LISTEN: Glenn interviews pastor being targeted by the city of Houston

October 20, 2014

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Churches are under attack in Texas, as several faith leaders have had their sermons subpoenaed as part of an ongoing lawsuit over a progressive city ordinance. One pastor, Steve Riggle, joined Glenn on radio to discuss the case on radio today.

Below is a rough transcript of the segment:

GLENN: I want to tell you something about -- that is more concerning to me than Ebola to me in Texas. More concerning than anything that is happening in our country today. And that is the out, the outward attack and hostility and hatred of people of faith. People of faith are under attack. Our churches and our institutions, our pastors, our preachers, our priests, our rabbis are under attack. God forbid you say this mosque has radical Islamic imams preaching hatred. You have a bag of bricks fall on your head. And they immediately shut down everyone from even saying, wait a minute. The bombers came from that mosque. What are they being taught inside that mosque? God forbid the president immediately sends a team of delegates to apologize to that mosque as it happened in Oklahoma.

However, in Texas, in Houston, Texas, there is an ordinance that has been passed by the city, and in this ordinance, it is the most radical thing that you could imagine. And it says: If you are somebody who is even questioning your sexuality. You're a male, but you're not in transition to become a female, you're questioning your maleness. I might be a female. Might be neither. You can use anybody's bathroom. This is madness. Madness.

So here's what's happened: The city has gone hostile on churches because churches tried to overturn an ordinance, and I'm going to let somebody who knows all about tell you in a second. Tried to overturn it. They gathered 55,000 signatures. They only needed 17,000. They gathered 55,000 signatures. After the signatures were there going against the ordinance, they wanted it up on the ballot. They only needed 17,000. The city said, we can't. We can't read all of these. So the ones that weren't legible, they threw out. That brought them down to 31,000 signatures.

Well, this has ended up now in the court because they weren't allowed to have the signatures count to be on the ballot. So now it's ended up in court. What happened? Now, the city is saying, we want all of your sermons, we want the sermons for all of -- everything that was preached, we want anything that was passed out. We want anything that was presented. We want anything that you approved or even saw. This goes against the Constitution. You do not have a right to go into a house of worship and ask them for their policies. For their -- their sermons. They have a right to speak out their mind, unless they are preaching hatred and violence towards others.

Now, that's where they're get you. Because you're against diversity. Steven Riggle, he is the Grace Community church pastor in Houston, Texas. He is one of the guys -- he is one of the main guys leading this, and I'm sorry to say, pastor. I have not been up on this ordinance at all. We haven't paying attention. Nobody has. Tell me exactly the ordinance, and what happened, and now what the city is saying.

RIGGLE: Well, it's an equal rights ordinance from our mayor, who is the openly lesbian of the largest -- she's a lesbian mayor. Of one of the largest cities in the country. This is her final term, so she -- this is her crowning legislation to get this through. We opposed it basically on, first, three terms. Gender identity, gender expression, and public accommodations. Public accommodation means that whether it's a public or private business, if the public is allowed to go there, then that's -- it's defined as that. Secondly, gender expression and gender identity have to do not with how you were born biologically, but whatever you think you are and express yourself to be. So a person could actually -- a man could go into a restaurant. Say, I'm going to go into a lady's restroom. And if he was stopped and said, you can't go in there. He can say, I may look like a man, but I express myself as a woman. He can go in there.

GLENN: He could be a predator, and you can't say anything to him as long as he expresses that he now feels like a woman.

RIGGLE: Exactly right. So we opposed it on that. We also opposed it on the idea that it was an unequal rights ordinance because what it was giving was granting a certain group of people rights that no one else had or giving them rights only because of their lifestyle choice. We are for equal rights. But the -- gay community already has all the rights the rest of us have. We opposed it on that basis. And the mayor already had the city council lined up to vote for it. We had a polling company do a poll in the city. 82 percent came back and said they were opposed to this ordinance. We gave it back to the mayor. Gave it to the council members. They voted it in anyway.

