject, like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

“They’re such liars ... it’s all so well-documented,” she says. “How do they have the gall to lie about their role?”

“Nobody was fighting for the children,” she adds.

“Generation COVID” features sizable input from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, now the Director of the National Institutes of Health. The film also eschews partisan politics, featuring voices across the political spectrum with a focus on the facts.

“It’s not at all meant to be political but document what happened and hear from the kids directly,” he says.

Distributor wanted

The film still needs a distributor, a complication that plays into our political divide.

“Right-wing conservative platforms talked about COVID for a while, but it’s played out. Mainstream left-leaning platforms aren’t ready for this ... it puts us in a difficult spot,” she says.

The film’s message may be more relevant than many realize. She name-checks bird flu woes and housing “migrants” in public schools as examples of modern-day school concerns.

“The ‘Closed Schools’ [approach] is now a tool in the tool box. We close them at the bat of an eye,” she says. “There’s a portion of the left and the community that says if we just did it better and locked down harder, it would have worked out better.”

Sey acknowledges one political fallout from the lockdowns — a higher number of young voters flocked to President Donald Trump in the last election. She says one of the young men featured in “Generation COVID” “will not forgive and forget” how the lockdowns impacted his life, including extreme weight gain and the possible loss of a football scholarship.

He's not alone.

“I think there are a lot of young people who look at that time and see the course of their lives were altered forever. Democrats did that,” she says.

Built for the fight

Sey isn’t done fighting. Last year, she created the XX-XY Athletics brand, dedicated to defending women’s sports. The case of trans swimmer Lia Thomas versus Riley Gaines made national headlines in recent years and epitomizes Sey's battle.

She’s pleased by President Trump’s executive orders protecting women’s sports but understands more work needs to be done. Consider the recent case of Natalie Daniels, a five-time marathon winner and mom who got kicked out of her running club on the dawn of the Boston Marathon for speaking out against trans women in women’s sports.

“She’s the kindest, sweetest, most gentle human,” Sey says of Daniels, who was targeted by activists who Sey says tried to track her whereabouts during the imbroglio. “It’s a reminder of how far we have to go … she was bullied to the point of almost retracting her comments.”

“That’s what we’re up against. I’m not gonna let an unhinged, screaming minority intimidate me,” she says. “Eighty percent of Americans agree [with me].”

Few fights are harder than what Sey already endured as a young athlete.

“The physical pain and suffering inflicted on me, eating 300 calories and working out eight hours a day ... call me any names you want, I can take it,” she says. “Nothing will ever be that hard.”

BlazeTV's Dave Landau battles demons with darkly funny 'Party of One'

Dave Landau is an open book on stage.

The “Normal World” star shares hilarious tales from his self-destructive youth. Hear a few and an uncomfortable thought comes to mind once the laughter subsides.

'You can fall down a lot, and you have to learn to get back up ... it took me so long to learn that lesson,' he says. 'Even 13 arrests didn’t stop me from drinking and enjoying drugs.'

It’s a miracle he’s still alive.

Now, he’s sharing how close he came to becoming a drug statistic in his new, sobering book, “Party of One: A Fuzzy Memoir.” The autobiography details Landau’s troubled childhood, from his father’s extended cancer fight to his many brushes with the law.

It’s darkly comic and often laugh-out-loud funny, but Landau isn’t content with making readers howl. He hopes his story might help others conquer their demons, too.

Inadvertently helpful

“I had to relive it and let it go and forgive myself. That’s the hardest thing in the world for me,” Landau tells Align about writing “Party of One.” “It’s hokey, but it could help anybody who might be struggling ... the more you know you’re not alone, the better it is ... being more open, you inadvertently help people.”

Landau wrote the bulk of the book during the pandemic, but he wasn’t ready to share it just yet.

“It’s really personal to me,” he says, and he wanted to make sure the people chronicled in “Party of One” understood the purpose behind the book. “I decided it was finally time to let the world know, at least my fans know about it.”

Some passages may feel familiar to those who have addicts in their families. Others will be shocking no matter one’s background.

“You can fall down a lot, and you have to learn to get back up ... it took me so long to learn that lesson,” he says. “Even 13 arrests didn’t stop me from drinking and enjoying drugs.”

The book, co-written with Jon Wiederhorn, shares how his comedic instincts steered him toward sobriety.

From Detroit to Dallas

Landau made videos as a younger man and obsessed over sketch comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.” His father would wake him up as a teen to watch “SNL” together. He later connected with Second City’s Detroit chapter. That’s the famed improv network that gave birth to stars like Gilda Radner, Amy Poehler, and John Belushi.

“It gave me an outlet I never had before,” he says, noting his family and friends urged him on. Now, he creates comedy on the fly with Blaze Media’s “Normal World” alongside co-host ¼ Black Garrett.

“It has its little cult audience that’s getting bigger. It’s nice to watch something grow,” he says. “Being able to do sketch [comedy] after growing up with sketch [comedy] is a highlight of my life.”

“Party of One” lets him connect with that growing fan base, something that’s increasingly common in today’s comedy world. Comedy fans feel familiar with today’s stand-up stars, a bond forged from on-stage routines, podcasts, and social media.

It’s one reason pundits say President Donald Trump used appearances on “The Joe Rogan Experience” and other comedy podcasts to retake the White House.

“You feel like you’re a part of somebody’s life ... it’s another reason to put out my book. Why hide it?” he asks.

Fair game

Landau is similarly open about his political views. He’s embraced elements of the modern right over the years, working to keep himself above the tribal fray at the same time. His philosophy? Everyone is fair game.

In the process, he educated himself on the political scene, eager to be more precise in his commentary.

“I started having to read the news every day ... things became more clear to me,” he says.

He spent months working alongside “Opie & Anthony” alum Anthony Cumia, who wasn’t shy about his right-leaning views. Landau paid an accidental price for that.

“People would attack me for doing nothing. Friends turned on me [for] a political ideology I wasn’t even sharing. I was just next to it,” he says of his formerly left-leaning persona. That also happened when he later teamed with conservative comedian Steven Crowder.

Those partnerships took their toll.

Late-night pariah

“I paid a lot to be where I am now,” he says. Many roles and opportunities dry up when you so much as empathize with the right, he says.

“I wasn’t going to get on late night, ever,” he adds of mainstream programs like CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” He did flip the script on Hollywood Inc. by appearing on Fox News’ late-night smash “Gutfeld!”

The repercussions didn’t stop with his professional life.

“I lost friends,” he says before suggesting they weren’t real friends in the first place. “People show their true colors. ... That’s part of this business. It’s not always very pleasant.”

Slammin' Sammy Swindell, the fiercest driver dirt racing has ever seen

Sammy Swindell is a race car driver, a motorsports legend. So naturally, I wanted his opinion on Mario Kart.

"Mario Kart?” he asks, either amused or annoyed; it’s hard to tell with Sammy. “Yeah, I’ve played a little. But racing video games don’t feel real. They don’t give you the full-body experience."

'When the car gets off the ground, you’re not really in control. So I’m trying to figure out where I’m at and where I’m going. I try to get back in control.'

He means it when he describes racing as a full-body experience. His aggressive driving style is what earned him the nickname “Slammin'.”

Precision at any speed

Few figures in sprint car racing command the same level of respect as Sammy Swindell. His work uniform has at various times included sponsorships from STP and Hooters. NASCAR described him as “arguably one of the greatest sprint car drivers ever.”

Born in Bartlett, Tennessee, in 1955, Swindell built a career on raw speed, mechanical precision, and an unmatched competitive fire.

He first turned heads in the 1970s, making a name for himself on dirt ovals across the country. But it was in the World of Outlaws circuit where he cemented his legacy.

Over five decades, Swindell has collected hundreds of victories, multiple championships, and a reputation as one of the most talented — if sometimes polarizing — figures in open-wheel racing.

As motorsports site the Driver’s Project notes: “It doesn’t matter if you love him or hate him, when Sammy Swindell shows up at a racetrack, things always get more interesting.”

I chatted with Sammy in early February. He has a reputation for being dry, almost hostile, but as he’s said many times, racing is his job, and he builds his own cars. Most of the time, when someone approaches him, he’s distracted by work. And it happens a lot; in the racing world, he’s a celebrity.

Swindell at the 1987 Indianapolis 500. Photo courtesy Sammy Swindell

Track tactician

He was more friendly than I expected, but focused, his Tennessee drawl leavened with the stoicism of an engineer-minded athlete. He smiled and laughed a few times but quickly returned to his gravitas.

Halfway through our chat, I realized he’s not grumpy — he’s analytical.

"I've got to meet a lot of really, really smart people," Swindell tells me. He learned a lot from his friend Henry "Smokey" Yunick, the legendary stock car driver, mechanic, engineer, and tactician.

