For years, Americans have been told the future of driving is settled. Electric vehicles would take over, gas engines would fade away, and anyone questioning the timeline was “anti-progress.” That narrative just took a direct hit, and it came from General Motors.

GM isn’t tweaking its EV strategy. It’s hitting pause, hard.

Charging times still don’t compete with a five-minute fill-up at a gas station.

The company has indefinitely delayed the next-generation refresh of its electric trucks and SUVs. No new deadline. No confident road map. Just a quiet admission that the plan isn’t working the way Washington, or the automakers themselves, promised.

Translation: The market isn’t cooperating.

Truck stop

After pouring billions into electrification, GM is now sitting on $7.6 billion in EV-related losses from 2025 alone, including a massive write-down tied to scrapped production plans and battery commitments. At the same time, EV sales dropped 43% in the fourth quarter after government incentives dried up. Turns out, when the subsidies disappear, so does a big chunk of the demand.

And while EV inventory piles up, GM is doing something far less glamorous but far more telling: It’s going all in on gas-powered trucks. Silverado. Sierra. The vehicles politicians love to demonize are the same ones keeping the lights on.

Because that’s what Americans are actually buying.

This is the part policymakers don’t want to admit. You can regulate, subsidize, and mandate all you want, but you cannot force consumers to embrace a product that doesn’t meet their needs.

Electric trucks still come with trade-offs that matter in the real world, not in a press release. They’re expensive. Range drops when you tow. Charging infrastructure is inconsistent at best, nonexistent at worst, especially outside major metro areas. And charging times still don’t compete with a five-minute fill-up at a gas station.

And now the bill for ignoring that reality is coming due.

NurPhoto/Getty Images

Hero to Zero

GM’s flagship EV facility, Factory Zero, has already seen shutdowns and workforce cuts. Production volumes for high-profile electric models remain underwhelming. And instead of ramping up, GM is scaling back, delaying programs that were once central to its “all-electric future.”

Let’s call this what it is, a strategic retreat.

Not because EV technology is useless. Not because innovation has stalled. But because the timeline was never grounded in how people actually live, drive, and spend their money.

For years, the auto industry was pushed into a corner to build EVs at scale or face regulatory consequences. So they did. They spent. They bet big.

But consumers didn’t get the memo.

Now, the same companies that were racing to meet political deadlines are pivoting back to profitability, back to demand, and back to common sense.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth for the architects of this agenda: Affordability matters more than ideology.

Money talks

When EVs cost more, when infrastructure lags behind, and when performance doesn’t match expectations, consumers don’t “adapt.” They wait. They keep their current vehicles longer. Or they buy what works, which right now is still overwhelmingly internal combustion.

GM’s move isn’t an isolated event. It’s part of a broader industry correction that’s been building for months. Automakers are quietly scaling back, delaying investments, and reassessing timelines that were never realistic to begin with.

The electric future isn’t canceled. But it’s no longer on a government-imposed fast track. It’s being dragged back to reality, where consumers, not regulators, decide what succeeds.

And right now, the verdict is clear. If EVs want to succeed, they better start putting buyers in the driver's seat.

Mother’s Day: A tribute to the one job we can’t afford to outsource

Mother’s Day is more than flowers, lunch at a nice restaurant, Hallmark cards, and sentimental social media posts. It is a reminder of the profound and formative responsibility mothers carry in shaping the next generation.

In a culture increasingly built on outsourcing, mothers are constantly told someone else can do the job better. Let the schools educate them. Let youth pastors disciple them. Let sports teams shape their character. Let others teach them practical skills. Let screens entertain them while we parents catch up on life.

Our ‘do more’ culture demands peak performance in every area of life, but it is leaving both children and mothers exhausted.

But motherhood was never meant to be outsourced. As a mother of two, these are a few lessons I’ve been learning.

Motherhood is discipleship

Mothers remain one of the single greatest influences on a child’s spiritual formation.

Barna research found that among practicing Christian teens, 79% say their mother encourages them to go to church, 66% say their mother teaches them about the Bible, and 72% say their mother teaches them traditions.

Social media and its culture of comparison can make us think discipleship requires planning elaborate Bible lessons, printing worksheets, and creating Instagram-worthy devotional moments. But with just a little intention, some of the most meaningful spiritual lessons can happen naturally through ordinary life.

You light a candle at dinner and explain, “Jesus is the light of the world.” You pull weeds together and talk about how bitterness and sin grow quickly when we neglect to root them out. Or, as my toddler and I did last week, you read "The Little Red Hen," then knead bread dough or grind flour together while talking about diligence, generosity, and helping one another.

The advantage of this informal approach is that faith becomes woven into everyday rhythms instead of compartmentalized into a separate lesson plan. These are the moments when faith becomes tangible and competence is built.

Children need margin

Modern parenting culture often leaves children overscheduled, overstimulated, and emotionally exhausted. Childhood itself is disappearing beneath endless activities, sports schedules, programs, lessons, and pressure to achieve earlier and earlier milestones. These poor kids are hardly allowed to be kids anymore.

Parents now worry whether their preschooler can pass entrance assessments while many children barely have time left to roam outdoors, build forts, help cook dinner, or sit quietly long enough to become curious. We need fewer sensory bins in the living room and more mud puddles in the backyard.

More than anything, children need margin — the kind of unhurried space modern family life often eliminates — and our presence. They need more kitchen table talk and less time away from home.

They need to be bored because boredom is the birthplace of creativity, resilience, and imagination. In fact, a growing body of research shows that unstructured play is tied to healthier development, stronger executive functioning, and greater long-term independence. My parents’ generation understood this, but my generation often fills every gap in our children’s schedules, leaving little room for kids to simply be kids.

