Liberals are right about 'thoughts and prayers' — but not for the reason they think



After a transgender shooter murdered children at Annunciation Catholic School last month, liberals demanded no more "thoughts and prayers."

For once, they're right — but not for the reasons they think.

Ritual scorn

Before the facts were fully known, liberals seized on the moment to lecture Americans about why prayer is an insufficient response to the tragedy.

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki declared that "prayer is not freaking enough." Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) went a step further. He used a press conference to browbeat Christians. "Don't just say that this is about thoughts and prayers right now," he declared.

The reaction was as predictable as it was tone-deaf.

Evil had just entered the sanctuary of God, and two innocent children were murdered. Yet progressives like Psaki and Frey believe that was the time to denounce believers who offer their sympathy to the victims and call out to God in a time of dire need?

It's a familiar ritual: Politicians and pundits use tragedy to score easy points against Christians.

Are they right?

Yes — partially. While Scripture recounts miraculous answers to prayer, most Christians don't experience immediate "results" from prayer (as if results are the goal; they're not). Prayers don't restore broken stained-glass windows and (typically) don't resurrect life.

But in a way, these ghoulish critics are right: America needs something more than words.

America lacks the courage to name evil for what it is and to confront the anti-God and demonic ideologies that deform human souls.

It's not that prayer is weak, ineffective, or insufficient. Calling on God is not a wholesale abdication of duty. Quite the opposite. Prayer is a powerful act precisely because it's meant to lead us to repentance, action, and moral renewal. Christian tradition does not sever prayer from action. They are inherently intertwined.

So, I agree: Our country needs more action. But what kind?

Rotten roots

As liberals sneer at prayer — the one practice that consistently births moral courage in the face of evil — they offer to sacrifice the Second Amendment on the altar of progressivism. Endless laws, strict regulations, all in the name of "safety," are pushed as the "real action" America needs. Ironically, they can't name a single law that would have prevented the tragedy, short of repealing the Second Amendment entirely.

But gun control is not the cure. The real solution is moral action.

Right now, America lacks the courage to name evil for what it is and to confront the anti-God and demonic ideologies that deform human souls. At the core, the Annunciation Catholic School tragedy is the fruit of moral disorder, the result of a culture that catechizes people into anti-God, anti-truth ideologies.

When a society teaches young people to reject God, meaning, and moral reality — everything that is true and good — we should not be surprised when their brokenness turns monstrous.

RELATED: The idols and lies behind the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting

The cure begins with addressing the spiritual rot at the root of these tragedies: racial individualism, nihilism, the denial of objective truth, and the rejection of God. In the simplest terms, it means rejecting the worldview of progressive liberalism. And prayer, rightly understood, fuels this moral reckoning. It reminds us that righteous action is not merely a policy outcome but a divine imperative.

We have a duty to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That means it's time for courageous Americans to stand up and recover a moral vision that forms strong men and women who fear the Lord and walk in His ways.

No law will save us. Only righteous action from God-fearing men and women will prevent the next Annunciation tragedy.

Prayer's demand

When Jesus hung on the cross and bore the weight of humanity's sin, mockers looked upon the living God and declared, "He saved others, but he cannot save himself" (Matthew 27:42).

That is exactly what the prayer-mockers do. They think prayer doesn't work or it has failed. Worse yet, they believe that God has failed.

But the eyes of man are easily led astray. The mockers on that day failed to discern that what they saw as a failure was anything but a failure. Jesus, after all, left the tomb alive.

So, yes: "Thoughts and prayers" aren't enough. Not because prayer is insufficient but because prayer calls us to more than words; it demands moral seriousness and righteous action.

If "thoughts and prayers" are to mean anything, they must be joined to action — the hard, uncompromising, and courageous work of confronting evil, calling out false ideologies, and shaping a culture that values truth, virtue, human life, and the God that created us. And what is beautiful about prayer is that it prompts righteous but flawed people to step up and do what is right. It fuels our courage to act.

