Remembering
James Robison

You are viewing a page from our archive site. To browse the latest Christian TV content on The Stream, click here.

Al’s Afternoon Tea: Trump Team Loaded With Kids. Are Big Families Going to Be Cool Again?

By Al Perrotta Published on November 20, 2024

Welcome back in for Al’s Afternoon Tea, our chance to stop and savor some of the latest news. Today, we have to set up a kids’ table. 

Are Big Families Cool Again?

The election may not only have given America a “new birth of freedom,” it may lead to a new burst of births. Aside from being gunslingers one and all, the administrative gang Trump is assembling for his new term tends to have large families.

Sure, Elon Musk blows the curve with 12 kids, but Sean Duffy has nine, and both Pete Hegseth and Robert Kennedy, Jr. have seven. Trump himself has five kids, while a slew of other nominees have at least three children. 

Could we see, with the help of this administration, a cultural shift back toward large families? That the effects of the Left frightening young people into de facto childlessness for the sake of the “planet” are wearing off?

Of course, the Left won’t stop their hysterical scare tactics. Take Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, who wants Democrats to push the notion that “Republicans want to kill your kids.”

Hmm. Would that be before or after Democrats exterminate them in the womb? Seriously, didn’t Rubin get the memo on November 5 that that kind of rhetorical fearmongering is over?

A Lady Who Cofounded a Pro Wrestling Empire as Education Secretary? Why Not?

Those who were joking that Hulk Hogan would be next to join President-Elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet weren’t far off. Instead, Trump has chosen Hulk’s old boss.

On Tuesday, Trump selected Linda McMahon to be the next Secretary of Education. While McMahon served as head of the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first term and is a board chair of the American First Policy Institute, she is best known for cofounding the WWE professional wrestling empire with her husband, Vince McMahon.

If you appreciate The Stream archives, please consider supporting the outreaches of LIFE.

Trump is vowing to end the Department of Education, returning more power to state and local governments. It’s no surprise why. The Department of Education didn’t exist for the first 200 years of the country, and we led the world in education. According to the 2024 assessment by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States is now 16th out of 81 countries in science and 34th in math. Plus, under the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Education is more concerned with DEI than the ABC’s, and kids are more likely to study drag queens than the queens of England. 

So if we need the queen of the WWE to wrestle our education system into shape, or choke out of existence the federal department that’s let our standards collapse, so be it.

One way to improve science and math scores is to reignite a passion for space. Enter Elon Musk.

To the Stars …

Yesterday, with Trump at his side, Elon Musk launched the sixth test flight of his Super-Heavy Starship rocket. At 397 feet tall and twice as powerful as the Saturn V rocket that took mankind to the moon, Starlight is the heaviest object ever lifted off the face of the earth.

As CBS News reports, “The primary goals of Tuesday’s flight was to boost the Starship out of the lower atmosphere on a suborbital flight to reentry over the Indian Ocean while the Super Heavy booster executed the return-to-launch-site mid-air capture or, as it turned out, a safe ocean splashdown.”

Musk aims for Starship to be a fully reusable heavy-lift rocket, which he says is key to making humanity “multiplanetary.” If all goes as planned, Starlight will help us reach Mars in the not-too-distant future. Trump hopes to see it done by the end of his term.

For the meantime, let’s again just watch that big thing fly.

Mace Doubles Down, Introduces Bill to Ban Men from Women’s Facilities on All Federal Property

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who is a rape survivor, introduced a new bill Wednesday morning designed to protect women’s spaces from being usurped by transgender biological males. It’s called the Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act, and would “prohibit individuals from accessing or using single-sex facilities on federal property other than those corresponding to their biological sex.”

Mace unveiled the legislation on The Michael Knowles Show this morning, telling the Daily Wire commentator, “This is a question that needs to be answered. Do women have rights or not? Are we going to allow these men to bully us into submission? And I say, no, no more. I’m done with this.

“There’s no amount of bullying and threats on my life that they’ve made this week that’s going to stop me from this.” 

One problem Mace faces is that she’s dealing with opponents who struggle to grasp reality. For example, yesterday, NBC News Washington correspondent Yamiche Alcindor accused Mace of having “baselessly accused” Sarah McBride, Congress’s new transgender member, of being a “biological male trying to force himself into women’s spaces.” Baselessly? McBride is not a biological male just because he says he identifies as a female? And his anatomy gives no one the basis to say otherwise?

Dr. Oz Tapped to Lead Medicare/Medicaid

While most people would be hard pressed to recognize most of the Biden administration’s top officials, Trump continues bringing people into his new administration with whom the public is already familiar. On Tuesday he named Dr. Mehmet Oz — yes, TV’s famous Dr. Oz — to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the administration’s effort to Make America Healthy Again.

“Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake,” Trump said.

Oz’s appointment is getting support from a surprising source: John Fetterman, who defeated Oz in 2022 to win Pennsylvania’s Senate seat.

Since returning from a hospital stay, during which he was treated for a severe bout with depression after his election, Fetterman has truly become one of the more interesting characters in politics. Did you catch his recent advice to fellow Democrats to chill out?

This Just In: Arizona Has Finally Completed Counting Its Ballots

Congratulations to John McCain for winning the 1986 Senate race against Richard Kimball.

 

On the Stream Menu

In the latest installment of his video interviews with experts on election integrity, The Stream‘s John Zmirak talks with Michael Del Rosso in “Cybersecurity Expert: The Deep State Isn’t Just Corrupt, But Communist.”  

Meanwhile, Frank Kaufmann reveals “The True Intentions Behind President Trump’s Vision for America.” 

 

Al Perrotta is The Stream’s Washington bureau chief, coauthor with John Zmirak of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration, and coauthor of the counterterrorism memoir Hostile Intent: Protecting Yourself Against Terrorism.