Our “do more” culture demands peak performance in every area of life, but it is leaving both children and mothers exhausted.

Mothers need margin

Another Barna survey found that 32% of mothers say they feel tired most of the time, while 38% say they constantly find themselves worrying about something. Many mothers feel isolated, unsupported, and crushed by unrealistic cultural pressure to “do it all.”

Many women strive to be fully present mothers, maintain spotless homes, manage packed calendars, curate magical childhood memories, and somehow do it all effortlessly. The result is that many families are running at a pace no one was designed to sustain — and more dangerously, it’s spiritually bankrupting us.

As Christian mothers, our family life should look drastically different from the world’s. Our priorities should reflect eternal values instead of mirroring the frantic priorities of the world.

Maybe for your family that means dropping a sport or cutting out an activity to make room for those family dinners and deep conversations — creating space for what matters.

My mother-in-law wisely sat down with my husband as a young boy and showed him on a calendar how many weekends the next “level” of baseball would consume. She told him, “We can do this if you’d like, but if you are saying yes to this, you are saying no to fishing, dirt biking, or camping on those weekends.”

She gave him the choice, and he chose the latter.

That kind of intentionality matters because what fills our children’s time will shape who they become.

Print Collector/Getty Images

Life skills matter

A Yugo survey found that 74% of parents believe teens are not fully prepared for adult life. Only 37% of teens know how to cook a basic meal, and just 32% understand basic food safety.

I saw this firsthand during my senior year of college when several freshman girls came over for dinner and Bible study. I asked one to chop an onion and another to brown hamburger meat. Neither had ever chopped a vegetable or touched raw meat before. Not because they were lazy, but because no one had ever taught them.

I came from a very different upbringing. Before the age of 10, I was already baking bread, grinding flour, doing laundry, and helping manage our house — whether I liked it or not.

These practical skills matter because they shape what kind of roommate, spouse, parent, and adult our children will become. We should be setting our kids up for success, not failure.

Some mothers feel intimidated because they themselves were never taught these skills. But the beautiful reality is this: We live in the age of YouTube, tutorials, online learning, and accessible information. If you do not know how to garden, sew, cook from scratch, can vegetables, or bake bread, you can learn.

Ask other women, watch videos, do little by little, and more importantly, don’t be afraid of failing, and failing a lot (like I do!).

I constantly ask people to show me how to do things because I desperately need a community of women walking alongside me in this motherhood journey.

Greatest responsibility, deepest joy

Motherhood has forced me to slow down, eat a lot of humble pie, and imperfectly navigate all kinds of new terrain.

And that is fine. This vocation is ultimately not about curating an image of perfection. It is about faithfully stewarding the souls, habits, character, and formation of the children God has given us.

As mothers, we have the greatest responsibility and the deepest joy to raise our children up to love the Lord and become competent, mature adults who serve God and others well. What we build in our homes today will shape the world tomorrow.

And that responsibility is far too important to outsource.

The night of the gun was never-ending — until the day I surrendered to Christ

I remember the night my legs gave out.

I woke up to my sister standing in my doorway. She was scared. Our parents were arguing behind a closed bedroom door, voices raised, something different in the tone this time. We walked down the hallway together and knocked.

Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship.

When the door opened, my father was standing there with a loaded gun pressed to his head.

My legs went numb. I collapsed onto the floor.

Long night's journey

It wasn’t an isolated moment.

Our home was marked by ongoing conflict and instability, the kind that teaches you early how to stay alert, how to read a room, and how to survive without ever really feeling safe.

I didn’t have words for what I had just seen. I only knew something wasn’t right in a way I couldn’t fix and that whatever I thought “normal” was, it wasn’t this.

That kind of moment doesn’t always explode your life right away. Sometimes it just sits there, quiet and unprocessed, and follows you.

It followed me. It bled into my personal and romantic relationships and ultimately skewed my view of the world and of myself. I learned to survive rather than connect — to perform rather than belong. I struggled to understand friendship, trust, and emotional safety. And over time, resentment toward my parents, especially my father, became part of my identity.

Seeking 'normal'

As I got older, that disconnect showed up everywhere. I didn’t feel like I fit in. I struggled to form real friendships. I was made fun of just for being myself, and after a while, you start to believe there’s something wrong with you. I didn’t know what the problem was. I just knew I felt it.

So when drugs and alcohol showed up, they didn’t feel like destruction. They felt like a solution. They quieted something I couldn’t explain. They made me feel normal, or at least closer to the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be.

That’s the trap, because it works — at first. What I didn’t understand was that I wasn’t fixing anything. I was covering something I didn’t want to look at.

Later, when things got worse, it was labeled a "mental health" issue.

My father struggled with mental illness, and for many years I wrestled with my own diagnoses, some of which, in hindsight, did not fully capture what was truly happening beneath the surface.

I was prescribed medical marijuana. But instead of helping, it began triggering severe adverse reactions, including escalating instability, mania, and psychosis that distorted my judgment and sense of reality.

ptsdusa.org

Not broken

Looking back now, I don’t believe there was something fundamentally broken in me. I believe there was something unaddressed. There’s a difference.

I kept looking for something to fix the symptoms, but nothing was touching the root. And that only works for so long.

Eventually, everything catches up. It did for me.

Addiction did not destroy my life overnight. It unfolded through cycles of defiance, denial, and relapse. Each time I tried to regain control on my own terms, I fell deeper into chaos.

