Author: Penna Dexter

Penna Dexter
In a recent sermon, my pastor declared: “The most significant decision we make every week is whether we will go to church.”
Church attendance is declining as the culture secularizes. Our pastor, Paul Donison, told us that during the pandemic, 40 million Americans stopped going to church and the numbers have continued dropping.
Dr. Ryan Burge is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University. He researches religiosity and political behavior in the United States and publishes a substack called “Graphs about Religion.” His findings show religious practice diminishing in all major demographic groups over the last 15-20 years. He says, “every group is leaving religion, even among conservatives and Republicans, the group that is typically tied to religion.”
Polls reveal that about a quarter of Americans identify as evangelicals. But many evangelicals report they’re not attending church. Dr. Burge says, “non attenders are taking on the label.”
When asked about church attendance, self-identified Christians who don’t attend church offer explanations like: “I don’t need to go” or “I can worship on my own” or “I find God in nature.”
If you’re in that category, read Psalm 27.
King David faced adversity when surrounded, betrayed, or even exiled. The psalm says the  sanctuary is the thing he asks God for. That’s where he longs to be.
It’s in the sanctuary where he sees the splendor of God, where he’s given a new perspective on his circumstances. He seeks to “inquire in his temple” (v.4, ESV). It’s there, he will find “shelter in the day of trouble” (v.5).  And he will “offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy” (v.6).
David feared he’d be forsaken, but concluded: “the Lord will take me in” (v.10).
We can worship by an ocean or a tree. But Pastor Donison speaks the truth: we need biblical preaching and sacraments to show us the fullness of who God is.
So, dear one, go to church.

Penna Dexter
Who or what is to blame for the scale of the wildfires that destroyed massive swaths of Los Angeles this winter?  Some politicians point to climate change and fossil fuels. Two California legislators have filed a bill to allow insurers and homeowners impacted by the fires to sue oil companies for their losses.
Lawmakers hope to cover damages the state is liable for through its underfunded insurance, the last resort for millions of Californians as state-imposed price controls have driven private insurers out of the state.
Tom McClintock, 8-term member of Congress from California, says climate change is not the culprit here. It’s the state’s “environmental and social policies.” In a Wall Street Journal, op ed, Rep. McClintock says California’s once-competent fire management policies and infrastructure, explain “why fires became less threatening throughout most of the 20thcentury.”  He points to federal environmental legislation, first passed in the 70’s, which has been taken to extremes in California. Consequently, forest thinning projects cost millions and take an average of 5.3 years to be approved. Brush suppression is made more difficult.  Cattle grazing “has largely been regulated out of use.” And “leftist officials neglected the region’s basic water infrastructure” in favor of wind and solar spending.
The 21st–century result: devastating loss of forests and homes. There are fixes for aging water lines, pumping systems, water tanks, and even reservoirs. But they have mostly not been implemented. National Review’s Noah Rothman describes a “bombshell” report, published in the Los Angeles Times, which could help Angelinos hold leaders to account “for their maladministration.” This review of thousands of pages of state, county and city records “reveals how thoroughly officials in Southern California dropped the ball when it came to fire management.” But, officials and the press have mainly tried “to persuade the public that the details revealed in this report amount to “misinformation.”
Our country has bold new leaders. Californians should find some. 