And that’s the word I’ve been grasping for: tactician.

Toward the end of our interview, he showed his cards a little.

I mentioned that in any sport, once you win the biggest prize, everyone studies exactly how you did it — your equipment, your methods, everything is exposed. And the test after that is whether you can win again once everyone else catches up.

Swindell has done this repeatedly. How?

"Part of it is just to keep as much as you can to yourself," he says. "And sometimes, you throw things to make them look somewhere else when the important stuff is over there."

Giant among 'midgets'

I first attended the Chili Bowl Nationals in 2024 while writing a story for Frontier magazine. I fell in love with the chaos and fervor of the event —the Super Bowl of dirt-track racing, drawing 20,000 people to Tulsa from all over the world.

Swindell at this year's Chili Bowl. Brendan Bauman, courtesy of Sammy Swindell

The indoor midget car race is a brutal test of skill, where conditions change every lap and drivers claw their way through deep fields just to make the main event.

This January, I returned for the 39th annual Chili Bowl, and Swindell was there, as always, drawing a crowd everywhere he walked.

He’s comfortable with the racing press. Once, during a live interview, he paused mid-sentence to bark at someone, “Come back here, you little pisser, POS!”

Swindell has won the Chili Bowl Nationals a record five times, a feat that cements him as one of the greatest dirt racers of all time.

Bryan Hulbert, a motorsports legend in his own right and the Chili Bowl’s announcer, told me that “Sammy’s legacy helped make the Chili Bowl what it is today.”

His dominance as a driver and car owner set the bar higher for everyone racing against him. Hulbert said Swindell’s “ingenuity in car design was ahead of its time,” with others only now starting to catch up. The same goes for sprint car racing — Swindell has “contributed more to the performance and engineering side of the sport than most realize.”

Dirt-track dynasty

Swindell’s father served as president of the club that ran the races around Memphis.

At 15, Sammy began his own racing career at Riverside International Speedway, winning in just his third race.

He won six races that first season. By then, he was already moving through different classes — sprint cars, modifieds, late models — anything with wheels and an engine.

"I looked at it as a job," he tells me. "The better I did, the more rewards I got. More sponsors, more money. It was just about putting everything I had into it to be the best."

Swindell spent two years in college studying physics and engineering before committing to racing full-time.

His mechanical instincts gave him an edge over competitors, as he built and fine-tuned his own cars. "I want the car to do the work, and I just guide it. If you can set your car up to do things others can’t, passing them is easy."

A three-time World of Outlaws champion (1981, 1982, 1997), Swindell was a dominant force in sprint car racing for decades.

Despite his intense, no-nonsense approach on the track, his impact extended beyond his own career. He shaped modern sprint car racing through his innovations and mentorship of younger drivers.

Hulbert observes that Swindell “races everyone hard, but not as hard as he raced his son, Kevin.”

Hulbert recalls their first-second finish at the Chili Bowl — his first time announcing the event — and compared it to the fierce battles between brothers, where rivalries produce “some of the most brutal racing you’ll ever see.”

That race came down to the final lap, and Swindell “made his son earn every bit of that win and then some.”

The only other time Hulbert had seen Swindell race with that level of intensity was against Steve Kinser, a rivalry that defined an era of sprint car racing.

Crash course

Crashes are a part of racing. Sprint cars flip. They land hard. Steering wheels and rubber can launch into the bleachers, right over chain link and beer cans.

But Swindell treats wrecks as he treats the rest of racing: as a problem to be solved.

"When the car gets off the ground, you’re not really in control. So I’m trying to figure out where I’m at and where I’m going. I try to get back in control."

He leans toward impacts rather than tensing up. "Some guys try to fight it, but you can’t. You just have to go with the flow."

It’s the same mentality he brings to racing in general.

At 69, Swindell still carries the same philosophy: Win, then move on to the next one. "I never thought of quitting. If I had a bad night, I just wanted to figure it out and do better."

I asked him if time slows down in a crash.

"Yeah, sometimes it seems like it takes a half hour, but it’s only a few seconds," he says. "The whole time, I’m just trying to gain control again, or whatever control I might have to make it stop or make it slow down or make it easier on myself and the car."

He pauses.

"I don’t know, maybe that’s just me. I don’t really hear too many people talk about that stuff — what they do in a crash. But yeah, I’m trying to get back in control."

The education of failure

When asked about the races or particular nights he often revisits, Sammy Swindell paused thoughtfully, considering the many tracks he's conquered. He reflected that each victory carries its unique memory, shaped by subtle differences from track to track.

Early in his career with the World of Outlaws, Sammy developed an analytical approach. "I'd look at a new track and ask myself what it reminded me of. If it resembled another place where I'd done well, I'd start with that familiar setup." Yet he emphasized that each track, no matter how similar at first glance, has distinct characteristics — corners, radius, banking — that must be mastered individually.

When our conversation shifted to the emotions tied to winning — the celebratory moments exiting the car, hoisting trophies, or holding oversized checks — Sammy offered an intriguing insight.

“Winning simplifies things," he explained. "It means you're not scrambling to repair the car. Your job becomes basic maintenance, setting up for the next race."

Conversely, a poor performance sends him into a meticulous review, examining missteps and setups gone wrong.

“You learn more from the nights things don't go right," Sammy noted thoughtfully. "You discover what's off. It's easier to make mistakes than it is to get everything exactly right."

I found Sammy's perspective refreshing, particularly since many racers admit winning adds pressure to repeat success. But Sammy sees it differently. For him, victory isn't an added burden; it's confirmation that he's met his goal.

"Winning never felt like pressure," Sammy said. "It was always the aim. Once I achieved it, the tension lifted. The next night was simply another chance to do it again."

'Four Against the West' goes behind the legend of Judge Roy Bean — and his three brothers

Joe Pappalardo writes history the way it should be written — loud, unruly, drenched in blood and whiskey, peppered with characters who refuse to be forgotten.

His latest book, “Four Against the West: The True Saga of a Frontier Family That Reshaped the Nation — and Created a Legend,” continues this legacy. It follows the four Bean brothers — Roy, Sam, James, and Joshua — who each left their mark on the Old West, navigating battlefields, courtrooms, and saloons, somehow able to bounce around the Wild West at its most unruly.

'More reporting is always the answer. If you’re in a jam, call another expert, pull another record, find another angle.'

Roy Bean, famously dubbed “the Law West of the Pecos,” may be the most recognizable of the bunch, and while the book opens with him, Pappalardo makes it clear that the real story is a family saga, not just a single outlaw-turned-lawman myth, although navigating that mythology is a huge part of the fun.

“I thought, let’s do a quadruple biography, candy-cane their experiences together,” Pappalardo told me. “You’ve got a pretty good book that really covers everything about the Old West — the Santa Fe Trail, California, New Mexico, the Civil War, the Mexican-American War. How could you go wrong?”

Just tell the story

I caught up with Pappalardo in early February, three months into his book promotion tour, fresh from a lecture taping for C-SPAN.

As a nonfiction author, Pappalardo captures the enormity of life with cinematic grit, even in his account of the history of the sunflower. What you get when you read his books is writing that breathes, scenes full of motion, carried by sentences that are fun to read.

It’s full of vivid passages like this one, the kind that lift you into the beauty and commotion:

The steamboat creeps innocently upriver, sternwheel churning a wake that shimmers in the moonlight. The vessel is loaded with passengers from New Orleans, where an insidious disease is emerging among recent immigrants there. And some on board, destined for the docks at Kansas City, are contagious.

It’s readable without losing the mysterious vitality of literature. In an era of gimmickry, Pappalardo achieves a forgotten maxim among writers: “Just tell the damn story.”

Pappalardo eschews the jumbled postmodern approach, where time is scattered into shards of disassembled events, for the river-like flow of a sequence in natural order. Better yet, he scripts the historical account in present tense, so the movement feels constant. This intensifies the animating spirit of the era, growing in the reader with each turn of the page: go west, go west, go west.

Manifest destiny

Details. Richness. Scenery. Color. The blood of existence. You get access to the thoughts and feelings and secrets of the characters. Immediately, you’re pulled into their minds, even their souls.

But while “Four Against the West” reads like fiction, all of it has been meticulously verified, woven so nimbly that even the footnotes feel native.

There’s so much nature, so much wildness, so much rugged earth. All the more beautiful when civilization crashes into it, punctured by slavery or cholera.

Like this passage:

Joshua Bean walks out of the Gil’s house, savoring the sunset view of the harbor, the rolling hills of the Mission Valley, and the mountains stretching off to his right. A dirt road from Old Town follows the north bank of the valley to Mission San Diego. The open land surrounding San Diego is crawling with roaming cattle, and every so often he can spot bacteria in sombreros and loose-fitting white shirts, trailing the herd on horseback or lounging in the shade of trees.

