After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Don Lemon’s Disgraceful Antics, The Truth About Immigration in America, PLUS Dangers of Data Centers

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a big picture look at America’s immigration problem, how the larger media is missing key statistics, and the civil-liberty concerns with ICE. Then Emily is joined by Matthew Spalding, author of “The Making of the American Mind” and Dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus. The two discuss how today’s immigration and citizenship debates reflect a deeper crisis over what it means to be an American, and why some on the left view America as illegitimate. They also dive into Don Lemon and Jennifer Welch framing the church disruption in Minnesota as pushback against ‘white Christian entitlement.’ Next Shane Cashman, investigative journalist and host of “Inverted World Live” at Timcast, stops by the show for a deep dive on AI Data Centers. The two discuss how these centers have quickly become a political flashpoint with big tech and government selling them as job creators, but locals aren’t buying it. They also warn about the deeper issue of billionaires embracing AI-powered surveillance. Emily wraps up the show with a breakdown of Don Lemon’s livestream coverage of protesters disrupting a Minnesota church service, the backlash from Nicki Minaj, why Lemon could face legal problems, the broader media narrative portraying Christians as hypocrites, and more… VanMan: Discover VanMan’s Pearl Eye Cream—real, nutrient-rich ingredients for skin and eye health; visit https://vanman.shop/afterparty and use code AFTERPARTY for 15% off your first order. Lovebirds Food: Take back your breakfast with Lovebird Cereal. Visit https://lovebirdfoods.com/AFTERPARTY and use code AFTERPARTY for 25% off your first order. PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Don Lemon Fan Club show. This is the official broadcast of the Don Lemon Fan Club. I am your host and the president of the Don Lemon Fan Club. Emily Jashinsky, thank you so much for joining us on a cold January evening. We are live here on After Party. Sort of kidding about the Don Lemon fan club. But I have to say what's going on in Minnesota is not funny, but Don Lemon absolutely is. So we will be enjoying every second of Don Lemon's Odyssey.

through the Twin Cities on tonight's edition of After Party, where our guests will be Dr. Matthew Spalding and Shane Cashman. We are going to bring them in momentarily. As a reminder, please do subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on your podcast feed, wherever you are listening to the show or watching the show. It helps so much if you subscribe. Of course, it also helps to leave a review over on Apple

and to leave likes and comments on the YouTube videos as well. Now, on with the show. I wanted to start tonight's show by zooming out a little bit, broadening our aperture, and going deep into what the macro situation on immigration actually is in this country. Because like many of you, some of you are on one side, others are on the other side. It's one of the cool things about this show. But, you know, as a civil libertarian to the extent that definition actually makes sense, I do have conflicting feelings about what's happening with ICE. but I did want to start by just going through some big picture, big picture stuff, peeling back, going to the big picture question here.

This is an article that I reference often, and it was written by David Leonhardt of the New York Times. I'm going to pull it up right here. David Leonhardt of the New York Times right on the eve, actually, of the, it was right on the eve of Trump's inauguration. So this was December of 2024, his second inauguration. What you're seeing in this headline is recent immigration surge has been largest in U.S. history. I'm going to read a little bit from the lead.

The immigration surge of the past few years, wrote David in 2024, has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times analysis of government data. I'll scroll down here to the chart. What you're seeing, and for the listening audience, what's in this chart is immigration by percentage of the total population all the way back in the 1850s and then into the 2010s and 2020s. And yes, the comparable decade is the 1850s where you had 0.6% of the total population in net as a share of the foreign-born population. So this isn't net migration. This is the share of the foreign-born population. That's 1850s. The only time it becomes comparable at that 0.6% level

is 2020 to 2023. So not even a decade for what it's worth, but a three-year period, where as David estimates, and I think this is at the lower end of the estimates, about eight million, eight million, I'll scroll up and use his exact language here. He says, this is a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record. That is including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic when millions of Europeans. came to the United States and he says, yes, so it was an average of 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023. That's annual net migration. So that's why the 8 million is on the lower end of the estimates because we're looking at 2021, 2021, 2022, 2023, average 2.4 million annual in net migration.

So that is historic. And there are no country, I mean, in history, you'd be hard pressed to find a country that is as heterogeneous, as, ours where you have that level of immigration in such a short window of time, a lot of which, you know, bureaucratically was a nightmare. And the left and the right both admit that. And you're squeezing that into a three-year period, roughly. That is a lot of new people as the population of multiple states put together in a very short period of time. And I know I sound like a broken record on this, but we're going to get into some more specifics of the debate about why this is such a huge part of the picture that you just rarely, rarely hear the media acknowledge, right?

Like, this is all about ICE. Ice is as large as it's ever been. It's now because of the one big beautiful bill, extremely well-funded, massive force. And we have seen some things that, I think, from a civil liberties perspective, have definitely raised my ire and made me uncomfortable, but when I zoom out to the big picture, it has to be considered in that balance. It doesn't make it right. But it does mean that we have to have the full perspective of this historically significant surge. I mean, what we are able to do in the United States of America, just in terms of like functioning with so many different people from so many different parts of the world is historically unique. Again, you would be hard pressed to find

any other civilization that does what we do in recognizing the worth and human dignity of every single individual, I guess this is Martin Luther King Day, regardless of the color of their skin, I wasn't going to that, but that's actually true. Historically, you would be hard-pressed to find another civilization that put people in such close quarters from so many different backgrounds and still upheld a fundamental level of basic humanity. And that is historically rare. It is a remarkable thing that we do in the United States of America, and it was obviously tested over the Biden administration, and in the years leading up to the Biden administration, when you had immigration increasing, increasing, foreign-born share of the population increasing. That would test any civilization.

Again, we are not perfect, but here we are. And I think that's an important part of the big picture to zoom out to. And it means, I'm going to put this from the Cato Institute last November up on the screen, so just a couple of months ago, headline here from one of their foremost voices on immigration, David Beer. He writes, 5% of people detained by ICE have violent convictions. 73% no convictions. In media, this is what is often called burying the lead, because let me just tell you from my perspective, what I often think the media should be leading with. It's not that this fact isn't on its own relevant to the conversation. It absolutely is. The Trump administration is saying that it's prioritizing going after violent criminals who are non-substableness.

I think just about everybody in the country agrees with that. But what the lead is here, let's scroll down. I'm going to show you a chart. And for the listening audience, I'll read the numbers out. This is the chart titled, ICE is primarily detaining people without serious criminal convictions. It's a snapshot from October 1 to November 15. So again, just a couple of months ago. This is detentions of people with criminal convictions. Criminal convictions. Criminal convictions. Let me zoom in. Okay. So violent criminal convictions within this one-month period, 3200.