Penna Dexter
The Department of Education is not needed. More evidence surfaced recently in results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, given to 4th and 8th graders every two years. Average NAEP scores in both grades are down 2 points since 2022. A third of eighth graders scored “below basic” in reading, a record low. And math scores continue to drop. The money we throw at the problem is not helping.
President Trump supports abolishing the Department of Education. Since only Congress can shut it down, advisors are debating the specifics of an executive order. The Wall Street Journal learned that the order is expected to “shut down all functions of the agency that aren’t written explicitly into statute” and “move certain functions to other departments.”
The order would also call on Congress to develop legislation to abolish the department. House Education Committee Chair Tim Walburg (R-Michigan), supports doing so, but expects Senate resistance. A recent Wall Street Journal poll shows 61 percent of registered voters want the department’s funding protected.
Betsy De Vos, Secretary of Education during President Trump’s first term wrote, “I can say conclusively that American students will be better off without.”
In an article for The Free Press, Secretary DeVos says she found, during her tenure, that “the Department of Education has almost nothing to do with educating anyone.”
Last year, Congress appropriated nearly $80 billion for education. Mrs. DeVos says, upon receipt of funds, the department‘s bureaucrats ”add strings and red tape, peel off a percentage to pay for themselves, and then send it down to state education agencies.” She recommends that Congress eliminate the middleman and send education funding straight to the states and schools as a block grant.
She says Congress should pass Universal School Choice — giving parents more authority.
Enforcing civil rights law should be shifted to the Department of Justice. And student loans should go to the banks.
Then, close the department’s doors.

Penna Dexter
A presidential transition always involves firing federal bureaucrats that populated the previous administration. The Trump team entered office motivated and prepared for this work — and rightly so.
The Napolitan Institute, an organization founded by pollster Scott Rasmussen, recently released a poll of Washington DC-based federal bureaucrats. Sixty-four percent of those who voted for Kamala Harris for president said they would not follow a lawful order from President Trump if they disagreed with it. Forty-two percent of federal government managers,with annual salaries of $75,000 or more, said they plan to politically oppose the administration.”
Senator Rand Paul told The Daily Signal that any government employee who refuses a lawful order by the president “should be fired for cause — immediately.”
The trouble is that there are career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees —who are protected from termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
Some of these employees do influence policy.
During his first term, President Trump experienced intense opposition from certain progressive bureaucrats. So, he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employee: “Schedule F.” These are previously-protected employees whose jobs do entail making certain decisions that impact policy. Under the Trump order, these employees would no longer be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule stipulates that “the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Biden repealed the Trump order upon entering office. And, he implemented a rule that prevents the firing of career civil servants,
Federal employees that have “policy-making and policy-influencing roles” can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies. That’s why President Trump is restoring Schedule F.
Congress should now consider enshrining it into Federal law.
As Senator Katie Britt of Alabama put it,  “Civil servants must serve our nation, not their political party.”

Penna Dexter
As evidenced by the crowd at last weeks’ March for Life on the National Mall in Washington DC, the pro-life movement is alive and well. In a post-Roe world, it’s still needed.
Vice President J.D. Vance joined the marchers, thanking them for showing up in such large numbers on “this especially frigid January.”  He made it clear he’s one of them, and  described their cause as “our movement.”
In a video message, President Trump pledged that in his second term, he will “protect the historic gains” made in his previous administration and will block the “push for a federal right to unlimited abortion on demand.”
Both the president and vice president made clear that targeting of “Americans of faith” and pro-lifers by the U.S. Justice Department will end.
President Trump told the marchers, “I am releasing the Christians and pro-life activists who were persecuted by the Biden regime for praying and living out their faith…”
Vice President Vance referred to failures by our nation to foster a culture of life, stating “our country has not stepped up in the way you have.”
Sadly, his statement aptly describes a recent action by the United States Senate.
Every January, before the March for Life, Congress considers an important piece of pro-life legislation. This year’s bill was the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, introduced by Senators James Lankford (R-OK) and Jim Banks (R-IN).
 On January 9th, the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, (R-SD) held a vote on it.
The bill does nothing to limit access to abortion. It simply requires that babies who are born alive—having survived an attempted abortion—will receive appropriate medical care. It’s a simple argument: Leaving this baby to die would be infanticide.
The motion for cloture failed 52-47, with every Democrat voting against moving the bill forward.
This extremism helped give us a Vice President who marched for life, carrying a sign that reads, “I Am the Pro-life Generation.”