Pappalardo’s craftsmanship is silent. One device he uses, for example, is suppositional narrative — he tells us what the characters “must have” felt.

In order to pull this off, a writer has to have gathered an incredible amount of information, far more than what winds up in print.

Then he sprinkles in philosophical observations and moral principles. He captures the social and political realities that dictated the era. Commerce, education, transportation, health, leisure. Legal theory, military strategy, economic orthodoxy, religious dogma — all captured by the flux of the narrative.

Even food and drink: You taste as you read.

Granular details

There’s quite a skeletal system underneath the swirl of this long-form creative nonfiction. Pappalardo fortifies all this storytelling with data.

His background at Popular Mechanics, the Smithsonian, and the Associated Press trained him to dig deep.

“More reporting is always the answer,” he told me. “If you’re in a jam, call another expert, pull another record, find another angle.”

His approach avoids the sweeping generalizations that plague many histories. Instead, he focuses on the beautiful minutiae of the characters he resurrects.

“You learn history better when you see it through the eyes of the people who were there,” he said. That means looking at what they ate, where they drank, how they survived.

Pappalardo’s obsession with granular details led him to Roy Bean’s time in San Antonio, where the infamous judge presided over spectacle and chaos.

Law and disorder

Bean’s story proved irresistible to the anti-Hollywood postmodernists of the 1970s, filmmakers who fought the industry’s sanitized depictions of history — often at the cost of their own careers.

The real Roy Bean — born Phantley Roy Bean Jr. — was no frontier hero. He was a con artist, a rootless huckster who turned justice into a sideshow. His courtroom was a saloon, his rulings improvised, more entertainment than law.

“Roy didn’t just pass through places — he got run out of them. That tells you something.”

The self-styled "hanging judge" is often portrayed as a rough-edged arbiter of frontier justice. In reality, Pappalardo said, Bean was more of a frontier grifter than a judge. “He brought more crime and disorder to his small town than he ever supplied in law and order.”

Still, Roy Bean is the hook, and his mythology looms large.

"Four Against the West" tears down the myths of Roy Bean to reveal the man beneath: outlaw and lawman, con artist and businessman, drifter and legend.

“Roy Bean is sort of a clown later in life,” Pappalardo tells me. ”He was a pioneer for celebrities who were famous only for being celebrities. So he's a modern creation in a lot of ways. He's a modern man in that way, coming out of this frontier. And yet he is the symbol of the frontier for a lot of people.”

Assume it's a lie

When asked how much of Roy Bean’s legend he had to discard, Pappalardo was blunt: “If I didn’t know for sure, it didn’t go in.”

He said that while most of Bean’s biographers did a solid job of documenting his life, Roy himself was an unreliable narrator. “If Roy tells a story, assume it’s a lie. If his brothers contradict him, assume they’re telling the truth.”

One of the biggest revelations came from old newspapers that painted a different picture of Roy’s infamous rope burns — the supposed result of an attempted lynching.

“We don’t actually know what happened,” Pappalardo said, “but we do know he was shot while raging drunk in a store, and the newspaper basically said, ‘Good riddance.’”

That kind of detail reshapes history, giving it the rough texture of real life instead of the clean arc of a Hollywood Western.

“Four Against the West” does just that, peeling back the myth to reveal the men who lived, fought, and lost on the frontier.

In their brother's shadow

Because Roy Bean’s brothers each shaped the West in their own ways.

“At least two of them,” Pappalardo said, “are probably more historically significant than Roy.”

Sam became the first sheriff in Doña Ana County, New Mexico.

Joshua was the first mayor of American San Diego and an early militia leader.

James saw both success and failure in Missouri, where he played the role of both lawman and first responder.

Together, their lives paint a messier, more complex portrait of a time when civilization and lawlessness blurred.

That’s the history Pappalardo thrives on — the kind that sprawls beyond legend, tangled in contradictions and larger-than-life figures.

“People think these guys were shaping some grand arc of manifest destiny,” Pappalardo said. “But really, they were just trying to get by.”

A crucial breakthrough

Pappalardo spent time in New Mexico, Texas, and California, sifting through archives, walking old trails, and standing in the ruins of railroad camps.

“Going to places always delivers the best stuff,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re going to find until you crack the pages open.”

One of his biggest discoveries came in Mesilla, New Mexico, where he unearthed a never-published interview with Sam Bean. “It was huge,” he said. “There it was, the story of his falling out with Roy and how they reconciled at the end of their lives. I didn’t have an ending until I found that.”

He also spent time at Roy’s old haunts, including the ruins of his first saloon. “You know you’re in the right spot when the ground is covered in broken beer bottles,” he joked.

The forgotten Bean

Of the four brothers, James Bean is the least known, but his story struck a chord with Pappalardo. “He was Independence, Missouri’s justice of the peace, what a justice of the peace should be — unlike Roy, who was a mockery of the role.”

James had terrible luck, getting caught up in a marriage scandal and finding himself at the center of violent crimes. But he took his responsibilities seriously, acting as first responder to suicides and murders.

James' final years were spent in a poor farm, where he organized a library to give the other residents something to read.

“Even after everything that happened to him, he still had that Bean spark,” Pappalardo said. “And he made sure his story made it into the newspapers, so someone like me would find it.”

A knack for showing up

What emerges from Pappalardo’s work is not just a history of four men but a panorama of an era that refuses to sit quietly in textbooks, too often lost in the antics of fiction.

It’s raw, violent, full of schemes and ambition, and populated by men who, for better or worse, made their mark. Their stories live on, not in sanitized myth but in the dust and grit where they were truly forged.

The gift of “Four Against the West” is the cohesion it accomplishes in capturing the full story.

Despite their flaws, the Bean brothers had a knack for showing up at pivotal moments in history. Whether leading militias, running saloons, or getting tangled in gunfights, they were always in the thick of it. And while Roy Bean became the pop-culture icon, Pappalardo’s book gives his brothers their due.

“The frontier wasn’t a neat, heroic place,” Pappalardo said. “It was a mess. And these guys thrived in the mess.”

Kingstone Studios: Spreading Christ's kingdom through comic books

Art Ayris thumbs through a pile of mail on his desk, then raises several envelopes. “Here's two letters from prisoners: ‘Send us your comics.’“

Every day, Ayris, CEO of Kingstone Media, gets these requests for the Kingstone Bible — a three-volume graphic novel adaptation of the Good Book.

In America, only 7% of people have read the Bible cover to cover. 'If only 7% of people read the instruction manual for something, you’re going to have a problem,' says Aryis.

He chats by video from the headquarters of Kingstone Studios in Central Florida. Behind him are displayed posters from his various releases.

He’s lean, a lifelong jogger. With his black mustache and his shock of white hair and his striped gray shirt, he looks like an off-duty firefighter. Calm demeanor, somehow able to become passionate without losing his tone or his cool.

He tells me that the average inmate has a third-grade reading level. “They just haven't really gotten the education they need. They certainly haven't gotten the spiritual education that they need.”

He feels deeply for inmates — their blood has quite literally run through his body.

'They gave blood to save my life'

Ayris was 4 at the time. His father, a contractor, was pushing a lawn mower and didn't realize his son was behind him, when a projectile piece of wire flew from the machine, striking Ayris in the stomach.

“Then I can remember laying on the seat of the car as he's driving me to the hospital and, you know, blood coming out of my intestines.”

He arrived at the hospital in critical condition, but the real danger wasn’t just the injury — it was the rapid loss of blood. The hospital didn’t have enough.

In a desperate move, doctors reached out to the local prison. Inmates came to donate blood.

“They gave blood to save my life.”

An unlikely beginning

Ayris’ passion for comics didn’t begin in the traditional way — he wasn’t a child who spent hours drawing on everything. His mother, an accomplished artist, had passed down an appreciation for creativity, but Art’s path was far from conventional.

Growing up, he was known more for being a “rounder” in school, often suspended for his antics. Deep down, Ayris was bored with school and not interested in conventional art. Yet even as he found trouble in his youth, he also found the beginnings of something greater.

A fateful choice

Ayris comes from several generations of American soldiers, with family in both world wars. His father was a veteran. His favorite uncle died while serving as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

At 18, Ayris was ready to continue this legacy. But at the last minute, his parents urged him to go to college instead.

There, he began his lifelong soldierly role in a different kind of battle: a campaign of ideas and theories.

A deeper purpose

Ayris describes his life as one marked by torpedoes — unexpected crises that have forced him to confront his own mortality and the deeper purpose of his existence.