3,200. Property crimes, 1,800. Traffic is the highest. That's at about 4,000. Immigration crime, 3,100. Vice, that's 2,000, so drugs and the like. But even just those violent criminals, let alone property criminals, let alone people who are non-citizens and are committing traffic offenses,

which I'm not willing to say isn't serious either. But let's just say with immigrant, or I'm sorry, let's say with vice and violent crime and property crime in one month. This is thousands and thousands and thousands of people. So do I think that bigger statistic that the Kato Institute led with is the 5% of people detained by ICE have violent convictions, 73% no convictions. Do I think that's a relevant fact? Sure. Do I think the more important fact is that 5% comes down to thousands of non-citizens, thousands of non-citizens? We're in a position where ICE detained them during that time period. Now, one more thing that my friend and Stepan actually pointed out to me over the weekend. This is December report from a left, most progressive organization. It's called Prison Policy. It's the

Prison Policy Initiative. The website isprisonpolicy.org. And right here, you can see, this is, again, a study from the left explaining how some of these deportations are happening. And I think you're going where I'm going as soon as I start talking. Local jails and police departments, they write, are key to the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ice arrests of people who are already in police custody. In the first year of Trump's second term, the administration has intensified the criminalization of asylum seekers and immigrants, pushed immigrant detention to all-time highs and indiscriminately rated city after city. Just a note on the criminalization of asylum seekers. Where the Trump administration is actually doing is narrowing, narrowing the

acceptability or the narrowing the, well, acceptability actually is probably the right word of asylum claims. So if people are coming and if you go to, if you went to the border during the Biden years, what you saw were lots of people being told to claim asylum and they were openly saying they were claiming asylum. And then also openly describing themselves basically as economic migrants. They wanted better lives for their families. They didn't like the country they were coming from. Well, maybe they love the country they're coming from, but they didn't like their circumstances. and they wanted to make better lives, some money back home. They would tell you this, not realizing that it could be considered asylum fraud,

but certainly what they were petitioning the United States for was not a legitimate asylum claim. So the Trump administration is making it easier to get to the overloaded asylum docket. And I think that's another important part of all of this. The Biden administration, I had a pit in my stomach when you would talk to some of these people who were trying to come into the United States, knowing that as soon as there was a Republican president again, a lot of their hopes and dreams were going to fade away in the lives that they tried to build in sanctuary cities and the like were going to crumble because this was not sustainable. This was not a legitimate, lawful asylum case, and it was not sustainable. It was not tenable.

But here goes the prison policy initiative. They say, despite all of this, the Trump administration remains well behind their mass deportation goals. And here's the key part, in large part, due to state and local efforts to protect immigrant communities and limit co-operations. operation with ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agencies. Now go back to the first sentence of that paragraph. Why might that be? They put it right there. They don't want to say it all in the same sentence, but they basically do. Local jails and police departments are key to the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda because they facilitate ICE arrests of people who are already in police custody. Okay, so that means there are people who are in police custody.

That's what the complaint is here. There are people in police custody who are being turned over to ICE. That is the crux of what sanctuary city and state laws, the likes of which are being enforced in Minnesota, in Minneapolis in particular, by Tim Walsh, and Jacob Fry. That is the crux of it. That is what they're about at the end of the day. And that is why, fundamentally, there are people who are impeding ICE's function. At the end of the day, you have a ideological opposition to actually having people who are being arrested, in some cases convicted of crimes. If you go to the DHS website, you can see people just, you can narrow it down to just people in Minnesota of just who have been convicted of crimes that DHS has apprehended in Minnesota

during the Trump administration. You could go look. Dozens of people convicted criminals who are in the state of Minnesota. and fundamentally what these protests are about, they do not want deportations, period. It's either what they want is a pathway to citizenship for virtually everyone. And if Democrats were serious, as some of them had said, have said in recent days, you know, let's all get that we all agree on getting the violent criminals out of there. If they were serious, they would be changing some of these laws.

DHS said, quote, the crisis in Minnesota, this was in a video. So the crisis in Minnesota is a direct result of Governor Walls and leaders in Minneapolis intentionally deciding to take these known criminals who have violated the law and release them back into the streets. Okay. So I sent an email to the city of Minneapolis today asking if that was true and saying, please just explain it to me. Like, I'm more than willing to be walked through what's going on here.

This was hours ago. And I never heard back from them today. I hope I do still hear back from them. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to hear, but I'd love to hear their side of the story because every time I get it from Democrats and every time they talk publicly about this, what they're not willing to do is cooperate.

And that leads to exactly the situation that we find ourselves in now. So this is a, I just wanted to step back and give the broader context for what's really happening when, you know, I don't think ICE has been perfect. and I'm happy to say that. I'm happy to call balls and strikes and criticize ICE when they have done things wrong.

Zoomed out. The other part of this is that there are families in the country who get very little attention, people in the country, who have been victims of crimes committed by non-citizens, who should never have been here, should never have been here, who should never have been let back out onto the streets,

and they get none of the narrative from the media. Conservative outlets do it. The president talks about Lake and Riley and Jocelyn Nungaree and some Democrats voted for the Lake and Riley Act. But when they talk about immigration, it is all about

the mistakes that ICE has made. There have been mistakes that ICE has made. It is all about the plight of non-citizens of the country, undocumented migrants in the country. And you never, I mean, it's so rare.

that you hear the framing actually flipped. And the framing when you flip it is that you have citizens in the country who have been victimized by non-citizens, and there are thousands of them around the country so much so that in one month, one month, literally 3,000 violent criminals were picked up by Donald Trump's ICE,

according to DHS, that is. And we all know that's true. So I wanted to, like I said, just zoom out a little bit, give some broader context, Two things can be true. Ice can be doing some stuff that I don't find particularly defensible from perspective of civil liberties. And the broader picture can be, if you want immigration enforcement in this country, if you want a fair system, they have an almost impossible job ahead of them, a daunting task, an overwhelming task. And it doesn't mean that you have to support the Trump

administration and their immigration enforcement every step of the way. But it does mean that if you want any serious system in this country, a just and lawful system for the citizens of this country. It is going to be enormously difficult, and it's going to require tough choices. It is going to, it is going to be hard. It's going to be emotionally difficult. It's going to be logistically difficult, and we're going to see a lot of unfortunate circumstances. There will be a lot of mistakes made because ICE is just making more efforts than it has in the last 10 years to do this stuff. So that's again, zoomed out perspective, and I wanted to go through that a little bit because it's been what's on my mind over the last couple of weeks as this story has been at the forefront.

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Dr. Matthew Spalding. He's the author of the new book, The Making of the American Mind, the story of our Declaration of Independence. He's the vice president for Washington Operations and the dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College's Washington, D.C. campus and one of the foremost authorities on this period of American history. So Dr. Spalding, thank you so much for joining me. Great being with you. Thanks for having me. And what a time for this book, Dr. Spalding. I was just talking a little bit about citizenship, which is obviously an important question as people are out in the streets, basically debating citizenship. And the left has gone fully peddled to the metal, pathway to citizenship, basically.

Like, what does citizenship mean anymore? It's faded out of the public debate. And I wanted to ask you actually about that in the context of this book about the Declaration of Independence. Because at one point in the Declaration, the authors refer to their fellow citizens. And that sounds almost, what's the right word for it? Like casual, cliche. Yeah. Or even just like, oh, we call ourselves citizens.