We must pray — because it's vital — but we must also act. Prayer sets the compass, and moral action steers the ship. It's high time we took the wheel.

If ‘words are violence,’ why won’t the left own theirs?



A grim pattern plays out every time a mass shooting happens in America. Before the victims are buried, before the facts are in, Democrats rush to the microphones to cast blame.

The pattern always goes one of two ways. If the killer can be tied to any semblance of a right-wing ideology, it’s a Republican problem. If the ideology runs the other way — or worse — touches one of the left’s sacred identity groups, then it’s a gun problem. Never their own movement. Never their own rhetoric. Never their own political tribe.

When the killer looks like someone Democrats already despise, it’s open season. When the killer looks like one of their own, the ideology vanishes, and the weapon is to blame.

The Annunciation Catholic School shooting in Minneapolis last week makes this pattern undeniable. The killer — a former student, a biological male identifying as a trans woman — wrote “Kill Trump” and “6 million wasn’t enough” (a nod to the Holocaust) on his rifle before the attack.

This wasn’t a generic outburst of violence; it was laced with the same extremist left-wing, anti-Christian, anti-conservative hatred that Democrats wink at every single day. Yet no Democratic leader stood up and said, “This is what our rhetoric creates.” Instead, they changed the subject — to guns.

Democrats’ hypocrisy

The hypocrisy is as predictable as it is insulting. When a white extremist commits murder, the left shouts that Republicans have “blood on their hands.” They blame Trump rallies, Fox News, Christian nationalism, you name it. But when a mass murderer hates Christians, embraces the transgender ideology, and openly calls for President Donald Trump’s death ... crickets.

Cue the same refrain: gun bans, universal background checks, confiscation. They exploit tragedy to seize power.

Let’s not forget the attempted assassinations of President Donald Trump. Thomas Crooks, who shot at Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, wasn’t a right-winger. He was a registered Democrat who donated to a progressive group.

Ryan Routh, who was arrested outside Trump’s Florida golf course with an AK-style rifle, described himself as a Biden voter who celebrated January 6 prosecutions online.

Where were the breathless op-eds blaming Joe Biden’s rhetoric? Where were the lectures about “dangerous political climates”? The media memory-holed their affiliations as soon as they didn’t fit the narrative.

An evil pattern

This isn’t new. In 2017, James Hodgkinson opened fire on a congressional baseball practice, nearly killing Steve Scalise. Hodgkinson was a Bernie Sanders volunteer, a man who posted constantly about his hatred of Republicans. Did Democrats take ownership? Did they tone down their language about “Republicans killing people” over health care? Not at all. They shrugged, called him a lone wolf, and moved on.

In 2019, Connor Betts murdered nine people in Dayton, Ohio. He described himself as a pro-Satan leftist, a gun-control supporter, and a backer of Elizabeth Warren. Did Democrats connect his politics to his crime? No. They blamed Trump for fostering a “culture of hate.”

Then came the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting. A transgender shooter targeted a Christian school. Rather than mourn the victims, the Biden White House declared a “Trans Day of Visibility.” They stonewalled the shooter’s manifesto for months — because it revealed too much about motive and ideology.

This pattern is too obvious to ignore. When the killer looks like someone Democrats already despise, it’s open season. When the killer looks like one of their own, the ideology vanishes, and the weapon is to blame.

Guns don’t vote Democrat or Republican — but shooters do. And the record shows plenty of killers in recent years have aligned with the Democratic left.

The ugly truth

The ugly truth is that Democrats care more about using mass shootings for their political advantage than stopping them. They use them to smear Republicans as extremists and push gun control. It’s why Biden could call half the country “semi-fascists” in one breath and then act shocked when his supporters try to take Trump’s life in the next. It’s why the same party that insists words are violence refuses to acknowledge that their own words — calling Trump a dictator, Christians bigots, Republicans Nazis — might radicalize someone to pick up a gun.