He recently told his wife: “When I really do drop, you’ll know it’s God’s will because He’s kept me alive through so many of these episodes.”

When he was 19, gangrene set in from his childhood injury, nearly killing him again.

“The doctors told me, ‘We have to operate immediately,’” he recalls.

But the first procedure didn’t solve the problem. As complications mounted, Ayris was given a grim prognosis: one last attempt at surgery, or he would need a colostomy.

“I was 19 years old, weighing 135 pounds — I looked like a POW,” he says. “They didn’t know if I was going to live or die.”

At Ayris' lowest point, when survival was uncertain, a Presbyterian pastor visited him in the hospital: “He shared the basics of the gospel,” Art tells me. “He walked me through it — acknowledging I was a sinner, believing Christ died for my sins, and confessing Him as my Savior. And it just made sense to me. My whole idea of living for myself seemed so stupid.”

Though the transformation didn’t happen overnight, that moment planted a seed. “It took me a while to get all the partying out of my system,” he admits. “But by my early 20s, I had fully committed my life to Christ.”

The experience of nearly losing his life imbued Ayris with a sharpened focus on eternity. “God gives us a great life here, but even the best life is so short,” he reflects. “I’ve lost friends who’ve stepped into eternity, and it’s made me realize that the next life is what I really need to prepare for.”

A born educator

Ayris' greatest talent lies in sharing knowledge. He was destined to educate.

In his 20s, he became a pastor while working full-time as a teacher and a football coach. It didn’t take long for him to confront challenges in the education system. “It was horrendous, what I saw in the public school,” he recalls.

He was hired by the only fully unionized school in the county, where fellow educators immediately pressured him to join the teachers' union. Reluctantly, he signed up.

“When I started reading those magazines from the [American Federation of Teachers] and the [National Education Association], it was like reading the manifesto of the Communist Party,” he says.

Within a year, Ayris left the union. “I didn’t care who got upset with me. I just got out.” The experience cemented his conviction that education in America needed to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Not long after, the church asked Ayris to leave his teaching position and join full-time ministry. “It was a good genesis,” he says, reflecting on how his path eventually led to creating comic books. “I’ve always had a conviction that Christian media should be better.”

Spreading the 'instruction manual'

While serving as a children’s pastor, Ayris noticed a concerning trend. Many of the kids he ministered to had little or no knowledge of the Bible.

Worse yet, in America, only 7% of people have read the Bible cover to cover. “If only 7% of people read the instruction manual for something, you’re going to have a problem," says Aryis.

So he set out to make the instruction manual more accessible.

He noticed that these same children were captivated by graphic novels and manga — stories that often lacked uplifting or meaningful messages. Rather than settling for the limited and often uninspired materials available for children’s ministry, Ayris saw an opportunity.

“There’s no reason we couldn’t create a Marvel for this market,” he says. His vision was simple but bold: Use comics to connect kids to the Bible in ways they could understand and enjoy.

The Kingstone Bible

Kingstone Studios

With this idea in mind, Ayris co-founded Kingstone Comics. Partnering with a team of 40 illustrators — many of whom had worked for Marvel and DC — he set out to create high-quality, engaging content for a new generation.

But for Ayris, Kingstone’s mission couldn’t be more different. “DC just had the Joker being pregnant, giving birth to a baby, and all that trans junk woke stuff,” he says.

The company's first major project, the Kingstone Bible, combined stunning visuals with compelling storytelling, offering kids and adults alike an accessible way to engage with Scripture.

"We’re not competing with Christian publishers,” says Ayris. “We’re competing with Marvel and DC.”

Batman and the gospel

Christianity has always had a rich relationship with the arts.

From gospel murals in ancient catacombs to the timeless masterpieces of the Renaissance, believers have used creative expression to communicate truth.

“If there’s anything that’s creative, it’s God,” Ayris says, marveling at creation’s diversity, from the weirdness of the platypus to the complexity of human beings.

At Kingstone, this divine creativity fuels the mission to share faith through modern storytelling, using comics and animation as vehicles to reach new audiences.

For Ayris, Kingstone’s work is part of that long tradition, a continuation of weaving the sacred into the creative.

But instead of stained glass or symphonies, Kingstone builds stories with panels, ink, and bold visual narrative — tools designed to resonate with today’s generation.

US Comics

As Kingstone grew, Ayris saw another cultural need: reclaiming America’s history from narratives that diminished its greatness. In 2023, he launched U.S. Comics, an imprint dedicated to celebrating America’s founding, its heroes, and its struggles.

The first series takes readers through the early days of the nation, from the arrival of the Pilgrims to Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.

The response to U.S. Comics has been overwhelmingly positive. Readers praise the depth and the comics' ability to make American history come alive.

U.S. Comics highlights the profound influence of Christian values on the country’s formation. “The founding fathers weren’t perfect,” Ayris says, “but there’s no question that America was founded on biblical principles.”

Kingstone Studios

The art of storytelling

Comics are a unique medium, relying on the sequencing of frozen images to create motion and life. Each panel is static, yet together they unfold dynamic narratives, immersing readers in vivid worlds of action and emotion. This makes comics a uniquely powerful medium for redemptive storytelling.

The superhero genre exemplifies this power but can only take it so far. Iconic figures like Batman battle villains across fiery landscapes and glittering utopias, their capes and armor symbolizing timeless clashes of good versus evil.

Despite their cultural impact, comics have often been dismissed as lowbrow entertainment, a diversion for the masses. For decades, they’ve been undervalued as an art form caught between writing and illustration.

Through Kingstone’s pages, the battle between good and evil transcends superheroes. It becomes a reflection of deeper spiritual realities. Whether introducing young readers to the Bible or offering fresh perspectives to seasoned believers, Kingstone blends tradition with innovation.

In prayerful hands, comics carry the weight of eternity.

The Constitution

U.S. Comics has also released a graphic novel adaptation of the U.S. Constitution. Art sees this as a critical tool for educating younger generations about the principles that shaped America, celebrating the dual nature of American identity — the individual and the community.

“The Constitution, like the Bible, is a living document,” Ayris says. “It continues to shape the nation’s direction. Through these comics, we want to reawaken a sense of reverence for the Constitution and help kids understand what made this country great.”

Created in collaboration with Joe Bennett, a former Marvel artist renowned for "The Immortal Hulk" and "Captain America," the comic pairs a rich historical narrative with striking visuals. It has quickly become one of Kingstone’s best sellers, reflecting a growing appetite for stories that honor America’s ideals and values.

Samaritan Inn

While building a career in comics, Ayris remained deeply committed to his local community, particularly through First Baptist Church of Leesburg, Florida.

Ayris spearheaded the founding of the Community Medical Care Center, a free clinic serving uninsured and medically vulnerable individuals. With the help of 50 volunteer doctors and eight dentists, the clinic now provides health care to over 7,000 people annually.

Then, working with his congregation, Ayris led the effort to transform the Big Bass Motel into the Samaritan Inn, a shelter for homeless families.

It was no small task. Converting the aging motel into a functional shelter required heavy finances and widespread community support.

He retold the story in his film “No Vacancy” (2022), featuring Dean Cain.

“Community is key,” Ayris says. “It's very important that communities pull together. When I made that movie, I wanted to show what happens when a community and a church work together.”

'A big Trump guy'

“I’m a big Trump guy,” Ayris says. “I’ve put up Trump signs, even out here in Webster. Sometimes, because I’m a pastor, people get a little frustrated with me. But I think they misunderstand.”

Released on June 14, 2024 — Flag Day and President Trump’s birthday — ”Trump 2024: Restoring the Glory to ‘Old Glory’” is one of U.S. Comics’ standout projects. The special-edition comic celebrates the story of Old Glory.

Flags carry a special resonance. They represent more than fabric. They embody the human condition.

“It is not just a piece of fabric. It’s a symbol of everything sacrificed for this country,” he tells me. “And if somebody starts spitting on the flag or trying to burn it in my presence, there's gonna be a hoedown.”

The heart of compassion

Most comics are mythology. They offer fiction and fantasy, a world of gods and heroes that hint at universal truths but often fall short of reconciliation. While there are plenty of historical comics, none quite matches the specific passion found at Kingstone, which has used the medium’s strengths — its ability to captivate and inspire — to openly proclaim the gospel.

In comics, heroes are often portrayed as mythical figures, elevated through their sacrifices and victories, becoming larger than life. But Kingstone’s heroes reflect a different kind of narrative. They draw from the Bible, where God stands with the victims, not the persecutors. Ordinary geniuses, sacred nobodies.

Kingstone’s mission is deeply tied to this Christian understanding of compassion.

