Do you know how easy it is to bake your own bread?

I didn't, and now I do. And I want to share this knowledge with you.

Want homemade sandwich bread? Just replace the water with milk or half and half and add melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar.

Once you know, it will be harder to go back to the chemical-infused grain product the big, industrialized food manufacturers tell us is "bread."

Especially since the real thing — what everyone understood as "bread" for all of human history until about 100 years ago — is cheaper, more nutritious, and doesn't taste like Styrofoam.

Sourdough ... for the rest of us

And don't worry — we're not going to ruin the fun by approaching it like neurotic, fussy "homesteading" influencers obsessed with buying shiny new equipment to make old-fashioned techniques “authentic.”

You’re not going to need a kitchen scale or a digital probe thermometer. You’re going to make something delicious and wholesome just the way your great-grandmother did, and she didn’t use any of these modern techno crutches.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about sourdough. I didn’t want to use the word before clearing the conceptual brush, because it’s contaminated with “lifestyle” associations. People imagine a complex “artisan” process that can only be achieved by some irritating guy from Minneapolis who talks in upspeak on YouTube.

A few months ago I wrote about cooking from scratch, by hand, without relying on gadgetry and GPS-style “turn by turn” directions. In that piece, I said I was going to learn to bake bread from a natural sourdough starter all by hand, with no scales, no metric-graduated beakers, and no obsessive feeding schedule.

I’ve done it. And it turned out as I thought it would. My hands now know what the right dough consistency feels like. My eyes can tell if the loaf has risen for long enough that it can be baked. The only tools I have relied on were cup measures and a glance at the clock so I know about how long the dough has been fermenting (rising). I don’t need directions or scales or thermometers because I own the knowledge in my hands and mind through direct practice.

The duds? Only about two or three loaves. My problem? Using a starter that was too weak; I hadn’t let it fully develop in the beginning culture stage before I started baking with it. Once I sorted that out, I ended up with this hearty specimen:

Josh Slocum

You’re going to make a loaf that good, and you’ll have it down by memory in one month.

Then you’ll branch out into other kinds of bread. Want homemade sandwich bread? Just replace the water with milk or half and half and add melted butter and a tablespoon of sugar. That’s all I did. Here’s the result from my first try:

Then I wanted something fancier, something like the loaves I’ve been paying $9 for at a local bakery that does it the old-fashioned way with nothing but flour, water, culture, and salt. I just added olive oil and rosemary and put fancy salt on top:

Want to do it yourself?

As I mentioned, I'm not going to give you a recipe. At least, not in the modern-day sense of a set of precisely calibrated steps and measurements designed to produce the exact same outcome every time.

Instead I'm going to give you a basic outline that forces you to absorb the process physically and by instinct, rather than just memorizing turn-by-turn directions. If you’re not afraid of plunging your hands directly into the dough and making practice loaves until you get it right, you’ll be baking like this in a few weeks.

For the starter

You’re not going to buy a starter from any of those online marketplaces. You’re going to make your own. The yeast comes from the rye flour and from the air.

Ingredients

Stone-ground whole rye flour. Yes, whole, and yes, rye, even if you don’t plan to make rye loaves. Rye is packed with natural yeast and bacteria that make starters get off the ground quicker than white flour.
Water
A jar

Method:

Take about a cup of whole rye flour and add enough room-temperature water to make a thick paste. And I do mean "paste" — something with the consistency of the stuff you remember using in school for papier-mâché volcanoes.

But don’t get neurotic. If it’s thinner or thicker than my paste, it’s still going to work.

Mix it well in the jar. Then take a rubber band and put it around the outside of the jar at the level where the starter is now. This is so you can see rise over time. Cover that jar loosely with a towel, cheesecloth, or a loose lid and put it in the oven with the light on. Leave it for 24 hours. Then discard half of it and add the same amount of rye flour and water back in, mix, and leave for another day.

You’re going to do this for at least seven days. After the first few days, you’ll see some bubbles. It’s not ready yet. Keep discarding and feeding. You may even notice it smells a little off the first few days. That’s normal.

By day seven (or a bit longer), you’ll notice that the starter smells sour, in a pleasant way, and yeasty. That’s what you want. At that point, you should also be seeing it double in size between feedings. If it’s not doing that, keep going with daily feedings.

Now you’ve got a stable starter. Stick it in the fridge. You can keep using rye to feed it for baking, or you can feed it white flour and convert it. I just use whatever flour I have handy because I don’t mind my loaves having mixed grains.

Your first loaf

So far we have used rye flour and water. Now to add our two final ingredients: white bread flour and salt.

Again, that's white bread flour, not all-purpose. Bread flour has a higher protein ratio, which you need for building structure and rise.

First, take your starter out of the fridge and feed it flour and water. Put it in your oven with the light on. This gives it the perfect 80 degrees F temperature that it likes. Colder than that and it takes forever. Significantly hotter than that, and you may kill the yeast.

Wait for it to double in size, three to four hours.

Take it out and mix about a half-cup of starter into about a cup and a half of room-temperature water. Put the jar of starter back in the fridge. You only need to keep about a tablespoon of it — that will inoculate all the flour the next time you feed it for baking.

In a large bowl, put in about four and a half cups of bread flour and two teaspoons of salt. Mix the salt through the flour. Now add your wet mixture of water and starter. Stir or use your hands to mix until it all comes together and there are no more dry flour spots. It will be rough and shaggy.

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Knead? No need

Guess what? You’re not going to knead. The reason most people knead is because we have used commercial yeast since it became available in the 1860s. Commercial yeast rises in just hours, too short a time for the yeast to build the bread structure, so you have to do it by hand to develop the gluten.

Not so with sourdough, using this method. Time is going to do everything kneading does and more.

Cover the dough and put it in a cold room or cellar if you have one. Somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees F. Let it sit 18-24 hours.

This is cold fermentation, which gives you the tang of sourdough, and it makes the bread more nutritious and long-lasting before it goes stale. If you don’t have a cold room, let your dough ferment for a few hours on the counter, then put it in the refrigerator overnight.

At the end of fermentation, you are ready to bake. Preheat a Dutch oven in your oven at 450 degrees for 45 minutes. Shape your dough into a ball or loaf, and put it in the Dutch oven. Cover, put back in the oven, and bake for 30 minutes, still at 450.

Remove the lid, turn the oven down to 400, then bake for about 10 to 15 more minutes to get a golden crust.

You have made bread that is miles above the plastic grotesquerie sold at grocery stores, for almost no money and for very little effort. No scales; no precise measuring. This is how your ancestors and all humans made bread for thousands of years before the late 19th century.

If your first few loaves aren’t great, keep going.

Don’t forget to slather it in butter.

The secret to senior softball? It's all about the magic bat

I always liked team sports, so when I got old enough, I signed up for senior softball.

At our first game, I showed up with an old mitt and a small aluminum bat I dug out of my sister’s garage. I didn’t really know what level senior softball was going to be. I figured this mitt and bat would be good enough. If not, I could upgrade.

Another guy couldn’t seem to get a hit with it. He seemed perplexed and somewhat disturbed that there was a special bat for old people.

That bat, it turned out, was for girls. Like girls ages 8 to 12. It was about a foot shorter than a normal bat.

I didn’t know this at the time. I leaned it against the wall in the dugout. When the coach saw it, he turned toward us players: “Whose bat is this?!”

I admitted it was mine. He glared at me and said, “Get this thing out of here! If you don’t have a real bat, borrow one from the other guys!”

