Remembering
James Robison

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

The Brew: Empty Shelves on Aisle 12

By Gayle McQueary Published on July 24, 2025

In Kansas City, Missouri, where good intentions meet grim reality, the city-funded Sun Fresh Market at Linwood Shopping Center is proving that even millions of taxpayer dollars can’t guarantee a well-stocked grocery store.

Heralded as a socialist-inspired solution to the east side’s “food desert,” this publicly backed venture is now a cautionary tale of empty shelves, spoiled dreams, and a community left hungry for answers.

Back in 2018, Kansas City poured $29 million into the Linwood Shopping Center, with Sun Fresh as its crown jewel — a grocery store meant to bring fresh produce to a neighborhood where options were as scarce as a ripe peach in January.

Fast forward to today, and the store — operated by the nonprofit Community Builders of Kansas City — is a shadow of its once-promising self. Shelves are barren, produce rots faster than the store’s prospects, and customer visits have plummeted from 14,000 a week to a paltry 4,000. The city council approved a $750,000 grant last year to keep the lights on and address concerns about security and infrastructure.

What’s gone wrong? It’s not just a case of bad management, though there certainly could be some. The real rot lies in the social ills socialism promises to fix but often exacerbates: crime, vagrancy, and theft. Shoppers are too scared to visit the store, with drug deals and loiterers turning the parking lot into a wasteland of danger and broken promises.

As Sun Fresh teeters on the brink of closure, Kansas City’s experiment underscores a timeless truth: You can’t mandate prosperity any more than you can mandate a ripe avocado. For now, the city’s residents are left with a bitter taste — and it’s not just the spoiled produce. Someone please pass this story along to New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, who is advocating putting city-run grocery stores in every one of the five boroughs.

Sigh.

Victory Four Years in the Making

A Christian photographer and blogger in upstate New York has secured a significant victory for free speech. On Tuesday, state officials settled in a federal lawsuit brought by Emilee Carpenter — and that means New York can’t compel her to create photographs or blog posts that contradict her religious beliefs about marriage.

Carpenter, who runs Emilee Carpenter Photography, specializes in wedding photography, working closely with couples to tell their love stories through images. Guided by her Christian faith, which views marriage as the sacred union between one man and one woman, Carpenter serves all clients but cannot promote messages that conflict with her beliefs — including same-sex marriage. “I’m in the celebration business,” Carpenter said, emphasizing that her artistic choices reflect her faith and authenticity, not discrimination.

New York’s laws, however, had threatened to punish Carpenter severely for that stance — including fines up to $100,000 and up to a year in jail. The state labeled her choices as “discriminatory,” despite her willingness to serve all clients — including those in the LGBT community, as long as the messages aligned with her beliefs.

On Carpenter’s behalf, Alliance Defending Freedom challenged these laws in a federal lawsuit, Emilee Carpenter Photography v. Letitia James, which gained momentum after the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in a similar decision, 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023), that the government cannot compel artists to express messages against their conscience. Citing this precedent, the Second U.S. Court of Appeals sent Carpenter’s case back to a lower court, which ruled in May that New York’s laws violated her free speech rights.

Under the settlement, the state must also pay Carpenter $225,000 in attorneys’ fees.

“Free speech is for everyone, and we’re pleased to settle this case so that Emilee can speak her views on marriage without the threat of being punished by New York” said ADF Senior Counsel Bryan Neihart. “The U.S. Constitution protects Emilee’s freedom to express her own beliefs as she continues to serve clients of all backgrounds.”

Carpenter’s victory ensures she can continue operating her business authentically, free from government coercion, and marks a milestone in the ongoing fight for free speech.

Proof: ‘False Narratives’ Used on Catholics

Speaking of free speech, we wrote back in May that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was declassifying and releasing the Biden administration’s “Strategic Implementation Plan (SIP) for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which just so happened to target Catholics and other pro-lifers as public enemies. On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee released a 51-page report accusing the Biden administration’s FBI, under the direction of Christopher Wray, to construct a “false narrative” depicting Catholics as “violent extremists.”

The new report shows how the FBI created a “manufactured narrative” to justify surveilling houses of worship, including spying on a priest who refused to disclose what a parishioner who’d recently been arrested revealed in the confessional.

The report found no legitimate reason for a “formal investigative assessment” of the priest, whose background, travel, and credit card details were all monitored and discussed in emails at the FBI. It also revealed that terms like “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” appeared in 13 FBI documents from 2009 to 2023, suggesting there may have been more abuses of religious liberty than Wray admitted.

The House Judiciary Committee plans to continue investigating the Biden-Harris administration’s gross misuse of federal law enforcement against Catholics. Let’s pray we see these injustices righted for the families that were unjustly targeted.

Along The Stream…

Jules Gomes shares some surprising news out of Rome that is throwing traditional Catholics into a tizzy in “Pope Leo XIV Sweeps Aside Primacy of Rome in Call for Ecumenical Unity.”

Later this afternoon, Pastor Shane Idleman discusses seven keys to knowing God’s will in “When God Calls, Satan Attacks.”

 

Gayle McQueary is The Stream’s social media specialist. She has a background in production and an opinion on most news headlines.