Penna Dexter
In one of his final lawless acts, just three days before leaving office, President Biden proclaimed that the Equal Rights Amendment is “the law of the land.” Congress passed this amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1972 and gave it seven years to achieve ratification by three fourths of the states.
Proponents claimed the ERA would protect women’s rights by prohibiting discrimination based on sex.
Thirty-five states ratified. In a constitutionally questionable move, Congress extended the deadline three more years. Still the amendment failed to garner the necessary support of 38 states. Five states rescinded their ratifications. The ERA expired. It’s dead.
The ERA would not protect women’s rights. Over a decade of consideration, it became clear it would severely undermine many commonsense protections for women and could be used to end even modest restrictions on abortion.
According to Kristin Waggoner, President of Alliance Defending Freedom, the ERA is worse today than it was in the 70’s. She points out: “the word ‘woman’ never appears in the ERA.” Instead,” she writes, “the amendment focuses on ‘sex’ — a word increasingly in danger of becoming meaningless as ideologues push to disassociate the term from biology and replace it with ‘gender identity’.”
Under state and local ERA-type policies, women and girls are already seeing their physical privacy, their athletic opportunities, even their physical safety compromised.
In a misguided attempt to revive the ERA, Nevada and Illinois passed bills to “ratify” the amendment. Virginia did so in 2020. Supporters claimed victory. But, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council, twice, declared the ERA “expired.” So did the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Archivist of the United States would be the person responsible for the amendment’s publication. Dr. Colleen Shogan and her deputy declared, just last month, that the ERA “cannot be certified as part of the Constitution due to established legal, judicial, and procedural decisions.”
Someone must kill the Zombie ERA.

Penna Dexter
I love living in Texas but, by birth and upbringing, I’m an LA girl — born in Pasadena, raised in a beach town, and educated at a university near downtown.
I’m mourning the massive damage and destruction to life, homes, businesses, and landmarks in places I’ve loved.
I remember dreading the Santa Ana winds, which sweep down from the deserts. They come every year and, because California is dry, they bring fires.
The LA Fire Department has over a hundred years’ experience fighting these fires. Each year, when the Devil Winds came, they’d be on it. Lately, the job is taking much longer.
What’s making things harder? Neglect, leftist environmental policy, and poor leadership.
Decaying power lines have been a huge problem — now (supposedly) being addressed. California promised to do better at keeping forest floors “cleaned” of burnable fuel. But “green” pushback prioritizes the “ecosystem” over humans. Voters have demanded new reservoirs. None have been built since 1979. Construction on a new one won’t begin until 2032.
Fire hydrants started running out of water during the first day of this year’s firefighting. Years of bad water policy means there’s insufficient water to fill the reservoirs they have.
In 2008, California began diverting 100 billion gallons of water per year away from Southern California and into the Pacific Ocean to “save” a fish, the Delta smelt. Governor Gavin Newsome has refused to restore the flow of excess rainwater and snow melt from the north to Southern California.
LA Mayor Karen Bass knew of the huge fire risk. Recently, she cut department funding.
And Kristin Crowley, LA’s first female and LGBTQ Fire Chief has wide experience in firefighting. But “promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusion, and equity” is her stated priority. LA’s three top fire officials are lesbian women. Few males are hired as firemen.
There’s another sad reality: Insurers have been cutting coverage in at-risk areas.
California needs a political reckoning – and our prayers.
Follow this link to an interactive map: https://bit.ly/CALFIRE3Dmap