I grabbed the bat, hurried to my car, and stashed it in the trunk.

Magic stick

So then I had to borrow another guy's bat. I didn’t know anyone on the team yet. I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

The other bats looked pretty high-tech. Most of them looked new. I didn’t want to scuff up somebody’s brand-new bat. Fortunately, when it was my turn at the plate, one of the guys handed me his.

I hadn’t played softball in many years, so I was pretty nervous. The first pitch came, and I swung late and hit a bloop single over the first baseman’s head.

I hadn’t hit it very hard. I was surprised the ball went so far. I ran to first base. I had my first hit.

The next time I was up, I used that same bat, and this time I made solid contact. The ball flew over the shortstop’s head. It went farther than I’d ever hit a softball. It was almost unnatural how far it went. It was like magic.

'We have the technology'

Later, I asked the guy about his bat. He said it was a senior softball bat. All the bats in the dugout were senior softball bats. That’s what everybody had.

When I went up a third time, I hit a grounder. But it bounced hard and skipped passed the third basemen for another hit.

Back in the dugout, I asked a different guy, “What’s up with these bats?” He said it was a special design. Senior softball bats were made of advanced materials. They were more flexible. The bat gave a little when it made contact. And then the ball “trampolined” off it with extra force.

He showed me the little inscription on the bat that said it was specifically authorized by Senior Softball-USA, the world's largest senior softball association.

“Wow,” I said. “So we have our own bats.”

“Yes, we do,” he answered.

Sweet spot

At the next game, another guy showed up with a bunch of old senior softball bats he wasn’t using anymore. He had brought them for me. If I liked one of them, I could buy it from him.

He told me to try them out, see which one I liked. The first one I tried, I blasted a base hit between the outfielders. “I’ll take this one,” I told him.

And the next week, I gave him a hundred bucks.

Pierre Lahalle/Getty Images

Softball shaman

Once I saw how fun senior softball was, I tried to find ways to get extra practice. A younger woman I knew invited me to a pickup game she played in.

These were young people, mostly in their 20s and 30s. They were good players, much better than I was.

When it came time for me to bat, I used my new senior softball bat and hit a deep ball into left field. Everyone was like, “Wow, you really got a hold of that one.”

The next time I was up, I hit another deep ball. People were surprised, shocked even.

“It’s the bat,” I told them. “It’s a senior softball bat.”

They had never heard of such a thing. They wanted to see it. I showed them the little inscription that said: Senior Softball-USA.

“It’s a special design,” I said. “It’s bouncier. Like a trampoline.”

They all felt the bat. They studied it. It didn’t look any different than their bats.

“Try it,” I told them. So they did. One guy, who could already hit the ball a mile, hit the ball a mile.

Another guy couldn’t seem to get a hit with it. He seemed perplexed and somewhat disturbed that there was a special bat for old people.

Another guy got a solid hit, but he didn’t seem particularly impressed. All these guys were really good hitters to start with. My special bat didn’t seem to do that much for them.

I said, “Maybe you have to be a senior to activate the technology.”

Team dream

I made it through that first season. It was a great experience. And being around my teammates reminded me how much skill and competence your average person over 50 represents.

Like the senior softball bat: They had integrated this new technology into their sport in just the right amount. It didn’t significantly alter the game; it just made it a little more fun.

But being on a team. That was the best part. I’ve been a writer all my life. Sitting in a room. By myself. Thinking my thoughts.

What a relief to be with the guys. On a beautiful spring day. In the dugout. With my magic bat.

5 pro athletes who boldly take a knee — for Jesus Christ

When most athletes look back on their glory days, it's the game-winning plays and the intense team camaraderie they want to relive.

Not former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

'My victory was secure on the cross ... and it doesn't matter if I win this tournament or lose this tournament.'

Ten years after he first knelt in protest during the National Anthem, the onetime culture warrior has written a book. His publisher describes "The Perilous Fight" as "equal parts memoir and manifesto."

Kaepernick may miss that era — after opting out of his contract in 2017, he never played for another NFL team again — but it's safe to say most fans are happy to have moved on.

In fact, there's been a different kind of rebellion brewing in pro sports lately — quieter and less disruptive, but no less profound.

Players taking a knee today are more likely doing it to pray than posture — and they don't seem especially concerned with who's watching.

While faith has always had its place in sports, this boldness is something new. These aren't symbolic gestures or vague references to "the man upstairs" but unabashed statements of conviction: Christ comes first.

Here are five Christian athletes proudly living their faith.

1. C.J. Stroud

Stroud doesn't treat faith as a postgame add-on. The Houston Texans quarterback consistently credits his success to God.

Even after a career-worst performance led to a crushing playoff loss against the Patriots, Stroud kept it in perspective: "Before I do anything, I want to give God the glory — my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Without Him, I'm nothing. I just appreciate Him giving me this opportunity, this platform to play this great game with this great organization."

2. Brock Purdy

Brooke Sutton/Getty Images

49ers quarterback Brock Purdy may have been last pick in the 2022 NFL draft, but his subsequent success has shown he's no "Mr. Irrelevant." His legendary predecessor Steve Young says that makes sense, considering that the greatest QBs aren't flashy, but "at peace."

The secret to Purdy's serenity? Founding his identity on faith, not football: "No matter what I’m going to face moving forward ... football, God, and Jesus are going to be my identity."

3. Scottie Scheffler

Andrew Redington/Getty Images

For someone who's the highest ranked golfer in the world, Scottie Scheffler doesn't seem too interested in keeping score.

After his second Masters victory in 2024, the 29-year-old made it clear that he's got his eyes on a higher prize.

"My buddies told me this morning, my victory was secure on the cross," he said. "And that's a pretty special feeling to know that I'm secure for forever, and it doesn't matter if I win this tournament or lose this tournament. My identity is secure for forever."

4. Clayton Kershaw

Michael Chisholm/Getty Images

Clayton Kershaw was always the kind of player who let his performance do the talking. Over 18 years pitching for the Dodgers, the left-hander racked up three Cy Young awards, 3,000 strikeouts, and three World Series titles — including last year's, his final season.

He brings that quiet excellence to his life as a Christian as well, putting his time and energy into Kershaw's Challenge, the Christian charity he and his wife run. When the Dodgers insisted on holding "Pride Night" in 2025, he countered by writing "Genesis 9:12-16" on his hat — drawing attention to the rainbow's older, sacred meaning.

5. Stephen Curry

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Stephen Curry may have been born into basketball — his father played for the Charlotte Hornets — but it was his family's deep faith that formed his life.

Early in his career as a Golden State Warrior, the gifted point guard made his priorities clear:

The Holy Spirit is moving through our locker room in a way I’ve never experienced before. It’s allowing us to reach a lot of people, and personally I am just trying to use this stage to share how God has been a blessing to my life and how He can be the same in everyone else’s.

More than a decade later, Curry is still at the top of his game — and making sure his three kids get the same faith-first upbringing he did.

New Alzheimer's treatments bring hope — and reminders of those we have lost

Ten years have passed since I last spoke to my grandfather as himself. Not a day goes by that I don't miss him.

The man who forgot me isn’t the one I carry. I carry the other one. The one who took me for long walks, who collected acorns the way other men pocket loose change. He taught me never to speak ill of others, advice I have absorbed deeply and applied far less than he would have liked.

He never had a bad word to say about anyone. Not once. As an Irishman, this made him practically a medical curiosity.