But I wanted to ask you what they meant by that. No, no, sure. Well, a general comment first based on what you were just talking about. I mean, you know, so on the one hand, people think that, oh, we're going to now talk about American history as if it's somehow separated from all of that stuff. But I would go so far as to suggest that all of the debates going on today, immigration being chief among them, but all of these questions having to do with various aspects of the rule of law,

all go back to our beginnings. America is defined by its beginning. And the declaration is our epic poetry, if you will, about that moment. And all, you know, history, everything we're debating, the nature of citizenship, what it means to be a people, consent, who gets to consent, who's a citizen, who has a right to vote to vote, excuse me, all of that goes back to precisely those questions. So these are centrally important and keys to all that. And everything about this thing we call the founding, which is the beginning of this of America,

which still guides us. And it's still, I mean, at the center of our politics, every important aligning election is about what it means to be an American. I mean, that's what the Trump election was about, but President Obama campaigned on his version of that. Go back to Reagan, go back to Lincoln, Jefferson, the very beginning. America is largely centered around defining what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be an American.

And what's different about America and why this is an important question is it's just not another ethnic question. It's not the equivalent of, a European country where it depends on what an ething German is or what it means, what is to be a Frenchman or a Russian or whatever it might be. America works differently. We have this concept of citizenship as opposed, say, to subjects or subject to the king or a member of the aristocracy or a particular class. Here, there's this notion that, going back to the declaration, we're all created equal. there's some basis upon our equality, but because of that equality, we are self-governing.

Because we're self-governing, and we're self-govering around a set of principles, we are a people, and that's how the declaration defines it. It's not just physically anybody that's here. It's not people of a certain historical tradition or a particular race, what it might be. It has something to do with a particular place, a particular people, yes, but it's a particular place in a people dedicated with a set of ideas that have to do with self-government, liberty, and the rule of law and consent, and all of the things that are in the declaration in the Constitution. And that's clearly what they meant when they talked about the concept of citizen. It's extremely important. It's centrally important because if you've lost that and we have no sense of what it means to be a people, then what the heck are we?

we hear for? What's the point of all this? And I think that's actually what we're debating, right? The modern kind of postmodernism and deconstruction and radical progressivism and whatever terms we want to use to call this is based on the notion that there is no, there should be no distinctions like citizenship and a people. It's just a matter of our own will and whatever we want And whatever that will, that over, that subjective will once is what goes. Your colleague was just going to say, your colleague at Hillsell, Victor Davis Hansen, talks about how we blur the line now between residents and citizens. And that would be, correct me if I'm wrong, I think that would be sort of odd to the founders as they were writing the Declaration of Independence. That there's an...

Absolutely, look, the idea of nations, which is a gathering, of individuals who decided to live together, govern themselves, and have a particular way of life. And there are various forms of this all around the world is centrally important. This goes back to Aristotle in the very beginning, the Greeks and the Romans. It's the essence of the Western tradition, including the Christian tradition. What's different about America and the culmination of the Western argument is that we have this other idea that it's, well, it's not because you just happen to be here. It's not because you can claim that this is somehow, you know, tied your ethnicity.

It's something that we as a people define, and we define that through the rule of law, in particular the constitutional system, the federal constitution and a bunch of state constitutions. And the heart of that, though, the thing that defines our citizenship or sense as a people is these common principles that the nation is dedicated to, which we find most famously enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, which is why we constantly go back and debate precisely that thing. And what I worry about today is that the left gave up on these claims some time ago. They don't believe that it's all subjective.

There are no such things to say self-evident truths or the idea that we are created equal or our rights that we possess by nature. Their kind of world relativism and whatnot is kind of given up on that. And I think we need to remind the American people of the importance of precisely those principles, which is the basis of our citizenship and everything else for that matter. And I think this anniversary is an opportunity to do that, which is why, among other things, work on what I work and teach at Hillsdale and why I wrote this book. I think it really is, these ideas are really central to all of these debates in a way that I think sometimes we don't quite realize.

Yeah. No, I think that's so right. Well, let's actually, since we set the stage, he's a good time to bring in Ilhan Omar. Because Ilhan Omar has raised eyebrows once again in recent days for some comments actually about this very issue, obviously, from the area. So let's roll this cup of Ilhan Omar talking about what she's seen in Minneapolis. list in the last couple of weeks. The one place where we thought we would never experience this is the U.S. goddamn states. Ooh, the U.S. G.D. states, Dr. Spalding.

What make you of this? The first thing I thought was odd about it, it's just illiterate. I mean, it's not even actually a good use of the acronym USA. I mean, it doesn't quite, I mean, come on, you can at least get it right. I mean, but yeah, but yeah, the point is that all these are various versions of the same thing. And we, in every few weeks, every few days, we find an example of this. But there is, it's, this is no longer the old left. You know, the old left, you know, look, think of Martin Luther King or kind of that, that, the liberalism of FDR for that matter.

It was still pro-American. It was liberal and progressive, and we might disagree on policies here and there, but it still believed this was a pretty good country and worth fighting for. And it had principles that we aspired to and should stand up for, as Martin Luther King famously said. But the modern left, the deconstructionist left, the postmoderns, which is what Omar and others really represent, is a rejection of all that. It's a radical turn to a view that America is actually the problem. And it's something to be not only should we kind of try to make it more liberal,

but actually we want to radically turn away from it. It's not worth defending or celebrating in any way. It's an inferior country, whether that's some systemic racism to go to, say, the 1619 project, or it's because they think that enforcing immigration laws is inherently racist and bigoted and mean-spirited and all these things. But the country itself is the problem. And these are just kind of various forms of that and various rantings and hateful things and cursings and whatnot. But the reflects, they really do. It's not to disagree.

They don't like this country. and I don't know about you, but I was in middle school in 1976 for the Bicentennial, and I remember all those things and the tall ships and whatnot. You know, one thing I remember, I grew up in California, and the local talent where I grew up, the local talent was a guy named Merle Haggard. Oh, yeah. It was a great troubadour. Oh, you're from Bakersfield?

Bakersfield, yeah. And his big hit was, if you're running down, my country, you're walking on the fight inside of me. And, you know, if you don't love it, leave it. There's a, you know, there really is a lack of, not only is there a lack of patriot but there's a, there's a real hatred for the country I fear. I don't know, I don't think that's where all the left is. I think there's still old liberals there that think this is a decent country and they don't

like this stuff. But the radical left, I really fear, has really gone off in a very, very different direction and is a full, you know, kind of a full frontal rejection of these ideas. Let's also bring in Don Lemon and Jennifer Welch, who were talking earlier today on a podcast about what's going on in Minneapolis. Don Lemon has been reporting from the scene. We'll have more on that later in the show. But Welch brought him on her podcast to talk a little bit about it,

brought him onto a podcast they were together to talk a little bit about it. And because Dr. Spalding, you mentioned Christianity, Welch is going to bring Christianity into this conversation as well. So let's roll the clip. And there's a certain degree of entitlement. I think people who are, you know, in religious groups like that, it's not the type of Christianity that I practice, but I think that they're entitled and that that entitlement comes from a supremacy, a white supremacy. And they think that this country was built for them, that it is a Christian. country when actually we left England because we wanted religious freedom. It's religious freedom, but only if you're a Christian and only if you're a white male, pretty much. And so, yeah,

