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One of the biggest obstacles facing the West today is radical Islam — and not the kind that festers in the Middle East. The biggest threat exists right on European and American soil. The West has been infiltrated by design via a plot to collapse it from within.

Sadly, we’ve largely teed up this plot. Between open borders, partnering in pro-Palestine activism, the election of people like Zohran Mamdani, and constant cries of Islamophobia by progressives, the West is catapulting ever closer to an Islamic takeover.

Perhaps the people who are so keen to merge with the Islamic people and champion their causes should hear the story of Yasmine Mohammed — an ex-Muslim and human rights activist.

When she was just 19 years old, Yasmine was forced into an arranged marriage to Essam Marzouk, an Al-Qaeda operative, after a childhood of horrors beyond imagination. But this marriage didn’t take place in Iran, Afghanistan, or some other Islamic nation. It happened in Vancouver, Canada. Her book, “Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam,” details the abuses and horrors she suffered at the hands of her nightmarish stepfather and husband and the Canadian government’s dismissal of her plight.

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn invited Yasmine to share her tragic story and her warning for the West. What she told him brought him to tears.

Early childhood

When Yasmine was very young, her parents divorced, and her mother remarried an Egyptian Islamist as his second of two wives. Immediately, “everything became haram — everything became forbidden,” says Yasmine. “Hijab was put on me. … I had to cover everything except for my face and hands up until I was 19, where even my face and hands got covered in black as well.”

Yasmine’s stepfather was a harsh and rigid tyrant. Anyone and anything that wasn’t considered Muslim was strictly forbidden. Once, when Yasmine wrote her name in a book as “Jasmine” instead of “Yasmine,” her stepfather interpreted it to mean that she wanted “to be Western.” Determined to teach her “a very strong lesson,” he “hung [her] upside down” on the same hook used for animal sacrifices during the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha — the Festival of Sacrifice. He then “whipped” her in places that would remain “hidden.”

These inverted lashings continued over the years, with the whippings growing more severe once she began wearing a hijab that kept the marks concealed.

“[He] whipped me to the point of me passing out because I was crying so much, and I couldn’t breathe. … My face, my nose, my throat, my eyes — everything was filled with mucus,” she recounts, noting that her mother was concerned by these whippings, not because her daughter was being tortured to near death, but because she was afraid of getting in trouble with the Canadian authorities.

“She wasn’t like this. Nobody in her family was like this,” Yasmine says. “Once she became indoctrinated into this ideology and once she married this Islamist man, she turned into this monster.”

“All she wanted was for Islam to win and for the West to be dismantled, and if it meant that she had to beat her daughter up to get her daughter to understand that that’s what needed to be done, then she was fine to do that. In fact, she was fine to kill me,” she tells Glenn. “When I took off my hijab, I had to escape from her and run for my life because she was so angry.”

Late childhood

For a brief time, Yasmine attended a public high school because there were no Islamic high school options. Much to her mother’s dismay, Yasmine thrived in public school.

“She thought sending me to a public school with hijab on that I was going to be ostracized and bullied and that I would learn that these non-Muslims were nothing but trouble … but instead I made friends with them, and I was happy to be there, and that just killed her,” Yasmine says. Furious, her mother determined she would be homeschooled after the school year ended.

Yasmine’s drama teacher noticed her change in demeanor and inquired about it, and Yasmine told him about her mother’s plans to squash the taste of happiness public school had given her. Her teacher’s kindness led Yasmine to eventually confide in him about the abuse she was suffering at home. “I shared with him everything, not knowing that as a teacher in a public school, it was his legal responsibility to contact the authorities, and that’s what he did,” she tells Glenn.

Police and child protective services launched an investigation into their family, which included Yasmine, her sister, her mother, her stepfather, and his two children from another wife. This was actually the second investigation, as another teacher had already reported suspected abuse to CPS when she noticed bruises in the shape of fingers on Yasmine’s stepsister’s face. The girl denied being abused, however, and the initial case was closed.

Sadly, the second case ended similarly, but unlike her stepsister, Yasmine was candid about the horrors she was suffering. “We went through the whole investigative system and the whole court case and everything. In the end, the judge said, ‘This is a cultural issue; this is a religious issue. He has the right to discipline his kids how he sees fit, and it’s not our place to intervene,’” says Yasmine. “I had told them about all of the beatings with the belts, and I told him about the hanging upside down and everything, and they still said, ‘Well, that’s just your culture; that’s just your ethnicity, your religion, your race, your whatever. You’re just going to have to endure.’”

Feeling there was no escape from the nightmare of her life, 13-year-old Yasmine tried to commit suicide.