We fed livestock together in the early mornings, breath visible, ground hard underfoot. He had a tenderness with cattle and sheep that I have never seen replicated . A slow hand to the forehead, a particular stillness, and the animal would simply decide to trust him. Even the wild ones. Especially the wild ones.

Unshakable faith

In the garden, he taught me to plant vegetables with something approaching ceremony. Potatoes pressed into drills with two hands, like an offering. Scallions in lines so deliberate they made the rest of existence feel approximate. Soil under the fingernail. The unshakable faith that what you plant will, in its own time, pay you back.

He taught me how to play piano and the Irish flute — hours of patient instruction that I traded, around age 13, for sports and the dubious pleasures of warm cider in a field. I stopped. He said nothing. I am still grateful and still guilty in roughly equal measure. He was the kindest man I have ever known.

He never had a bad word to say about anyone. Not once. As an Irishman, this made him practically a medical curiosity. We are, by temperament and long tradition, a people who can elevate mild inconvenience into competitive suffering. He never caught that particular bug.

A passing cloud

Then Alzheimer's arrived. Before it takes the body, it takes the person, which makes the grief savage in its specificity. You mourn someone still breathing in front of you, still drinking tea, still occasionally smiling, while the version you knew withdraws without a forwarding address.

The first time he didn't recognize me, I expected hesitation. What I received was blankness. Placid, absolute blankness. A face I had known my whole life, looking at me like I was a stranger who had wandered into the wrong room. For him, likely a passing cloud. For me, a clean line dividing before from after.

My grandmother outlived him by months. The official cause was a heart attack. The accurate cause was a broken heart, and I mean that with clinical precision rather than poetic license. She simply had no further use for mornings without him. Fifty years of reaching for the same hand, and when the hand was gone, she simply lost the argument for continuing. There is a particular brutality in watching love become a countdown.

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Andia/Getty Images

A complicated picture

For decades, the dominant scientific theory treated Alzheimer's as a single-villain story: amyloid plaques accumulating in the brain. One cause; one target. It was neat and tidy.

It was also completely wrong. Researchers now describe a far more complicated picture. Tangled Tau proteins. Genetic vulnerabilities. Metabolic failures. Disruptions originating in the gut, of all places.

The brain fails as part of a longer story. The first forgotten name is never the beginning, but only the moment the beginning becomes impossible to ignore. Medicine, in other words, spent decades treating the final chapter as the only one worth reading.

Newer treatments show modest results. They slow the decline, but they don’t reverse it. They don’t put a man back at his kitchen table, telling a story his family has heard so many times they could recite it backward, about meeting his wife at a dance, and making it feel, on the 43rd telling, like something worth leaning in for.

The current scientific ambition, at least, has grown more honest: attack the disease across every front simultaneously. Target the proteins, the aging cells, the metabolic dysfunction, and the genetic predispositions. Treat the system, not the symptom.

Bone-deep

My grandfather would have grasped this without a single journal article. He understood, bone-deep, that everything connects. Soil quality shapes the crop. Weather shapes the soil. The animals depend on both. You can’t fix a failing field by fixating on one plant.

There is something resembling hope in this shift. It arrives too late for him and for her. But the possibility exists that fewer families will sit across from someone they love and watch recognition drain from a familiar face. Over 7 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer's. The people who love them number considerably more, and their suffering doesn’t appear in the statistics.

My grandfather carried me when I was too tired to walk and when I was too sick to stand. In return, I carry him. The man who never gave anyone a reason to be forgotten. It is the least I can do and nowhere near enough. And I will do it anyway, gladly, until I no longer can.

Lego's Model T: How Ford is bringing automotive history to a new generation, brick by brick

On a recent episode of "The Drive with Lauren and Karl," we had a conversation that was a little different — but just as telling about car culture today.

It started with something unexpected: Lego. Not just as a toy, but as a way to connect automotive history to a new generation.

For an industry that often focuses on what’s next — EVs, software, autonomy — it’s easy to overlook how important the past still is.

Our guest, Ford heritage brand manager and archivist Ted Ryan, shared the story behind a new Lego model of the Ford Model T — and what went into getting it right. And the level of detail may surprise you.

To a T

This wasn’t just a half-baked licensing exercise. According to Ryan, the designer behind the set spent months researching the Model T, even reaching out directly to Ford’s archives to verify historical details.

Where was the fuel tank located? How many lights did the car have? What year-specific features mattered?

Those details were checked, corrected, and refined — sometimes multiple times — before the final design was approved.

The whole process took a year of back-and-forth, with emails and revisions to make sure the finished product reflected the real car, not just a simplified version of it.

That’s a level of effort you don’t usually associate with something that ends up on a toy shelf.

Wheeling and dealing

There’s a bigger idea behind it.

As Ryan explained, Lego has shifted in recent years to focus on things that matter culturally — music, film, architecture, and increasingly, cars.

That last one makes a lot of sense.

From Formula 1 to classic American vehicles, automobiles are a huge part of global culture. They’re also a way to tell stories — about innovation, design, and how people lived at a particular moment in time.

And what better example than the iconic Model T.

This is the vehicle that put America on wheels, transforming transportation and making mobility accessible to millions. Bringing that story into a Lego set makes that history visible — and tangible — for people who might never read about it otherwise.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Pieces of history

What stood out in the conversation is how much these sets are now aimed at adults as well as kids.

Lego calls them “AFOLs” — adult fans of Lego — and it’s a growing category. They want builds that are more complex, more detailed, and more likely to be display pieces than playthings.

In this case, the Model T set also includes historical context, helping explain why the car mattered — not just what it looked like.

It's all part of a broader trend. Car culture isn’t just happening at racetracks or car shows anymore. It’s happening in living rooms, offices, and hobby spaces — through collectibles, models, and even digital experiences.

A classic you can keep

For an industry that often focuses on what’s next — EVs, software, autonomy — it’s easy to overlook how important the past still is.

Projects like this show there’s still real demand for that connection.

Not everyone is going to restore a classic car or attend a concours event. But a lot of people will build a model, display it, and learn something along the way.

For younger enthusiasts, this may be their first introduction to a crucial moment in history; for longtime car fans, it’s a potent reminder of what cars mean to them.

Either way, it goes to show that car culture — despite the carping of the environmental doomsayers — isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

'Sugar-free' scam: How scapegoating a pantry staple is ruining our health

Sugar has had a terrible few decades in public relations. Which is rich, considering sugar never hired a publicist or lobbied for its inclusion in 37 varieties of salad dressing.

Sugar was simply sitting there, being a carbohydrate, when an entire industry decided it made a more convenient villain than portion size, impulse control, or the more uncomfortable question of why a gas station sells a beverage the size of a toddler.

Fat was the villain in 1990. Americans loaded up on SnackWell's cookies and ate them by the sleeve.

Somewhere between the obesity panic of the 2000s and the clean-eating obsession of the 2010s, sucrose transformed from a pantry staple into a health and wellness villain on par with cigarettes and sloth.

Sugar, sugar

The human body runs on glucose. Your brain needs it. Your muscles prefer it. Sugarcane has been sweetening drinks in South Asia since roughly 350 A.D., and somehow humanity survived long enough to argue about it on social media.

The problem was never the molecule but the amount — 22 teaspoons a day, the American average, poured mostly into beverages people didn’t even register as meals. A single large fountain soda contains 17. A flavored coffee drink from any chain you can name contains more than that and comes with a cheerful barista who will spell your name wrong on the cup while handing you what is essentially a dessert with a lid.