absolutely 100%, but it's an intimidation tactic. And, you know, I said, I don't understand how I've become the face of it when I was a journalist. I do understand that I'm the biggest name there. And I'm also, as I was on with my producers this morning, you know, you and Kylie talk all the time. My producers were saying, I said, how did I become the face of this? And my producer said, Don, you're a gay black man in America. Yeah, that's it. That's it. So Jennifer Welch, I should add, also had some, she was talking about, I'm going to find the exact quote, she was talking about how white nationalism, because it's, they're flirting with charging Don Lemon under anti-KKK laws in addition to potentially the Face Act. And Jennifer Welch went on to say, so Don, Don, it's abundantly obvious to me that if they do charge you, you're going to lawyer up and you're going to get, they're going to get humiliated, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and she goes on to the rest of the broadcast to talk about how it's actually the white nationalist. I'm trying to find the exact quote here.

She refers to Harmeet Dylan, who's at DOJ, as talking about a quote, black man with a cell phone and a microphone because the white nationalists at the white megachurch got their feelings hurt for being called out for being hypocrites. I'm just going to turn it over to you, Dr. Spalding. Well, it's actually getting difficult to follow some of these arguments, to be perfectly honest. There's a certain absurdity to them, and we should recognize the absurdity about this whole argument. But, I mean, it really shows the extent to which what goes from modern liberalism has completely rejected the liberalism of the American founding. I mean, what is it that gave rise to the liberalism that really is America? America is the most successful form of a liberal nation in world history. And yet they're rejecting its principles.

I mean, the thing that makes for America upon which everything is built, including the religious liberty that has been referred to here, is human equality, human equality that we are all equally, have the equal status before the law. We're also equal in the eyes of God, but equal before the law. that's the basis of religious liberty and all of our liberties for that matter. And yet modern liberalism very famously is turning much of our popular discussion today back on racial questions, white nationalism, racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, you name it.

That's the language they always want to go back to. Why is that? Well, once you've rejected the philosophical moorings, if you will, of American liberalism, which is the founding, which is the declaration, which is the kind of comes out of that whole Western tradition, if you reject that, what's left? What's left? All it is is what CSLO is called the poison of subjectivism. It's whatever you want. It's relativism. It's, you know, I can. be a helicopter today and a, you know, a Jeep tomorrow. I don't know what it, what is it? And you, and everything has to be categorized based on other things. And it's oddly going back to kind of pre-American ideas of feudalism and race and all the, all the, the particular, the exact same things that the American founding rejected.

We turned away from those things because we wanted a nation. based on liberty. And that requires the rule of law, inequality, consent, all these principles that are associated with the American founding, which they're now openly rejecting. They want to claim them to some extent. They want to claim them as they've redefined them

to be completely subjective to their opinions. And anybody who suggests otherwise is, pick your category of evilness. And so religious liberty, means you have to be open to anything and everything that someone says is their opinion. It doesn't actually mean having religious opinions of any worth, of any standard, of any standing, or doctrine or or, you know, kind of religious meaning. It means being, you know, value-free.

And so, you know, I think more and more Americans, you know, on the right, in the middle, and kind of what I would call, what I call the old left, find that to be just patently, obviously, absurd, because that's not the American liberal tradition that they've always learned, that we've always upheld, and that's been the center of the interpretation. And today, that argument itself is considered to be kind of, you know, right-wing and bigoted, if not racist, and it's all about Christian nationalism and all these kinds of, I mean, at a certain point, I've run out of, we run out of terminology to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, criticize. I mean, what else can they call us? What's left? I mean, they go on Nazis where that's,

that doesn't do the trick anymore. So I guess Christian nationalism is the flavor of the moment. That's what I was, so just what I was going to ask you about next is kind of this obvious question that the Declaration of Independence and of itself was an act of protest. And we've been talking here about protests and citizens. And all of that is tied up itself in the Declaration of Independence, which of course you've written about in this book that people should go out and make sure to read. So I'm wondering, you know, Martin Luther King on his mountaintop speech, right before he's assassinated, he says all we ask of America, what is the quote, so all we say to America is be true to what you said on paper. And Frederick Douglass had made similar points about the promissory note and all of that. So what how should we? I mean, one of the interesting parts of the Ken Burns. American Revolution documentaries. He talks about how there's a lot of descriptions of what was happening at the time as civil war. And that's an interesting question because it gets to what's protest, what's war, what's actually, how do we define these movements? Because it seems like

what these protests are is beyond obviously protests. We're verging into a different territory. So how should we think about all of that as we look at the declaration? No, no, it's a great question. But it's a very different thing. I mean, you mentioned Martin through the King, Frederick Douglass, and, of course, you know, Lincoln and the whole fight against slavery in the Civil War. And the argument of understanding of slavery at the time of the Declaration itself, for that matter. I mean, look, the problem is that the broadly speaking, the modern left does, you know, kind of look at history backwards.

They want to argue that America's racist today, so therefore they just go back in history to find what they've. want. But it's not very good history. The argument of the founding and the claim of the founding is, are these principles. America is not a perfect country. That's never been the claim. We are imperfect people, all of us. And there are all sorts of things I would point to an American history that, you know, you can, that are cringeworthy and if not barbaric in the case of slavery. But that doesn't mean the whole thing was somehow flawed from the beginning. It set out a set of principles and we've always lived up to those principles and tried to live up to them. That's, that was Frederick Douglass's point when he realized what the declaration actually said. That was the

ringbolt, he said, of the American Constitution, which itself is a liberty document, to quote him. Marginers King, the Declaration is a promissory moral. Live up to your promissory note. Yes, I agree with that. But the left is decided that's not good enough. Any existence of any problems, that existed are somehow systemic. Well, that's just not, that's just not history. And I think it's a deep misunderstanding of the nature of politics. I mean, politics is about putting out, you know, what are the principles you stand for, right? This is what, this is what an agenda is, an election.

What do you stand for? How are you going to get there? And how are you going to aspire towards it and lead people in that direction? That's what the founding is. That's what the declaration is. And so part of it is that not only we're getting the history wrong, but we've lost, we've kind of forgotten how to think about politics in the way the founders did, which I would argue is kind of the way the Western tradition teaches politics, which is about aspiring to principles. What is true? Can we say about man, about the nature of man? What does it teach us about politics in principle? And then, as the declaration says, how does prudence dictate how we should actually operate? Now that politics is all. and imperfect. It takes a while to figure things out. It takes a while to solve problems. The Continental Congress, a few weeks before the declaration, abolish the slave trade.

