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‘I Am Jane Doe’ Documentary Exposes How Sites Like 'Backpage' Help Child Sex Traffickers

September 25, 2017
Staff

WRITER

Can you imagine seeing your missing daughter in a prostitution ad? Parents shared their real-life nightmares in the new documentary “I Am Jane Doe,” which takes a sobering look at the child sex trafficking industry facilitated by websites like Backpage.com.

“It’s horrifying, and it’s happening, and people are making millions of dollars on it,” Glenn said on radio Monday while introducing director Mary Mazzio.

She talked about her horrifying revelation that children were being enslaved in droves in the U.S. as well as what Backpage does to help sex traffickers find clients who will rape children by the hour. Backpage and other sites have been allowed to host ads selling children, getting away with it by filtering out terms like “Lolita” or “amber alert” before publishing the ads pimping out kids anyway.

“People call this human trafficking … that’s kind of a sanitized term,” Mazzio said. “What we’re talking about is serial child rape. These children are carted from motel room to motel room.”

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

GLENN: There's some things that don't matter at all. Some things that matter a lot. But what matters most?

We're being sucked into things that, really, don't matter at all. We're being sucked into arguments about free speech and safe zones that, quite honestly, I'm sorry, if you're on a college campus, get over it. There are going to be some communists that you are talking to you. And there are going to be some Nazis that are talking to you, and they all have a right to say it. There are going to be some pro-global warming people and some anti-global warming people. You're on a college campus. Get over it. That's where you should be challenged on everything that you think. That's why there is tenure, so somebody can ask outrageous questions. We're not a society that was built on timidity. We have to be able to challenge each other.

So Hollywood, college campuses, communists, Nazis, the NFL, one, a right to stand. You have a right to take a knee. Because, quite honestly, that's a sideshow. Anybody else feel like you were in the Roman Colosseum this weekend? Real things are happening, that actually matter. And we're watching -- we're watching lions and Christians. What are we doing?

There is free speech. And there's an argument that -- it is the argument that has to be made that speech must be protected. And the only kind of speech that has to be protected is the speech that the majority doesn't like.

However, there are people that hide behind free speech. And they do real damage. Right now, in Congress, they are talking about the Communications Act and the Communications Decency Act of 1996. And there is -- there is something that came from The Village Voice, it's called the Backpage. And it is the literal auction platform for slavery today.

And people have been trying to shut this down for quite some time, and they have some really good attorneys.

This needs to be heard by you. There is a movie that is out, that just came out. It's on Netflix and i Tunes and Vimeo and Google Play, Amazon DVD. It is called I Am Jane Doe. Parents -- it's hard to watch. It's parents who sent their kids off to school one day, and they didn't come back. Kids that left home and didn't come back, until their parents found them being sold on the Backpage of the Village Voice. It's horrifying, and it's happening. And people are making millions of dollars on it.

A woman who didn't know anything about human trafficking just a few years ago is the producer and director of I Am Jane Doe. And she's with em now. Mary Mazzio. Hi, Mary, how are you?

MARY: Glenn, how are you this morning? Thank you for having me on.

GLENN: You're welcome. So explain to the audience exactly what's happening.

MARY: So this started, Glenn, when I read an article in the Boston Globe about Jane Doe number one, Jane Doe number two, and Jane Doe number three, age 13, 14, and 15 years old, that sued backpage.com and the Village Voice empire for -- for compensation for injuries they sustained by virtue of being bought and sold for commercial sex online. And people call this human trafficking and sex trafficking. And sex trafficking of minors. That's kind of a sanitized term, right?

What we're talking about is serial child rape, right?

These children are carted from motel room to motel room. They are with the admin of technology, right? They're schedule on the hour by the hour.

And I had not a clue that this was happening in numbers that would make your head spin in this country. I think, like most Americans, I assumed this was happening in developing countries, right? Where children are bought and sold for sex.

And when I read this article, I remember thinking, "What the hell?" This is ten minutes from where I live. Jane Doe one, two, and three. And they're represented, by the way, by Ropes & Gray, one of sort of the oldest white-shoe law firms in the country. And, oh, by the way, how did Ropes & Gray get the case? Like, how did they lose their motion, right? How did they lose this lawsuit?

That made no sense to me. And I'm a recovering lawyer, which is like highly irritating to many people, by the way. But I'm really thinking at the time -- I read the decision, and I remember thinking, "How is it legal in this country for websites like Backpage -- and there are many others, by the way, to host ads selling children? How is that legal? And yet, it is.

GLENN: Okay. So now -- so people understand, this is some -- you know, this comes from The Village Voice. And a lot of people on the left were protecting The Village Voice. And they were like, "No. There's no way they understand. There's no way this is happening." Because to a lot of people on the left, The Village Voice is, you know, the voice of a generation, and a hero outlet to many.

MARY: Oh, yeah. Fighting -- fighting truth to power, right? I mean, exposing corruption. Exposing wrongdoing.