Penna Dexter
Whenever there’s a new session of Congress, the House of Representatives adopts a new set of rules to govern the way it conducts business. Four years ago, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced, and the House passed, a resolution aimed at making all House rules “gender inclusive.”
The resolution expunged sex-specific words from House rules.
So where the terms “father” and “mother” had previously appeared in the House Code of Official Conduct, they were replaced with “parent.”  “Husband” and “wife” became “spouse.” ”Son” and “daughter” became “child.” And “brother” and “sister”: ”sibling.”
It really gets awkward: “Aunt” and “uncle” were replaced with “parent’s sibling” and “cousin” became “sibling’s child.” For in-laws, the terms are “parent-in-law”, “child-in-law” and “sibling-in-law.” The absurd list goes on. There’s even a section that eliminates all gendered terms.
To be clear, these changes only affected the rules document and do not prevent the House members from using gendered language in floor speeches or legislation. But this hat tip to the far Left’s desire to eliminate every distinction between the sexes is silly and just makes it harder to communicate clearly.
This ridiculous action by the 117th Congress should have been reversed two years ago by the 118th Congress, But, with extended wrangling over who would be speaker, this crucial task was skipped
The Wall Street Journal recently published an op-ed by Washington attorney Eileen O’Connor calling on members to now complete what she calls “The House’s Unfinished Gender Business,” and restore the “pre-117th Congress’s language.”
That language, Ms. O’Connor argues, is the opposite of gender inclusive. “It denies the existence of the sexes and the words used to describe their relationships to each other.”
She writes, “When even elected officials can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the basic facts of life, it is no wonder the rest of society loses its nerve as well.”  The House should restore clarity to its rules and eschew all gender-blending nonsense.

Penna Dexter
“Some people are calling it a “Vibe Shift.”  Before anyone is sworn into office, we are seeing the fruits of the November election. There’s a new optimism as we reflect on the things that need change. There’s much to pray for, so let’s begin:
Heavenly Father, we’re grateful that voters rejected the gender ideology that allows, even encourages, the mutilation of bodies, especially the bodies of children. Bring us aid and wisdom to banish it from our government, our education system, our military and our national psyche. Help the confused to understand we humans are created, male and female in Your image.
If there’s a vibe shift, let us take advantage of it to get rid of the DEI mentality that rewards identity over real accomplishment. 
Lord, remove from government any tendency to force hardworking Americans to pay the rightful bills of favored interest groups. We ask You to help our leaders enact policies that will bring able-bodied men, who have become discouraged from working, back to productive lives. 
Lord, restore a culture of life and marriage and lawfulness.
Let’s allow Psalm 128 to guide us as we seek the Lord’s blessing in 2025.
Holy God, in the coming year, let us be a people who fear You as we increasingly understand your power and might.
May we walk in Your ways. 
Father, grant us the opportunity to eat the fruits of our labor.
May our society flourish as we delight in Your will and walk in Your ways.
May more of us marry and form godly families.
Let marriages prosper and be blessed with children who thrive under the loving care and discipline of their parents. 
In Your great wisdom, help us to discern good from evil and provide us with good things all the days of our lives.
Let us be godly influences in the lives of our children’s children.
And grant us Your peace. 
In Jesus Name, 
Amen

Penna Dexter
The massive National Defense Authorization Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week. The Washington Stand reports that the bill “takes a sincere stab at some of the worst forms of military wokeness.” The bill was a compromise, but the election results spoke volumes to senators who previously insisted on expanding the draft to women and on rolling back Biden transgender policies. The Washington Stand calls this a “Christmas miracle.”
The legislation strips out Senate language that would have required women to register for the draft. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) led against this effort to draft our daughters which Rep. Roy says is “just nonsense in a country of 330 million people.”
Speaker Mike Johnson included a provision that blocks minor children of members of the military from receiving puberty blockers, hormones, and gender mutilation surgeries through military health insurer Tricare. The Speaker said, “Taxpayer dollars should never be used to support procedures and treatments that could permanently harm and sterilize young people.”
Stats from the National Library of Medicine reveal that the hormones and drugs required by a transgender person cost “upwards of $3700 per person, per year. Transition surgeries cost from $20,000 to $150,000 depending upon their complexity.
Also, according to The Washington Stand, “Sources from inside the Trump camp say priority number one is weeding out the thousands of gender-confused troops this administration welcomed into the ranks under the guise of ‘inclusion’.”
The necessity for constant care of a transgender soldier curtails the ability for that person to deploy overseas.  Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for National Defense, Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, says “that’s an extravagance the Pentagon cannot afford because it detracts from combat readiness.”
Under the next administration, the woke regime in the military must be rooted out. The sooner we get rid of the distractions and financial drain resulting from the current transgender policy, the better.