That is a dosage problem. It got rebranded as a chemistry problem, and that rebranding sold a lot of diet soda.

Gut check

I learned this the hard way, via my own stomach. For about two years I swapped sugar for artificial sweeteners with the confidence of someone who had done exactly one Google search. Sucralose (commonly sold as Splenda) in my coffee. Stevia in everything else. The occasional sugar-free chocolate that tasted like sweetened cardboard, which I ate anyway, because suffering voluntarily is how adults signal virtue.

I was, by all the metrics I had invented for myself, being responsible. Then I started feeling bloated roughly 40 minutes after every meal — a persistent, uncomfortable fullness that no amount of walking around the block seemed to fix. And then came a specific, percussive kind of digestive discomfort that I will describe only as "audible." My fiancée noticed. I blamed the dog.

I cut the sweeteners on a Friday. By Sunday, the situation had resolved itself completely. The bowel-induced thunder had passed, the barometric pressure had normalized, and my fiancée stopped sleeping with the window open.

Metabolic mayhem

It turns out that I was ahead of the research for once in my life. A recent study examining the biological effects of common artificial sweeteners — sucralose and stevia, specifically — found that even quantities comparable to everyday human consumption altered gut microbiome composition in measurable ways.

The gut houses roughly 39 trillion microorganisms, meaning it contains more bacterial cells than human cells, a fact that raises serious questions about who, exactly, is running things. It regulates metabolism, modulates immune response, produces neurotransmitters, and sends chemical signals to the brain, influencing mood and appetite. The body is less a person than a committee, and the committee has opinions about your sweetener choices.

Disrupt the ecosystem, and you get disrupted systems downstream. The researchers found that beneficial compounds helping maintain metabolic health declined in subjects exposed to these sweeteners. In plain terms, the body became measurably worse at handling sugar, and it had not consumed any sugar to arrive there. The sweetener had taught the body a new dysfunction without any of the calories required to earn it.

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Sweet surrender

The findings on sucralose were particularly persistent. Researchers observed that its effects on gut bacteria and gene activity carried across multiple generations in animal studies. Offspring who had never consumed sucralose showed early signs of impaired glucose regulation — their bodies struggling with sugar metabolism as an inherited consequence of a parent's diet.

This is epigeneticism: the transmission of acquired biological traits through changes in gene expression rather than DNA sequence. Stevia's impacts were detectable but short-lived, fading rather than compounding. Neither result fits the marketing promise of a neutral, calorie-free pleasure. Both suggest that the quest to outsmart biology with chemistry has, predictably, run into biology itself.

Americans consume artificial sweeteners at scale. They are in diet drinks, protein bars, flavored yogurts, chewing gum, children's vitamins, and roughly half the products shelved in the "healthy" aisle of any grocery store. Meanwhile, rates of obesity, insulin resistance, and metabolic disorders remain stubbornly high — exactly the conditions these products were engineered to help prevent. The sweeteners are not the sole explanation. But the idea that they carry zero metabolic consequences is no longer a position the evidence supports, and it was probably never as solid as the packaging implied.

The M-word

None of this requires burning your Splenda packets in the back yard, but the broader pattern is familiar enough to be dispiriting. Fat was the villain in 1990. Americans loaded up on SnackWell's cookies — fat-free, proudly labeled, stuffed with sugar — and ate them by the sleeve because the math seemed to check out. Sugar became the villain in 2010. Americans loaded up on artificially sweetened alternatives and called it progress.

The villain rotates on a roughly 20-year cycle. The processed food industry introduces the replacement, funds the science that endorses it, and collects the revenue while researchers spend the next decade figuring out what went wrong. Then a new villain is identified, a new replacement is launched, and somewhere a marketing team opens a bottle of champagne that probably contains aspartame.

The answer to every panic in that cycle was always moderation, a word so aggressively boring that it apparently requires a global dietary crisis every 10 years to get anyone's attention. It also means reframing what sugar actually is: not a poison to be eliminated but a pleasure to be savored, like good whiskey or compliments from your father. Save it for a nice piece of cake, a well-made dessert, the occasional spoon of honey stirred into morning tea with the uncomplicated satisfaction of someone who has stopped reading the label.

Why the Supreme Court nuked Colorado’s 'Must Stay Gay' law (and what to expect next)

Colorado's ban of so-called "conversion therapy" has finally been exposed for what it really is: an attack on free speech.

In the recent decision Chiles v. Salazar, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Colorado had violated the First Amendment by censoring the free speech of psychological professionals in the name of banning “conversion therapy.”

Constitutional rebukes by courts are routinely treated like speed bumps by social engineers.

That’s a grab-bag term invented by activists to demonize traditional counseling aimed at helping patients pursue happiness as they see fit.

Cruel denial

In fact, Colorado’s “Must Stay Gay” law didn’t restrict — as its advocates claimed — cruel or coercive treatments. Instead the law prohibited therapists from serving clients who sought help in diminishing unwanted sexual compulsions.

For instance, imagine a married dad struggling with temptations to commit adultery with young, even underage, males. Or consider a sexual abuse victim suffering from gender dysphoria who wishes to accept her physical sex instead of submitting to disfiguring, sterilizing surgery and a lifetime of dangerous hormones.

The LGBTQ lobby pushed hard for this law, akin to an equally draconian ban in California, falsely claiming that any therapy aimed at altering sexual feelings was “unscientific” and “harmful.”

'Changed' for the better

My own organization, the Ruth Institute, filed a detailed amicus curiae debunking such claims, citing published studies by eminent professionals showing that talk therapy with willing clients is often beneficial and virtually never harmful. People do successfully change their patterns of sexual attraction and behavior, with or without therapy.

The Changed Movement collects their stories. We at the Ruth Institute have interviewed many such people. In fact, objective studies show that there are more "ex-gays" than "gays." “Must Stay Gay” laws like Colorado’s depend on legislators’ ignorance of such facts.

'Egregious assault'

But the court didn’t rule on the psychological merits, instead pointing to the more fundamental question of free speech in America. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority:

The First Amendment stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech," and any viewpoint-suppression law "represents an 'egregious' assault" on the "inalienable right to think and speak freely" and the "free marketplace of ideas.”

Such a robust attachment to free speech and thought is increasingly rare in America and other Western countries. A pastor in Finland just faced trial for an alleged hate crime for writing a pamphlet summarizing historic Christian teaching on sexual morality. A law soon to pass in Canada would punish “offensive” religious speech, even citations of the Bible. We’ve heard prominent figures such as Hillary Clinton call for civil or even criminal cases aimed at citizens who share “misinformation.”

In Britain, dozens of citizens face arrest every day for posting their opinions about immigration and crime. The European Union has fined the platform X (formerly Twitter) $140 million for refusing to suppress political speech that Eurocrats deem unacceptable.

ruthinstitute.org

Politically enforced orthodoxy

Why have so many, especially among our elites, endorsed censorship and even government-enforced speech? Because so many of their preferred policy positions cannot prevail on the merits in the “free marketplace of ideas,” which Justice Gorsuch rightly defended. These fashionable stances rely on media myths, pseudo-science, and politically enforced orthodoxies.

As I show in my book "The Sexual State: How Elite Ideologies Are Destroying Lives and How the Church Was Right All Along," the only way for an untenable worldview to prevail is by massive amounts of force and propaganda. The campaign against change-allowing therapy meets both objectives. It discredits the very idea of therapy to help reduce unwanted same-sex attraction. And it shuts the door to anyone in the helping professions who doesn’t accept every jot and tittle of the sexual revolution’s shifting party line.