And their rhetoric has been shameless. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) once told a crowd, “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gas station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them.” Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasn’t far behind, declaring, “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.”

These aren’t just slips of the tongue. This is licensed hostility — leaders telling their base that Republicans are illegitimate, dangerous, even deserving of harassment. And then Democrats act surprised when that rhetoric finds its way onto the barrel of a gun.

Meanwhile, conservatives say the obvious: Murderers are responsible for their murders. But we can also recognize that culture, rhetoric, and ideology matter. We should confront the roots of violence wherever they grow — whether in white supremacy or in radical gender ideology, whether on the right or the left. Democrats refuse to do this because it would mean admitting that their own movement produces violence too.

Instead, they hide behind platitudes. “Thoughts and prayers don’t work,” they sneer, mocking faith communities while proposing policies that wouldn’t have stopped the crime in the first place. They will never admit that the shooter who targets Republicans, who targets Christians, who scrawls “Kill Trump” on his weapons, is soaked in the very rhetoric their side promotes daily.

RELATED: Tone-deaf Democrats lash out over prayers for Christians murdered in devastating Minnesota shooting

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Democrats had 12 years at the highest levels of power to do something meaningful about this. Eight years of President Barack Obama, four years of President Joe Biden. They promised “commonsense gun reform.” They promised unity. They promised safety.

Yet what did we get? Nothing but more division, more pandering to activist groups, and more empty speeches. No progress, because their goal has never been real solutions. Their goal has always been to weaponize tragedy to advance their ideology.

Enough is enough

As a father, I can’t sit quietly anymore. All of my kids attend Catholic school. They go to weekly Mass. When I read about a shooter storming into a Catholic parish school with “Kill Trump” written on his gun, I don’t just see headlines. I see my children. I see my wife. I see my parish family.

I want real solutions. I’m tired of the empty suits across the Republican aisle and the cynical blame-shifting of Democrats. Enough is enough. If they won’t protect us, if they won’t be honest about the problem, then we, the people, need to take matters into our own hands.

We need bold leadership at the local level — parents, parishes, and communities willing to protect our children, defend our faith, and confront the truth. Because the politicians won’t do it. And our families can’t wait any longer.

If Your Response To Tragedy Is To Mock God, Repent

Those scoffing at Christians' prayer after Wednesday's tragedy repeat the folly of the crowds who dared the crucified Christ to save Himself.

Tone-deaf Democrats lash out over prayers for Christians murdered in devastating Minnesota shooting



In the aftermath of the atrocious mass shooting at a Minnesota Catholic church, several Democrats jumped at the opportunity to denounce prayer.

A masked man horrifically shot and killed two children, ages 8 and 10, while they were praying in the pews of Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis on Wednesday morning. The assailant also left 17 others injured, including two in critical condition.

The shooter, who was later identified as Robin Westman, took aim at the innocent children and other Mass attendees through the stained-glass windows before taking his own life in the parking lot.

'Stop praying for a f**king minute and demand action.'

In response to the senseless tragedy, leaders from President Donald Trump to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) conveyed their deepest sympathies and offered prayers to the families of the victims.

Although the response was largely bipartisan and unifying, some Democrats took it upon themselves to lash out.

RELATED: Gov. Walz's condemnation of Trump's efforts to make Democrat-run cities safe aged really poorly

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Jen Psaki, former press secretary for the Biden administration, managed to twist the atrocity into a political critique of the Trump administration while simultaneously dismissing prayers offered by Americans across the country.

"Prayer is not freaking enough," Psaki wrote in a post on X. "Prayer does not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers."

"When kids are getting shot in their pews at a catholic school mass and your crime plan is to have national guard put mulch down around DC maybe rethink your strategy," Psaki said in another post.