It culminated in a destructive spiral that led me to a reckless and disorienting bender in Atlantic City. The consequences I now faced were legal. There was no talking my way out of this or pretending it didn't exist. I had reached a point where I could no longer outrun the reality of what my life had become.

Brought to my knees

In hindsight, I believe God had to bring me to my knees.

The illusion of control was gone. I finally realized there was no way I was getting out of this under my own power. And that's when change finally became possible.

It became possible because faith became real — not something I grew up around, not something I understood intellectually, but something lived.

Scripture says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” And also, “You shall be called by a new name.”

I used to hear that and think it sounded nice. Now I understand it.

Redeemed and reconciled

Because my identity did change — not overnight, not perfectly, but fundamentally. I was no longer defined by what I had been through or how I had responded to it. Through recovery and faith, I encountered Jesus not as religion but as relationship. Through prayer, God revealed to me that I was not meant to be ashamed of my past but to embrace it, bring it into the light, and allow it to help others.

One of the most profound outcomes has been reconciliation with my father. The man I once viewed as the source of my wounds became part of a redemption story marked by grace, forgiveness, and healing.

Today, I live a life that is sober and grounded in faith. I’ve worked the Twelve Steps and now help guide others through the process. I am actively involved with Chain Breakers and bringing Christ-centered recovery to those who need it.

If there is one message I hope to share, it is that unhealed childhood trauma, misunderstood mental health struggles, and substance abuse are deeply interconnected. Healing requires both spiritual surrender and honest conversations about mental health.

I share this with humility, knowing I too remain a work in progress. It's my hope that the more we bring stories like mine into the light, the less power shame and isolation will have over those who are still struggling.

Colorado's speed-camera traps just got way more aggressive

There’s enforcing the law — and then there’s building a system that treats every driver like a suspect the moment they turn the key. Colorado isn’t flirting with that line anymore. It’s driving straight past it.

For years, speed cameras were a minor annoyance. You knew where they were, your navigation app warned you, and if you were paying attention, you adjusted. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it was transparent. Colorado has now scrapped that model in favor of something far more aggressive — and far less accountable.

Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

The state’s new Automated Vehicle Identification Systems don’t just clock your speed at a single point. They track your vehicle across multiple cameras, calculate your average speed over distance, and automatically issue a ticket if you’re 10 miles per hour or more over the limit. No warning. No discretion. No human judgment. Just a system quietly watching, calculating, and penalizing.

Let’s call this what it is: not smarter enforcement, but broader surveillance.

Highway robbery

The rollout followed a 2023 change in state law, and what started as warnings has quickly turned into active ticketing. One of the newest stretches under this system is Interstate 25 north of Denver, where drivers moving through construction zones are now monitored continuously. The state says it’s about safety. That’s the headline. But the fine print tells a different story.

The penalty is $75 and carries zero points on your license. That’s not an accident. If this were truly about cracking down on dangerous driving, there would be meaningful consequences tied to your driving record. Instead, this looks like a volume business model — low enough fines to keep people from fighting, high enough frequency to generate serious revenue.

And then there’s the part that should concern every driver in America: The ticket goes to the registered owner of the vehicle, not necessarily the person who was driving.

That’s where this stops being about traffic enforcement and starts colliding with the Constitution.

Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images

Blank check

The burden of proof in this country is supposed to be on the state. That’s not optional. That’s foundational. Yet Colorado’s system leans on the assumption that if your name is on the registration, you’re responsible — unless you can prove otherwise. That flips due process on its head.

Colorado Revised Statute 42-4-110.5 does not give the state a blank check to assign liability to vehicle owners in every situation. In fact, it explicitly acknowledges that the owner may not have been the driver. And long-standing legal precedent — at both the federal and state level — makes it clear that the government must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Relying on a license plate and a database isn’t proof. It’s a shortcut.

And let’s be honest: The system counts on the fact that most people won’t push back. They’ll see the fine, weigh the hassle of fighting it, and just pay up. That’s not justice. That’s compliance by inconvenience.

Legal maze

If you do challenge it, you’re stepping into a legal maze that most drivers aren’t equipped to navigate. Meanwhile, the state continues issuing tickets at scale, backed by a system that never sleeps, never questions itself, and never exercises judgment.

This is what happens when enforcement becomes automated: Accountability disappears.

A police officer can assess a situation. A camera cannot. It doesn’t care if traffic flow made it safer to keep pace. It doesn’t account for conditions. It doesn’t apply discretion. It simply records, calculates, and penalizes. That might be efficient, but it’s not fair — and it’s certainly not nuanced.

Mile-high spies

Then there’s the bigger picture, the one few officials seem eager to talk about.

These systems don’t just measure speed. They track movement. They log where your vehicle enters a zone, where it exits, and how it behaves in between. Expand that across highways, cities, and eventually entire states, and you’re looking at a real-time network that monitors how Americans move.

And if you think it stops at speeding, you haven’t been paying attention to how quickly technology evolves.

Today, it’s average speed enforcement. Tomorrow, it could be automated citations for rolling stops, lane usage, or anything else that can be digitized. Add artificial intelligence into the mix, and the potential scope grows exponentially. This isn’t science fiction — it’s the natural progression of a system that’s already in place.

Colorado isn’t just testing a traffic tool. It’s piloting a framework.

Stealer's wheel

Supporters will argue this is about protecting construction workers, and that’s a legitimate concern. No one is arguing against safety. But safety cannot become the catch-all justification for systems that erode fundamental legal protections. You don’t preserve public safety by undermining due process.