Penna Dexter
We are about to have our first openly transgender member of Congress. Democrat Sarah McBride won Delaware’s lone House seat and will be sworn in this January. Since Rep.-elect McBride is a trans woman (a biological male) there’s a bit of uncertainty regarding restrooms and other women’s spaces.
Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has introduced a couple of measures aimed at protecting women and the spaces designated specifically for their use — i.e. restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms. One measure would prevent transgender women from using women’s facilities on the House side of the U.S. Capitol.  The other would extend that ban to all federal property.
Rep. Mace says, as a victim of abuse, “I’m absolutely, 100 percent going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom.”
Speaker Mike Johnson has not committed to a vote on either measure but stated that single-sex facilities “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” Rep. McBride pledged to abide by those rules, “even if I disagree.”
Still, over time, compliance will suffer. Chris Enloe, writer for The Blaze, says Nancy Mace “should be commended for fighting back against the encroachment of transgenderism.” But, on social media she touts her support for same sex marriage, stating, “I voted for gay marriage twice in fact and would do it again.”
The Blaze’s Chris Enloe points to the “dissonance between these two positions.” He says, “to support the destruction of traditional marriage — in which functional and biological differences are its most important property — is a wholesale rejection of the framework that distinguishes a man from a woman.”
It’s right there in Matt. 19:4. God’s design for marriage is based upon the way He created us: “male and female.” But, society has elevated personal feelings and discarded sex differences as a requirement for marriage.
We’re here, says Chris Enloe, because of those who tried to “erase biological realities when it was convenient.” 

Penna Dexter
The troubled Boeing Company got a new CEO in August. Early on, Kelly Ortberg began winding down DEI at Boeing. DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — has been around for decades. Diversity requires the elevation of immutable differences — like race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. Equity —often mistaken for equal opportunity — emphasizes equal outcomes. In favor of achieving these, employee merit is necessarily de-emphasized and therein lies the seed of DEI’s failure.
After the death of George Floyd in 2020, Fortune 500 companies launched or beefed up their DEI initiatives. But, when companies that build things take their eye off the ball, quality suffers.
For Boeing, which designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, 2024 brought massive problems, including the midair separation of a panel from an Alaska Airlines plane, difficulties accessing quality parts, flawed flight control software, a 7–week labor strike, and a severe cash crunch.
A Boeing insider told documentary filmmaker and writer, Christopher Rufo, “An organization can prioritize excellence or diversity, but not both simultaneously.” He said, “DEI is the drop in the bucket, and the whole bucket changes. It is anti-excellence, because it is ill-defined, but it became part of the culture.”
That’s why Kelly Ortberg quietly dismantled Boeing’s DEI department.
Another American corporate giant: the country’s number one employer, Walmart announced it is abandoning DEI.
The Washington Stand reports that when DEI warrior Robby Starbuck began investigating Walmart’s policies, company executives “reached out to him.”
The company has announced it will no longer participate in the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBT shakedown campaign: the Corporate Equality Index. It pledged to remove inappropriate sexual and/or transgender products, and to cancel racial equity initiatives.
Walmart joins a growing list of companies rejecting DEI. American businesses are realizing that the woke DEI agenda is polarizing and stifling for businesses. Some are choosing to return to simply running a business.
Chris Rufo affirms, “A reckoning is underway in corporate America.”