Marriage

When Yasmine was 19, her mother specifically chose a man who she thought was “strong enough to control [her].”

This man — Essam Marzouk — is currently serving prison time in Egypt for his terrorism. He was “someone who would beat me and swear at me and spit on me and cover me head to toe in black,” Yasmine says. “He used to cover the windows in paper to make sure that if the curtains moved, nobody would see me inside literal prison.”

“I had to accept being raped and beaten by him because according to the Hadith and the Quran, a man has that right to do that to his wife,” she says.

It wasn’t long before Yasmine was pregnant. Her husband and her mother began making plans to take the baby girl to Egypt for “female genital mutilation” — a common practice in Islam.

“That’s when I had to escape,” she says.

To hear more of Yasmine’s story and her warning for what is coming to the West, watch the complete interview above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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Yet another apparently unhinged protester allegedly attacked conservatives, video taken by Blaze Media national correspondent Julio Rosas shows. According to police, this time he is actually facing consequences.

Video taken by Rosas seems to show the impassioned protester lunging at an attendee outside the Student Action Summit hosted by Chalie Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA in Tampa, Florida. After he repeatedly yelled at the crowd and shoved one of the attendees, a police officer tackled him to the ground and detained him, according to the video.

‘Mr. Smith is finding out Florida is not his home state of New York.’

RELATED: Establishment Dems say Mamdani and his allies are in for a ‘painful lesson’

Rosas later reported that the alleged attacker, named Trevor Smith, was being charged with battery, resisting arrest, and driving under the influence. As of Sunday, he was still in jail in Hillsborough Country.

The video shows that Smith initially approached attendees, apparently taunting them and trying to get them to engage. When another attendee walked by he allegedly shoved him back several times before the police officer hopped the fence and pursued Smith.

Screenshot / Julio Rosas

Smith quickly retreated back to his car, which he left running in the street, before he tripped over the curb and fell to the ground. The police officer, who witnessed the whole altercation, quickly subdued and arrested Smith.

RELATED: Los Angeles anti-ICE protesters harass DHS agents, military members on Independence Day

Screenshot / Julio Rosas

“Mr. Smith is finding out Florida is not his home state of New York,” Rosas told Blaze News. “You will be held accountable if you’re driving under the influence, causing traffic disruptions, and attacking people in broad daylight in front of the police. I thank the Tampa Police Department for handling this situation swiftly.”

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It’s the revenge of the uglies.

There is no gentle way to introduce this topic: The repellent, the dim-witted, and the untalented have been promoted far above their station, and America is suffering as a result.

The enormously fat, the face-metal-wearers, the lumbering transvestite men with Herman Munster jaws tottering on heels down the salad dressing aisle …

People who 100 years ago would have been actual circus freaks you needed to pay a nickel to peep at, today walk down the streets and the red carpet as if they were the platonic ideals of manhood and womanhood.

No, I am not trying for comic effect. I mean it.

Fat city

Last week in a Staples parking lot, I watched an SUV pull into an empty spot. In the back window was a bumper sticker that said, “Just doing b***h things,” in that girly-cutesy “handwriting” typeface, with pink swirls and cartoon butterflies surrounding the vulgar catchphrase. The rest of the bumper stickers were for Planned Parenthood and other girlboss causes.

The driver opened the door and began the deboarding process. At about 5’5”, she must have weighed close to 300 pounds.

Gali Tibbon/Getty Images

At that level of obesity, it is impossible to tell a person’s age. She may have been 28 or 45. She climbed down backward, holding onto a handrail, and the truck noticeably bounced on its suspension when her weight was removed. Wearing a baseball cap and an unfortunately tight T-shirt and shorts (all in what I think of as “poison tree frog” colors), she huffed her way across the parking lot.

Noticing’s not nasty

Now, I must pause and reassure some readers, because the grotesque has become so normal that noticing that it is grotesque is now taken as a sign that the author is a mean, nasty person who pokes fun at unfortunate people.

No. The description I wrote above was not mean, inaccurate, or cold-hearted. It is an accurate account of an unsightly and demoralizing everyday spectacle that all of us see in public.

America is full of morbidly obese men, women, and children. Young women walk the streets in ensembles formerly reserved for prostitutes. Young men won’t even wash the food particles or grease out of their hair and beards before wiling away the afternoon, spending their barista salary on comic books and toys, while sporting the kind of “Wheee! I’m a superhero!” garb even toddlers used to wear only beneath their clothes. (Who else remembers Underoos?)