And let’s not ignore the tone coming from officials who promote these programs. There’s an almost casual acceptance — sometimes even pride — in the idea of constant monitoring. As if a 24/7 enforcement net is something drivers should simply accept as the cost of modern transportation.

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

Government answers to the people, not the other way around. Policies like this deserve scrutiny, debate, and — when necessary — pushback. Because once a system like this is normalized, it doesn’t get scaled back. It expands. Quietly. Incrementally. Permanently.

Colorado may frame this as innovation. But from behind the wheel, it looks a lot more like overreach.

And if other states decide to follow this blueprint — and they will — drivers across the country may soon find themselves in the same position: tracked, ticketed, and told to prove their innocence after the fact.

That’s not better enforcement.

That’s a fundamental shift in how the rules are applied — and who they’re really serving.

10 last-minute Mother’s Day gifts that don’t feel last-minute

Mother’s Day has a way of sneaking up on people. One minute it’s April; the next, you’re rummaging through a half-empty scented candle shelf in CVS wondering whether “Tuscan Sunset” or “Nantucket Rain” better expresses your appreciation for the woman who gave you life.

Fortunately, the best last-minute Mother’s Day gifts often are not things at all.

Experience gifts also have the advantage of arriving instantly via email. Even if you’re down to the wire, they are still thoughtful because they require planning and shared time.

In fact, depending on your mother’s age, the last thing she may want is more stuff. Many parents eventually reach a stage of life when they are actively trying to simplify, downsize, declutter, or quietly distribute decades of accumulated possessions.

What they often appreciate more are gifts involving time, competence, memory, thoughtfulness, or shared experience.

A carefully planned lunch. A framed family photograph. Help organizing old pictures. Tickets for something months away. A promise to finally fix the technology problems everyone else in the family avoids.

The best gifts from adult children acknowledge a simple reality: Eventually, your role in your parents’ lives shifts. At a certain point, being helpful, attentive, and present matters more than buying another object that winds up in a closet.

Here are 10 last-minute Mother’s Day gifts that are still personal.

1. 'Coupons' but for tech support

Every mother has probably received a homemade coupon book at some point. Usually it promised things like “one free hug” or “breakfast in bed.”

Harder to pull this off as an adult — unless you offer something actually helpful.

Many parents quietly live with low-level technological chaos: three different remotes, passwords scattered across sticky notes, thousands of family photos somewhere in the cloud but nowhere anyone can actually find them.

Here's where you come in. Some sample "offers":

“I will finally fix the printer situation.”
“I’ll set up your streaming passwords properly.”
“I’ll organize all the family photos.”
“I’ll clean up your phone storage.”

And if you're not so tech-capable yourself, you can always hire someone to do it for you.

Of course, there's no need to limit yourself to digital chores. Maybe there are some old paint cans that have been sitting on the side of the house for a decade, or maybe an unused garden bed needs to be brought back to life.

Yes, these gifts are more practical then sentimental, and that's the point. Children eventually become useful — what better day to acknowledge this than Mother’s Day?

2. Tickets for some future event

One reason many last-minute gifts feel hollow is that they lack intentionality. A future event instantly solves that problem.

The key is specificity: not "We should go to a concert sometime," but “I bought tickets for June 14.”

Experience gifts also have the advantage of arriving instantly via email. Even if you’re down to the wire, they are still thoughtful because they require planning and shared time.

These could be tickets to a concert, baseball game, or theater production; a botanical garden membership; enrollment in a cooking class; or reservations for afternoon tea.

In many cases, the anticipation becomes part of the gift itself.

3. A real letter

Not a text. Not a greeting card with two rushed sentences crammed beneath someone else’s poetry. An actual letter.

For many mothers, especially those with adult children, this may be more meaningful than almost any purchased object.

You don’t need to make it overly sentimental. In fact, it’s often better if it’s specific and grounded.

Memories you still think about.
Things you understand now that you didn’t as a child.
Family traditions you appreciate more with age.
Sacrifices you failed to notice at the time.
Funny stories only the two of you remember.

One advantage of getting older is realizing that ordinary family moments were not ordinary at all.

Print the letter and put it in an envelope. Include an old photograph if possible. Physical objects still matter.

4. Plans you made yourself

Many family gatherings supposedly “for Mom” still require mothers to organize them.

This year, remove her from the logistics entirely. Pick the restaurant. Coordinate schedules. Make the reservation. Handle transportation if necessary. Inform everyone where to be and when. The competence is part of the gift!

And it doesn’t necessarily have to be expensive. A carefully planned brunch at home can be more thoughtful than an overcrowded prix-fixe restaurant meal booked in a panic.

The important thing is that she experiences the day rather than managing it.

5. A family 'podcast' recording

One of the strangest things about adulthood is realizing how many stories you never asked your parents about.

How did they meet? What was their first apartment like? What do they remember about their own parents? What did family holidays look like when they were children?

A surprisingly meaningful Mother’s Day gift is simply deciding to record these stories before they disappear. The good news is that this requires almost no technology. An iPhone on the kitchen table is enough.

You could record a conversation with just your mother or both parents together. Gather siblings or grandparents, or even create a recurring “family podcast.”

The point is not production quality. In fact, part of the charm is hearing ordinary interruptions: laughter, people talking over each other, someone making coffee in the background.

Years from now, those details may matter as much as the stories themselves.

6. A portrait sitting

It may sound extravagant or old-fashioned, but commissioning a portrait — even a relatively simple charcoal sketch or watercolor — has become surprisingly accessible.

And unlike most gifts, it creates both an experience and an heirloom.