But obviously, we had to fight about a lot of those things. Soon after the Constitution, the cotton gin is invented. That changed the whole economics to the South. And then, pretty soon you've got in the Antebellum South, all of a positive defensive slavery. So we need to at the history right, yes, we understand the nature of how history should be understood. And I think that the left just wants to use history as the cudgel. And I think that's deeply misleading, problematic. What most Americans want and what we're supposed to be given during the classroom is not teaching them ideology, but teaching the facts of history, the real stories of history,

the actual narrative, warts and all, as I like to do in my classroom. But the overwhelming story is this noble story of accomplishment and moving towards those principles, trying to be better, a more perfect union, as the Constitution says. So it's a much greater, greater thing. And I think the prominent voices in today's left have really just completely rejected that. And I think our hope in this anniversary year is that a lot of Americans, right center in kind of the old left, as I like to call it, the liberal generation of, of, you know, our parents and those who have been educated in that form of American liberalism. I still think this is a good country, worth defending, and don't think this,

you aren't going to continue to support this nonsense, especially as we see it coming out in these egregious cases. Dr. Matthew Spalding is the author of the new book, The Making of the American Mind, the story of our Declaration of Independence. He is, as you can tell, one of the most brilliant people that I've had the opportunity to get to know. And of course, he's over at Hillsdale College, which you should send your kids to, and go ahead and check out those courses online.

They're amazing. Thank you, Dr. Spalding. Great being with you. Thank you. All right. Next up, Shane Cashman. But first, you guys know this. I am skeptical about absolutely everything, especially those, like, healthy foods,

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they can't make those claims. And unlike the corporate giants, Lovebird is family owned, donating 20% of profits to fight childhood cancer. And that matters. So head to lovebirdfoods.com and get some for your family. I literally had this today. If you're ready to take back your breakfast, go to Lovebirdfoods.com slash afterparty and use code after party for 25% off your first order. You can also find Lovebird cereals at Walmart, Whole Foods, Sprout, Sproutes, and other major retailers nationwide. Check them out. love bird cereal join the real food revolution and take back our country's health from big food box by box all right let's bring in shame cashman who's an investigative journalist and host of

inverted world live over at timcast Shane thanks for being here hey emily thanks for having me yeah for sure let's talk about data centers why not there's big news in the data center front it's actually much less boring and I think the country is coming to realize this it's much less boring. Like the name data center sounds banal and inoffensive, but as they've come to communities in states from coast to coast, it's become obvious. These are not just banal local, municipal questions. So let's put F5 on the screen. This is a very interesting metric from someone who tracks this information, Don Johnson. He's looking at, quote, already 25 data center cancellations and postponements this month. So in January, expecting to see a 100 plus month towards midterms,

which excludes local county moratoriums. And Shane, you've been tracking this too very closely. One of the sneaky sleeper issues in the midterm election cycle is 2026 that we are now in, but very interesting to see what looks like a bit of a reversal. Do you buy these numbers? Are you seeing this too? I think it's positive that people are definitely pushing back on this because they were like this abstract idea, these data centers, but then they started invading communities around the country and it became a kind of bipartisan issue where people are like, oh, we don't like this, it's eating up our farmland. So I do think people are pushing back. It's still not enough.

Like there's still a lot of data centers that are being put up everywhere. I'm in West Virginia, and there's like a giant one being put in that goes across Jefferson County and Berkeley County, and the people are furious. And West Virginia, passed a bill last year that basically makes it so no one can say no to these things. So these people are furious because it's eating up all this farmland and no one wants to have this eyesore. I mean, there's a million reasons why, like, you know, they don't know what it's going to do with the sound, the water usage, what kind of energy usage, all that kind of stuff. But there are people pushing back on it. It seems like there's places that have been

canceling them. But I think we have a long ways to go. Well, so let's get back into that Y question. You just mentioned farmland and all of that. We put F6 up here. This is Donald Trump's Cryptozar, David Sachs, just a couple of days ago saying narrative violation. The largest AI data center uses roughly the same amount of water as two burger joints. There are over 200,000 fast food restaurants in the U.S.,

so this is a tiny amount. He posted an article where this analysis had been done. I've seen other analyses. Pirate wires has some information on this. But Shane, is the water question here, a red herring? Is that something where it's like, it's easily, you follow this closer than I do. Yeah. Is it something where it's like easily kind of, okay, you're making the water a really big issue. Let's talk about the water. Well, we can, we can debunk your water claims. But if we are,

if our conversation was focused on, for example, what you said, farmland, jobs, that type of thing, it would be harder for them to debunk. Is this one of those? Yeah. So David Sacks, first of all is a propagandist. Like he wants to. He literally works for the government. Right. Like he wants this to be the narrative. But they do have a point, I read most of that article where, you know, they're saying that it doesn't take up as much of water as people say. But all in and out burgers, like if you read that article, they're basically the same, they're identical. If you look at Burger Kings or different, you know, fast food joints, they're all pretty much the same. And they don't use that much water compared to even the smaller AI data centers can use tens of thousands of gallons of water a day.

And some of them like Googles can use millions of gallons of water a day. And there's other people in the tech world, like the Rainmaker CEO, who goes around saying he wants to seed the clouds so they can help farmers. But his real goal, which he has stated, is to create water for data centers because they use so much water. So I get what they're trying to do because he's a propagandist, and he doesn't like any negative questions about AI, clearly. But it's certainly something that isn't always like 400 million gallons of water in every data center. But it is something I think we should worry about because there are people right now, I'm not too far from Northern Virginia, and they're up by AI Alley, right? Data Center Alley.

So they're seeing their water bills and their electricity bills double in two years' time. And it's because of what they're funding the data centers, and the data centers are using that much electricity and water. And that just happens in the last decade. 10,000 acres of land stolen by data centers in Northern Virginia alone. You know, and that's happening across the country. Yeah, and when you say stolen, what's interesting about that is it's partnerships between local governments. And sometimes this is what we were just talking about.

We can put actually this one is F7 on the screen. As Shane has been explaining municipalities, people are pushing back on their local governments for letting this stuff happen. You can see on the map that Robinson Meyer of HeatMap posted here. what Shane was just talking about in like the Northern Virginia area in particular, which explains why this is becoming like a sneaky midterm election issue. And Shane, as I look at some of this, you know, there's a lot of bullshit that goes into the claims, tech makes about bringing jobs. You know, it doesn't bring that many jobs. All these jobs are important, but it's like a hundred jobs or whatever. It seems to me like this is becoming a, I don't know, scapegoat is not the right word.

It's becoming a proxy war for like pro-human and anti-human. And that sounds kind of crazy. No, it is. But could you like give us the big picture on what's going on with this like goofy policy question of data data centers? Like, why? Well, first of all, let's go back to like almost a year ago. Second day of Trump 2.0 when they did Project Stargate. You know, that was the day.

I'm like, oh, they sold out the American people. That's it. This $500 billion shrine with Oracle and Open AI and all this people to, build lots of data centers because we're in like a cold war type scenario with China. It was basically a federal, what Trump did was codify, a big federal effort to accelerate data center construction, ease regulations, that sort of thing. Yep, yep. So cut a lot of red tape and now they're building huge ones like in Texas, Oregon, Virginia,

obviously West Virginia. So then they're saying, well, this is going to be great for jobs because we're going to create lots of jobs. But in my opinion, this is what I think a lot of people agree on who are in these areas where they're coming, where they're invading, is it's going to kill the local community. So first of all, let's just take West Virginia, for example, because I think it's fascinating. They signed that bill I just mentioned earlier. Part of that bill also states that they get all these great tax breaks, but they also don't, most of their property taxes don't even go back to the community, like most of their data centers in the country.