Those who hold traditional Christian ethical values must be driven out of the therapy business. There must be nowhere for sexually confused or traumatized people to go, except to those convinced that there are 47 human genders, that gay people are “born that way,” that sexual orientation is fixed and immutable while gender is a shifting social construct.

None of that is supported by the evidence, but it’s sold to the public and low-information legislators as the “verdict of science.”

A brick in the wall

The victory for therapeutic freedom and the First Amendment in Colorado is welcome pushback against the rule of groupthink. It should invalidate laws in other states that constitute “viewpoint discrimination.” One brick has been pulled from the sexual revolutionary Berlin Wall.

But the revolutionaries are already at work looking for workarounds. Constitutional rebukes by courts are routinely treated like speed bumps by social engineers. (Despite SCOTUS’ defense of the Second Amendment, blue-state gun grabbers keep scheming up new ways to undermine this fundamental right.) The very day of the SCOTUS decision, Colorado and California introduced bills to incentivize lawsuits against therapists for alleged “harm” inflicted by “conversion therapy.”

The freedom of your neighbors to the therapy of their choice is still not safe. Despite this important victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, the battle isn’t over.

Your bank can shut you down overnight — here’s how to protect yourself

Most Americans assume that if their deposits are insured, their banking relationship is stable.

For decades, that assumption has been reasonable. Large national banks offer scale, convenience, and integration across checking, credit cards, mortgages, investments, and digital tools. For many households and businesses, they remain the default choice — for many good reasons.

Regional and community banks typically face fewer reputational signaling incentives and fewer reasons to police customers’ lawful beliefs.

But in recent years, some lawful customers have found accounts restricted or closed not for fraud or criminal conduct, but because the financial institution decided internally that the customer is a risk to the institution's reputation or political standing. In other words: They have been canceled.

These cases are often hard to prove — and that difficulty is itself the problem. First lady Melania Trump revealed in her memoir that a bank decided to "terminate" her account. The reasoning was frustrating to pin down, since decisions on account restrictions are shielded from public verification by opaque risk explanations and confidentiality rules.

Other cases were clearer. In 2023, internal documents revealed that U.K. private bank Coutts closed the account of British politician Nigel Farage after deciding his political views posed “reputational risk” — a disclosure that ultimately led to the resignation of National Westminster Bank's chief executive.

“If they can do it to me, they can do it to you, too,” Farage proclaimed after the dispute.

The risk

Your money may be insured, but access to it is governed by institutional judgment. For some consumers, understanding where that judgment lies is now part of responsible financial planning.

That’s where this guide comes in. It’s not a broadside against megabanks. It is a road map for readers who want to understand the trade-offs that come with scale — particularly when account access is governed by broad, centralized risk frameworks rather than personal relationships or clearly defined misconduct.

Regulators have since moved to clarify standards governing account closures and risk assessments. But for consumers who watched large institutions end financial relationships under ambiguous or shifting rules, the question remains straightforward: Why assume that risk if alternatives exist?

There are no guarantees. But there are differences — rooted in structure, incentives, and how close a branch is to customers — that can meaningfully affect how ideological risk is handled.

Ideological risk is not evenly distributed. It tends to correlate with scale, distance, and discretion, rather than with partisan labels.

This guide organizes banks into categories based on structure and incentives, not ideology.

How this list was compiled

All banks listed below meet the following baseline criteria:

FDIC-insured (or equivalent federal backing).
No public record of ideologically motivated account closures.
Standard modern banking services, including online and mobile access.
Responses to Align's inquiries, where available.
Institutional cultures or policies emphasizing lawful, viewpoint-neutral customer treatment.

Banks to consider

1. Regional and community banks

They are often safer. Regional and community banks typically operate on relationship-based models, with decision-making closer to customers and local markets. They face less national activist pressure, fewer reputational signaling incentives, and fewer reasons to police customers’ lawful beliefs.

Here’s what to look for:

FDIC insurance.
Rigorous underwriting standards.
Focus on local business, agriculture, manufacturing, or regional commerce.
Long operating histories.
Knowing exactly who to talk to next if your problem isn't fixed.

Warning: Not all community banks are equal. Some rely heavily on third-party compliance vendors or adopt national risk frameworks wholesale. Size alone is not a guarantee.

Here are some strong options.

Woodforest National Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.8 (32.2K reviews); Apple 4.8 (47K reviews)
Region/States: 730+ branches in 17 states
ATM: MoneyPass network

Woodforest National Bank is a privately owned, community-focused financial institution headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas, that has provided banking services since 1980, operating hundreds of branches across multiple states and offering products for both personal and business customers. It offers a full range of financial services including checking and savings accounts, loans, debit cards, online and mobile banking, and other products designed for everyday banking needs. The bank emphasizes customer relationships, convenient access — including retail locations and digital tools — and a commitment to serving the communities where its customers live and work.

First Premier Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes (via Premier Bankcard)
App: Yes — Google 4.5 (1.48K reviews); Apple 4.4 (1.4K reviews)
Region/States: 13 branch locations in South Dakota
ATM: Fee-free access to 37,000+ MoneyPass ATMs nationwide

First Premier Bank is an independently owned, FDIC-insured community bank headquartered in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It offers a full range of financial products and services, including personal, business, and agricultural checking and savings accounts, loans and mortgages, wealth management, and digital banking. The bank also operates Premier Bankcard, a nationally recognized issuer of Mastercard credit products. First Premier emphasizes strong capitalization, customer support, community investment, and accessible online and mobile banking tools for managing finances nationwide.

American National Bank of Texas

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.7 (987 reviews); Apple 4.8 (9.7K reviews)
Region/States: 24 locations in Dallas-Fort Worth
ATM: ATMs at nearly all branches

American National Bank of Texas is a long-established, independently owned, FDIC-insured community bank headquartered in Terrell, Texas, with more than 30 branches serving North Texas. It offers a full suite of financial products and services including personal and business checking and savings, loans and mortgages, digital banking, and wealth management. The bank emphasizes local relationship-driven service, community involvement, and comprehensive financial solutions tailored to individuals and businesses alike.

Liberty National Bank (Midwest)

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.9 (15 reviews); Apple 4.6 (192 reviews)
Region/States: 18 locations in Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska

Liberty National Bank (Midwest) is an independently owned, FDIC-insured community bank headquartered in Sioux City, Iowa, founded in 2003. With approximately $600 million in assets, it serves customers across Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska, including Sioux City, Sioux Falls, and surrounding communities. The bank emphasizes local decision-making, relationship-based service, and support for families, businesses, and agricultural clients in the markets it serves.

Liberty National Bank (Texas/Oklahoma)

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.5; Apple 4.9
Region/States: ~10 locations in Oklahoma and North Texas
ATM: 20 local ATMs

Liberty National Bank (Texas/Oklahoma) is an independently chartered, FDIC-insured community bank headquartered in Lawton, Oklahoma. Originally established in 1902 as the Bank of Elgin, it adopted the Liberty National name in 2002 and has since expanded across Oklahoma and into North Texas, with assets exceeding $1 billion. The bank remains under Green family ownership and emphasizes long-standing ties to local communities, regional growth, and personalized banking relationships.