Some artists now work from photographs with quick turnaround digital commissions, while others offer live sittings that can be scheduled for later in the summer. The point is not necessarily museum-quality realism. In many cases, the charm comes from the act itself: setting aside time to sit still and be looked at carefully.

For mothers especially, who are often the family member behind the camera rather than in front of it, a portrait can be unexpectedly personal.

Even if the finished work arrives later, the commission itself can be given immediately — and is far more thoughtful than another last-minute gift basket.

7. A framed family photo

Most families now possess thousands of photos, and almost none of them exist anywhere outside a phone.

That’s why one of the best last-minute Mother’s Day gifts is often simply turning digital memories into physical objects again.

The easiest version is also one of the most effective: pick a genuinely good family photo, print it properly, and frame it.

You don’t need to wait for shipping, either. Places like FedEx Office, CVS, and Walgreens offer same-day photo printing at many locations. A thoughtfully chosen black-and-white candid photo in a simple frame will usually mean more than a generic store-bought decoration.

If you have slightly more time, photo books have become remarkably easy to make online. Services like Shutterfly, Mixbook, and Artifact Uprising let you assemble albums in an evening using photos already sitting on your phone.

The key is curation. Don’t dump 300 random images into a template. Pick a theme: vacations, grandchildren, pets. One thoughtfully assembled album often becomes something people revisit for years.

Sunset Boulevard/Getty Images

8. A fresh citrus subscription

Subscription gifts often fail because they seem generic — another monthly box filled with novelty snacks or products nobody would have purchased voluntarily.

The better approach is much simpler: Think about what your mother already genuinely enjoys eating or drinking, then find the best recurring version of it.

For some mothers, that might mean coffee from a favorite local roaster. For others it could be cheese or good olive oil.

The key is matching the gift to her actual habits rather than your idea of what a “gift” should look like.

Importantly, a subscription gift does not need to physically arrive on Mother’s Day itself in order to be thoughtful. In some ways, the delayed arrival is part of the appeal. Instead of a single rushed delivery, the gift becomes something she can look forward to weeks later.

One especially good option for citrus lovers is Marmalade Grove, a California citrus farm that ships seasonal fruit boxes directly to customers. A surprising number of people have never tasted truly fresh citrus picked close to ripeness, and the difference can be dramatic.

9. One excellent thing she would never buy herself

Last-minute shopping becomes much easier once you stop trying to find the “perfect” gift and instead follow a simpler rule: Buy one genuinely excellent version of something she already uses.

Not flashy luxury, but just an upgraded everyday object she would appreciate but probably never purchase for herself: exceptionally soft pajamas, a high-quality chef's knife, beautiful garden shears, quality stationery.

Bonus: This often lends itself to a last-minute stop at a local business, whether it's a gardening store, a paper store, or a kitchen goods supplier.

10. A gift in her name

Donating to charity “in someone’s name” can sometimes seem impersonal — the sort of thing corporations do instead of buying Christmas gifts.

But done thoughtfully, it can also be deeply meaningful. The key is specificity and personal connection.

Instead of donating to a massive abstract nonprofit, think about the causes, institutions, or traditions your mother genuinely cares about: a local pregnancy center, a veterans' organization, local food banks, missionary work.

For religious families, one especially meaningful option is arranging a Mass intention or prayer offering on her behalf.

Like many of the best last-minute gifts, the point is not the amount of money involved. For many mothers — especially religious mothers — one of the greatest satisfactions is seeing their children carry forward the values they tried to instill in them.

Tech billionaire Palmer Luckey calls out homeschool haters' hypocrisy

Activists who demand strict oversight for homeschooling rarely apply the same standards to public schools, entrepreneur and defense contractor Palmer Luckey argued this week.

Luckey pushed back against growing calls for tighter regulation of homeschooling, responding to critics who say parents should face more evaluations and state monitoring.

'Ask them what the consequences should be for homeschooling parents who fail to educate children.'

Home invasion

His comments came after writer Jill Filipovic argued that homeschooling families should accept more scrutiny if they believe homeschooling delivers better educational outcomes.

“If homeschooling is actually super high quality, then homeschooling families should not object to being evaluated, tested, and checked-in-on to make sure their kids are actually learning,” Filipovic wrote in a post viewed more than one million times.

Luckey responded that homeschool students often succeed precisely because they are not forced into what he described as the “slow-progress-across-all-subjects method public schools impose on every student, no matter how they learn.”

He added that standardized oversight would likely undermine the flexibility that makes homeschooling effective in the first place

“The evaluation/testing you are talking about would almost certainly prohibit that sort of tailored education,” Luckey wrote, “especially since they would be designed and administered by a system that wants to eliminate homeschooling in almost all cases.”

Several studies appear to support at least part of Luckey’s argument.

Study haul

A 2022 study analyzing results from the Classic Learning Test — a college entrance exam launched in 2015 — found homeschool students outperformed peers from other school systems by margins ranging from three to 12.1 points, including in verbal and writing categories.

A 2025 study by Cardus found that 45% of short-term homeschoolers earned at least a bachelor’s degree, roughly comparable to the 46% rate among non-homeschooled students. The same study also found homeschoolers were more likely to be married, have children, volunteer in their communities, and report higher levels of optimism.

Meanwhile, a 2026 overview of peer-reviewed research found that 62% of studies conducted over a 30-year period concluded homeschool students outperformed their traditionally schooled peers.