The left has manipulated the Christian concern for victims. Today’s ideologies often co-opt the language of liberation, accusing Christianity of failing its own values while turning compassion into a tool of control. These narratives attempt to replace the heart of Christianity itself, using the language of justice to further agendas of power.

Kingstone confronts this distortion head-on, telling stories that present true compassion. Through Kingstone's work, comic artists transform the battleground of narrative into an opportunity to reveal the heart of the gospel.

In an industry dominated by mythology, Kingstone offers something profoundly different: stories that point not to fleeting heroes but to an eternal Savior, stories that don’t just depict battles but offer the ultimate victory of redemption.

They remind readers that the greatest hero of all didn’t ascend through conquest but through sacrifice — a story more powerful than any myth could ever tell.

“I never envisioned running a comic-book media company as a teenager,” Ayris says. “But God had to actuate my life, to bring out the gifts I didn’t even know were there. Once the Spirit of God fills you, you start discovering those things.”

Matt Taibbi tells Tucker Carlson why Biden's pardon for Fauci could help bring curtain down on COVID cover-up

Investigative reporter Matt Taibbi and Tucker Carlson recently spoke at length about long-standing efforts by deep-staters to control information flows, apparent last-ditch attempts by elements of the previous administration to embroil the U.S. in a direct conflict with Russia, and the likelihood that President Donald Trump has been targeted for assassination on more occasions than have been publicly admitted.

While the conversation was wide-ranging, it largely centered on the question of what impact Trump's mass disclosures — particularly his planned declassification of government documents — might have, not only on his safety but regarding various matters left unresolved or swept under the rug over the past four years, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its possible manufacture.

Taibbi told Carlson that in this time of revelation and reopened investigations, former President Joe Biden's strategic blunder could ultimately prove to be what forces Anthony Fauci to spill the beans.

While Biden apparently sought to spare Fauci from accountability, Taibbi indicated that the former president's pardon of Fauci on the eve of Trump's inauguration actually painted a target on his back and deprived the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of his key means of self-preservation.

"The thing is about these pardons — they're a mistake. If you want to know what's happening, they just made it a lot easier for us to find out," said Taibbi. "Once the pardon's delivered, the person can't plead the Fifth. If they're brought before a grand jury, they can't take the Fifth any more. If they're brought before a congressional committee, they can't invoke the right against self-incrimination."

'It's going to be like a turkey shoot.'

Citing the insights of past and current congressional investigators as well as criminal defense attorneys, Taibbi suggested that the consensus is that it is "illogical to give somebody a pardon if you're trying to cover up things" unless "there are very serious crimes involved."

In either case, the pardon serves as a giant "red flag."

When asked what possible crimes Fauci might have needed cover for, going all the way back to Jan. 1, 2014 — around the time the Obama administration supposedly halted funding for dangerous gain-of-function research that makes pathogens more deadly and/or more transmissible — Taibbi noted that "the one thing that comes to mind immediately is perjury."

"Lying under oath to the Congress. In particular, saying, you know, that we have never funded gain-of-[function] research, that we weren't doing it during this time period — even as there are other people in the government, like the deputy director of the NIH, saying, 'Yes we were,' or Ralph Baric, who was one of the scientists at UNC, saying, 'Yes, absolutely, that was gain-of-function,'" said Taibbi.

Fauci misled Congress by stating in May 2021 that the National Institutes of Health "has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology."

In addition to putting the former NIAID director back on the hot seat, Taibbi suggested that other people with fingerprints all over the pandemic, including Peter Daszak — the British zoologist who was formally debarred along with his scandal-plagued organization EcoHealth Alliance this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — may similarly be trotted out to answer questions, including questions about documents that the Trump administration may release.

"There are documents that we know exist that we're going to get now with FBI communications between the bureau and a lot of these scientists dating back 10 years, and it's going to tell a very crazy story," said Taibbi. "There's a reason why Fauci's pardon is backdated to 2014, because that's the time period that they're going to have to start looking [at]."

The investigative reporter suggested that key questions to revisit with these scientists will be, "When did we start defying the ban on gain-of-function research? ... Why were we doing it? What connection did that have to the Wuhan thing? What kind of advanced notice did we get? What kind of lies were told about it? Who were responsible for those lies? What kind of information did we get about the inefficacy of the vaccine?"

"COVID is a gigantic rats' nest of stuff," continued Taibbi. "It's going to be like a turkey shoot, where every direction they look, they're going to find something revelatory."

The investigative reporter suggested that the Republican-controlled government could illuminate what authorities actually knew about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where American tax dollars ended up courtesy of Fauci; whether there was advance warning that the pandemic was coming; and whether investigations into the possibility of a lab leak were suppressed "because of the connections to U.S. research."

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Upstart streamer Loor.TV is out to televize the conservative revolution

One of entrepreneur Marcus Pittman’s biggest inspirations these days is Trump.

Barron Trump, to be precise.

'What happens if you combine funding and distribution on the same platform and you target it towards younger viewers?'

With his streaming startup, Loor.TV, Pittman’s betting on an audience conservative media usually ignores: young men. And after watching Barron help the senior Trump retake the White House, Pittman’s even more confident his instincts are correct.

Bet on Barron

“If you look back at MTV, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, basically every major cable TV brand, they all [catered] to a young male audience,” Pittman tells Align. It’s an audience that conservatives seem to have written off as a lost cause.

“We as conservatives have [said], ‘They don't serve us, and they don't have any money,’” says Pittman. “But actually they’re very engaged. And I think Barron knew that.”

Bloomberg/Getty Images

Which is why the 18-year-old scion convinced his 78-year-old dad to hit the podcast circuit in the final months of the election, sitting down for lengthy but casual talks with Gen Z favorites like Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and Logan Paul.

If you’re over a certain age, chances are the only one you recognize from that list is Rogan — even though all are huge cultural and commercial forces. Take Adin Ross, the 23-year-old online streamer who interviewed Trump live in August.

“He signed what’s rumored to be $100 million to stream on Kick,” says Pittman. “That’s Joe Rogan numbers, but most people haven’t heard about [him].”

Ross arrived at the interview in what turned out to be a gift for the candidate: a customized Tesla Cybertruck, emblazoned with the now-iconic image of Trump in the immediate aftermath of his assassination attempt, fist raised in defiance.

To Pittman’s eyes, the stream’s success was a “tremendous moment” for the young male demographic — and a kind of proof of concept for Loor.

“I don't think it's that they don't vote. I just don't think they ever have content catered to them,” he says. “I’ve described it as: We’ve built all these stores, and all they sell is Depends. And we wonder why young people aren’t buying.”

Breaking in

As an outsider who’s managed to barge his way into the conservative media-sphere, Pittman has come by his conclusions honestly.

Almost exactly 12 years ago, the then-unknown filmed an anti-abortion protester holding a sign reading “Babies Are Murdered Here” outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. That clip became the catalyst for Pittman’s 2014 documentary of the same name.

Reception from the pro-life movement was surprisingly chilly, Pittman recalls. “The gatekeepers hated it,” he posted recently on LinkedIn. “No [prominent evangelicals] would share or promote the film ... but because of the freedom of the internet, it went crazy.”

Pittman hadn’t realized it, but apparently calling abortion “murder” was beyond the pale. “Abby Johnson even threatened to call the FBI on me.”

And yet “Babies Are Murdered Here” found an audience — and helped reframe the abortion debate. Says Pittman, “The radical freedom of the internet, even with all the dangers and filth, ultimately winds up pushing cultural narratives towards what's true.”

Early Loor.TV marketing (courtesy Loor.TV)

No country for young men

The success of “Babies Are Murdered Here” led to an opportunity to co-found Apologia Studios, an evangelical podcast network based in Arizona. After a successful, five-year run as Apologia’s studio director, Pittman took a job as head of video advertising at Scottsdale-based Social Ally.

One of the agency’s clients was Christian streaming service Pure Flix (now known as Great American Pure Flix). Immersion in the Christian film industry made Pittman realize the extent to which young audiences were being ignored in favor of mostly older women.

“And so I left and made another movie,” says Pittman.

That movie was 2019’s “Babies Are Still Murdered Here.” Pittman made the sequel available on Amazon Prime, which abruptly pulled it after seven months, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews.

That experience was eye-opening, says Pittman. “[I thought] there's a real problem here because we have a lack of funding and a lack of distribution support for any content that's outside of a very narrow window.”

To remedy that, Pittman founded Loor in late 2020. The pitch was simple: “What happens if you combine funding and distribution on the same platform and you target it towards younger viewers?”

Making loot

Like many a streaming site, Loor offers its subscribers access to its content for a monthly fee. Where Loor departs from the usual model is that every show or movie on the site is at some stage of funding.