So we did a referendum. We gathered -- we knew we had 31,000. Right? And the city secretary, who is the only one charged by the city charter with verifying signatures, stopped counting at 19,000 because we already passed the threshold way a 93 pass rate. And then the city attorney inserted himself, the city secretary was called to the mayor's office with a meeting with the mayor and the city attorney, and she was asked to attach a paragraph that they had written to her report. Which she did.

And basically the city attorney had inserted himself, which has never happened in the history of the city before, and disqualified more than half of the petition signatures.

GLENN: Why? On what basis?

RIGGLE: Well, on basis like you can't read them. They weren't done right. Blah, blah, blah. One sitting city council member's petition was thrown out. My daughter's petition was thrown out, and a third grader could read her signature. This is over and over and over again.

For people who are listening who think somehow this might be some kind of personal spat with the mayor, absolutely not. What you have here is you have the violation of our first amendment rights. You have the violation of our religious liberty. And, thirdly, you have two people, the mayor and the city attorney, who have single-handedly taken away the voting rights of the fourth largest city in the country.

GLENN: So now they've come to you and they've said, not only you, but everyone, everyone who is in favor of this -- favor the repeal of this ordinance, they're asking for what exactly? Your sermons, but what else?

RIGGLE: Here's what happened. A couple of community people and a couple of pastors together filed a lawsuit against the city to force them to put this on the ballot. The five pastors were issued subpoenas by the city. None of the five of us were party to the lawsuit. And in the original subpoena, they asked for 17 different kinds of -- of -- 17 different areas of communication, including sermons, any emails, text messages, correspondence, anything we communicated to the congregation and included in the subpoena was about the ordinance, about the referendum and about the mayor personally. Anything that had been said about the mayor. So it was very, very broad.

And the mayor and city attorney when challenged on this said, we didn't even know that subpoena was going out. Which, if anyone knows the mayor and the city attorney, they would know -- there's no way that the mayor and the city attorney didn't know that was going out. They just got caught. So the five of us said no way. So we, alliance freedom attorneys came in to defend us, and we have said to the mayor, we don't have any problem with you having all of our sermons. In fact, I've said publicly, if the mayor and the city attorney will agree to listen to all of my sermons, I'll give them 31 years' worth. That's how long I've been in this city. They can have them all. As a matter of fact, they're already on the website. They can go there and get them any day of the week. But what we are opposed to is the state telling us that we have to turn those things over for their inspection.

GLENN: Have you ever seen anything like this?

RIGGLE: Well, I've never seen anything like it, but more than that is that Eric Stanley, the lead counsel with the alliance defending freedom, he was asked that same question, and he said -- and, you know, they do this constitutional law stuff all over the country and religious liberty cases. He said, I've never seen anything remotely like this at all.

GLENN: This is the most dangerous thing I've seen. This is more dangerous to the republic of Texas than Ebola is. This is more dangerous than anything I've ever seen. Everybody who said -- Stu, did you pull up those phrases? I asked Stu about an hour ago. Go find the phrases of people when we said, the next thing we know, if you say yes, this is not about equal rights. It's never about equal rights. This is about shutting people down. As Jeffy said, diversity is great unless it disagrees with my opinion. That's what this has been about. Shutting down the churches and shutting down the people of faith and everyone said, that would never ever happen.

STU: Yeah. Slate. Will churches be forced to conduct gay weddings? Not a chance. That's just a scare tactic conservative groups use to scare voters.

GLENN: It's happening right now. It's happening in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, right now. Two ministers are being threatened with seven years in jail unless they perform a gay wedding. So Slate magazine, liar.

STU: Washington Post. They do allow for outliers here. But they say:

We've be warned nationwide same-sax marriage would bring an unprecedented wave of conflicts between married and same-sex couples and religious traditionalists, who would refuse to provide services in any other way to facilitate the marriages, thus we would finally see clear examples of the harm created by same-sex marriage. These fears have been largely unrealized so far.

GLENN: Have they? How about the people who won't make wedding cakes?

STU: Yeah, and they do say there have been a few celebrated conflicts that they allow for.

GLENN: This is -- a few celebrated? Only because it's the beginning. Only because it's the beginning.

Here's what I would like to do. I'm going to give you the address of the mayor.

Mayor Annise Parker.

Houston City Hall.