It goes to the state, right? So that's like a huge issue that people are having because they're like, West Virginia is a fairly poor state. and the communities do need help. So, first of all, that's crazy. I imagine a lot of states are going to adapt that if data centers continue to boom, which we can talk about that a little more later. But anyway, the jobs, all the contractors

that are coming to build the data centers are from out of state. So they will have jobs, but they're temporary. And it might help the local area for a little bit, whether it's hotels, Airbnb, restaurants. But then they go away. These things are built. They've mutilated the farmland. because it's not just putting a warehouse on top of land.

It's like they're drilling and burying things 10, 15, 20 feet underground. You can't reuse that land, right? So all that's happening. And then they're not going to hire locals to come run them. And most of these even bigger data centers only have 20 to like 50 employees inside them. It's mostly automated, right? So I don't imagine it really giving any jobs to anybody. Maybe like H-1B people when they come in, you know, or people from Silicon Valley,

they send out to other states, but it's not going to help the people. Right. Yeah. Like that's what they say. And that's, you know, it's a tell because they're going to be hundreds of people involved in the construction. You can look at their numbers and then permanent jobs. It's sometimes like 70 to 100 and a lot of them are janitorial, great new jobs. But for the like longevity of these data centers fueling the AI boom, uh, that's I guess the next question, Shane. We are actually not you and I, but to accept the premise here is to accept that it's, good to have an AI boom. That's sort of the underlying principle here.

And as somebody who's obviously dissatisfied with this administration's approach to technology and the kind of, we were talking about David Sachs earlier, the cryptosar, he's a good example of the EAC, like the accelerationalist wing of MAGA. What troubles you about the kind of open embrace, the close embrace of accelerationism? they're anti-human, like you said. They're anti-earth. You know, they pretend to be to help you. They want to help you.

They want to help make jobs. But the whole EAC movement, like Andreessen and all of them, it's all fake. I mean, I don't like AI, but I think we can coexist with it. It might not be as apocalyptic as a tool. I think it's going to be terrible for the surveillance state. And so that's one of the aspects that I really don't like is the fact that Trump is now funding that crazy dystopian surveillance state. and he's surrounded by the worst people, in my opinion, like a teal, like an Ellison, you know, Altman. Like, I don't like Musk either.

I had never been a fan. And I just, I wish, you know, there was two movements within the Trump 2.0 campaign, the Maha and the tech guys. And the tech guys won out in my opinion. Maha's done some stuff, but most of the things they promote are anti-Maha. You know, on that, and Project Stargate, to go back to his second day in office, this last go-around, they announced these MRNA vaccines that they'll design in 48 hours that'll be personalized. Like that is antithetical to Maa. So it's that.

It's the fact that I think they're anti-human. And so again, like Andresen and Teal Hoffman, they're also trying to create these private cities, which is why they're going around building or buying up all this land, not just for data centers. But like Andresen, I think they just built, they just, him and Hoffman just bought 70,000 acres in northern California. for their private city. It's called Forever California. And it went on for years, this process because the farmers refused to sell.

And then they sued the farmers for refusing to sell. And so the process was so damaging to the farmers because the lawsuits and the money, they got so poor, they had to sell. I think almost all the farmers sold. And the ones who were saying, two years ago, we would never sell.

So I really hate that. Especially after, you know, I was really into Trump doing things like in 2018, when he was helping farmers in California get more water because that smelt fish, right? They had that weird issue. We're like, we can't send water this way because it's smelt fish. And now we're undoing all of this stuff. And I really like farmers. I like farms. I like real food. I like that stuff. And you can see by them erasing all of this organic life, the world, the nature, it gives them and their cronies the ability to do these

crazy things they want to do, like Bill Gates, making things. fake meat. You know, he's doing that because they're expecting to not have farms, right? They're trying to, like, turn the night into day. That was a serious story I read today in my show where they're trying to send mirrors into outer space. So, like, everything they're doing is just so anti-Earth, anti-nature. I think it's got a lot of unintended consequences that we're not really ready for. Well, Shane, you're going to be familiar with this clip, but let me, you mentioned Larry Ellison. I'm going to put this up on the screen.

This is Larry Allison on the, quote, AI powered surveillance that is in our future. And submitting that. The police will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording, watching and recording everything that's going on. Citizens will be on their best behavior. Because we're constantly recording

and reporting everything that's going on. Oh. When you come to government, what government's doing. They're obviously, there are artificial intelligence tools and some of them, I know the Oracle have developed around financial management for government, but also. So we don't even need to hear the rest. I mean, that's the key part. There's a part in that before, like I think it's just before that where he's talking about having, um, you know, these cameras on cops and how they'll even be played while they're in the bathroom. But I swear we'll turn them off. Or we won't

look at it. We won't look at it. It's what he says. But it will be recording even in the bathroom. And then he goes into this thing about citizens being on the best behavior. That man is, I think, just an evil man. And he doesn't like people. And for those, I'm sure everyone knows, like, his son just bought CBS. So we're in for a wild ride with these guys. We yeah.

So Larry Allison is obviously in Trump's orbit and a huge donor to political causes. So, Shane, they're saying this stuff out loud. and it seems odd. I mean, it's historically, I guess, makes sense in the sweep of the last 100, 200 years that were like frogs in the boiling pot, that because there's a sort of banality to everyday life, you hear a billionaire saying some crazy shit, you just wake up the next day, move on. It seems bad, but it feels like it all happens slowly. Sometimes with like social media, algorithmic social media, smartphones, it happened fast. And still, nobody really woke up until the pandemic totally. That was like the wake up call for so many folks. They're doing this in plain sight.

I mean, they're doing this in plain sight. And Republicans are going along with it. That just, it all seems unbelievable. Yeah. They're, they're all into it. Everyone. I mean, it's the right now, but the left was funding this, you know, under Biden, you know, ever, like, Palantir's been making money through every administration since Bush. Alex Carp is a huge dumb donor. Yeah, he gets pegged as a Republican now, but yeah. So now it's just, Trump's friends and Trump has had Teal in his corner since 2015 so and Vance is obviously

kind of like mentored and created by Teal so for me though I just think they don't care about being open with it there were five years a lot of these guys were open about being happy for censorship for anyone who was subverting the lockdown narrative so why would you trust them now of a sudden

just because they're getting a lot of money from administration that a lot of us voted for but you know we're seeing it they're not only just talking about it openly, a lot of their death machines are being operated right now around the world, you know, and things they create, like within Gaza, you know, what they're doing with AI Lavender and the way it uses AI to basically find out who they're going to kill. And there's a very minimal human oversight. They're doing it in Ukraine with a lot of facial recognition and drones that will get you. So it's like, and in the UK, they just last year started a

predictive homicide unit to see who is most likely based on their internet usage to commit a homicide. So, I mean, this is insane stuff. So they're open about it because everyone's bought into it in terms of the authorities, the governments around the world. They want to use this because they think it's going to make a safer world, but it's going to be a world that is completely anti-God, anti-human, anti-anything natural, which I oppose that. what it feels, what they're, to them, it makes them feel comfortable because they're in control.