Subscribers themselves provide this funding; every month they receive an amount of free Loor currency called loot, which they can use to help support projects they like. In the event that they want to offer a project or projects even more support, they can buy additional loot from the site.

For younger viewers, accustomed to such micro-transactions from the video-game world, this kind of participation is a big perk.

“We’ve heard reports that some kids were so excited about [Loor animated children’s show] ‘Bearly Biblical’ that they asked their dad if they could mow the lawn to raise money to fund the next episode of the cartoon. And they did,” recounts Pittman.

Slaying Goliath

'Bearly Biblical'/Loor.TV

Created by longtime animator Tim Ingle, “Bearly Biblical” uses cartoon teddy bears to re-enact the most violent stories from the Old Testament. Pittman sees it as both educational and an entertaining throwback to “the way cartoons used to be ... when Elmer Fudd had a shotgun and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles used actual weapons to fight enemies.”

Other shows on the site include “Esotera,” an ambitious, post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic; “Gothix,” a documentary about a popular streamer’s departure from liberal orthodoxy and subsequent cancellation; and “Felt Board Sunday School,” a “South Park”-style animated show spoofing “church lady” culture.

The first episode of “Bearly Biblical” portrays a plucky young Israelite shepherd named David literally knocking the stuffing out of Philistine giant Goliath. That classic story very much resonates with Loor’s mission.

“You don't need the strongest weapons,” says Pittman. “You just need to be able to take the most shots. And it only took David one, but he brought five stones.”

Pittman continues: “I would much rather have 100 filmmakers [take a chance with] $10,000 than put $30 million into one thing that's got to work.”

By offering creators a platform to take such chances, Pittman wants to create a much-needed incubator for new talent.

To innovate, incubate

“When we first started, people said you're going to need $100 million just to get this off the ground,” says Pittman, citing the widespread assumption about what it takes to compete with behemoths like Netflix or Disney.

Clockwise from left: Pittman and Loor.TV A&R head Jason Farley; Pittman lecturing on how to win Gen Z audiences; a Loor.TV ad (all images courtesy Loor.TV)

“I like to make the comparison that everybody's trying to buy a major league sports team, but nobody’s built out the college [pipeline] for talent yet,” says Pittman. “That's why we use the same [canceled, conservative] actors in everything. Because we don't have a way to say, ‘Have you seen the film that kid made for $10,000?’ And then build that kid up by slowly giving him more money for every project he does.”

People in the mainstream media have begun to take notice. After hearing Pittman talk about Loor on a podcast, veteran industry executive and Fuel TV co-creator Shon Tomlin reached out. “This is the first time in 25 years where I heard someone [who made me say], ‘This guy understands entertainment, pop culture, comedy, animation, technology, gaming, monetization, streaming,’” he would later recall. Tomlin joined the company in September.

As Loor grows, catering to the young male audience remains central to its plan. When I mention how much my 11-year-old son seems to prefer watching YouTube shorts to TV, Pittman counters that this doesn’t mean that younger viewers lack the attention span for long-form entertainment.

“That’s not true. Podcasts [can be] multiple hours long and still get views in the millions,” he says, adding that the algorithms guiding tech companies like YouTube and TikTok tend to promote short-form content.

No one's really tried to make long-form content for this generation. But if you look at "'Deadpool vs. Wolverine’ or ‘Top Gun,’ they're all for that younger male audience. All the hits are. And that's what wins the movie theater: younger male content.”

After years of being called crazy for bucking the conventional wisdom, Pittman intends for Loor to spearhead that victory. “If you think long-form podcasts are great, wait until we [win] narrative art and storytelling. We’ve owned the podcasts/talk radio side for a while. But once conservatives own both, we’ll be unstoppable.”

Exposed: how Washington engineered the Ukraine crisis — and pushed us to the brink of World War 3

Joe Biden is rushing to do as much damage as possible before leaving office.

Along with bailing out his son, he’s racing to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine. Rather than de-escalating tensions or seeking a resolution to the conflict, Biden seems hell-bent on edging the world closer to the precipice of World War III. This is not hyperbole.

‘Trump must be brutally honest with the American and Ukrainian people, just as he had the courage to do in the case of Afghanistan.’

Scott Horton, the author of “Provoked,” delivers an unflinching and meticulously-researched critique of U.S. foreign policy, laying bare how Washington reignited Cold War tensions with Russia and set the stage for the current crisis in Ukraine.

In telling the story of how successive administrations pursued policies designed to antagonize Russia, dismiss its security concerns, and provoke the conflict that now rages, Horton — who was recently accused of being a Russian propagandist on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" — leaves no stone unturned.

His inescapable conclusion? Deliberate choices led to this dangerous impasse.

Let’s be clear: Ukraine cannot and will not defeat Russia — not now, not ever.

Say this aloud, however, and you’re instantly labeled a Putin sympathizer. But Horton is no Kremlin crony. He’s ruthlessly logical, a voice of reason cutting through the propaganda-fueled chaos.

If you care about facts over feelings, read "Provoked," his 1,000-page takedown of the mainstream narratives driving Europe — and the world — toward catastrophe. Packed with over 6,000 footnotes, Horton methodically exposes the geopolitical moves that have brought us to the edge of extinction.

A betrayal rooted in the Cold War's end

The seeds of the Ukraine crisis were sown in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War. U.S. officials assured Soviet leaders that NATO would not expand eastward — a promise never formalized but understood as sacrosanct by key figures like Mikhail Gorbachev.

Horton points to former Secretary of State James Baker’s assurance to Gorbachev that NATO would move "not one inch eastward" beyond Germany. That was a brazen deception. By the mid-1990s, NATO was incorporating former Warsaw Pact nations, beginning with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first post-Soviet president, cautioned Bill Clinton in 1994 that NATO’s expansion would undermine trust and fracture Europe once more.

"NATO was created in Cold War times," Yeltsin argued. "Today, it is trying to find its place in Europe, not without difficulty. It is important that this search not create new divisions, but promote European unity. We believe that the plans of expanding NATO are contrary to this logic. Why sow the seeds of distrust? After all, we are no longer adversaries; we are partners.”

His plea fell on deaf ears. Horton underscores the gravity of this oversight, quoting George Kennan, the architect of Cold War containment, who warned that NATO expansion would be “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

Horton tells Align that “the truth is that since the end of the last Cold War, successive administrations have pushed their so-called sphere of influence deep into Eastern Europe, expanding their military alliance, in violation of solemn promises and agreements, up to Russia's borders.”

He continues, outlining a pattern of provocations:

“They’ve overthrown governments friendly to Russia, including Ukraine’s — twice in the Bush and Obama years. They’ve installed anti-ballistic missile defense systems from suspicious dual-use-capable launchers, supported Kiev's war against the 'rebels’ of the east, and continued to threaten to integrate the nation into the NATO alliance, against all the best advice of leaders of the U.S. foreign policy establishment who knew better all along.”

“These are not Russian talking points,” Horton emphasizes, “any more than they are a justification for Putin’s 2022 invasion and subsequent war — not at all. But they are the truth, and enough to undermine the lie that the Russian president has simply decided 25 years into his presidency to reconquer Eastern Europe for no reason beyond his twisted sense of history and imperial Russian entitlement.”

Horton drives the point home: “He had always prioritized good relations with the West and allowed the status quo to hold in Crimea and the Donbas until Washington escalated the issue, time after time.”

Color revolutions and the road to Maidan

In his book, Horton lays bare the deep roots of Ukraine’s turmoil, tracing them back to the 2004 Orange Revolution — a moment Moscow saw not as a democratic awakening but as a Western power play.

To Russian leaders, this was no grassroots uprising. The West’s fingerprints were all over it, from financial backing of opposition groups to overt political support for Viktor Yushchenko, whose contested victory marked a shift away from Moscow’s influence. For Russia, the message was clear: The West wasn’t just knocking on its door — it was trying to kick it down.

A decade later, the 2014 Maidan Revolution turned simmering tensions into a full-blown geopolitical inferno.

Horton documents how protests against President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to prioritize ties with Moscow over a European Union deal spiraled into chaos, aided and abetted by U.S. intervention. Yanukovych’s refusal to bow to Western pressure made him a target, and soon enough, he was ousted from power with Washington cheering from the sidelines.

Then came the smoking gun: a leaked phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

During the call, they candidly discussed handpicking Ukraine’s next leaders — proof that this was nothing more than a coup disguised as a wholly organic, democratic uprising. For Moscow, this wasn’t just meddling; it was an act of war by other means. The coup shattered any pretense of diplomacy, prompting Russia to annex Crimea and back separatists in the Donbas.