No, it is not. We are putting the vast majority of our children into madhouses that no longer have anything to do with how society works or what they will experience in said society. Arguments to continue doing so because we already do so are tautological.
— Palmer Luckey (@PalmerLuckey) May 3, 2026

Rubber rooms

Luckey also rejected the argument that public schools better prepare children for real-world socialization.

“We are putting the vast majority of our children into madhouses that no longer have anything to do with how society works or what they will experience in said society,” he wrote.

Despite the growing body of research and the rapid rise in homeschooling, major media outlets continue to advocate for tighter oversight. The Washington Post reported in 2024 that between 1.9 million and 2.7 million American children were being homeschooled — roughly a 50% increase over six years.

In England, homeschooling numbers rose from fewer than 81,000 students in 2022 to roughly 92,000 in 2023. The Guardian attributed much of the increase to COVID-era lockdowns while simultaneously calling for greater regulation and oversight, arguing public schools provide stronger safeguards for children.

Luckey, however, said critics often apply a double standard — demanding accountability from parents while excusing systemic failures in public education.

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Artemis II pilot Victor Glover tells schoolkids to put teamwork over race

Artemis II pilot Victor Glover is showing kids that progressive ideology and groupthink are not pathways to success.

Despite the media's persistent interest in the color of his skin, the 50-year-old NASA astronaut prefers to keep the focus on his crew's historic April 6 spaceflight, which marks the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth.

'I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we [were] is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually.'

This was once again evident Friday, when the team of four sat down for a "CBS Mornings" town hall, taking questions from children from nearby science-focused school M.S. 255 Salk School of Science.

No DEI in 'team'

"How did it feel to be the first person of color to fly to or around the moon?" an 11-year-old girl named Ameya asked, 10 minutes into the discussion.

Glover replied with a smile, "I will tell you one of the things about swinging for the fence and trying to hit a home run when the game is on the line is if you think about that, that can add pressure and make you not go up there and and play your best game."

The astronaut said instead he "focused a lot on working with this team and trying to be a good teammate," before stressing the importance of being a team member, and not focusing on individual attributes.

"I think one of the reasons we were as successful as we [were] is we spent a lot of time thinking about us and not me individually."

Glover continued, "I would answer this by maybe just making a visual lesson here that I spent a lot of time thinking about this patch and this patch," he said while pointing to his NASA patch and then the United States flag, "and not this patch," pointing to his own name.

"And now we get to be here and we get to talk about it, though."

'Human history'

Glover has been fielding such questions since the mission was announced. Just three days before the launch, a journalist asked Glover what being the "first black man" to travel to the moon meant to him.

Glover dismissed the notion, saying he hoped society would be "pushing the other direction" so that one day "we don't have to talk about these firsts."

"This is the human history," he emphasized. "It's about human history. It's the story of humanity, not black history, not women's history, but that it becomes human history."

Todd Owyoung/NBC/Getty Images

Glory to God

Glover has also been known to put his Christianity before ethnic identity.

Glover has used his time in the spotlight to talk about his faith. Just before circumnavigating the moon, Glover shared what he called the "most important mysteries of the world" in a live radio transmission.

"Christ said in response to 'what was the greatest command' that it was to love God with all that you are. And he, also being a great teacher, said the second is equal to it, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself."

Upon returning to Earth, he made his priorities even clearer: "When this started ... I wanted to thank God in public, and I want to thank God again."

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This used-car odometer scam is everywhere — and impossible to detect

Used-car buyers beware.

The number you see on an odometer used to mean something. It used to tell a story about wear, usage, and value. Today, that number can be fiction, and you would never know it.

The story the odometer tells should always be compared to the wear on the seats, the condition of the pedals, and the state of the steering wheel.

Modern mileage blockers have changed the game entirely. This isn’t the crude odometer rollback scam from decades ago. This is something far more sophisticated, far more difficult to trace, and far more dangerous for consumers who assume the system still protects them.

Disappear here

This technology doesn’t “roll back” mileage at all. It prevents mileage from ever being recorded in the first place. That is exactly why traditional detection methods fall flat.

These devices plug directly into a vehicle’s Controller Area Network, the digital nervous system that connects every major electronic component in the car. Once installed, the blocker intercepts mileage data before it gets stored across the vehicle’s control modules. The car is still driven, still accumulating wear, still aging in real time, but the digital record stays frozen.

And it is all completely invisible to the usual diagnostic tools. These devices don’t leave evidence because they don’t alter data — they prevent it from being recorded in the first place.

Traditional odometer fraud leaves a trail. Technicians can spot inconsistencies between modules, timestamps that don’t line up, or physical wear that contradicts recorded mileage. But when mileage is never logged, those clues disappear. Every system in the vehicle agrees with itself. The data looks clean, even if it is incomplete.

The result is a whole new way to commit fraud.

Legal gray zone

Nor do these devices leave any trace behind. They're plug-and-play — no cutting wires or other modifications required. They connect using factory-style connectors and can be removed just as easily.

Be forewarned: The days of “a scan will catch it” are over, especially as this technology gets better. We're already seeing high-end versions engineered for specific vehicles.

The legal line, at least, is clear. Using these devices to misrepresent a vehicle’s mileage during a sale is fraud. It doesn’t matter how advanced the technology is or how undetectable it may be. If the intent is to deceive, it’s illegal.

But the devices themselves exist in a legal gray zone. There are legitimate uses for this technology. Automakers and testing facilities may use mileage blockers during development, performance evaluation, or controlled transport scenarios. In those environments, preventing mileage accumulation can make sense. It preserves test conditions, protects asset value, and isolates variables.