Penna Dexter
Speaking last month before the United Nations General Assembly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned that he intends to submit documents to start the process of expelling Israel from the United Nations. His reason? Israel’s refusal to cede its territory to create a Palestinian state.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, discussing the threat on his podcast Verdict, said if Israel is removed from membership, the United States may, itself, withdraw from the U.N.
Senator Cruz says, “If the U.N. expels Israel, the U.S. should halt all funding from America to the U.N.”
The United States is, by far, the U.N.’s largest benefactor.
In a letter to lawmakers, the senator from Texas wrote, “The effort to diplomatically isolate Israel is aimed at ultimately destroying the Jewish state, which is both obscene and antithetical to American national security interests.”
Now may be a good time to discuss U.S. participation in the United Nations. Israel is not the only point of contention.
We should also oppose the ongoing efforts at the U.N. to make abortion an international human right, and its promotion of protected class status based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
U.N. directives often find themselves being debated in Congress. Last week Congressman Nikema Williams, along with 100 Democrat co-sponsors, introduced a resolution declaring an international right to abortion. According to Stephano Gennarini, Vice President for Legal Studies with the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), “There is no international right to abortion under any treaty ratified by the U.S. government.”
C-Fam’s Friday FAX explains that the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with U.N. civil rights agreements, “routinely goes beyond its mandate calling on governments to decriminalize abortion in all circumstances.”
Mr. Gennarini also says a treaty has been drafted that treats lobbying and political activity opposing pro-trans policies as crimes against humanity.
The U.S. has leverage at the U.N. Will we use it to stop this stuff?

Penna Dexter
It’s been a long time since conservatives expected fair and balanced coverage of elections by the legacy media. But the Left counts on traditional news outlets to tip the scales with favorable coverage of its candidates and issues.
True to form, major outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS covered the 2024 campaigns and handled debates and interviews in the biased way they always do. But in this election, the media’s failure to provide truthful and fair coverage hurt the Left.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel writes, “So long as the left is pointing fingers, let it direct a big, fat digit at the outfit that played the biggest role in losing it the election: the U.S. media.”
We cannot place the media in one overarching category. The Journal itself is legacy media, but its editorial page skews right. Today, Americans have numerous media outlets to choose from.
And so do candidates.
Even The Washington Post points out that “Trump and his surrogates saw incredible value in tapping into a podcast ecosystem that has large numbers of young male listeners who otherwise might have skipped casting ballots.“
Meanwhile much of the media ignored, and expected voters to ignore, border chaos, higher prices, and especially President Biden’s decline. As Kim Strassel points out: “In a world with a competent press, Mr. Biden’s failing constitution would have been front page news.” Instead, the legacy media cooperated with the Democrats in covering it up. If they had done a better job reporting on it, there would have been time to hold a primary which “would have produced a tested nominee.”
Big shock: Americans didn’t buy narratives like “we’re experiencing one of the strongest economies ever” or “crime is falling.”
First Amendment freedoms include the press because the press is meant to provide politicians with “gut checks as to how their policies sit with the nation.” Traditional news outlets face a reckoning.

Penna Dexter
Election day was almost upon us — the editorial endorsing Kamala Harris had already been written — when William Lewis, CEO and Publisher of The Washington Post announced the paper would not be endorsing a presidential candidate, ending a 50-year tradition of doing so.
Immediately after the announcement, The Post began bleeding subscribers — 250,000 of them within four days. Several staff members resigned in protest. Longtime opinion writer Ruth Marcus titled her column, “The Post, the wrong choice at the worst possible time.”
Owner Jeff Bezos wrote his own column explaining that The Post can no longer ignore polling that reveals falling public trust in journalists and the media. “What presidential endorsements do,” he wrote, “is create a perception of bias.” He said, “Ending them is a principled decision.” Other newspapers — The LA Times and USA Today – took the same action citing awareness of their own “lack of credibility.”
The Washington Post is not profitable and is becoming less so. Subscribers are turning to smaller, independent news outlets and social media. But, to do good investigative reporting, a news organization needs a large infrastructure. Covering the U.S. government takes a huge staff. The Post has these things. But, Mr. Bezos wrote, his paper and The New York Times “talk only to a certain elite” and increasingly “only to ourselves.” It would be good to have a centrist DC-based paper. If The Washington Post took serious steps away from its role as purveyor of leftist propaganda, it would be better for all of us.
Mr. Bezos also reportedly told The Post’s management it needs to hire more conservative columnists. Radio host Erick Erickson suggested that, if Mr. Bezos is serious about creating a balance, the paper should also add conservative editors and reporters “to break the leftwing worldview infused into the news product they produce.”
It would take deep structural and ideological shifts for The Washington Post to shed its reputation for extreme bias.