Boston Globe/Getty Images

We have an “epidemic,” if you will, of substandard physical and mental health. But this epidemic is not being caused by capitalism or patriarchy or oligarchs or any other leftist bogeyman. This is something Americans are doing to themselves. Regardless of the real problems with our unhealthy food supply and over-reliance on pharmaceuticals, only individuals can change themselves.

Stunning and brave

But they don’t want to. The enormously fat, the face-metal-wearers, the lumbering transvestite men with Herman Munster jaws tottering on heels down the salad dressing aisle — these people don’t want to get better.

Worse, they demand that the rest of us call them beautiful, that we call them brave, that we call them authentic.

Beginning with the hippies in the 1960s, our values have slowly but surely taken a 180-degree turn. What may have seemed cheeky and cute in 1967 — young men rebelling by having long hair, young women burning their bras — has become monstrous. Members of the so-called “counterculture” look like they belong in the psychiatric hospitals and asylums that we decided we no longer needed.

Welcome to the cuckoo’s nest.

Opposite day

The leftist culture — which is mainstream culture — has pulled an inversion. It tells us that morbid obesity is healthy and beautiful, like this spread in Cosmopolitan magazine featuring a fat woman in a yoga pose with the caption, “This is healthy!”

It tells us that mortification of the flesh, which we call “gender-affirming care,” is “authentic” and “natural.” So possessed are we by this dark spirit that Americans will cry tears of apparent joy when they see a confused 14-year-old girl showing off her mastectomy scars.

It would be dishonest to strike a Christian pose, as I lack faith in God (I continue to try). But it’s getting impossible for me to see this societal sickness as anything but an enactment of what Isaiah 5:20 warns about:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

It’s getting harder not to see the truth inversions, the lying, the “compassion” that’s actually about loathing and control, as anything other than the devil himself ascendant among us.

Slop culture

If the fish rots from the head, then let us identify the head. In 21st-century America, it’s the media.

I almost wrote “Hollywood,” but in 2025, celebrity is delivered to us through a million refractions on our social media apps instead of from the silver screen. But it is the culture and “artistic” institutions that were first captured by woke insanity, and the sludge at the mountain peak has broken free and buried us all in the valley below.

RELATED: All in the family: Hollywood golden boy Pedro Pascal’s loony leftist pedigree

Photo by Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/WireImage

Take the “recording artist” Lizzo. Nominally a pop star, Lizzo is known for proudly displaying her morbidly obese body in see-through “clothing.” There’s no reason for it, either; she’s a genuinely talented flutist and musician.

Yes, she is now slimming down. Perhaps, she has realized that “body positivity,” our current euphemism for “never telling fat people that it’s bad for them or that it makes them unattractive,” will not bring her career or life longevity. But Lizzo is just one of countless celebrities, actors, musicians, and other tastemakers who have been parading their living decomposition before us and demanding that we call it “beautiful.”

D-list delusions

And if it’s not a call to pretend that people who deliberately ugly themselves up are actually beautiful, it’s a demand to worship the most meager talents as if they were once-in-a-century prodigies.

Actor Pedro Pascal is the male embodiment of this phenomenon. He originally rose to fame on the popular show “Game of Thrones.” Now that it’s over, this forgettable actor is everywhere. He’s all over social media declaiming about “Palestine” and haranguing the public for not sufficiently supporting trannies.

Notice how you know Pedro Pascal’s name, even if you haven’t seen him in any movie or show you can remember. Notice how he’s been mugging for the cameras for months, saying whatever leftist tomfoolery is most popular that day, while breathless online fan mags hyperventilate over his “vibe.”

Pascal comports himself as if he were a Henry Cavill, a Cary Grant. As if he were not only as classically handsome as the favorite leading men of Hollywood but also as charming and charismatic.

He is not. Pascal is middling at best in both looks and demeanor. But he carries himself in the world like the gorgeous quarterback hero or his stunning cheerleader wife.

I believe I can try

It’s all good fun to crack wise about lunatic celebrities, but this emotional and moral sickness has not stayed confined to the glitterati. Millions of American young people are forming their interests and personalities based on these broken, narcissistic people, and they’re doing it right out in stores, in schools, and on the streets of the towns we live in.

This isn’t just an aesthetic problem; it’s ruining the physical and mental health of too many American youth.

What they need to hear — and that means that actual adults like us have to start saying it out loud again — is that they cannot be anything or anyone they want to be and expect society to call them champions. That was a cruel lie that started with participation trophies and has ended with genital surgeries on children.

Mean season

Let’s start pulling mediocre and inadequate people down off the perch they had no right to climb onto in the first place. It doesn’t matter if this feels “mean.” It didn’t “feel mean” 20 years ago before adults were convinced that everything humanity knew about life, love, health, and the soul for thousands of years was “just like, their opinion, man.”