And yet -- and listen, I'm a liberal, right? I swing very left. And it pains me, right? That Backpage and the Village Voice -- and we'll talk about Google in a minute. But the dirty little secret to all the alternative weeklies was that their editorial was supported by the sex ad. And, listen, back in the '70s, it was free love, free sex, right? Whatever goes. And I think the term -- the lexicon around human trafficking, nobody really started talking about it until ten years ago, 12 years ago. What is it? And I think that really exposed -- what you said before, this is -- particularly as it relates to children, modern day slavery. And the numbers are escalating with technology online. And what I mean by that is that the problem is getting worse, rather than better. There's an estimate of around 15 percent of all homeless and runaway children, will be victimized. And when you think about the numbers, there's anywhere between 1.6 and 2.5 million children on the street at any one time.

Fifteen percent of those children -- oh, my God, we're not talking about a kid here or there that shows up at the Port Authority. We are talking about conservatively, hundreds of thousands of children. And, by the way, I received this report from the University of Louisville. And they said, "Mary, you know, we understand that 15 percent is sort of the estimate. It's in the shadows. Nobody quite knows. But make no mistake, we -- we did a study of children in Kentucky and Indiana, we have concluded that 40 percent of homeless and runaway children were victimized by child sex trafficking. Forty percent. So this is a problem that is escalating in size and scale. And it sits along the opioid epidemic. And that is something that nobody is talking about. Because those children are the most vulnerable.

GLENN: Okay. Mary, I'm going to run out of time. So I would like to -- because I want to get -- I want to build this in layers because there's a lot of information that people need to absorb.

First, I want you to watch the video. It's free. It's everywhere. It's I Am Jane Doe. It is a really well-produced documentary. And I warn you, when you start talking about freedom of speech, you will -- you will -- if you're a Libertarian, start to say, "Well, wait a minute. Hang on just a second. Do they have a right -- do they have a responsibility to know exactly what's happening on the other side, if somebody is just putting in a classified ad?" But that's not what's happening here. You know, if somebody wants to post something on Facebook -- Facebook isn't responsible for what everybody says online. They can't be. It will put them out of business.

Nobody can do that. But that's not what's happening. Can you quickly, Mary, explain what the Backpage is doing.

MARY: Yeah, and so this is really interesting. Because a Senate investigation sprang up, which provided all kinds of evidence that -- for example, a pimp or a trafficker might post an ad for a child and would use terms that would signal a child: New in town, fresh off the boat, schoolgirl.

These are indicia, of a child, right? And Backpage developed filters, according to the congressional report, that would automatically scrub the term "Lolita" or "schoolgirl," right? Or Amber Alert, and yet the ad would then be posted.

So there was some conscious decision to mask indicia of a child. And I think that is what is so troubling about the Wild West online is that Backpage and those that have supported Backpage -- which, by the way, includes Google and others that are desperate to keep this Wild West culture online have said, even if you're a website that encourages illegality, you still bear no responsibility for the harm that happens, including the sale of children.

STU: Mary, just to clarify, were you saying that they put the term Amber Alert in the ads?

MARY: Some traffickers apparently put the term "Amber Alert," because it was a term that Congress discovered that was filtered out automatically by Backpage.

STU: That is absolutely unbelievable.

MARY: I kid you not. I kid you not. There's a new child to the cause, and there's an effort in Congress right now to really close the loophole, right? If you're a bad actor and you're encouraging this activity, you ought to bear some responsibility. Right? There should be a financial incentive for you to clean up your act.

And one of the mothers, her child, she lost her child at Christmas time to a Backpage buyer. Her daughter was 16 years old. What did the ad say? Fresh. New in town.

GLENN: I learned this from working with Operation Underground Railroad, that there are, you know, low miles. There are terms.

MARY: Precisely.

GLENN: There are terms that people who are buying children clearly understand. And for Backpage to be censoring those and then not turning those people into police is really quite reprehensible and frightening.

I want you to -- here's what I want you to do: Mary, would you be willing to come back later this week? Because I want to talk to you about the Google connection.

MARY: Yes, of course.

GLENN: Because Mary is -- you know, correct me if I'm wrong, Mary, but you and I don't agree on much, I would imagine.

(laughter)

MARY: Exactly. You could probably count it on one hand, Glenn.

GLENN: Yes. So we don't agree on much. However, we do agree on this. And what she's going through now, what Google appears to be doing to her, they are making her look like me. They're making her -- you know, treating her --

STU: This is terrible, Mary. I'm so sorry for you.

GLENN: Yeah, no. They're treating her like they would treat me. So something is really wrong. I get it when they're treating me that way. But when they're treating one of their own, there's something really wrong. And I want her to explain that.

But the first thing I want you to do is, please today watch I Am Jane Doe and bring yourself up to speed on this. Because there's something going through Congress that needs to happen. Later this week, I hope to have Mike Lee on to talk -- have you talked to Mike Lee about this at all, Mary?

MARY: No -- no, I have not.

GLENN: Okay. So I would like to get Mike involved in this. Because I trust Mike as a real strict constitutionalist, but he's also a deeply moral man. And so we'll -- you know, we'll not excuse -- will not excuse the -- the horrors done to people over -- you know, for rights, if you will.

MARY: Right. Exactly. And he's a First Amendment specialist. And I think both he and I fundamentally agree, this is about conduct online. It has nothing to do with speech.

GLENN: Nothing to do with speech. Okay. Mary, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

The name of the movie is I am Jane Doe. We'll talk again, Mary. Thanks.

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

Getty Images / Handout | Getty Images

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

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

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.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.