Category: Rational Thought

Back in January 2025, the Department of Homeland Security put out a statement bragging that, under its new policy, “criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches.” It read like a tough-guy soundbite at the time. This month, a federal appeals court used that exact sentence as evidence against the government.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction blocking DHS agents from conducting immigration enforcement at or near more than 1,400 houses of worship across 33 states and Washington, D.C. Senior Judge Barbara Milano Keenan wrote that the policy had already caused a documented decline in worship attendance, placing “a substantial burden” on congregations’ ability to practice their religion — and that DHS’s own public statement showed the agency meant to target those buildings all along.

The ruling applies specifically to the Quaker, Sikh, and Baptist congregations who sued, and it requires DHS to fall back on the more restrictive 2021 policy that generally kept immigration agents out of churches, schools, and hospitals absent a warrant or an emergency. DHS, for its part, called the ruling “a false narrative to try and demonize our brave ICE law enforcement” — which is one way to respond to a court quoting your own press release back to you.

All of this actually happened. CT Mirror confirmed it.

Here is a fact you have probably repeated with total confidence at a campfire: baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than adults because they can’t control their venom and “dump it all” in one bite. Here is the correction: that is completely false, and researchers at Loma Linda University just proved it with actual venom milkings.

Adult rattlesnakes produced an average of 120 milligrams of venom per milking. Juveniles produced less than 15 milligrams. The babies are not secretly more lethal. They are, in fact, working with a fraction of the ammunition. The myth apparently didn’t even exist before the late 1960s, at which point it got into newspapers and never left, eventually infecting the brains of 53% of surveyed Southern California students and, more alarmingly, 73% of emergency responders and health professionals.

So a rumor with no scientific basis outcompeted actual toxinology for over half a century, largely because it made a better story than the truth. The truth, notably, still involves a venomous snake biting you, which remains bad regardless of the snake’s age.

Consider this your one dose of real information for the week. Use it to correct someone smugly, then immediately go check every category on this website for the exact opposite of what we just did.

All of this actually happened. ScienceDaily confirmed it.

In a stunning display of a co-equal branch of government actually functioning, U.S. District Judge Claria Horn Boom dismissed a Department of Justice lawsuit demanding Kentucky hand over unredacted voter rolls, including residents’ driver’s license and Social Security numbers. Because apparently that needed to be litigated.

Boom isn’t some rogue outlier here, either. She’s the eighth Trump-appointed judge to look at this exact demand from this exact administration and say some version of “no, federal law does not grant you unfettered access to a state’s private citizen data, thanks for asking.” The DOJ has now sued 30 states and D.C. over this, going 0-for-a-lot.

Boom leaned on a recent 6th Circuit ruling against the same maneuver in Michigan, which means the losing streak now has actual appellate backup. The DOJ, undeterred by math, has already asked for a rehearing.

It’s not much, but for one Thursday in Kentucky, basic data privacy law beat out a federal agency’s group project. We’ll take the win.

All of this actually happened. Louisville Public Media confirmed it.

A Florida man walked into a Wawa bathroom in Palm Beach County carrying a black fanny pack containing $30,023 in cash — proceeds from selling his Pokémon collectibles, which he was planning to use to help pay for his sister’s medical procedure. He set it down. He walked out without it. He came back.

The money was still there. He returned it to staff. The rightful owner was reunited with his Pokémon money.

This is not how Florida stories are supposed to go. Somewhere, a deputy is re-reading this and checking to see if it ends differently. It does not. The man had $30,000 in a fanny pack — for reasons that are both explained and somehow still confusing — and when he left it behind in a gas station bathroom, he went back and gave it to someone instead of pretending it never happened.

To be fair: he was carrying the money in a fanny pack to a Wawa bathroom because he was selling Pokémon cards to fund medical care for a family member. The American healthcare system remains a reliable source of situations in which people are in Wawa bathrooms with $30,000 in cash for understandable reasons.

Florida, you almost had something wholesome. Then we re-read the part about the Pokémon cards and the fanny pack and the Wawa bathroom and realized: no, this is still Florida. It’s just Florida being accidentally decent.

All of this actually happened. The Washington Post verified it, bless their hearts.

In a remarkable act of institutional self-preservation, the Catholic Church has issued a formal rebuke of the United States government’s claim that God is a co-belligerent in the Iran war. Pope Leo XIV, who is both the head of the world’s largest Christian denomination and apparently the only person left who has read the source material, stated plainly: “God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war.”

He later clarified: “God does not bless any conflict.”

This came in direct response to Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, who has been describing the war in Iran as a mission of divine purpose, and Donald Trump, who at an Easter press conference — on Easter — said “God is good” in reference to the bombing campaign. Hegseth called a rescued pilot “reborn” on the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a metaphor that everyone present apparently let slide.

The Pope, for his part, has been consistent. He described threats to destroy Iranian civilization as “unacceptable.” He has repeatedly called for de-escalation. He is, at this point, doing more to represent the teachings of Jesus Christ than the people who claim Jesus told them to start this war.

This is what passes for Rational Thought in 2026: the Pope has to tell the American government that God does not have a preferred outcome in their bombing campaign. We are all doing great.

All of this actually happened. The Irish Star confirmed it, and God bless them for covering it.

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that 70 percent of Americans believe Donald Trump is “not too” or “not at all” religious — a figure that has risen eight percentage points since fall 2024. This is notable on its own terms, but it becomes considerably more interesting when you consider that the same period covers an AI image of Trump as a Christ-like figure posted to his social media, a Secretary of Defense quoting scripture at Pentagon briefings, military commanders allegedly telling soldiers that Trump was anointed by Jesus to trigger the Apocalypse, and a formal fight with the Pope.

Somehow, all of this religious signaling has resulted in fewer Americans thinking Trump is religious. This is either a devastating indictment of the signaling strategy or a sign that the American public is quietly more theologically sophisticated than generally assumed. Possibly both.

The Daily Beast, in a piece published this year, argued that Trump’s “God-talk is actually turning America off religion” more broadly — that associating faith with political theater is causing people to reconsider the whole enterprise. NPR ran a piece titled “Christians are having a Trump-sized reckoning.” Conservative Catholics, according to Religion News Service, are becoming disillusioned at accelerating speed, particularly following the pope conflict.

In a stunning twist, the most effective argument against American theocracy may turn out to be watching someone attempt to build one in real time. File this under Rational Thought, with the caveat that we’re grading on a steep curve.

All of this actually happened. Pew Research confirmed it, and their methodology is above reproach.

In a move that would have seemed unremarkable in most of recorded history but feels somehow radical in 2026, the Pope said that God doesn’t bless wars. Specifically, Pope Leo wrote: “Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.” He called for peace in the Middle East and insisted that “God does not bless any conflict.”

The White House, whose Secretary of Defense has been crediting divine providence with Iran war victories and quoting Psalms at press briefings, has not formally replied to the Pope’s theological position. This is not because they agree. CNN ran a piece on “the GOP’s double standard on the pope.” Analysis pieces appeared. Things were tense.

It is worth noting, for the record, that the leader of the Catholic Church — an institution with a complicated personal history on the subject of wars it has blessed — looked at the current situation and said, in so many words, “No. Stop. God is not doing this.” This constitutes, in the GCJ editorial view, an act of rational thought, however relative that designation has become.

The struggle between sacred and secular power is, as scholars note, roughly a thousand years old. It’s nice to see it’s still getting the attention it deserves in what used to be the news cycle.

We did not make this up. Middle East Eye has the receipts.