The world has always run, and always will run, on rules that favor beauty, skill, intelligence, and genuine accomplishment. It doesn’t matter if the unfortunate and the pushover enablers don’t like it. Feelings don’t change reality, and reality doesn’t give a darn what we think about it.

The Pedro Pascals of the world are running on credit that’s not even their own. They’re borrowing prestige they didn’t earn, and we’re all acting as if they’re entitled to it. We can break this spell by telling the truth: “You’re not handsome, you’re not charismatic, and you have no capital built up to say the things you say. Shut up.”

America’s education system is facing a growing list of challenges — from plummeting test scores and the lingering hangover from COVID-era remote classes to teacher shortages and mounting public frustration over gender ideology.

But take it from a former teacher: Another grave problem is haunting our classrooms. Climate extremists have infiltrated American schools, and they’re indoctrinating our children in radical ideology. It’s time the Department of Justice took action to stop it.

I worked for many years as a teacher and saw firsthand just how deeply rooted this climate ideology is in our classrooms.

Fortunately, they’ve taken the first step. In May, the Justice Department filed lawsuits against four states for allegedly funneling public funds into unconstitutional climate litigation. Attorney General Pam Bondi called the litigation “burdensome and ideologically motivated,” and she’s right. The troubling part is: It’s happening in our public school classrooms too.

If the Trump administration is serious about rooting out taxpayer-funded climate extremism, the next logical step is clear: Launch an investigation into the climate ideologues flooding our education system with fearmongering and pseudoscience.

Indoctrinated K-12 classrooms

Just look at what’s happening in New York City. In the summer of 2024, Columbia University partnered with NYC Public Schools to hold a four-day workshop for teachers called “Integrating Climate Education in N.Y.C. Public Schools.” The aim should be clear from the name: Teachers were guided on how to interweave climate hysteria into their lesson plans.

A reporter later visited a public school in the Bronx where a teacher was reading her students a book about flooding in Africa. “And what’s causing all these rains and storms and floods?” she asked. “Carbon,” an 8-year-old answered.

RELATED: Trump’s climate policy shift could save American farmers from disaster

SimonSkafar via Getty Images

This isn’t isolated to New York. In 2020, New Jersey became the first state in the nation to mandate that climate change be taught at all grade levels. It begins in kindergarten, where even the lighthearted activity of dancing is used to “examine global issues, including climate change as a topic for dance.” And it’s integrated into every other school subject — from computer science to physical education.

Other states are working to incorporate climate change into their curricula. California’s Assembly Bill 285, passed in 2023, requires science teachers to instruct students beginning in the first grade “on the causes and effects of climate change, and on the methods to mitigate and adapt to climate change.”

This isn’t science; it’s political conditioning masquerading as curriculum.

Take it from me: I worked for many years as a teacher and saw firsthand just how deeply rooted this climate ideology is in our classrooms — and that was before state governments began passing their mandates. What I witnessed wasn’t education but indoctrination, and it proved very successful.

Radicalized universities

Later, I left K-12 to teach as a college professor, and what I found was troubling. My freshman students widely believed the world was going to end within their lifetimes and were emotionally paralyzed by it. They didn’t want to debate other students or hear the other side of the argument. Instead, out of anger, they wanted to shame and cancel those who thought differently.

Even the most milquetoast of pushback was met by my students with confusion and contempt. This is what happens when children are indoctrinated from a very young age.

The effects of climate brainwashing are so widespread that psychologists even have a term for it: climate anxiety. The New York Times recently profiled the case of a woman paralyzed by mundane activities, like eating nuts.

They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.

In 2021, the first study on climate anxiety was released. It found that young children all over the world had been affected. Of those surveyed, more than half reported feeling sad, anxious, angry, and guilty over the climate, while a full 75% said the future looked frightening.

Leading academic institutions like Yale and Harvard have since accepted that climate anxiety is inevitable and sought to provide therapy to their students. But this is like an arsonist claiming fires are inevitable and investing in more garden hoses. Climate anxiety isn’t inevitable; it’s a direct result of convincing our children that a made-up apocalypse is inevitable.

Root out climate hysteria

Teaching kids how to care for the environment is not wrong. I was part of a generation taught to recycle, respect nature, and preserve the land for future use. But today’s curriculum isn’t about stewardship — it’s about shame. It’s not about science — it’s about fear.

It’s time for the Justice Department to broaden its investigation into the public education bureaucracies, state curriculum mandates, and activist organizations pushing climate panic in the classroom. Climate extremism shouldn’t be government policy, and it certainly shouldn’t be taught as gospel to our kids.

