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: GOP Senator Wants ‘Due Process’ for All 8 Million Illegal Immigrants Biden Waved In

Senator James Lankford (r)

By John Zmirak Published on May 8, 2025

Periodically, I like to remind Stream readers of the fabled Washington Generals, whose job it is to go out every night and lose gracefully to the Harlem Globetrotters — a team that breaks the rules, mocks the refs, and always gets away with it, to the cheers of the crowd. I do this to help everyone understand how the Republican Party works — and has worked for decades.

Even when it wins elections, as it did under George W. Bush, it rarely moves the needle on any genuine conservative issue — instead offering a watered-down, “Me Too” version of whatever leftist proposals the Democrats have been demanding. That, plus a stupid war or two.

Look at how Congress right now is refusing to codify the budget cuts DOGE has recommended, and which Trump imposed by executive order. Or this latest piece of principled, conservative lawmaking: keeping up taxpayer funding for abortion giant Planned Parenthood:


The latest example of a Republican being a good Washington General: From deep-red Oklahoma, Senator James Lankford. He’s the senator who lent his name to a mass-amnesty bill, proposed during the Biden administration, as the price of getting any control over the border, allegedly to fix our “broken immigration system.” Now Lankford is demanding that every one of the eight million-plus who flooded into our country deserves a fair hearing, even if they just swam the Rio Grande and are still dripping wet:

Of course, the time and expense required to offer such due process to foreign citizens with no legal claim to it would shut down President Trump’s efforts to undo the mass invasion Biden orchestrated with the clear purpose of transforming the American electorate and imposing what Elon Musk has called a “one-party state.” So whatever pro-family squeaks Lankford emits from time to time, now you know which side he’s really on. Not ours.

Federal Judge, Former Fundraiser for Obama and Clinton, Demands Waste of Unspent COVID Money

Yahoo News reports:

A U.S. District Court judge in New York on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s plan to cancel more than $1 billion of previously approved pandemic-era relief funding to schools across the country.

The preliminary injunction issued by District Judge Edgardo Ramos prevents the U.S. Department of Education and its secretary, Linda McMahon, from recovering money “during the pendency of this litigation or until further order of the Court.”

Maryland had joined 15 states and the District of Columbia in the suit against the department and McMahon last month. The suit, filed April 10, followed a letter from McMahon that arrived in email inboxes at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 28, advising state sch0ol officials that any unspent COVID-19 federal recovery funds were being reclaimed immediately.

Most of the money in Maryland comes from the American Rescue Plan’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ARP ESSER, program. McMahon wrote that it didn’t make sense for the federal government to be awarding COVID-19 grants “years after the COVID pandemic ended.”

The Education Secretary can’t stop squandering money on an expired pandemic because one biased judge intervenes. And if we complain about that, we are “objecting to the rule of law.”

How much longer will the Trump team comply with such orders before it faces the constitutional crisis the Left and its judicial activists have forced upon our country? At some point, Trump will have to defy the courts, or else just decide to resign. Why linger in office as a lame duck crippled by unelected judges when the skies are clear and the water is blue down in El Salvador?

Why You Should Be Praying About the Ongoing Papal Election

Only black smoke is coming out of the Sistine Chapel in Rome right now, which means the cardinals electing a successor to Pope Francis haven’t come to a decision yet. I view that as a good sign, as an indication that corrupt, progressive “insider” candidates like pro-China Cardinal Pietro Parolin haven’t been able to close the deal. There is still hope that a genuinely Christian pope who is opposed to Marxism and globalism might emerge from these proceedings.

If you’re not a fan of the papacy, why should you care about this? The devoutly Protestant Steve Deace explains:

Wondering who the contenders might be, and which ones would be stooges of China or cheerleaders for the LGBTQ movement? Vatican watchers who favor traditional Christian beliefs have composed dossiers on the frontrunners, which are available online:

Don’t Look to Online Influencers for Theological Insights

One of the funniest, most baffling theological exchanges I’ve seen in some time recently took place between Dr. Jordan Peterson and classical liberal watchdog James Lindsay. They’re discussing the phenomenon of wokeness and how it can be applied to right-wing tribalists as well to those on the Left. But they digress into a discussion of the figure of Lucifer, and go wildly off the rails:

That was … priceless.

Voice of America Might Broadcast Some Pro-America Programs

The great Kari Lake, repeat victim of election fraud, now supervises the Voice of America. She tried to enact President Trump’s executive order to wind down a network that had morphed into a leftist, globalist source of agitprop. Federal court orders frustrated her, so now she’s looking to use the network for good instead of evil:

One America News is scrappy, underfunded, patriotic, and honest. In other words, it’s everything Voice of America should be. Let’s hope that some federal judge doesn’t find a pretext between the lines of the First Amendment to prevent this from happening.

And just in case all this talk about the Washington Generals might have depressed you … there was one night when they maybe got fed up, resolved to beat the Globetrotters … then did!

The crowd was stunned, children cried, and the Globetrotters’ manager went into the Generals’ locker room to berate them … as if they’d cheated. All of which reminds me of what happened after the 2016 election … .

Along The Stream…

Later this morning, don’t miss this epic debate between an Orthodox Jew and a Messianic Jew about the real meaning of the Old Testament and the nature of the Messiah.

Confused by all the claims that MAGA Americans are “xenophobic” and that border enforcement is “extreme”? At 10 a.m. read our sane, evidence-based explainer about why neither of those claims is true.

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.