Horton argues that the West’s actions didn’t just provoke Russia — they guaranteed a response. Crimea, home to Russia’s vital Black Sea fleet, was never going to fall into NATO’s orbit without a fight

A grim prognosis for Ukraine

The human cost of these provocations is staggering, and Horton offers a bleak forecast. “In tragedy and defeat,” he says, “Ukraine will lose at least the four southern and eastern provinces to Russia.”

He warns that if Ukraine doesn’t negotiate soon, critical regions like Kharkiv and Odesa could also fall. The latter, Ukraine’s last major port city on the Black Sea, is vital to the nation’s survival. He explains in our discussion: “It would take direct U.S. intervention to reverse the course of the war on the ground, and even Biden knew we could never go that far without risking direct war between Russia and NATO.”

Media complicity and misinformation

Horton doesn’t just take aim at policymakers; he reserves equal scorn for the media, accusing it of cheerleading the march to war. He tells me, “The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, The Daily Beast, MSNBC, and The National Review” are among the most shameless purveyors of pro-war propaganda.

By casting the Ukraine conflict as a righteous battle against an imperialist Russia, these outlets conveniently sidestep America’s role in stoking the flames. All of them, in his view, are guilty of being war-friendly propagandists.

He’s right. The narratives they push are as delusional as they are dangerous. Ukraine, they insist, can win, and anyone who refuses to drink the Kool Aid is considered an enemy of progress, peace, and patriotism. The lunatics aren’t just running the asylum — they’re dragging us to the brink of nuclear annihilation.

A path to peace?

Horton takes a clear-eyed view of the steps needed to end the war, urging U.S. leaders to confront an uncomfortable reality. He calls for brutal honesty with both the American and Ukrainian people, insisting they admit what’s painfully obvious: The war is unwinnable.

“The best choice is to seek peace immediately while they are only this far behind and not further,” he tells Align. A negotiated settlement, while difficult and painful, is the only viable path for Ukraine’s survival.

Horton sees a potential for resolution under a Trump administration, citing Trump’s past willingness to defy the foreign policy establishment.

He points to the president-elect’s handling of Afghanistan as an example. “Trump must be brutally honest with the American and Ukrainian people, just as he had the courage to do in the case of Afghanistan. The war is lost. We have to end it before our friends lose even more territory,” Horton explains.

In contrast, the Texas-based author argues that the Biden administration's approach stems from arrogance, emphasizing strategies that further fuel the flames of carnage.

Rather than seeking resolution, Washington has escalated the conflict, ignoring the devastating consequences. As Horton warns, this hubris could have catastrophic costs — not just for Ukraine, but for the entire world.

Aim true: Anna Thomasson sets her sights on empowering women through firearms training

There’s something about firing an AR-15 on full auto that puts a big smile on your face.

At least it does for my colleague, Helen Roy. It’s also addictive, apparently; no sooner has she emptied the entire magazine into the target than she asks, “Is that all?”

'A lot of the ladies that do come on a regular basis call it "lead therapy," because while you're out there, you're going to feel all this energy hitting you, and then you just want more of it.'

Behind her, David Prince laughs knowingly. A tall, grandfatherly former CPA, Mr. Prince (as everybody calls him) owns the spacious and immaculate Eagle Gun Range, where we’ve just spent the last few hours getting a crash course in how to shoot.

Beaming next to him with almost maternal pride is Helen's instructor, Anna Thomasson. She — along with her husband, Bryan Wertz — has been kind enough to spend the afternoon giving us a highly condensed version of the extensive firearms training she offers women through her company, Dallas-based Aim True.

Matt Himes

Although Thomasson grew up around firearms, she was always more observer than participant. "My family is very traditional,” the petite Texan explains. “My dad is ‘boys shoot guns and girls stay in the kitchen.'”

That changed in 2015, when Thomasson was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her husband, Bryan Wertz, was a lifelong avid shooter; during her recovery he suggested she join him at the range as a way to spend time together while getting outside and getting some sun.

Thomasson found she enjoyed it. And not only that — learning to handle a firearm seemed to restore some of the inner strength sapped by her medical ordeal. “I got the feeling I could be confident in the world again,” she says.

She never looked back, taking course after course and honing her skills. She formed Aim True in 2017 as way to teach firearm self-defense to other women. She also organized the “ladies-only” training group Diamonds and Derringers.

Like Thomasson, Helen has always been comfortable around guns. Her father and her older brother (military veteran and active military, respectively) both enjoy shooting, as does her husband. While she's often joined them at the range and has fired off a few shots of her own on occasion, she's never gotten much, if any, formal training. She's here to rectify that. Helen tells Thomasson she should consider her a beginner.

Gun-shy

We start in a tidy, well-lit classroom tucked away near Eagle Gun Range’s front desk. When I ask how they met, Wertz and Thomasson smile as they describe their courtship, more or less finishing each other’s sentences.

There’s an ease between them that automatically puts us at ease, and it sets the tone for the hours to come. As Thomasson runs the training, Wertz sits to the side, doing work on a computer, every so often interjecting to expand or emphasize a point Anna makes.

Thomasson begins by explaining what’s different about firearms training for women.

To begin with, says Thomasson, many of her students are motivated by a newfound sense of vulnerability.

“I have a lot of clients coming to me when they’ve had a divorce, or they’ve lost their spouse, or they’ve had a break-in at their home,” she says. “They’ve never wanted to hold a gun before, they've never had any interest in it, and now a situation has dictated that this is something [they] have to do.”

Matt Himes

According to Wertz, this reluctance tends to make women who do show up for the course very diligent students.

“We always say that a man feels like he was born to stick a gun in his pants and walk around with it,” says Wertz. A woman, on the other hand, “says I really want to know about this gun and I want to make sure that I don't hurt someone with it, that someone doesn't hurt me with it, that I really understand all aspects of it and how to use it and be confident.”

When that confidence finally comes, it’s often a revelation, says Thomasson. “Sometimes they have an emotional reaction to shooting the first time. And sometimes it just goes straight into, oh my gosh, I am going to be able to take care of myself and I don't have to rely on anybody else.”

Pick a holster

When it comes to buying a gun, Thomasson likes to start with an often overlooked question: Can you find a holster for it? “My clients go to Highland Park Village, get a really pretty gun, and I say, ‘And you can leave it on your bedside table because there's no holster to fit it,’” says Thomasson.

Unless you’re planning to use your gun exclusively out in the country, Thomasson recommends a concealed-carry holster, typically worn inside the waistband.

Choosing the right gun

“Our hands are different from men's,” notes Thomasson. “They're usually a little bit smaller.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean you want a smaller gun, but rather a “grip size that we can actually reach the trigger on.”

Ultimately, says Thomasson, how a gun fits your hand can come down to personal preference. She likens choosing a gun to buying shoes. “I can't buy you a pair of shoes and say, ‘Love these shoes. You should wear them.’ But [I can] teach you the aspects of the gun and what you should be looking for.”

Sometimes bigger is easier

One common misconception Thomasson encounters is the assumption that a smaller gun will always be easier to shoot.

“This is our mindset as women. We think the bigger the gun, the harder it is to control, and the smaller the gun, the easier it is to control.”

Thomasson recalls a recent exchange with a client.

“[A woman] in her 70s called and she said, ‘I'm about five foot tall and I don't have much strength. I have a really big gun, a 9mm, and I think I want to sell it and have you teach me how to use a smaller gun.’”

Thomasson quickly got her to reconsider. “I talked to her about the recoil … and the weight of that bigger gun taking some of that recoil away from your hands and your shoulders. Whereas a smaller gun doesn't have the weight to [absorb] that recoil … and it ends up hitting you harder.”

For Thomasson, this is an essential part of the training she offers: “learn[ing] how to figure out what kind of gun is going to suit you best for your hand strength … [and] your situation.”

Loading the magazine

Thomasson leads us over to a table on which she’s placed a Glock semiautomatic pistol with a special slide for training as well as a pile of inert dummy rounds — in this case, spent Simunition blank cartridges. She begins by teaching Helen to load the magazine, which she recommends bracing against the tabletop.

Laughing at how surprisingly difficult she finds it, Helen says, “You know what, this is very important. How do you do gun stuff and maintain a manicure?”

Thomasson has anticipated the question. “You know there's always a girl way and a boy way,” she says, fetching a small device from a nearby shelf and handing it to Helen. It’s called an UpLULA, and before long it significantly increases Helen’s efficiency.

Trigger warning

Matt Himes

Now that the gun is loaded, it’s time to pick it up. But first Thomasson imparts a basic principle of gun safety: “[You] don't ever want to touch the trigger until [you’re] ready to touch the trigger.”

“This gun is developed to be comfortable in your hand when your finger is on the trigger,” explains Thomasson. “So that's the way that your hand is going to want to pick this up.”