Let’s stop the fear, stop the brainwashing, and bring common sense back to the classroom.

If you’ve ever wondered why your pastor has never endorsed a political candidate, it’s likely because until last week, it wasn’t allowed. In 1954, Lyndon B. Johnson, who was a senator at the time, sponsored legislation dubbed the Johnson Amendment, which prohibited tax-exempt organizations, including churches, from endorsing or opposing political candidates.

But after 71 years, the Trump administration has reversed that. On July 7, the IRS issued a new interpretation of the Johnson Amendment, declaring churches can endorse political candidates during services without losing tax-exempt status.

It’s a small change that will likely go unnoticed by many, but “the ramifications of this are going to be so far-reaching,” says Sara Gonzales, BlazeTV host of “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

We live in an age when theology is on the ballot — especially when it comes to topics like abortion and gender ideology, which are “verifiably, demonstrably wrong” according to Christian doctrine, says Sara. “Churches not preaching about politics or anything related to it has been very destructive in this country.”

“This is part of the moral decline of the United States of America,” adds BlazeTV contributor Matthew Marsden.

Perhaps, however, we will see a return to traditional values and morals if pastors can boldly delve into politics and lead their congregations through the murky waters of how policy engages with scripture without fear of losing their tax-exempt status.

“I don’t think people understand how far-reaching it can be if the pastors in America take their balls back,” says Sara frankly.

“They absolutely need to,” says Rippaverse Comics founder Eric July. “Churches — all denominations — have been so compromised, man, and they skirt around a lot of issues.”

Interestingly, the pastors who have been cannonballing into politics without regard to potential repercussions are typically “witches that are masquerading as pastors,” who are nearly always “left-leaning,” July adds, reiterating Marsden’s point that “the moral decay” of the entire world has risen in tandem with the church “[becoming] less involved” in the things that impact society.

To hear more of the conversation, watch the clip above.

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred take to news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

President Trump announced Tuesday that he would raise tariffs on copper to 50%. Within hours, copper futures surged 17% — the largest intraday jump since 1988.

Some investors are about to get rich. Others will take a bath. The winners will cheer Trump for protecting American industry. The losers will cry economic illiteracy.

So what does a 50% copper tariff do? Nothing good.

So which is it? Are tariffs good or bad?

Answer: both. Tariffs work — when they serve a purpose. When they don’t, they’re just another dumb tax.

Hamilton warned us

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton laid out the American case for tariffs in his “Report on Manufactures.” The goal wasn’t ideology. It was survival.

America, newly independent, couldn’t defend itself if it couldn’t manufacture firearms or steel. The French had supplied over 80,000 muskets during the Revolutionary War. Without them, we would have lost. Hamilton understood: Manufacturing wasn’t just useful — it was a matter of national security.

It was also a path to national prosperity.

Hamilton had seen how Great Britain used mercantilism to enrich itself at the colonies’ expense. Raw materials went out. Finished goods came in. British factories thrived. By 1770, nearly one in five Britons worked in manufacturing — and colonial demand fueled much of it.

Between 1720 and 1770, Britain’s trade surplus with the colonies exploded, rising from £67,000 to £739,000. American dependency on British goods helped trigger the Revolution.

Hamilton wanted to flip the script.

And for a while, we did.

For over a century, the United States followed Hamilton’s blueprint: protective tariffs, industrial development, and domestic manufacturing dominance. America prospered under what became known as the “American System” — essentially a more self-respecting version of British mercantilism.

Throughout the 19th century, the United States had the highest average tariff rates in the world. That protection helped launch the industrial might that made us the most powerful economy on earth.

Then we blew it.

After World War II, we tore up the playbook. By 1973, much of the American System had been dismantled. Since 2001 alone, we’ve lost more than 60,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs.

So: Why tariffs now?

Better to be a country than a colony

Trump’s basic impulse is right. We should want economic self-sufficiency. We should want to prioritize value-added production over raw material extraction.

In short: It’s better to be a country than a colony.

Tariffs, when targeted, help get us there. But they need to be smart. They have to promote industry — not punish it.

So what does a 50% copper tariff do? Nothing good.

Losing the plot

In 2024, the U.S. produced about 1.1 million metric tons of copper. We consumed closer to 1.8 or even 2 million. That means over 40% of our copper use depends on imports.

A 50% tariff will raise copper prices across the board. That’s bad news for American manufacturers — especially electronics and high-tech industries.

Now, when tariffs hit manufactured goods, domestic producers can usually ramp up production. Most manufacturers operate at about 60% capacity. That means we have room to grow. Plus, manufacturing benefits from economies of scale: The more you make, the cheaper each unit gets.