901 Bagby Street.

Houston, TX 77002.

I would like to ask all preachers, all pastors, all rabbis, to send her your sermons. In fact, if you're not a preacher, pastor or rabbi, I would like to ask you to do your own homework. Go look some things up from George Whitfield. The first evangelical in America. Go look him up. Go find some of his speeches and some of his sermons on religious liberty. Go find the best sermons you can find on religious liberty and send them to city hall in Houston.

America, we have -- there are not a lot of chances left. We've got to wake up. Our churches must wake up. If you're a pastor, a priest, a rabbi, if you have any -- any flock that you are supposed to be shepherding. You better get your staff out and start leading your flock. Or you'll lose your staff, your flock, and your position. This is the most dangerous thing I've seen. And we are becoming openly hostile to God. It doesn't end well when a nation like ours does that.

Pastor, anything else you want to add to this?

RIGGLE: Just one thing, that the city attorney at a press conference last week just made this comment regarding the outrage that is now happening all over the country. We're getting inundated with people calling and emailing and saying how outraged they are over this. Now, remember this is about first amendment. It's about religious liberty. And it's about voting. The city attorney about all the outrage. I quote his words.

It's ridiculous.

That's a quote. So people better be outraged. And they better lift their voices and they better start screaming.

GLENN: Steve, anything I can do for you, you please contact us. We're in this fight with you. I'll stand with you shoulder to shoulder. And millions of Americans, I hope, will do the same, but anything you need. Thank you so much. God bless. Steve Riggles, the founding senior pastor.

Rage isn’t conservatism — THIS is what true patriots stand for

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Conservatism is not about rage or nostalgia. It’s about moral clarity, national renewal, and guarding the principles that built America’s freedom.

Our movement is at a crossroads, and the question before us is simple: What does it mean to be a conservative in America today?

For years, we have been told what we are against — against the left, against wokeism, against decline. But opposition alone does not define a movement, and it certainly does not define a moral vision.

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

The media, as usual, are eager to supply their own answer. The New York Times recently suggested that Nick Fuentes represents the “future” of conservatism. That’s nonsense — a distortion of both truth and tradition. Fuentes and those like him do not represent American conservatism. They represent its counterfeit.

Real conservatism is not rage. It is reverence. It does not treat the past as a museum, but as a teacher. America’s founders asked us to preserve their principles and improve upon their practice. That means understanding what we are conserving — a living covenant, not a relic.

Conservatism as stewardship

In 2025, conservatism means stewardship — of a nation, a culture, and a moral inheritance too precious to abandon. To conserve is not to freeze history. It is to stand guard over what is essential. We are custodians of an experiment in liberty that rests on the belief that rights come not from kings or Congress, but from the Creator.

That belief built this country. It will be what saves it. The Constitution is a covenant between generations. Conservatism is the duty to keep that covenant alive — to preserve what works, correct what fails, and pass on both wisdom and freedom to those who come next.

Economics, culture, and morality are inseparable. Debt is not only fiscal; it is moral. Spending what belongs to the unborn is theft. Dependence is not compassion; it is weakness parading as virtue. A society that trades responsibility for comfort teaches citizens how to live as slaves.

Freedom without virtue is not freedom; it is chaos. A culture that mocks faith cannot defend liberty, and a nation that rejects truth cannot sustain justice. Conservatism must again become the moral compass of a disoriented people, reminding America that liberty survives only when anchored to virtue.

Rebuilding what is broken

We cannot define ourselves by what we oppose. We must build families, communities, and institutions that endure. Government is broken because education is broken, and education is broken because we abandoned the formation of the mind and the soul. The work ahead is competence, not cynicism.

Conservatives should embrace innovation and technology while rejecting the chaos of Silicon Valley. Progress must not come at the expense of principle. Technology must strengthen people, not replace them. Artificial intelligence should remain a servant, never a master. The true strength of a nation is not measured by data or bureaucracy, but by the quiet webs of family, faith, and service that hold communities together. When Washington falters — and it will — those neighborhoods must stand.

Eric Lee / Stringer | Getty Images

This is the real work of conservatism: to conserve what is good and true and to reform what has decayed. It is not about slogans; it is about stewardship — the patient labor of building a civilization that remembers what it stands for.