The problem is that non-dealers can easily get hold of these devices too. Federal law bars selling or installing odometer-altering devices with intent to defraud, while California law goes farther — prohibiting any device that causes an odometer to display anything other than true mileage, regardless of intent. In practice, however, variants remain widely available online, typically marketed as diagnostic or testing tools.

Horacio Villalobos/Getty Images

Sit before you commit

That's why service records, maintenance history, and physical inspection — preferably by a trusted professional — are more important than ever. The story the odometer tells should always be compared to the wear on the seats, the condition of the pedals, and the state of the steering wheel.

Dealers are also feeling the pressure. Liability around mileage accuracy is increasing, and the expectation that a dealership can verify every vehicle’s true history is becoming harder to meet. Insurance companies are adjusting their models as well, particularly when policies are tied to usage or mileage-based risk.

Meanwhile, manufacturers are playing catch-up, exploring new ways to secure vehicle data and detect anomalies that current systems miss. But like every technological arms race, the defense is always reacting to the offense. And right now, the offense has an edge.

The uncomfortable takeaway is this: The number on the odometer is no longer a definitive measure of a vehicle’s life. It’s just one data point, and in some cases, it’s the least reliable one.

That doesn’t mean the system is broken beyond repair. But it does mean consumers need to adjust their expectations. Trust needs to be earned through documentation, inspection, and transparency, not assumed based on a digital readout. Because the technology exists. It works. And in many cases, you won’t see it coming.

Why do the 'child-free' want EVERYBODY to devalue motherhood?

When my mother lost her temper, her most frequent complaint was the existence of her children.

“I could have been someone if I hadn’t been saddled with three kids and no damned man to help me,” she’d yell between puffs on a cigarette.

Lacking their own firsthand experience of motherhood, some of these women bolster their arguments by remembering the hell they put their own mothers through.

Back in the '80s, I didn’t know any other mothers who blamed their children for ruining their lives, or who said out loud that they regretted that their children were born. They surely existed, but decent people didn’t express such dark thoughts in public.

Ball and chain

We’ve come a long way, baby. In the 21st century, it’s socially acceptable to talk about children as a ball and chain, a fetter on freedom, the reason a mother’s life never took off. Children were once thought of as a gift. For an increasing number of women, they’re seen as a burden.

Modern women are telling each other and the world how they refuse to have their lives ruined by children. Those who have had them and wish they hadn’t confide their resentments to magazine reporters.

Last month, the Cut published an article titled “I regret having children.” The writer speaks to three anonymous mothers who relate their depression, frustration, and resentment at how having children derailed what they thought their lives would be.

One says having kids made it harder to enjoy her “stressful but fulfilling” job as a nonprofit executive. For a whole year, her baby was colicky and wouldn’t stop crying. In fact, her child was so unbearable that even the babysitter said, “I can’t do this anymore," and quit.

Mother load

Childlessness also used to be a private matter. Not now. Everywhere you turn, there's another middle-aged woman with a brittle smile proclaiming how happy she is to have forsaken motherhood in favor of her hobbies, her career, and her ability to sleep in.

Lacking their own firsthand experience of motherhood, some of these women bolster their arguments by remembering the hell they put their own mothers through. As a child, 40-year-old Victoria Peel Yates

watched my mother work six days a week running her esthetician business while doing all of the cooking, cleaning, and child care at home. She was so busy being a working wife and mother to two kids that she put off many of her dreams until retirement.

Yates never tells us what these unfulfilled dreams were, just that her mother "loved her work" (only retiring when the U.K.'s COVID lockdowns forced her to) and that her "lifelong wish was to become a grandmother."

The life Yates remembers sounds hectic, but also rich; through a different pair of eyes, this balancing act could look like "having it all." Could it be that her mother found meaning and fulfillment in her life of "sacrifice"?

Birth dearth

It doesn't seem to occur to Yates, who needs a cautionary tale to justify her own choices. What kind of life did not having kids allow Yates to have, anyway? She's vague on the details, mentioning something about a freelance writing business. Mostly, it seems to be about what she avoids — the "upheaval" that would make dealing with her grief, anxiety, and financial precarity even more difficult.

Business Insider filed Yates' essay under "Parenting." This seems like an odd choice, until you realize that the whole "child-free" movement is about turning a lack into something more like an equally productive alternative.

National Public Radio’s “It’s Been a Minute” podcast puts it plainly. It’s a bit painful to listen to or read given the Valley Girl dialect of host Brittany Luse. Here’s how she opens the March 24, 2026, episode on being “child-free.”

Childless implies that being a nonparent may be a matter of circumstance, like maybe you wanted kids, but it didn't work out. But the term child-free is much more rooted in the choice to be a nonparent. That's the group of people we'll be discussing today.

They're not just people without kids; they're nonparents. Instead of lives, they nurture their own freedom, modernity, and self-determination.

Neil Libbert/Getty Images

Ma'am Solo

Luse’s guests include author Emma Gannon, who wrote a novel about being “child-free by choice.” Gannon wants us to know about the vital contribution she's making by not reproducing:

I feel like child-free women bring a lot to society. You know, if someone is sick, if someone has aging parents, if someone needs someone with free time, someone with more finances 'cause child-free women normally have more money, I think it's sort of like, well, let's celebrate the auntie figure. Let's celebrate the godmother. Like, these are people in society that I think get stuff done as well.

Like, yeah. It sounds less like a celebration and more like whistling past the graveyard. Any honest adult who gets to middle age knows that we look back on some of our choices with regret. But the child-free advocacy ladies put on their brightest smiles and assure us (themselves, really) that they won’t regret not building a family. They won’t feel lonely in their old age when they have no one to care for them but a low-paid staffer at a nursing home.