RELATED: Why tariffs beat treaties in a world that cheats

Copper mining isn’t like that.

Mines take years — sometimes decades — to start production. They don’t scale easily. They need huge capital investment. And thanks to layers of environmental regulation, the domestic copper supply is basically inelastic.

So prices go up. Supply doesn’t. That’s a recipe for pain.

The China bonus

Ironically, Trump’s copper tariff might end up helping China.

As U.S. demand for imported copper drops, global copper prices may fall — once the Wall Street day-traders have had their fun. And that means cheaper raw materials for Chinese factories.

Bad for us. Great for them.

That matters because raw materials are the single largest cost input in manufacturing. (See: every iPhone ever made.)

Want to boost American competitiveness? Don’t spike copper prices. Expand domestic supply.

Smarter than tariffs

Copper is a genuine national security issue. But tariffs in this case aren’t the best tool.

Better to ease restrictions on mining and recycling. We could meet most of our copper demand just by processing domestic scrap instead of sending it overseas.

About 40% of U.S. copper comes from recycling. Yet we ship our junk electronics abroad, only to buy back the copper at a markup. That’s madness.

Let Americans mine. Let Americans recycle. Prices would drop. Supply would rise.

Tariffs wouldn’t be necessary.

A tariff without a cause

Given all of this, Trump’s copper tariff looks more like a tax-grab than a strategic move. It’s right up there with tariffs on bananas and coffee: symbolic but economically useless.

Trump has the right instincts. But instincts need discipline. If the goal is to rebuild industry and secure supply chains, he should target tariffs where they’ll create jobs and grow GDP — not score short-term political points.

Hamilton showed us the way. It’s time to stop losing the plot.

On July 1, Zohran Mamdani officially secured the Democratic mayoral nomination in New York City. The 33-year-old self-described socialist and longtime member of the Democratic Socialists of America, backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), openly supports the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement and refuses to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” His policy proposals include rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, a $30 minimum wage, robust corporate tax increases, and a Department of Community Safety to reduce reliance on police.

His nomination has many in the country shaking their heads, but they should be doing much more than that, according to Glenn Beck.

“This is not just a local upset. This is a flashing red warning sign for where this country is headed if a lot more Americans do not wake up,” he warns.

Mamdani represents “the future that the left wants: a nation where free stuff flows like water, taxes choke the life out of ambition, and the very idea of America is rewritten to fit the Marxist playbook.”

Mamdani has been compared to other progressives, especially Beto O’Rourke, who was also a young rising star aiming to fundamentally change the nation. But Mamdani, Glenn says, is especially terrifying because his ideology is “the convergence of communism and Islamicism.”

While Mamdani would almost certainly dispute being called a communist, the truth, Glenn says, is that socialism is just “diet communism” — the “transition step in between capitalism and communism,” according to Karl Marx himself. Plus, “there is growing evidence that Mamdani is now an actual communist,” he says.

In 2019, Mamdani admitted that he was shaped by the writings of Marxist revolutionary Frantz Fanon. A year later, he posted the following to X, celebrating India’s election of a communist mayor and implying that he would bring the same communist policies to New York City.

In a 2021 campaign video, Mamdani expressed his intentions to “buy up housing on the private market and convert it to community ownership” — a communist fantasy that “usually ends with a bullet in people’s heads,” Glenn says.

And then there’s his Islamism to contend with.

“In college, [Mamdani] co-founded the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. They’re the super, super classy group that was the main organizer of the anti-Israel protests and encampments on college campuses across the U.S. right after October 7 in the attack by Hamas,” Glenn says.

The day following the October 7 attacks, Mamdani posted the following tweet, in which he condemned neither Hamas nor terrorism:

“He has called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, sponsored a bill to block New York charities from funding groups tied to what he claims are Israeli war crimes, and he has vowed to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever sets foot in New York City while he is mayor. And he doesn’t believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state,” Glenn adds.

“This isn’t politics,” he warns. “This is a dangerous, deadly ideology that threatens New York City’s Jews, which make up the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.”

Mamdani’s rise “is not a fluke,” he warns. “It is a symptom of a Democratic party sprinting to the left.”

“His brand of friendly neighborhood communism — openly anti-capitalist, anti-Israel, and obsessed with equity — is the future the Democrats now have to bet on,” says Glenn. “Mamdani’s dystopian vision for the future of New York is the future that the left wants for all of us.”

He is laying the bricks for Ocasio-Cortez’s path to a presidential run.

“They are clearly grooming AOC for a 2028 presidential run,” Glenn says, “and Mamdani is part of that long game. He has appeared alongside AOC at public events in New York, reaching back to 2023, preaching the same socialist gospel: Free everything, tax the rich, dismantle capitalism.”