And actually, one of the things that frighten me during the pandemic, there was this kind of coming apart of people who preferred comfort to freedom. And I think what we learned during the pandemic is that is actually a big chunk of our fellow countrymen. And that's, I find, I think there are a lot of people who would watch what Larry Allison just said, shockingly, even in the United States. There's some chunk. It's not most of the country, but there's some chunk of the country that would listen to that. say, great, bring it on. Yeah. And there's also, I know there's a bunch of people out there who consider themselves dissidents from like the right during lockdowns, but now they're, I see a lot of them saying, well, we'll just use it on the bad guys now. And then it'll be fine. I'm like, that's not how it works. Because they're building it for the next administration and then the one

after that. And they always redefine who's an enemy, whether it's in this country or outside of this country, right? Like Biden said half this country was, you know, bad. bad people that should be, you know, whatever, arrested for J6 and stuff like that. So I think we should be very worried about what they're building with AI. I'm not so much worried about AI, although I don't like it. I don't use it that much. I'm worried about the people who are building it and that this administration has completely embraced them and that they can't be trusted.

And you look up things that they're saying, whether it's in, you know, in public forums like that are things they write like Mark Andreessen's. I almost call it, what is it called? Something manifesto. It's kind of like Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, but it's like the opposite. It's the opposite. And it's like, it's this very happy outlook on the future of technology and AI, which I don't think is possible if we want freedom, honestly,

because they don't want, they want total control at all times. Right. Oh, Shane, this has been depressing. Shane is the whole stuff. inverted world live over at Timcast. Thanks for stopping by Shane. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. We will bring you Don Lemon's Odyssey through the Twin Cities in just one moment, but first over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro-birth. I'm pro-life. And being pro-life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after.

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slash Emily or call 855-601-229. That's preborn.com slash Emily. All right. We're going to close up to the show today with Don Lemon. His misadventures in Minnesota. And I said this at the top. What's happening in Minneapolis is not funny, but Don Lemon absolutely is. Don Lemon is incredible. I am living for his trip to Minnesota. He looks like he'd rather be in Davos. He's dressed for Davos, but, you know, he'd rather be in Davos. He'd rather be in Davos. but he finds himself in Minnesota inside a Baptist church. You may have already seen these clips. If you haven't seen the clips, we have some of them to show you,

but they resulted in first. Nikki Minaj going to war with Don Lemon, Nick Minaj newly, what should we call her new ambassador for the Christian church, calling him, quote, this is F10, Don Cock-Sucking Lemon, who she said in all caps is disgusting. How dare you? I want that thug in jail. He would never do that to any other religion. Lock him up! Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point. Obviously, there needed to be four. This is hopefully Nikki Minaj in transition to Christian life. I don't know what's in Nikki Minaj's heart. She says she believes in

Jesus, I don't know that it's the right move to go with Don Cox sucking Lemon, but here we are. It happened. And listen, directionally, she's accurate. Directionally, this is correct. He would not ever do that to another religion. And we know that because I'm about to play the clips. You've probably already seen them. But let's watch the clips in sequence.

So we are going to get into the storming of the church because as the Washington and Free Beacon had. This was in Minneapolis, of course, the city's church. This is the free beacon TikTok on the account. So like, I mean the minute-by-minute account, not the TikTok. And Don Lemon is doing a live stream for Minneapolis yesterday, Sunday. And as we go through these videos, you're going to see exactly what Nikki Minaj is reacting to. So let's go ahead here and roll. This is going to be S-1. One, this is Don Lemon. He's reporting on what the organizers have told him. And this is critical because the Trump administration, Hermit Dillon, over at the Department of Justice,

civil rights division, has said she is now planning to investigate Don Lemon for a violation of the FACE Act, Clinton Air Face Act. The FACE Act is something that actually people like Mike Lee, folks on the right, have said, has been abused to come after pro-life protesters. It absolutely has been abused. I think it is a huge constitutional question. It has been used against pro-life protesters. So politically, of course, Republicans are going to turn that around on people storming into,

it was totally abused by the Biden administration. So of course, Republicans are going to turn that around and charge people who storm a church service in Minneapolis. Don Lemon seemed to know that this was about to happen, which is why he's in hot water with Harmeet Dillon and the Trump administration. Here's S-1. I've been surprised, pleasantly surprised to see the community coming together. diverse community. If you see this when we first pulled up, we're like, wait a minute.

I love that he's got a branded Nick Cap. Which operation are we at? And as it turns out, because we're like, well, this is kind of mega-coded, right? So the American flag or whatever, but these are resistance protests. The American flag. Planning an operation that we're going to follow them on. I can't tell you exactly what they're doing, but it's called Operation Pull Up, where they surprise people, catch them off guard, and hold them to account.

And so that's what we're doing here. And then we're after that, after we do this, operation, you'll see it line. It's like he's in Fallujah. He's like Brian Williams, like Katrina. That's what we're seeing from Don Lemon now in a parking lot of like a big lots in Minneapolis. He clearly seems to been clued into Operation Pullup going into the church.

I don't know if we're going to find that out definitively or for sure. Personally, I don't support charging journalists in acts of journalism, even if what Don Lemon did, appears to have been atrocious, which, let's just say it, pretty, pretty confident in that assessment at this point because Roll S2, you're about to see this Baptist Church in Minneapolis, it's called City's Church, be disrupted by these quote protesters who were told one of the pastors works for ICE. Let's take a look. Just like Jesus did, we went into that church and we flip tables peacefully. Yep.

Renee Good. Where are you? Where are you? Where are your people? Why are you not at Whipple every day fighting for the humanity, standing for our people? Where are you? You drink a coffee. You got your jewelry. You have your nice clothes. But what do you do? What do you do to stand for your Somali and Latina?

communities. I'm not going to comment. You have no comment. Exactly. All right. And now let's take a look at Don Lemon confronting the pastor. This is S3. What do you think of this? I mean, this is unacceptable. It's shameful. It's shameful to interrupt a public gathering of Christians in worship. But there were folks. I have to take care of my flock. Listen, we live in a, there's a constitution of First Amendment to freedom of speech and freedom to assemble and protest. We're here to worship. We're here to worship Jesus because that's the hope of these cities.

That's the hope of the world is Jesus Christ. I want to be very respectful. Please don't push me, though. We're here. We're here to worship Jesus. He's trespass. That's why we're here. That's what we're about.

Don't you think Jesus would be understanding and love these folks? We're about spreading the love of Jesus. But did you try to talk to them as a Christian? No one is willing to talk. Okay. I have to take care of my church and my family. I asked this, you actually would also leave this building. You don't want to sub-chromical.