To avoid this, says Thomasson, we have to force ourselves to rest our finger on the frame as we grab the rest of the gun with our hand.

Thomasson points to the fleshy webbing between Helen’s index finger and thumb. “When you pick this gun up … I want you to see how high you can get this part of your hand up here,” she says, indicating the curved little overhang separating the top of the grip from the rest of the pistol.

Helen does, which gives Thomasson the chance to point out an important physiological difference between men and women. “Now if I had one of the boys pick this up, then all of the meat [between his thumb and index finger] would be squished up at the top. But females don't have that kind of muscular development in that part of our hand.”

It’s a difference that can often be overlooked, says Thomasson. “A male instructor will tell the female you need a higher grip, you need a stronger grip. And the lady says, ‘This is all the grip I've got. I don't have any more hand.’”

It's something neither of us have ever thought about, apparently. "It's almost as if men and women are different," marvels Helen with mock incredulity. She examines my hand and compares it to hers.

"I do have that space," she says, smiling brightly. "Confirmed woman!"

"Confirmed woman!"Matt Himes

When it comes to finding a properly fitting gun, Thomasson says it’s all about how your finger reaches the trigger. You want to have it close enough that you comfortably pull it back, without it being so close that your finger wraps around to the other side.

Proper stance

After teaching Helen how to complete the grip with the placement of her non-shooting hand, as well as how to use the pistol’s metal sight, Thomasson talks proper stance.

“Did you notice that you leaned back?” she asks Helen. “The minute you picked up that gun, you got away from it.”

Thomasson says this is an unconscious expression of fear — “we think the gun is going to go off and cause a big bang and we’re already scared of it.” This is precisely what her training seeks to overcome.

Lead therapy

After Thomasson advises Helen on the proper stance, it’s time to dry fire — that is, “shoot” the gun without any live ammunition. We all know it’s loaded with inert rounds, but as Helen aims, the tension in the room builds, and when the hammer makes its quiet little “click,” there’s a tangible sense of release.

Helen lets out a deep exhale and smiles. She looks a little flushed.

“What went through your mind?” asks Thomasson gently.

“Something about having bullets in the gun made me a little nervous,” says Helen. “It's weird, there's so much psychological stuff built up around guns. And I have shot guns before, but ...”

“Because you loaded this and you made that action happen,” says Thomasson. She puts her hand on Helen’s shoulder. “How are you doing?”

“I'm good. It's kind of powerful, though. Do women often have an emotional reaction when they shoot?”

“I would say 75% of the females that I have, the first shot they go into tears. We put the gun down and we step back and we hug and we talk about it for five or ten minutes. A lot of the ladies that do come on a regular basis call it ‘lead therapy,’ because while you're out there, you're going to feel all this energy hitting you, and then you just want more of it.”

Get a grip

At this point Bryan chimes in to emphasize the power of a good grip.

“So a lot of times, ladies will ask Anna, you know, should I have a gun because I'm tiny and a man will take it from me?”

He demonstrates by trying to pull the gun out of Helen’s hands. He can’t. “I'm just not going to get it from you before you could use your blaster.”

He then addresses how to hold the gun before you’re ready to point and shoot; for example, if you’re preparing to defend yourself against what could be an intruder in your house. In this case, says Wertz, its best to hold the gun pointed down toward the floor.

He demonstrates on Helen. If she holds her gun above her head, pointed toward the ceiling, it’s easy for him to keep her from bringing the gun level.

Wertz then shows what happens if he grabs Helen’s gun when it's pointed to the floor. “If you kneel, then what am I giving you? I’m giving you the perfect first shot.”

Home on the range

David Prince is old enough to have had an entire career before this one, but he radiates boyish enthusiasm when he talks about Eagle Gun Range.

He opened it in 2012, after noticing that there hadn’t been a range built in the Dallas area for 30 years.

“My wife's inspiration is my perspiration,” he jokes. After building a fence and a rock garden, among other projects, they decided to think bigger. “Let us build a gun range. … I can do that.”

“We wanted someplace [that was] really family-friendly,” Prince says. “Especially friendly to the mothers and the women, because stereotypically, women and guns don't mix. … We wanted a place for them to come and feel safe.”

A big component of Eagle Gun Range’s family-friendly atmosphere is its state-of-the-art air filtration system, which removes the contaminants produced by firearm discharge. “It’s cleaner in the range than it is outside,” says Prince.

It’s clear that he’s proud of what he’s created. “Our mission statement says it all: to have a place that's safe and fun to shoot.”

And it’s not that he’s pandering to the ladies, either.

“Indoor shooting is a great co-ed sport,” he says. “Women outshoot guys all the time. Women are great shooters. It’s a fun sport. It doesn't take massive muscles. You can do it and compete against each other, and it's a fun thing, especially for families. Kids get to shoot against the parents. It’s something the whole family can enjoy.”

Shots fired

Now it's time for Helen to put her classroom training into practice.

We head to the private bay Prince has graciously arranged for us, and Thomasson introduces Helen to the first gun she'll be shooting. It's a Glock 9mm, the same as the practice gun she used. Only this one, of course, shoots real bullets.

Matt Himes

Helen loads the magazine, sorts out her grip, and gets into her stance. She aligns her sights at the paper target, then finds the trigger. She takes a deep breath and very slowly pulls it back.

Bang. We all exhale. Helen smiles. "There we go. That was fun."

It was a decent shot, hitting the human silhouette just above the bull's-eye over the chest. Helen fires off another. This one still hits the target, but a little wide. Thomasson reminds her to take it slow.

"When you pull it really fast, you kind of jerk the gun down, and then that's when you end up with shots that are not in the target. Not that, if you were defending yourself, it still wouldn't hurt the person. But if we want to get that perfect shot, [we need] control of the trigger."

Thomasson then has Helen shoot the same cartridge in a smaller gun: a subcompact Glock in turquoise. This gun's grip is significantly thinner and shorter than the previous one; Helen's pinky just barely wraps around the bottom.

When she shoots, the kick is powerful enough that her left hand slips off a little. Helen also notices that because the gun's size allows her finger to wrap all the way around the trigger, it has a tendency to pull to the right when shooting.

It's all a vivid demonstration of Thomasson's earlier point about women and gun size. "[They] say shrink it and pink it and that's how you sell it to a woman," says Wertz. "Well, that's no good because then it's just a pink gun and it's tiny."

As an alternative, Thomasson shows us the Walther PDP F-Series, a full-size 9mm pistol designed for shooters with smaller hands. To get the gun's ergonomics and fit just right, Walther consulted with expert female shooters, including Olympian Gabby Franco.

'Smith and Wesson ... and me'

Noting that the training so far has used Austrian and German pistols, I ask Wertz about the American gun industry.

"When we get into rifles, bolt-action rifles, semiautomatic rifles, carbines, we win," says Wertz, "but the Europeans kind of have a hold on the striker-fired market. The polymer lower, steel upper type gun like Glock, Sig, H&K, Walther, all really great handgun manufacturing companies."

Wertz is quick to add that Smith & Wesson does make an excellent striker-fired pistol that many competitors use.

Of course, the iconic American brand has other claims to fame. "Smith & Wesson makes a better revolver than anybody in the world," says Wertz. "And then if you want a 1911-style, old kind of World War II Heritage American pistol, nobody makes them better than we do."

In this latter category, Wertz singles out Florence, Texas-based Staccato. "Anna's got a Staccato that she carries a lot, and they make a better gun than than just about anybody else."

'It's gonna get sporty'

Matt Himes

According to Prince, Helen is something of a natural. He pulls her target and examines it with admiration. "This is extremely good shooting. She's at five yards, but she shot with several firearms, not having any practice rounds."

Helen does equally well on the AR-15 rifle Prince offers her; in fact, she finds it to be her favorite firearm of the day. "I feel so much more confident with [the AR-15] than the smaller ones," she says, when asked if she'd rather have it or a pistol for self-defense.

Wertz says that despite the media's relentless propaganda about "assault rifles," this is a common reaction from women after they shoot an AR-15. "You can see how accurate you were with very little effort and without having any training."

Then it's time to try the rife on full auto. Prince is thorough and professional as he coaches Helen on what to expect; at the same time, you can tell he can't wait for her to let it rip. "It's just natural — when you first squeeze the trigger, you're going to let it rattle off about five rounds. You're going to let go. We're going to reload. Squeeze. Turn around and smile."

Just before Helen pulls the trigger, Wertz smiles. "It's gonna get sporty."

Matt Himes

To watch some of Helen's training with Aim True at Eagle Gun Range, check out the video below.

For more information about Aim True and the wide variety of firearms and emergency preparedness training it offers, see here.

To learn more about Eagle Gun Range or to explore its online store, go here.

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