F&M Bank (Farmers & Merchants Bank of Central California)

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.6 (322 reviews); Apple 4.8 (1.1K reviews)
Region/States: 33 locations in California
ATM: Pulse & Cirrus (400,000 ATMs)

Farmers & Merchants Bank of Central California offers personal and business banking services, including a variety of checking and savings accounts, loans, and agricultural financing tailored to individuals and companies across numerous California communities. The website emphasizes secure 24/7 online and mobile banking so that customers can manage accounts, transfer funds, pay bills, and access eStatements from anywhere. It also highlights local branch access, community roots dating back over a century, and a commitment to serving customers’ financial needs.

New Peoples Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 2.8 (82 reviews); Apple 4.6 (790 reviews)
Region/States: 18 locations in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina
ATM: Allpoint (55,000 locations)

New Peoples Bank is a community-focused financial institution with multiple branches serving individuals and small to medium-size businesses across Southwestern Virginia, Southern West Virginia, Northeastern Tennessee, and Western North Carolina, offering a full suite of personal and business banking products including checking, savings, loans, and online services. Through its website, customers can open accounts, apply for mortgage or personal loans, manage finances with online and mobile banking tools, and access additional services like identity protection and ATM networks. The bank emphasizes local decision-making, Golden Rule customer service, and technology that supports secure, convenient banking experiences.

First United Bank & Trust

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 3.8 (51 reviews); Apple 4.8 (431 reviews)
Region/States: 7 locations in Kentucky
ATM: MoneyPass

First United Bank and Trust Company is a community-oriented, FDIC-insured bank offering a full range of personal and business financial services, including checking and savings accounts, loans, digital banking, and trust solutions accessible online or at local branches. The bank emphasizes convenient 24/7 access to accounts, tools for managing finances, and solutions like credit cards and business services tailored to local needs. Its website highlights personal service, community engagement, and products designed to support customers’ financial goals with trusted relationships and modern banking technology.

Arbor Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.4 (132 reviews); Apple 4.8 (399 reviews)
Region/States: 6 locations in Iowa and Nebraska
ATM: MoneyPass

Arbor Bank is a community FDIC-insured bank offering a wide range of personal and business financial products, including checking and savings accounts, online/mobile banking, lending solutions, and mortgage services. It also provides business banking tools like treasury management, SBA loans, and positive pay fraud protection, along with card solutions and insurance options. The website emphasizes secure digital access, personalized service, and support for customers’ financial growth.

First Command Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google: 3.6 (82 reviews); Apple: 4.6 (1.5K reviews)
Region/States: Over 750 First Command Bank advisers in over 175 offices in 45 states and Guam
ATM: MoneyPass ATM network and NYCE network; reimburses non-FCB ATM surcharges up to $10 per statement cycle

First Command’s banking section highlights personal banking products tailored for military personnel, veterans, and their families, including competitive checking and savings accounts, CDs, car loans, and debt consolidation options. These services come with convenient online and mobile access so that customers can manage funds, pay bills, and transfer money securely from anywhere, backed by the FDIC-insured protection First Command Bank offers. The emphasis throughout is on helping service members and their families manage everyday finances and build solid financial habits.

Citizens First Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: No (mobile app offers free credit report updates weekly)
App: Yes — Google: 4.7 (1.24K reviews); Apple: 4.8 (3.1K reviews)
Region/States: 19 locations in Florida (The Villages and surrounding counties)
ATM: On-site ATMs at most branch locations; part of the Publix Presto! ATM Network (1,300+ surcharge-free ATMs across the Southeast); additional access through regional shared ATM arrangements (fees may vary depending on network)

Citizens First Bank is an FDIC-insured community bank serving The Villages and surrounding counties in Florida. It offers personal and business checking and savings products, robust online and mobile tools including bill pay and eStatements, and an ATM network focused on surcharge-free access. The bank merged with Seacoast Bank in October 2025 following the acquisition of its parent company, with conversion of accounts tentatively scheduled for July 2026.

Emigrant Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: No
App: No dedicated mobile app; online account management via EmigrantOnline®
Region/States: 2 locations in New York; 1 location in Miami, Florida
ATM: On-site ATMs at branch locations; The bank refers to participation in ATM networks, though specific network details and surcharge policies are not prominently disclosed on its website. Prospective customers should confirm ATM access and fee policies directly with the bank.

Emigrant Bank is a privately owned U.S. financial institution offering high-yield savings, checking accounts, CDs, and mortgage lending. It emphasizes competitive deposit products and online/telephone banking access rather than a large retail branch footprint. Emigrant also provides mortgage lending through its direct lending division and support for account holders with tools to handle funds and financial needs securely.

2. Credit unions

Credit unions are member-owned, less PR-sensitive, and historically focused on service rather than signaling. Because there are thousands of local credit unions with varying eligibility rules, this guide does not list specific institutions.

How to find a good one:

Confirm NCUA insurance.
Look for long operating histories.
Favor credit unions with business or agricultural lending.
Ask directly about account-closure policies and escalation.

3. Explicitly viewpoint-neutral banks

This is the smallest and most visible category — and the one that requires the most due diligence before joining.

The claim here is not that these banks are “conservative,” but that they have made explicit commitments to viewpoint neutrality and have no public record of ideological account closures.

What qualifies:

Public neutrality policies.
Leadership statements emphasizing lawful activity over belief.
Clear articulation of when accounts would be restricted.
No documented ideological de-banking cases.

Old Glory Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.6 (940 reviews); Apple 4.8 (1.5K reviews)
Region/States: Nationwide digital access; one physical branch
ATM: MoneyPass (40,000+ ATMs)

Old Glory Bank is a full-service, FDIC-insured American bank headquartered in Elmore City, Oklahoma, offering personal and business checking and savings accounts, loans, certificates of deposit, and modern digital tools like mobile and online banking with nationwide access. It positions itself as a nationwide online bank built around traditional American values and strong commitments to privacy, security, and customer autonomy. Customers can bank digitally from all 50 states while also accessing features such as ATM networks, cash deposit options, and advanced debit card controls.

Co-founded by John Rich, Dr. Ben Carson, Larry Elder, and former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R), Old Glory is guided by what it calls the Banking Bill of Rights. A statement to Align from the founders makes the bank’s stand against de-banking central to its mission: “Not only does Old Glory Bank have a policy on de-banking, it is the very reason we exist! We were founded in direct response to the growing and troubling practice of de-banking Americans for their lawful, constitutionally protected beliefs. We saw the alarming trend in January 2021 and got to work years before it became newsworthy. We stand firm on the belief that this practice is morally, legally, and fundamentally incompatible with the freedom upon which our nation was built.”

Regent Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.8 (21 reviews); Apple 4.9 (523 reviews)
Region/States: 7 locations in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri
ATM: 10 free out-of-network transactions monthly

Regent Bank is a regional, FDIC-insured, full-service bank headquartered in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with multiple branches in Oklahoma, Texas, and Missouri, offering personal and business banking products including checking, savings, loans, digital banking, and treasury services. It emphasizes personalized, concierge-style service tailored to entrepreneurs, small and mid-market businesses, and specialized niches like health care, agriculture, and nonprofits. The bank combines traditional community banking values with modern tools and solutions, supporting clients’ financial needs through dedicated local relationships and digital access.

A Regent Bank spokesperson told Align that the institution identifies as a “Christian, faith-based organization in terms of [its] mission and values” and that its “approach is grounded in relationship-driven banking and serving clients based on lawful activity — not political or religious beliefs.” Regent’s spokesperson added that de-banking is a frequently discussed issue at the executive level of the organization.