Unless you're here to worship. I'm a Christian. We're here to worship. We're here to worship. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Okay, so arguably trespassing because the pastor asked him to leave, but a lot going on there, obviously a lot going on there. You know, when Don Lemon, and I've heard actually this from many others, because, you know, in the West, it's true that because we live comfortable lives, I think Christians have been accustomed to, especially for the last, you know, until 20 or so years ago, but there was a time period in American history where Christians were the cultural, I mean,

there's a long time period in American history going back to the founding where Christians are the, the dominant part of society, the dominant culture. And Christians became totally accustomed to that. And I think are jarred by what's actually been pretty normal for Christian history. which is being relegated to the fringes, right? Being treated differently and being on the outskirts of society, being ostracized. And Roder wrote the Benedict option and I think an important time. And I always recommend that book. I think it probably was prescient about what the future of the church actually is going to look like. But it's true. Christians have gotten very comfortable and very used to being part of the kind of cultural mainstream in a way that's clearly we're transitioning to a

period where it's it's flip-flopped. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's normal for Christian history and the scope of Christian history. It's going to be perfectly normal. You know, I obviously wish it weren't the case that like the ethics of believing in human worth, human dignity, universal human dignity, if I didn't feel like that was losing ground in the United States of America, I wish that weren't the case, but I think it is the case. And all that is to say, it's, In Minneapolis, obvious why people, you know, there's a video of a child crying. If you haven't seen that yet, there's a little boy crying in the pews. Well, there was a mass shooting during mass, beginning of the school year, in the same exact community.

There have been attacks on churches and synagogues. That's a thing that if you are worshipping on a Sunday, you're very afraid of. We can have another conversation about church security. But, you know, unfortunately, that's something that's happened. And so when a group of people barges into a church and start shouting and screaming, of course, people are going to be scared. Of course, children are going to be scared. And really, you know, Lemon goes on to talk about, he said he had, quote, conducted some reconnaissance. Incredible.

Incredible. He conducted some reconnaissance. He says, quote, these are resistant. protest resistance protesters that are planning an operation that we're going to follow them on. I can't tell exactly what they're doing. You heard him say they're going to surprise people catch them off guard and hold them to account because they are strategizing. I don't want to get too much of their information there.

And he admitted that he, quote, turned my camera off at one point, according to the Washington Free Beacon Report from Chuck Ross that I'm reading from here. Now, when Nikki Minaj went off on him, he responded, or I'm sorry, when Harmeet Dylan went off on him. Lemon responded to say, quote, I had no affiliations with that organization. I didn't even know they were going to this church until we followed them there. Why don't you talk to the actual person who is in charge of the organization and whose idea was to have the protest at the church before you start blaming me for stuff for which you have no idea. Don, I think she is going to talk to the, quote, actual person who is in charge with the organization. Something tells me that's in the works if it hasn't already happened. So it's very, very possible. I'll put the text of the Face Act up here. So part one is about, quote, reproductive health services. It's about abortion. And part two says, by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with, or attempts to injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising

or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place. of religious worship, quote, shall be subject to the penalties provided in subsection B, blah, blah, blah. So, if you're looking at the text of the Face Act, two things. First of all, you may see why people like Mike Lee clearly have constitutional problems with the Face Act, and myself included. Second of all, you would see a pretty obvious violation of part two of that law, attempting to interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise. You're seeking to exercise. the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. Well, we all saw that in the clips. So I would think that Harmeet Dylan, this is F6, or I'm sorry,

this is FS that we can put up on the screen. She says, a House of Worship is not a public forum, F1, I'm sorry, a House of Worship is not a public forum for your protest. It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal, criminal, and civil lawsuits. Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo-journalism of disrupting a prayer service. You are on notice. It's incredible. We're going to see what happens with that one. They're looking into actually also the like violation of anti-KKK laws from the 1870s that were implemented to enforce the 14th amendment. Again, do I think I probably disagree with Harmead on that. I think it's probably not a good idea to charge Don Lemon in this case.

But just a broader point on, and you'll probably, many of you may disagree with me on that. That's fine. As a journalist, I have a slightly different perspective. But on the broader point of, we heard the protesters talking about one protesters saying we went and flipped the tables. We did it peacefully, obviously comparing themselves to Jesus in the temple. and Don Lemon multiple times saying, well, shouldn't you show them love? Shouldn't you show them love? And what I saw was Christians turning the other cheek at that service, interacting politely and peacefully

with people who had stormed in screaming and shouting and disrupted a sacred space. Seems like a perfectly reasonable Christian behavior to me. And the bigger picture, just to tie this beautiful weave. together from the beginning of the show to the end is, listen, bring this up a lot. And I, you know, Republicans talk about Lake and Riley a lot, and I talk about Lake and Riley a lot. But the left has this dominant narrative in quote-unquote mainstream media, which is Christians are hypocritical, hypocritical. Don Lemon said that these Christians were going to be held to account, held to account.

The protesters were going to hold people to account. that Christians are hypocritical, as that one protester is saying, they're in their nice clothes with their lattes, that it's somehow hypocritical that they are not at Whipple protesting with the anti-ice activists. Now, there's obviously reasonable disagreement between people on whether I should be embraced or protested, right? like that's a we can we should be able to uh talk about that have difficult conversations amongst each other about that but uh the reason i think these these disagreements are are actually fair is that having compassion and believing in in universal human dignity does not equate necessarily to open borders and it's fine of christians want to make open borders

arguments, but those arguments should be made, obviously with the knowledge and the intent, the knowledge of and the intent to protect innocent life anywhere it's found. And what we've seen is actually innocent life being victimized by the agenda of people who want a more lenient immigration system in this country. And that is why you have more conservative Christians not out protesting ice because many of them have seen the way a reckless and lawless system can end up taking innocent human life, praying on innocent human life. And so no, it is not a totally obvious leftist W in this case that Christians are completely hypocritical for sitting in their pews and worship.

on Sunday. First of all, Christians worship a God who believes in universal human dignity. There is no Jew or Greek as the Apostle Paul, who is right behind me here on the shelf. As he wrote, there is no Jew or Greek. Universal human dignity. I can't recommend Tom Holland's book, Dominion enough. That's also behind me on the shelf. That is what people are doing. So if you want people to uphold universal human dignity, you should want them in the pews in a sacred space worshiping on a Sunday. That's a great place to start, actually. But if you believe that universal human dignity means open borders, fine. Understand that people who have seen the system of the last 10 years, whether there are people legitimately victimized women who are

raped and sexually assaulted by non-citizens, understand why they may not be out in the streets with you. It's pretty shameful to categorize them necessarily as hypocrites. So a little, some thoughts, some thoughts on what's been going on in Minneapolis in recent days. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's show. Appreciate it. Some fun guests. We'll be back Wednesday at 10 p.m. Eastern with more. Please subscribe on YouTube. Leave some comments, leave some likes, leave some reviews, wherever you get your podcast. You can email me at Emily at devil makeairmedia.com. And you You can send your questions for Happy Hour, which I, of course, record on Thursday afternoons. They release on Friday at Happy Hour, around 5 p.m.

I'll see you back here, everyone, on Thursday with more After Party.