“Democrats are not flirting with socialism anymore. They are embracing it as their new identity,” he adds.

To hear more of Glenn’s predictions and analysis, watch the episode above.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

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The Trump administration is preparing to launch a sweeping series of executive orders aimed at securing America’s position as the world’s leader in artificial intelligence. If carried out properly, these efforts could help spark a new era of economic prosperity and technological dominance.

The forthcoming executive actions would radically streamline federal approvals for AI-related infrastructure, vastly expand energy resources devoted to artificial intelligence development, and prioritize the construction of new transmission and data projects critical to powering America’s AI future.

Artificial intelligence could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.

It is a remarkable development — and one desperately needed.

Trump’s AI infrastructure revolution

The expected executive orders outline sweeping changes. One key measure would create a national Clean Water Act permit tailored to speed up environmental approvals for AI-related infrastructure — especially energy and data facilities.

Another directive would push the federal government to prioritize “shovel-ready” transmission projects, helping the electric grid expand quickly enough to meet the demands of AI growth.

The orders would also unlock federally managed land for rapid development of the infrastructure needed to power and support artificial intelligence operations.

Finally, the administration plans to increase dramatically the energy resources dedicated to AI development, treating the technology as a national priority.

These changes aim to eliminate major regulatory and logistical obstacles slowing AI advancement. By streamlining permitting, securing energy access, and opening federal land, the orders would lay the groundwork for building and deploying large-scale AI systems nationwide.

A critical change

Each of these reforms matters. The numbers make that clear.

An article published earlier this year in MIT Technology Review summarized estimates from multiple researchers analyzing AI’s future impact. One study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory projected that by 2028, powering AI in the U.S. could require between 165 and 326 terawatt-hours of electricity annually.

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Douglas Rissing via iStock/Getty Images

That would exceed the total power consumption of all U.S. data centers today. It’s enough to supply more than 20% of American households.

Put another way, the article noted that AI’s energy demand could create emissions equivalent to driving 300 billion miles — roughly 1,600 round trips between Earth and the sun.

This isn’t a modest technological shift. It’s an industrial revolution, and it’s already under way.

The global AI race

China’s leaders understand the potential benefits and costs of artificial intelligence, too, which is why they have approved dramatic increases in energy development in recent years.

In May, the Chinese government approved a plan to build 10 new nuclear reactors at a cost of $27.7 billion. If implemented, it would make China the planet’s largest generator of nuclear power by 2030.

China also invested more than $900 billion in renewable energy sources in 2024, nearly matching global investment in fossil fuels.

China is taking its energy needs seriously, and the Trump administration appears committed to ensuring that the United States doesn’t fall behind.

AI’s $13 trillion opportunity

Artificial intelligence is not just a futuristic novelty. It is the key to unlocking one of the greatest economic booms in modern history.

The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that AI could generate as much as $13 trillion in additional global economic productivity by 2030. That is the equivalent of adding three new economies the size of India’s. Nations that lead in AI development will enjoy a productivity surge, revolutionizing manufacturing, logistics, transportation, health care, finance, and nearly every other sector.

For the United States, this means the potential to revitalize American industry, re-shore critical supply chains, and create millions of high-wage jobs. AI could supercharge small business growth, empower entrepreneurs, and streamline government services. It could give America the edge in military technology, scientific research, and global competitiveness.

In short, it could be the single most important economic engine of the 21st century.

But to get there, America needs to act quickly. Building the infrastructure necessary to power AI’s massive growth, both physically and digitally, will require bold and aggressive leadership. That is exactly what Trump’s new executive orders represent.

Protecting liberty

Artificial intelligence will transform nearly every part of American life — our economy, schools, military, and medical system.

The upside is immense. With the right leadership, AI could spark a new American golden age, driving productivity and innovation beyond anything in living memory. That’s the future President Trump aims to deliver. If his initiative succeeds, it could define America’s 21st-century revival.

But the risks are real.

So far, Congress and most state legislatures have done practically nothing to safeguard Americans’ basic freedoms in the age of AI. No national guardrails exist to stop this technology from being used to suppress free speech, erode religious liberty, or undermine economic independence.

Without decisive action, the very tools that promise prosperity could become the greatest threat to liberty in American history.

That’s why the Trump administration and Congress should tie any pro-AI legislation to strong protections for individual rights. If America plans to lead the world into the AI future, it must lead with freedom front and center.

A rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” at a Baltimore Orioles home game is being debated as possibly one of the worst anthem performances of all time.