A creed for the rising generation

We are not here to cling to the past or wallow in grievance. We are not the movement of rage. We are the movement of reason and hope.

For the rising generation, conservatism cannot be nostalgia. It must be more than a memory of 9/11 or admiration for a Reagan era they never lived through. Many young Americans did not experience those moments — and they should not have to in order to grasp the lessons they taught and the truths they embodied. The next chapter is not about preserving relics but renewing purpose. It must speak to conviction, not cynicism; to moral clarity, not despair.

Young people are searching for meaning in a culture that mocks truth and empties life of purpose. Conservatism should be the moral compass that reminds them freedom is responsibility and that faith, family, and moral courage remain the surest rebellions against hopelessness.

To be a conservative in 2025 is to defend the enduring principles of American liberty while stewarding the culture, the economy, and the spirit of a free people. It is to stand for truth when truth is unfashionable and to guard moral order when the world celebrates chaos.

We are not merely holding the torch. We are relighting it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn Beck: Here's what's WRONG with conservatism today

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What does it mean to be a conservative in 2025? Glenn offers guidance on what conservatives need to do to ensure the conservative movement doesn't fade into oblivion. We have to get back to PRINCIPLES, not policies.

To be a conservative in 2025 means to STAND

for Stewardship, protecting the wisdom of our Founders;
for Truth, defending objective reality in an age of illusion;
for Accountability, living within our means as individuals and as a nation;
for Neighborhood, rebuilding family, faith, and local community;
and for Duty, carrying freedom forward to the next generation.

A conservative doesn’t cling to the past — he stands guard over the principles that make the future possible.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: You know, I'm so tired of being against everything. Saying what we're not.

It's time that we start saying what we are. And it's hard, because we're changing. It's different to be a conservative, today, than it was, you know, years ago.

And part of that is just coming from hard knocks. School of hard knocks. We've learned a lot of lessons on things we thought we were for. No, no, no.

But conservatives. To be a conservative, it shouldn't be about policies. It's really about principles. And that's why we've lost our way. Because we've lost our principles. And it's easy. Because the world got easy. And now the world is changing so rapidly. The boundaries between truth and illusion are blurred second by second. Machines now think. Currencies falter. Families fractured. And nations, all over the world, have forgotten who they are.

So what does it mean to be a conservative now, in 2025, '26. For a lot of people, it means opposing the left. That's -- that's a reaction. That's not renewal.

That's a reaction. It can't mean also worshiping the past, as if the past were perfect. The founders never asked for that.

They asked that we would preserve the principles and perfect their practice. They knew it was imperfect. To make a more perfect nation.

Is what we're supposed to be doing.

2025, '26 being a conservative has to mean stewardship.

The stewardship of a nation, of a civilization.

Of a moral inheritance. That is too precious to abandon.

What does it mean to conserve? To conserve something doesn't mean to stand still.

It means to stand guard. It means to defend what the Founders designed. The separation of powers. The rule of law.

The belief that our rights come not from kings or from Congress, but from the creator himself.
This is a system that was not built for ease. It was built for endurance, and it will endure if we only teach it again!

The problem is, we only teach it like it's a museum piece. You know, it's not a museum piece. It's not an old dusty document. It's a living covenant between the dead, the living and the unborn.

So this chapter of -- of conservatism. Must confront reality. Economic reality.

Global reality.

And moral reality.

It's not enough just to be against something. Or chant tax cuts or free markets.

We have to ask -- we have to start with simple questions like freedom, yes. But freedom for what?

Freedom for economic sovereignty. Your right to produce and to innovate. To build without asking Beijing's permission. That's a moral issue now.

Another moral issue: Debt! It's -- it's generational theft. We're spending money from generations we won't even meet.

And dependence. Another moral issue. It's a national weakness.

People cannot stand up for themselves. They can't make it themselves. And we're encouraging them to sit down, shut up, and don't think.

And the conservative who can't connect with fiscal prudence, and connect fiscal prudence to moral duty, you're not a conservative at all.