RELATED: Gunman opens fire at Catholic church; police say there are about 20 victims

Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) echoed Psaki, saying that prayers were an insufficient response to the atrocity that took place at the Catholic church.

"Don't just say that this is about thoughts and prayers right now," Frey said in a press conference following the shooting. "These kids were literally praying. It was the first week of school. They were in a church."

Brian Krassenstein, a left-wing political commentator, made similar remarks on his X account Wednesday, insisting that people "stop praying for a f**king minute and demand action by people and not just God."

"Praying is the problem here, not the solution," Krassenstein said. "People use prayer instead of action. If prayer worked a house of prayer wouldn’t have just experienced this tragedy."

"Prayer becomes a problem when it takes the place of real action that could save children’s lives," Krassenstein said in another post. "If that offends you, good, it should."

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Sometimes the most Christian thing to do is shut up



I didn’t want to write this. I still don’t.

The push notification lit up my phone while I was working out — campers swept away as the Guadalupe River surged dozens of feet in under an hour. I walked out of the gym and teared up in my truck.

Now I’m stuffing sunscreen and swimsuits into two trunks. My older two kids head off to sleepaway camp next week. How do I tell them the adventure they’re so giddy about just turned fatal for other families? What can a keyboard jockey like me offer when other parents are living a nightmare? My first instinct was to close the laptop, whisper a prayer, and stay quiet.

But silence isn’t always the faithful response.

Entire campsites — from Kerr County to the back roads of Texas Hill Country — have been wiped away. Parents who expected mosquito bites and ghost stories are now scanning riverbanks for anything recognizable. They don’t need punditry. They need the rest of us to witness their grief without turning it into the next battleground in the culture war.

That’s the part I dread most.

Within hours of the first siren, the internet erupted in blame. Was it climate change? Outdated flood maps? Local negligence? Federal failure? Pick your camp, rack up your retweets, move the score marker. The bodies weren’t even identified before the hashtags started trending. It’s as if we’ve forgotten how to mourn without also trying to win.

'Where was God?' feels like the only honest question when the water rises. But storms don’t mean vengeance, any more than sunsets are God’s apology.

Then there’s that phrase believers lean on — “thoughts and prayers.” “Ts and Ps,” as Gen Z sneers. If I lost one of my kids, those words would feel like a whispered lullaby in a room suddenly emptied of breath — tender, well-meaning, and painfully inadequate.

Not because prayer is pointless. Because the cliché is.

When calamity struck, Job’s friends “sat with him on the ground seven days … and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.” No carbon emissions debate. No X threads. Just presence. Silence. Solidarity.

Maybe that’s the posture we need now — especially along a river whose name, Guadalupe, traces back to “river of the wolf.” Creation still has teeth. Even waters we picnic beside can turn predator in a single thunderstorm. Wolves hunt in packs. They also protect their own. Maybe that’s the symbolism: The same river that devoured so many calls the rest of us to move as a pack — toward the survivors, not away.

Real faith doesn’t show up as a hashtag. It comes in the form of casseroles and chain saws, spare bedrooms and Venmo links. It hauls soggy photo albums into the sun. It listens more than it lectures. When Jesus met Mary and Martha at the tomb, He wept before He preached. Maybe that’s the order we’ve lost.

RELATED: Liberal women quickly learn what happens when you say vile things about little girls killed in the floods

Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

So what can we do from a distance?

Give until it pinches — money, blood, bottled water, even unused PTO if your workplace allows donations. Relief crews will need support for months, not days.

Go if you can. Student ministries, church groups, skilled contractors — this work doesn’t end when the cameras leave.

Guard these families’ dignity. Share verified donation links, not drone footage of recovered bodies. If you wouldn’t show the image to your child, don’t post it.

Grieve aloud. Let your kids see adults who don’t numb tragedy with mindless scrolling.

And yes, pray— not as a substitute for action, but as its source. Prayer is oxygen for those on their feet. When the apostle James said, “Faith without works is dead,” he might as well have been looking out the window of a rescue chopper.