4. Large regional and super-regional banks

Regions Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google: 4.5 (128K reviews); Apple: 4.9 (521K reviews)
Region/States: 1,445 locations across 15 states spanning the South, Midwest, and Texas
ATM: No-fee access at Regions ATMs

Regions Bank is a large, FDIC-insured, full-service financial institution and subsidiary of Regions Financial Corporation, offering a broad range of personal banking products including checking and savings accounts, loans and mortgages, digital banking, and wealth management solutions. It serves millions of customers through an extensive branch and ATM network across the South, Midwest, and Texas, while also providing online and mobile tools for everyday account management The bank combines traditional community-oriented service with modern digital convenience to support a wide spectrum of consumer financial needs.

Zions Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google: 4.6 (6.8K reviews); Apple: 4.7 (29K reviews)
Region/States: ~20 branches in Utah and other Western markets
ATM: No-fee ATM network serving Western U.S.

Zions Bank is a full-service, FDIC-insured regional bank operating as part of Zions Bancorporation, offering personal banking products such as checking and savings accounts, loans and mortgages, credit cards, and robust digital banking tools including online and mobile access. It serves individuals and small businesses through an extensive network of full-service branches across multiple Western states and emphasizes community-focused service with modern financial solutions. Founded in the 19th century and rooted in local market relationships, Zions Bank combines traditional banking values with convenient digital access for everyday financial management.

Synovus Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google: 4.7 (10.6K reviews); Apple: 4.8 (50K reviews)
Region/States: 40+ locations in Alabama and Georgia
ATM: Unlimited fee-free Pinnacle Financial Partners ATMs

Synovus is a large, FDIC-insured financial services company and bank holding company headquartered in Columbus, Georgia, offering a full range of commercial and personal banking products including checking and savings, loans, mortgages, credit cards, and digital banking. It also provides specialized services such as wealth management, trust and investment solutions, treasury management, and mortgage and capital markets services through its subsidiaries. Synovus operates an extensive branch and ATM network across the Southeast and emphasizes personalized client relationships alongside modern digital tools.

Arvest Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google: 3.6 (12.5K reviews); Apple: 4.9 (252K reviews)
Region/States: 310 locations in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma
ATM: Offers ATMs with live teller drive-thru services

Arvest Bank is a regional full-service bank offering personal and business financial products including checking and savings accounts, loans and mortgages, credit cards, wealth and treasury management, and secure online and mobile banking tools. Through its extensive network of branches across Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas, the bank emphasizes local community commitment while providing modern digital conveniences like 24/7 account access and mobile deposits. Its mission centers on partnering with customers to deliver tailored financial solutions that support everyday banking needs and long-term financial goals.

PlainsCapital Bank

FDIC-insured: Yes
Credit card: Yes
App: Yes — Google 4.5 (1.3K reviews); Apple 4.9 (8.7K reviews)
Region/States: 55 branches across Texas, including Austin, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Lubbock, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley
ATM: Branch and regional network ATM access (confirm surcharge policies directly with bank)

Founded in 1988 in Lubbock, Texas, PlainsCapital Bank has grown into one of the largest independent banks in the state, with approximately $12.4 billion in assets and more than 1,000 employees. A subsidiary of Hilltop Holdings Inc., it operates a statewide branch network and offers commercial banking, treasury management, private banking, wealth management, and consumer banking services. While emphasizing relationship-based banking, PlainsCapital functions at the scale of a large regional institution with centralized infrastructure and enterprise-level risk management.

What to approach with caution

Not every “alternative” bank actually reduces ideological risk.

Fintech apps without their own bank charter: Many rely on sponsor banks and payment processors, meaning account access can be restricted upstream with little notice.
Institutions with expansive “reputational risk” clauses: Banks that reserve broad discretion to sever relationships for social or political reasons introduce uncertainty.
Ideological startups without federal backing: Branding is not a substitute for FDIC insurance, balance-sheet transparency, or regulatory oversight.

Questions to ask your bank

If ideological or reputational risk is a concern, you don’t need to announce your politics or interrogate your bank. You’re simply trying to understand process, discretion, and escalation — the same way you would with fees, fraud protection, or data security.

These are reasonable, neutral questions.

1. Under what circumstances can my account be restricted or closed?

Listen for clear references to fraud, illegality, or operational risk. Be cautious if you hear broad or undefined references to “reputational,” “social,” or “values-based” concerns.

2. Will I receive notice before an account is restricted or closed?

Ask:

How much notice is typical?
Are there circumstances under which notice is not provided?

Advance notice reduces risk regardless of ideology.

3. Is there an appeal or escalation process if a decision is made?

Important follow-ups:

Can decisions be reviewed by a human committee?
Is there a relationship manager or ombudsman involved?

The ability to appeal matters as much as the rule itself.

4. Who ultimately makes account-closure decisions?

You’re listening for local or relationship-based decision-making versus centralized compliance teams or third-party vendors. Distance often correlates with opacity.

5. Do you rely on third-party compliance or risk vendors?

This matters because:

Upstream vendors can impose restrictions that the bank itself did not initiate.
Vendor changes can alter outcomes without warning.

6. How do you define “reputational risk”?

A strong answer ties reputational risk to concrete financial, legal, or operational exposure.

A weak answer uses vague or moralized language without boundaries.

7. Are account decisions based on lawful activity, regardless of belief or affiliation?

Banks that can say this plainly usually mean it.

8. Is my account subject to special monitoring or enhanced review?

This is especially relevant for nonprofits, small businesses, and public-facing individuals.

How to use this checklist

You don’t need perfect answers. You’re looking for a bank that can explain its rules clearly — and show how decisions are reviewed.

The return of Drag Queen Story Hour?

I was at my local library recently when I saw something odd on the bulletin board. It looked like a poster for a Drag Queen Story Hour.

They can’t be doing that again? I thought to myself.

Much of drag comedy focuses on the fact that as hard as they try, most men can’t actually pull off impersonating a woman.

In case you don’t remember, Drag Queen Story Hour was one of the most bizarrely inappropriate events ever to appear at your local library.

When these “story hours” first began to proliferate in the late 2010s, the idea of drag queens reading books to very small children set off one of the fiercest battles of the culture wars.

Because it was so transgressive, outrageous, and effective as a way of infuriating the general populace, the proponents of DQSH doubled down on it. They kept pushing it. They founded an NGO. They rammed it down our throats.

Blake Nelson

Queen's gambit

The way DQSH worked: Libraries would hire a professional drag queen to read books to children ages 3 to 11. It was presented to the public as a “fun twist” on the idea of a kindly grandmother or librarian reading to the kids.

The drag queens they hired were adult men from the local area, men who were otherwise employed performing “drag shows” at nightclubs, bars, and private events.

These men dressed up like women — more specifically, super-sexualized women (prostitutes). Then they went on stage and told raunchy stories and sexually explicit jokes. Sometimes they sang songs and did pratfalls, all of which were of a sexual nature.

The understanding was that a drag show would feature explicit sexual content. Which is why they were performed in 21-and-over establishments.

That is, until Drag Queen Story Hour came along. And someone decided that drag queens belonged in libraries, reading to children.

Live, love, laugh

Part of the appeal of drag queens is the humorous sight of a chubby, stubbly, middle-aged man wearing lipstick, mascara, and gigantic false eyelashes. Much of drag comedy focuses on the fact that as hard as they try, most men can’t actually pull off impersonating a woman. And the results of their clumsy failures are often very funny.

Drag shows — or something like them — have appeared in many cultures throughout history. The humor of men pretending to be women is universal. Everyone finds those situations funny.