Being a conservative today, means you have to rebuild an economy that serves liberty, not one that serves -- survives by debt, and then there's the soul of the nation.

We are living through a time period. An age of dislocation. Where our families are fractured.

Our faith is almost gone.

Meaning is evaporating so fast. Nobody knows what meaning of life is. That's why everybody is killing themselves. They have no meaning in life. And why they don't have any meaning, is truth itself is mocked and blurred and replaced by nothing, but lies and noise.

If you want to be a conservative, then you have to be to become the moral compass that reminds a lost people, liberty cannot survive without virtue.

That freedom untethered from moral order is nothing, but chaos!

And that no app, no algorithm, no ideology is ever going to fill the void, where meaning used to live!

To be a conservative, moving forward, we cannot just be about policies.

We have to defend the sacred, the unseen, the moral architecture, that gives people an identity. So how do you do that? Well, we have to rebuild competence. We have to restore institutions that actually work. Just in the last hour, this monologue on what we're facing now, because we can't open the government.

Why can't we open the government?

Because government is broken. Why does nobody care? Because education is broken.

We have to reclaim education, not as propaganda, but as the formation of the mind and the soul. Conservatives have to champion innovation.

Not to imitate Silicon Valley's chaos, but to harness technology in defense of human dignity. Don't be afraid of AI.

Know what it is. Know it's a tool. It's a tool to strengthen people. As long as you always remember it's a tool. Otherwise, you will lose your humanity to it!

That's a conservative principle. To be a conservative, we have to restore local strength. Our families are the basic building blocks, our schools, our churches, and our charities. Not some big, distant NGO that was started by the Tides Foundation, but actual local charities, where you see people working. A web of voluntary institutions that held us together at one point. Because when Washington fails, and it will, it already has, the neighborhood has to stand.

Charlie Kirk was doing one thing that people on our side were not doing. Speaking to the young.

But not in nostalgia.

Not in -- you know, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan.

In purpose. They don't remember. They don't remember who Dick Cheney was.

I was listening to Fox news this morning, talking about Dick Cheney. And there was somebody there that I know was not even born when Dick Cheney. When the World Trade Center came down.

They weren't even born. They were telling me about Dick Cheney.

And I was like, come on. Come on. Come on.

If you don't remember who Dick Cheney was, how are you going to remember 9/11. How will you remember who Reagan was.

That just says, that's an old man's creed. No, it's not.

It's the ultimate timeless rebellion against tyranny in all of its forms. Yes, and even the tyranny of despair, which is eating people alive!

We need to redefine ourselves. Because we have changed, and that's a good thing. The creed for a generation, that will decide the fate of the republic, is what we need to find.

A conservative in 2025, '26.

Is somebody who protects the enduring principles of American liberty and self-government.

While actively stewarding the institutions. The culture. The economy of this nation!

For those who are alive and yet to be unborn.

We have to be a group of people that we're not anchored in the past. Or in rage! But in reason. And morality. Realism. And hope for the future.

We're the stewards! We're the ones that have to relight the torch, not just hold it. We didn't -- we didn't build this Torch. We didn't make this Torch. We're the keepers of the flame, but we are honor-bound to pass that forward, and conservatives are viewed as people who just live in the past. We're not here to merely conserve the past, but to renew it. To sort it. What worked, what didn't work. We're the ones to say to the world, there's still such a thing as truth. There's still such a thing as virtue. You can deny it all you want.

But the pain will only get worse. There's still such a thing as America!

And if now is not the time to renew America. When is that time?

If you're not the person. If we're not the generation to actively stand and redefine and defend, then who is that person?

We are -- we are supposed to preserve what works.

That -- you know, I was writing something this morning.

I was making notes on this. A constitutionalist is for restraint. A progressive, if you will, for lack of a better term, is for more power.

Progressives want the government to have more power.

Conservatives are for more restraint.

But the -- for the American eagle to fly, we must have both wings.

And one can't be stronger than the other.

We as a conservative, are supposed to look and say, no. Don't look at that. The past teaches us this, this, and this. So don't do that.

We can't do that. But there are these things that we were doing in the past, that we have to jettison. And maybe the other side has a good idea on what should replace that. But we're the ones who are supposed to say, no, but remember the framework.