Womb and doom

It’s no surprise that the “child-free” discourse attracts the more extreme end of the feminist spectrum. A surprising number of these feel no shame in weaponizing their wombs. Such feminists treat the children they might or might not have as bargaining chips in the never-ending war between left and right.

This woman put out a 30-second social media video telling the world — presumably all the misogynistic, white, conservative patriarchs — she wouldn’t be having any babies for the oppressive regime we call the United States of America. She’s surprisingly confident in her fecundity for a woman of 44:

I have lots of eggs left. I’m very fertile. I got it tested. And I want you to know I’m not going to have any of your babies. Not going to reproduce my amazing genetic composition for this country. ... And you’ll kill me before you rape me.

Something is profoundly wrong with a culture in which it’s not only acceptable, but applauded, to discuss child-bearing as a jail sentence and a buzz-kill for women. As a culture in general, we barely even give lip-service any longer to the idea that we adults have a moral responsibility to children. Look at how "The Simpsons" turned the expression “Won’t somebody think of the children?” into a joke — the kind of thing only a stupid, pearl-clutching “Boomer” would say. It’s gross and cringe to think of the children, right?

As a former child who knew from birth that his mother experienced his existence as an assault on her personhood and her dreams, I can confirm that these attitudes have sad and lifelong emotional and moral effects on a person. Say a prayer for America’s children; God knows many of their mothers won’t.

Going to Europe on my own at 14 was an adventure. Can today's kids ever feel as far away from home?

The first time I flew on a plane, I was 14 years old. It was my first time going to Europe and my first time anywhere outside the United States other than Canada. But Canada doesn’t really count, does it? Not really, especially back then, when you didn’t even need a passport to drive over the border.

That first time overseas I was alone — kind of. I was playing in an orchestra on a music tour. There were itineraries and things were planned, and there were adults making sure I was present. I was with 85 other high school students, eight counselors, and a director.

I think maybe that’s part of what I’m most thankful for when I think of those summers in Europe. I felt so far away then.

But I wasn’t with my family or my parents. At that age, at least for me, that counted as "alone."

Roughing it

This was back before we all had smartphones in all our pockets. I couldn’t text my mom and dad every hour, and I couldn’t check my email whenever I wanted. I didn’t even have an email. I could call them, however. And I did, every few days.

Of course, you couldn't just pick up a pay phone and make an international call. You needed a calling card.

Remember those?

The back was covered with instructions. How to call out of a country, what code to enter calling into a country, and a ton of numbers you had to enter before you even made the call. It was an insanely convoluted system, almost as if it were a test you had to pass. If you accidentally pressed a wrong number, you would have to start all over again.

But this system did work. And it allowed me to check in with Mom and Dad every three or four days, as they requested.

Warm welcome

Every stop of the tour, we would get divided up and stay with different host families — a few kids per household. They would give us a little tour in their broken English (the only language any of us spoke), offer their phone if we wanted to call home, and — if they were really cool — let us have a little wine with dinner.

On our last night, we would play a concert outside in the middle of the town. All the host families would come, sit there in folding chairs, and listen. There was food, sparkling water (then still rare in America), maybe some wine.

The next morning, we would get on the bus and drive to another tiny little town three hours away and do it all again. After four weeks of this it was time to get on a plane and head back home.

I did this every summer in high school. It was a blast, and I learned a lot — both about other people and myself. They were formative experiences for a kid from the Midwest like me, and they set me on a path I'm still on today.

Far and away

Still, I have to wonder if I would ever let my kids do something like that. The thought of sending my son off to Europe at such a young age with people I don’t know gives me serious preemptive anxiety. On the other hand, my parents were good parents and they let me do it. And I survived.

Fortunately, my son won't be 14 for years, so I have a little time to learn to let go. And if he does go, we'll have the full spectrum of modern technology keeping us connected, not just some dinky plastic card.

At the same time, I wonder if the end of the calling card didn't take some of the magic with it. Knowing everything that’s happening with all your friends back home while posting pictures every hour for all of them to see doesn’t quite plunge you into the unknown.

I think maybe that’s part of what I’m most thankful for when I think of those summers in Europe. I felt so far away then — far from Mom and Dad, my school, everyone I knew, and everything familiar. Maybe one of the blessings of having grown up when I grew up was the possibility of that kind of distance. Traveling meant just a little more when you could feel far away.

Imperial War Museum/Getty Images

Cozy connection

I’m in Europe again, though I have a smartphone and email now. I text my wife all the time, and she sends me pictures of the kids. I FaceTime with them, tell them I can’t wait to see them next week, and send them videos of what it looks like here. I manage business on my phone, write columns like this one one my computer, and continue my work as usual despite being across the ocean in the Europe that used to feel so far away.

I like this new reality quite a bit, but I think I liked the old one too. Distance doesn’t feel so great any more. The world is smaller and everything nearer. Maybe the whimsy of those childhood summers in Europe was simply the whimsy of youth and I’m only feeling all this because now I’m old and without that same wonder. But I’m not sure.

We are in the age of ever-present digital connection, and that’s not changing any time soon. Those final years before the mass adoption of the cell phone were the last gasps of a big, magical world. We didn’t really understand it at the time, but the cell phone, the smartphone, and email marked the end of distance and some kind of world of whimsy.

There’s no good in lamenting the things we can’t change, and there are quite a few advantages to this newer, much smaller world. But whenever I want to remember the old excitement of that wider, wilder world, I recall the feel of a calling card in my hand and smile.