I get the temptation to shake a fist at heaven. “Where was God?” feels like the only honest question when the water rises. But storms don’t mean vengeance, any more than sunsets are God’s apology. Scripture calls Him a refuge and redeemer, not a puppet master yanking strings to break hearts. Turning away from God now is like fleeing the only lighthouse in a gale.

If grief makes prayer sound hollow, answer the hollowness with action — and with the stubborn belief that the Creator remains good, even when creation feels cruel.

I still don’t want to write this. I’d rather tuck my kids in tonight and pretend rivers respect property lines and holiday weekends. But if this piece offers anything, let it give permission to mourn without politicizing. For one day — one hour even — let grief be grief. Let dads hold their kids tighter. Let moms remind us that safety doesn’t come with a zip code. Let the church prove it’s more than a Sunday address.

With the sparklers of Independence Day barely cooled, maybe the most patriotic thing we can do is recover the lost art of compassionate presence. No monologue — including this one — can fill a bunk bed left empty. But through gifts, sweat, silence, and prayer, maybe we can shoulder a sliver of the weight.

If you’re reading this in a dry living room, remember the families whose furniture is floating somewhere downriver.

Before you post, pause.

Before you debate, donate.

If “thoughts and prayers” still feel hollow, add two more words: “Here’s how.”

Then go do it.

'Miss me with your thoughts & prayers,' Ayanna Pressley declares while advocating for gun control



In a tweet advocating for gun control, Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts declared, "Miss me with your thoughts & prayers."

Pressley called for "universal background checks," an "assault weapons ban," "comprehensive red flag laws," increasing "the purchasing age," "closing the boyfriend loophole," "& more," and then went on to claim that "gun violence is a public health crisis and we must legislate to save lives."

The post earned pushback on social media.

"No," Ryan Petty wrote in response to the Democrat's comments. Petty's daughter Alaina was one of the victims killed in the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

— (@)

"Because things always get better when the government gets involved," Dr. Mark Young wrote with apparent sarcasm.

"Translation: The existing 10,000 gun laws and regulations on the books have done exactly nothing to stop violent crime in this country. So let's do some more gun laws and regulations," someone else wrote, adding, "Why am I skeptical?"

"It's hard to always be wrong about everything, but Ayanna’s efforts have been unstinting," someone else wrote.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

In addition to promoting gun control, Pressley is also a climate alarmist who has claimed that "climate change is an existential crisis and environmental justice is racial justice."

— (@)

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Leftists Explain Tragedy With Fake Narratives Because Their Idols Offer No Explanation Or Remedy For Evil

There is but one remedy for the kind of evil that murders men, women, and children and its name isn’t gun control. It’s Jesus.

'We believe in prayer': Top TN official boldly defends prayers after massacre at Christian school



The director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation boldly defended prayer on Monday as an appropriate response to atrocities.

After three children and three staff members were brutally gunned down by a transgender perpetrator at the Covenant School in Nashville, the trite discourse about prayer not being sufficient was reinserted into the national media narrative.

But at a press conference, TBI Director David Rausch affirmed people who believe prayer is necessary in the wake of the massacre.

"Again I want to echo what chief has said in reference to the great support and the great teamwork that has been taking place here, as well as sending our heartfelt prayers to the families, to this community of these victims," Rausch said at a press conference.

"Now, I know there’ll be people who want to criticize us for prayers. But that’s the way we do that in the South, right? We believe in prayer and we believe in the power of prayer. And so, our prayers go out to these families," he continued.

None
— (@)

To demonstrate empathy for victims of atrocities — such as mass shootings — people often offer their "thoughts and prayers." It's a way to show solidarity with those impacted by the tragedy despite having no personal connection to it.

But "thoughts and prayers" do nothing to prevent gun-violence crimes, argue gun control advocates. Mocking people who offer their prayers, in fact, has become commonplace in recent years. One progressive radio host, for instance, went viral on Monday after he observed that prayers did not prevent the tragedy in Nashville.