They're -- they can dream all they want.
They can come up with all these utopias and everything else, and we can go, "That's a great idea."

But how do we make it work with this framework? Because that's our job. The point of this is, it takes both. It takes both.

We have to have the customs and the moral order. And the practices that have stood the test of time, in trial.

We -- we're in an amazing, amazing time. Amazing time.

We live at a time now, where anything -- literally anything is possible!

I don't want to be against stuff. I want to be for the future. I want to be for a rich, dynamic future. One where we are part of changing the world for the better!

Where more people are lifted out of poverty, more people are given the freedom to choose, whatever it is that they want to choose, as their own government and everything.

I don't want to force it down anybody's throat.

We -- I am so excited to be a shining city on the hill again.

We have that opportunity, right in front of us!

But not in we get bogged down in hatred, in division.

Not if we get bogged down into being against something.

We must be for something!

I know what I'm for.

Do you?

From Pharaoh to Hamas: The same spirit of evil, new disguise

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

The drone footage out of Gaza isn’t just war propaganda — it’s a glimpse of the same darkness that once convinced men they were righteous for killing innocents.

Evil introduces itself subtly. It doesn’t announce, “Hi, I’m here to destroy you.” It whispers. It flatters. It borrows the language of justice, empathy, and freedom, twisting them until hatred sounds righteous and violence sounds brave.

We are watching that same deception unfold again — in the streets, on college campuses, and in the rhetoric of people who should know better. It’s the oldest story in the world, retold with new slogans.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage.

A drone video surfaced this week showing Hamas terrorists staging the “discovery” of a hostage’s body. They pushed a corpse out of a window, dragged it into a hole, buried it, and then called in aid workers to “find” what they themselves had planted. It was theater — evil, disguised as victimhood. And it was caught entirely on camera.

That’s how evil operates. It never comes in through the front door. It sneaks in, often through manipulative pity. The same spirit animates the moral rot spreading through our institutions — from the halls of universities to the chambers of government.

Take Zohran Mamdani, a New York assemblyman who has praised jihadists and defended pro-Hamas agitators. His father, a Columbia University professor, wrote that America and al-Qaeda are morally equivalent — that suicide bombings shouldn’t be viewed as barbaric. Imagine thinking that way after watching 3,000 Americans die on 9/11. That’s not intellectualism. That’s indoctrination.

Often, that indoctrination comes from hostile foreign actors, peddled by complicit pawns on our own soil. The pro-Hamas protests that erupted across campuses last year, for example, were funded by Iran — a regime that murders its own citizens for speaking freely.

Ancient evil, new clothes

But the deeper danger isn’t foreign money. It’s the spiritual blindness that lets good people believe resentment is justice and envy is discernment. Scripture talks about the spirit of Amalek — the eternal enemy of God’s people, who attacks the weak from behind while the strong look away. Amalek never dies; it just changes its vocabulary and form with the times.

Today, Amalek tweets. He speaks through professors who defend terrorism as “anti-colonial resistance.” He preaches from pulpits that call violence “solidarity.” And he recruits through algorithms, whispering that the Jews control everything, that America had it coming, that chaos is freedom. Those are ancient lies wearing new clothes.

When nations embrace those lies, it’s not the Jews who perish first. It’s the nations themselves. The soul dies long before the body. The ovens of Auschwitz didn’t start with smoke; they started with silence and slogans.

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

A time for choosing

So what do we do? We speak truth — calmly, firmly, without venom. Because hatred can’t kill hatred; it only feeds it. Truth, compassion, and courage starve it to death.

Evil wins when good people mirror its rage. That’s how Amalek survives — by making you fight him with his own weapons. The only victory that lasts is moral clarity without malice, courage without cruelty.

The war we’re fighting isn’t new. It’s the same battle between remembrance and amnesia, covenant and chaos, humility and pride. The same spirit that whispered to Pharaoh, to Hitler, and to every mob that thought hatred could heal the world is whispering again now — on your screens, in your classrooms, in your churches.

Will you join it, or will you stand against it?

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Bill Gates ends climate fear campaign, declares AI the future ruler

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The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

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