Penna Dexter
A false abortion narrative lives in our presidential politics.
The narrative is that state restrictions on abortion passed since the Dobbs decision in 2022 are placing women in serious danger. Supposedly hospitals, fearing they’ll run afoul of state law, are refusing to treat women for miscarriages or abortion complications.
Abortion advocates, including our vice president, blame the Supreme Court for the death of Amber Thurman, age 28, following a medication abortion. She was 9 weeks pregnant with twins.
Medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in 2023. The sustained growth in the use of the abortion pill since it was approved in 2000 is due, in large part, to the FDA’s progressive easing of restrictions on its use. (Many medical experts contend the FDA did not adequately study its safety.) The FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and, in 2016, extended the requirement to 10 weeks’ gestation and allowed non-physicians to prescribe the drugs. In 2021 the Biden administration eliminated the requirement that women seeking a medical abortion be evaluated in person by a medical professional.
A Wall Street Journal editorial states the obvious:

“Thurman’s death affirms what antiabortion activists have argued: that the two-pill abortion regimen is far more dangerous than its advocates claim.”

Since Georgia’s abortion law bans abortions after six weeks gestation, Amber Thurman, made an appointment at a North Carolina clinic for a surgical abortion. She arrived too late for the appointment. Rather than reschedule the surgical abortion, Amber opted to begin a medical abortion. She took the first pill and drove back to Georgia. At home, days later, she vomited and passed out. She was taken to a Stockbridge, Georgia hospital. The babies had no heartbeat. Standard treatment involves an antibiotic and a DNC, but it was hours before Amber received either. She died of sepsis.
No court decision or law prevented her timely treatment.

Penna Dexter
According to statistics from George Barna, 41 million Americans who describe themselves as “born-again Christians” are “unlikely” to vote in the November elections. His research, conducted in August and September, dug deeper into the reasons for these Christians’ complacency. Family Research Council’s daily news publication, The Washington Stand, reports that 68 percent of them said they’re not interested in politics, 57 percent don’t like either of the presidential candidates, 52 percent don’t think their vote will make a difference, and 48 percent of respondents cited concerns about manipulation of election results.
It’s not just the presidency that’s at stake. FRC’s president, Tony Perkins, encourages believers to pay attention and weigh in all the way down the ballot, warning that: “Control of the House and Senate hangs in the balance.” He points out that “Governors, state attorneys general, local school boards, even comptrollers are amassing major victories in protecting children from radical gender ideology, pushing back on corporate America’s woke agenda, fighting the Biden administration’s lawless overreach, and passing sweeping pro-life and pro-parent laws.”
FRC brought several speakers and pastors to Washington DC last weekend for its Pray, Vote Stand conference. Cornerstone Chapel Pastor Gary Hamrick told the crowd, “Let me tell you what happens when we are not involved in the political process: We open the door for every evil ideology to fill the vacuum.”
In Romans 13, we read that government is created and established by God. In our nation, we have the opportunity to influence the government by choosing our leaders. Christians who do not vote shirk a crucial responsibility for stewardship. The Left is ready to pass laws that will entrench its power and make elections pointless.
Another pastor, Jack Hibbs, told the DC audience we must take every opportunity God gives us to advance His kingdom. “And,” he said, “voting is the easiest.”
If you’re not planning to vote, he says, “you need to repent.”