Everyone, that is, except for 4-year-olds, who might not understand this style of humor just yet. And don’t need to.

The fact is that it would be hard to predict how a small child would react to a professional drag queen in person.

Oh, sure, a child who has been coached and prepped by a progressive parent might enjoy it. But your average child? Especially those under the age of 6? They might be traumatized.

And then doubly so when the adults they usually trust (parents, teachers, librarians) tell them not to be afraid, that it is wrong to feel uncomfortable, that if they have any negative feelings whatsoever about “Miss Wiggles” — who is 6'2", wearing ghoulish makeup, and pretending to be a woman — they are committing a grave moral sin.

Some small children are frightened by the sight of their own parents dressed up in Halloween costumes. Think of what an encounter with “Sashay D. Lite” might do to them.

Joe McNally/Getty Images

Properly checked and vetted

Some conservatives raised the issue that some of these performers might be predators of some kind.

This was met with attacks and smears that conservatives were homophobic, transphobic bigots, hatemongers, etc. Besides, all the drag queens would, of course, be thoroughly screened and vetted.

And yet at a Houston library in 2019, one of the drag queens reading stories to children was found to be a registered child sex offender.

So except for that guy. Everyone else had been properly checked and vetted.

Culture war, wins and losses

Looking back at the original battle over Drag Queen Story Hour ... who actually won?

In my mind, the general public did. Obviously a large majority of people believed DQSH was a bad idea. And the libraries stopped doing it.

But here I was, in my local library, staring at a poster with a Pride flag. And a drag queen. With the words Story Hour on it.

Looking closer, I saw they had changed the name. Now it was called Family Pride Story Hour. It would be specifically for LGBTQ families. A drag queen would be reading the stories. And then there would be a dance.

The suggested age for children attending? “Birth to six years old.”

No rest for the wicked

Ahhh. Those sneaky leftists. They couldn’t let this go. Subjecting infant children to the most grotesque adults they could find was too good a strategy to abandon.

What better way to divide and conquer? To confound and demoralize? They want us to fight over the drag queens again!

My advice is: Don’t do it. Don’t give them what they want. Talk to your librarians ahead of time. Talk to your library’s supervisor.

But be aware: If Family Pride Story Hour is coming to my town, it might well be coming to yours.

Ode to a 1984 Buick Skylark — and to all the other cars of my life

America is a nation of cars.

Those hunks of metal on four rubber tires are our lifelines. They are how we go to work, go home, go out to eat, go on vacation, and go just about everywhere and anywhere. When we are just a few days old, we come home from the hospital in one, and on our way out, we head to the grave in a hearse.

I bought it for $450 from a friend who was moving to New York City. It was cream with a plush, brown interior.

From birth to death; we live in cars.

We love our cars when they work for us, and we hate them when they don’t. We curse them when they break down, when they don’t start, and when they demand $2,750 for a new computer chip just to get running again.

We even mourn them when they break down once and for all — no matter how much grief they've caused us. We become attached to our cars because of course we do. For Americans, they are an inextricable part of life.

1978 Oldsmobile Starfire

And of our history. Cars transport us through space, but also through time — to certain chapters in our lives. A car is a physical reminder of who we were behind that particular wheel.

I remember my first car like we all remember our first car. It’s the first time you are free like an adult even though you are not an adult. You are still very much a stupid kid, but you don’t feel like one in the driver's seat.

Mine was a 1978 Oldsmobile Starfire. It was light blue, and it was my grandpa’s before it was mine. He “sold” it to me for $1. I loved that car. I felt like I was in an old movie when I was driving down the road. I loved looking at it parked. I loved thinking about the fact it was mine. It was so cool, so retro, so rear-wheel drive, so bad in the rain. One morning on the way to school, I drove it off the road and into a ditch, and that was the end of the Starfire.

1993 Plymouth Voyager

My next car was really my parents’ car, and it wasn’t a car; it was a van. They let me use it pretty much whenever I wanted to. It was a white 1993 Plymouth Voyager. The sliding door was full of sand and barely moved. The crank windows weren’t working so great. There was an MP3 player plugged into a tape adapter shoved into the tape deck on the dashboard.

That van is my senior year of high school. I remember driving with my girlfriend to a crappy Chinese restaurant about 40 miles south just for something to do with a pretty girl I liked. We did that a lot. I got two tickets speeding back from her house late at night in that van.

1984 Buick Skylark

After the Voyager, I drove a 1984 Buick Skylark. I bought it for $450 from a friend who was moving to New York City. It was cream with a plush, brown interior. I don’t even know how many miles it had on it, I just knew that it ran, and it ran good.

I drove that thing all over. Up north, over to Detroit, down to Chicago, out to Wisconsin. It had a cigarette lighter and ashtrays. I remember smoking American Spirits in a yellow pack in that car. Driving with the windows down in the summer and slipping around the road in the winter.

The Skylark was my college car. It was an "old" car then, but now it's ancient: 1984 was 42 years ago. I suppose that makes me ancient too.

Four years after I bought the Skylark, I sold her to my brother for $300 and moved to Chicago. I didn’t have a car for almost a decade. I didn’t need one there, and I didn’t need one when I was overseas.

2007 Volvo XC90

The next car I bought was with that old high school girlfriend, now my wife. Right after we got married, we left the city, and so we bought a 2007 Volvo XC90 with about 120,000 miles on it. It cost us $3,600, which we borrowed from my wife’s grandparents. We paid them back over the next year.

We didn’t have the Volvo for too long; it broke down a couple years later. But it was a beast of a car and the first thing we owned together. Thinking about it now, the XC90 was kind of a symbolic introduction to married life. It wasn’t my car; it was our car.

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2009 Volvo S70

After the XC90 was a 2009 Volvo S70. It was a fine car, and it was the car in which our son came home from the hospital. That car was us three. First-time parents, firstborn son. That first year with your first kid is special, and that car was where it happened.

The S70 was a little weird. It wouldn’t start if it was colder than 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside. You would think a car from Sweden would be able to handle the cold, but it couldn't. I had to hook it up to a starter that plugged into the wall and juice the battery for 30 minutes if we needed to start it when it was cold.

Our last trip in that car was our trip to the hospital when my wife was in labor and about to give birth to our daughter. In the middle of the night, I drove my wife and our son through a snowstorm to the hospital. We hit a massive piece of ice flying off a plow, the car eventually overheated, and the S70 died on the side of the road somewhere in Northern Michigan at about 4:30 a.m.

My wife took an ambulance to the hospital, my son and I took a cop car behind her, and the Volvo took a tow truck to the scrapyard.

2017 Honda HR-V

A few days later, we got a Honda HR-V from my wife’s then-92-year-old grandmother. She never drove it, and she didn’t need it, so she gave it to us, and it’s been our car ever since. I don’t know how much longer we will have the HR-V. Maybe 10 years, maybe one year. We’ve got three kids in there now, and it can’t take any more. One day, maybe we will be lucky enough to upgrade to an SUV with another row. We’ll see.

I can already tell how we will remember the HR-V. I already know the chapter it will define for us. We will say it was our first real family car, our car when we added two kids and grew a lot in quite a few ways. Our lives have become much better in that car. We’ve experienced some bad stuff in it but much more good on the whole. We grew, that’s for sure. It’s a good car now, and someday we hope to remember it as a great car.

It sounds funny to mark our time by our cars. But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s as good a way as any to divide up our time here.

Cars: the things that take us wherever we go.