Anything else?

Rausch explained at the press conference that TBI investigators were assisting local law enforcement with the officer-involved portions of the incident. The agency will also provide investigative oversight, he said.

Bodycam footage showed how, within a matter of minutes, police officers entered the school, located the perpetrator, and ended the massacre by shooting the shooter dead.

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'They weren't praying enough': Progressive radio host goes viral over vile reaction to Christian school massacre



Progressive radio host David Pakman appeared to suggest on Monday that the victims of the Covenant School massacre would not have died if they had prayed more.

"Very surprising that there would be a mass shooting at a Christian school, given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events," Pakman said in a now-deleted tweet.

"Is it possible they weren't praying enough, or correctly, despite being a Christian school?" he added.

The point of the tweet, Pakman later claimed, was to mock Republicans for offering "thoughts and prayers" after shooting massacres as opposed to advocating for gun control.

"I'm not mocking the faith of the slain children, I'm mocking the absurdity of every Republican who sends thoughts and prayers and does nothing else to actually stop the scourge of gun violence," Pakman claimed on Tuesday in response to outage against him.

However, those who cite prayer after massacres do not argue that a "lack of prayer" would have prevented the massacres. Rather, they invoke prayer as their response to the atrocity.

Despite his defense, there were a glaring lack of references to Republicans in his initial tweet. If the point of his tweet was to score political points against Republicans, why not actually include "Republicans" in the tweet?

Indeed, people did not believe Pakman's defense.

Not only was it pointed out that Pakman said nothing about Republicans, but his exact words were "is it possible they weren't praying enough." The "they" was understood to refer to those at the Covenant School, a Christian school, because there is not another antecedent to which the "they" could possibly refer.

Anything else?

Before deleting the viral tweet, Pakman expressed surprise that he had generated intense backlash against himself.

"Some people are upset with me about this tweet," he said, in a now-deleted tweet.

Interestingly, Pakman appeared to suggest, in another now-deleted tweet, that he only deleted his viral tweet because he was being attacked online — not because he is sorry.

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'F*** your thoughts and prayers': Democrat drops F-bomb in statement about Michigan State shooting



Michigan state Rep. Ranjeev Puri, a Democrat, dropped the F-bomb in a statement about the recent shooting at Michigan State University.

The 43-year-old shooter killed three and wounded others, and also reportedly ended his own life.

"F*** your thoughts and prayers," Puri declared in his statement, before going on to offer "deepest condolences" to the school's community.

"What happened in East Lansing is unfortunately far too common. Going to school in America, whether it's pre-school or college, means risking your life every day to the threat of a mass shooting. Yet all we have offered up are empty solutions — traumatizing active shooter drills and bulletproof backpacks," Puri said in the statement. "We do not need to live like this. The United States is the only country where this happens. Where mass shootings have left us desensitized, waking up each day to a seemingly never-ending horrific cycle of gun violence."

\u201cToday, we begin to collectively heal from the horrific events which transpired, tomorrow we work. \n\nMy official statement regarding the Michigan State University shooting is below:\n\nFuck your thoughts and prayers.\u201d
— Rep. Ranjeev Puri (@Rep. Ranjeev Puri) 1676353119

"Thoughts and prayers without action and change are meaningless. Our office will continue to work tirelessly to pass common sense gun reform immediately. We will not stop until our students can attend school without fear, our communities can attend places of worship in peace, and our society is safe from senseless gun violence," he said.

Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was killed in the 2018 shooting at a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, called Puri "disgusting."

"You are disgusting. Have some respect for your office and to the families who have lost loved ones," Petty tweeted.

But gun control activist David Hogg, who was a student at the school when the Parkland shooting occurred, expressed support for Puri: "We need more politicians like this," Hogg tweeted in response to Puri's statement.

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