Penna Dexter
The New York Times recently reported on an “emerging truth” among Christians. Correspondent Ruth Graham writes, “For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious.”
This dynamic applies only to Christians who are part of Generation Z. (Gen Z currently encompasses ages 12-27.) A survey of over 5000 Americans done last year by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute found that, in every other demographic, men were more likely than women to describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. But, the study shows that within Gen Z, the opposite is the case. As The Times’ Ruth Graham puts it: “The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip.”
A recent Wall Street Journal article outlined the metrics in which young men “keep falling behind” their female peers. Fewer are attending college. Fewer are employed. Fewer are looking for work or obtaining workforce training. Fewer feel needed.  More report being lonely. More commit suicide.
One reason more young men are in church may be that many churches are intentionally speaking to these trends. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes, “It may be, then, that churches that seem like home to young men are particularly well positioned to do that kind of work — stabilizing and elevating men who are currently adrift and making them more appealing as potential spouses than any currently available force in either ‘normie’ or very online culture.”
The AEI survey shows 61 percent of Gen Z women identify as feminist. Perhaps they’re not as onboard with this “macho Christianity.” Mary Harrington, author of Feminism Against Progress, coined the term and says young men are attracted to “a Christianity that is prepared to fight, to struggle, to refuse therapeutic winsomeness.”
Hopefully, these guys will invite the girls back to church.

Penna Dexter
In these days, do you sometimes find yourself struggling to discern truth from lies? Do you sense that bedrock principles regarding culture and politics are being mercilessly challenged? Do sources of information you once found reliable now seem shaky?
We’re being targeted by a powerful propaganda technique called reality suppression. In a recent Substack article, author and filmmaker, Christopher Rufo unpacks how the Left suppresses reality in order to maintain “its control over the discourse.”
Chris Rufo explains: ”the technique of reality suppression is designed to persuade your opponent not to believe what is in front of him.”
He gives three examples. One is COVID. Where did the pandemic come from? If the evidence had you convinced or at least suspicious, that it was from a lab leak, it was deemed racist or too antagonistic toward China to say so. Skepticism of the vaccine was dismissed as anti-science, The possibility of natural immunity was dismissed.
Hence, either by censorship or intimidation, reality was suppressed.
The second example of reality suppression is critical race theory. Chris Rufo brought CRT to public attention and surfaced a massive body of evidence to show how it was being taught in schools. But the Left employed its media outlets to deny that CRT even exists.   “Pure reality suppression,” says Mr. Rufo. “taking something that is obviously real, that is substantiated by evidence and just using a blanket denial to say something that exists does not exist.”
Chris Rufo’s third example is immigration — massive numbers of illegals flowing across the border and into the interior of the country. The establishment media ignores or plays down the danger of criminals, specifically Venezuelan gang members bringing murder, drugs, and human trafficking into sanctuary cities like New York, places like Aurora, Colorado, and even suburbs around the country.
To fight reality suppression, Mr. Rufo says trust your own observation and intuition.  And seek out reliable sources of information.

Penna Dexter
There’s a growing concern in the U.S. and many other countries that people are not having enough babies.
The fertility rate in the U.S. is now approximately 1.62 births per female. This is well below replacement level fertility which is 2.1 births per female.
Why should we care about this?
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat worries a lot about the declining birthrate. In his book, THE DECADENT SOCIETY, he laments that “amid all of our society’s material plenty, one resource is conspicuously scarce. That resource is babies.” He writes frequently about “the grim consequences of an aging, childless future.”
The concern is frequently highlighted in other major news sources including Bloomberg, CNN Business, The Wall Street Journal, BBC, and The Economist, with headlines like, “Global fertility has collapsed with profound economic consequences.” 
Propelled by falling birthrates, the U.S. population is rapidly aging. As the number of productive workers shrinks and the population of elderly rises, we’ll face a shortage of workers to support the older generations. This accelerates the economic pressures on childbearing-aged couples.
There are several reasons for the declining birthrate. Couples are marrying past the peak age for human biological fertility, which is 22-24. And, increasingly, people are not marrying at all. One in four 40-year-old American adults have never been married.
To many Millennials and Gen Z-ers, having kids is one of many lifestyle choices. John Stonestreet, host of Breakpoint, says that in our current culture, “we make the choice to have children or not based on convenience, enjoyment, and personal fulfillment.” For many young women, “motherhood often lands on the losing side of that evaluation.”
Elon Musk has touted the work of Kevin Dolan, organizer of The Natal Conference who describes to his audiences “a problem that will define the next century…predicated on one question. Will your children have children of their own?”
All too often, the answer is ‘no.’