Before the Orioles hosted the New York Mets at Camden Yards on Thursday, fans were introduced to “Baltimore electronic musician Dan Deacon.”

The Baltimore-based recording artist is not an unknown musician. He has over 160,000 monthly listeners on the streaming service Spotify and has had music featured in movies like “Venom.”

Nevertheless, Deacon’s pregame performance has audiences split over whether what they experienced was new-age art or ear-piercing noise.

‘I think the Orioles have officially hit rock bottom.’

The performance initially caught fire on an Orioles fan’s X page, which has now racked up over 1.5 million views.

“I think the Orioles have officially hit rock bottom,” the fan wrote in a caption, with the video of Deacon’s version of the song attached.

With oversize glasses and a Hawaiian shirt draped over a Baltimore Orioles T-shirt, Deacon raised his hand to the sky and delivered one of the most divisive — and electronic — anthem performances of all time.

The Orioles mascot was shown standing at attention behind Deacon before the camera panned to the mixed reactions in the crowd. Saluting police officers were juxtaposed with likely former military members saluting from their seats. Other fans, adults and children alike, are seen laughing. Some attendees appeared confused but still sang along with the anthem.

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Buck Britton, the Orioles’ interim third base coach, looked the most puzzled during the performance, seemingly looking around for answers as to what he was experiencing.

The internet was split; some hated Deacon’s digitized anthem, while others loved its uniqueness.

“WTF is this?” one sports page on X wrote. “National anthem singer Dan Deacon labeled a ‘disgrace to America’ after bizarre rendition at Orioles game.”

Another viewer on X wrote, “Worst national anthem in recent memory.”

Oppositely, one X user said, “I wanted to hate it, but I didn’t.”

One of Deacon’s fans chimed in on X and added, “It doesn’t need to be Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey wannabes every night” singing the anthem.

“At least it’s not in Spanish,” another viewer wrote on X, tagging the Los Angeles Dodgers team in the post. This was likely in reference to singer Nezza singing the anthem in Spanish at Dodger Stadium in June, despite being told by Dodgers staff not to.

The artist later cried in a video posted to TikTok, where she expressed that she did not understand why it was so controversial, despite admitting the performance was in response to raids on illegal immigrants in California.

Almost exactly a year ago, singer Ingrid Andress performed at the MLB’s Home Run Derby in what was deemed a horrible performance, with the singer later apologizing and admitting she was drunk.

She told fans the next day she was immediately headed to rehab.

“It only took, you know, global humiliation for me to be like, ‘This is a problem,'” Andress explained.

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Ingrid Andress sings the national anthem prior to the 2024 T-Mobile Home Run Derby at Globe Life Field on Monday, July 15, 2024 in Arlington, Texas. Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images

Perhaps Deacon was the Orioles’ good luck charm, though; the struggling team won both games of their doubleheader that day against the Mets, 3-1 and then 7-3.

For fans in search of national anthem performances similar to Deacon’s, look no further than Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. The guitarist delivered an equally, if not more, off-brand electronic performance of the anthem at a Los Angeles Lakers home game in 2016.

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During the late hours of July 6, the Department of Justice and the FBI issued a quiet report: Jeffrey Epstein’s “black book” of elitist clients who engaged in his sex trafficking ring of underage girls doesn’t exist and neither does the blackmailing operation he was suspected of running.

No press conference, no social media announcement, no fanfare – just nothing to see here, move along.

Except MAGA isn’t moving along. This goes against everything we were told – for years.

Glenn Beck recalls the interview he had with Kash Patel back in 2023, during which Patel insisted he knew exactly who possessed Epstein’s infamous “black book” – not the broader case files Attorney General Pam Bondi later clarified were actually sitting on her desk for review. Patel pointedly said “black book” and vowed he knew who was hiding it.

“Who has Jeffrey Epstein’s black book?” Glenn asked frankly.

“The FBI,” Patel responded. “That’s under direct control of the director of the FBI [Christopher Wray].”

Patel went on to explain why incriminating information, like Epstein’s black book and the Nashville shooter’s manifesto, are nearly always under tight wraps: “Government gangster operations” swoop in to collect, classify, and censor.

“All these local law enforcement communities get funding from the DOJ and FBI for local programs, and if you don’t cooperate, you’re not getting your million dollars. … That’s why you don’t have the black book,” he said, adding that President Trump “should run on” a campaign promise to release it.

“On day one, roll out the black book,” he urged.

“You need a central node to be continuously declassifying. … I’m telling you as a former number two in the [intelligence community], they over-classify 50% of the stuff there to protect the deep state,” he added.

To hear more, watch the clip above. For the full interview, click here.

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