Your BRIGHT Week in Review
Plus: Dinner and a Movie
Photo of the Week
The Politics of Being a Studmuffin: RFK Jr., Kid Rock, and Sexy Shirtless Cold Plunges (PJ Media)
What I’m Reading This Week
One of my goals this year is to read more. I went from reading 40-50 books per year to less than 10 in 2025. A Better Life, a novel by Lionel Shriver, is a new recommendation from Ann Coulter. From the book description:
Gloria Bonaventura, a divorced mother of three living with her 26-year-old son Nico in a sprawling house in Brooklyn, decides to participate in a new city program that would pay her to take in a migrant as a boarder. Gloria is thrilled when sweet, kind, helpful Martine arrives. But Nico is skeptical. A classic live-at-home Gen Zer with no interest in adulthood, Nico resents any interruption of his “hovercraft repose.”
As the months go by, Martine endears herself to both Nico’s sisters, while finding her way into Gloria’s heart and even, briefly, Nico’s. But as Martine’s disturbingly dodgy compatriots begin to show up, Nico conceives a dark twin hostile to both his mother’s altruism and the “migrant crisis” in general—and turns out to be anything but a reliable narrator himself.
Local Police Cooperation With ICE Surges 950% Under Trump
RedState reported a surge in cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE is reshaping the immigration debate. New data from FWD.us show that in the first year of Trump’s second term, arrests by local officers working with ICE jumped 950%. As of late January, 1,168 agencies had officers trained to assist ICE, up sharply from the Biden years. The task force model deputizes local officers to make immigration arrests and offers financial incentives. Red states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee lead participation, while some blue jurisdictions predictably resist cooperation.
Becky Noble of RedState noted, “The American public also seems to be on the side of local and federal cooperation. Two recent polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans, including Democrats, favor the deportation of illegal immigrants and support ICE enforcing immigration laws. What is it going to take for Democrats and the left to figure out that Tom Homan and the boys are not going anywhere anytime soon?”
Rubio’s New World Order
At the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Europe to embrace a tougher alliance under President Trump, declaring, “President Trump demands seriousness and reciprocity from our friends here in Europe.” The New York Post reported he rejected Europe’s current path, saying, “We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” Framing the U.S. and Europe as civilizational partners, Rubio said, “We are part of one civilization – Western civilization,” and emphasized, “For the United States and Europe, we belong together.”
Rubio blasted past trade and immigration policies, warning, “In a pursuit of a world without borders, we opened our doors to an unprecedented wave of mass migration that threatens our cohesion of our societies.” He added, “We do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.”
A new world order, indeed!
On the New York Times’ response to the speech, David Strom at Hot Air wrote:
Rubio’s speech was a call to renewing a shared greatness, and was unashamed of the West’s values, including our colonial past. The Times and AOC are pointing to the Islamic tide rising in Europe and declaring that to be the future. Europeans should learn to live with grooming gangs, Sharia law, and banning dog parks to accommodate their new overlords.
At least you can appreciate the fact that the left is becoming ever more explicit about its hatred for Western Culture and white people. Spain just regularized half a million illegal migrants and put them on the path to rapid citizenship in an effort to fight the “far right,” and Democrats here at home are openly, in some cases, calling for a race war.
The battle lines within the West are drawn. There are those who want to drive a stake through the heart of Western culture, and those who want to see it rise again.
RELATED: Democrats Audition for Nomination in Munich (Hot Air)
Lent Challenge Aims to Bring Peace Despite Cultural ‘Noise’
The Chosen actor Jonathan Roumie is urging believers to use Lent as a reset through the Hallow 40-Day Prayer Challenge, themed “The Return.” In an interview with Fox News Digital, he said, “Lent becomes a time for just meditation, peace and reflection,” especially as “the noise in the culture … just seems to get louder and louder and louder.” He said the challenge builds “resilience” and helps people reconnect with God despite the daily chaos. Roumie believes many people are returning to church because they are “really tired of what they’re experiencing in society.” Using the app, he added, “It gives me a sense of calm and peace and mindfulness,” and helps users “return to the Father.”
Fox News Digital added, “Hallow was founded in December 2018. Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt are among the many others who have been outspoken about their regular use of the app for prayer and meditation.”
Dinner and a Movie
My favorite Robert Duvall movie is The Godfather, of course. However, I felt like it would be more appropriate to choose his favorite role, Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove, to honor his work.
There’s a restaurant in Virginia that Duvall owned at one point that I always wanted to visit but never got a chance while I lived there. In one interview talking about local cuisine, he described scrapple as “everything but the oink.” If you don’t have access to scrapple, go for Robert Duvall’s Crabcake Recipe instead.