Better in their words…

NYC Mayor Adams rage-quits race; Pastor Voddie Baucham passes at 56; revival and pushback accelerate; NHS peddles more ‘public health’ nonsense; Democrats sue over Guard in Portland; more.

Source: NEVER MIND ☙ Monday, September 29, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥🔥🔥

In some ways, it felt like the end of an era. Early this morning, the New York Times ran the story below the headline, “With 38 Days to Go, Eric Adams Drops Out.” Spare a moment’s sympathy for New Yorkers, who —with just over a month left— face an impossible choice between Mamdani the Commie and disgraced Nursing Home Killer and Lov Guv Andrew Cuomo, with the GOP’s courageous but statistically unlikely Guardian Angel founder Curtis Sliwa trailing the progressive cruise ship in a leaky rubber raft.

Adams, a former cop, assumed the Mayor’s mantle from lockdown-loving Bill de Blasio in 2022. In case you’ve forgotten (and who could blame you), de Blasio hawked jabs with free french fries, single-handedly hollowed out the Big Apple’s economic core, shuttered schools, fired cops, teachers, and first responders for refusing experimental shots, paid drug dealers and illegal immigrant to infest the city’s finest hotels, let BLM looters run wild on Fifth Avenue, and generally made life miserable for everyone in every single way he could think of while awake or dreaming.

Yes, Martha, that revolting spectacle was what Democrats called ‘good government’ in the City that Never Sleeps. But in 2022, new hope blossomed in Central Park when, plumb spang amidst the unfolding covid nightmare, pro-cop Democrat Eric Adams took the reins from de Blasio.

Encouragingly, Adams started —painfully slowly— unwinding the worst of de Blasio’s covid policies. He complained —loudly, but without doing much— about the burden of illegal immigrants, and thus got himself scribbled onto Biden’s naughty list, thereby attracting dramatic FBI raids and the Merrick Garland Special: a criminal prosecution for some poorly defined bribery allegations revolving around a free plane ticket to Turkey, or something similar that nobody has ever been able to clearly explain.

Complaining about illegals was also what caused corporate media to turnagainst the City’s second black mayor.

I have no doubt there was plenty of financial funny business attached to Adams’s campaigns. After all, he was a Democrat. Until this year, that is. After Trump’s DOJ dismissed the lawfare prosecution, and Democrats made clear he was persona non grata, Adams re-registered as an independent. And the Democrats’ purity spiral spiralled even tighter.

Anyway, Democrats have now accomplished electing two black mayors, and ensured both of them served only one term. Great job. But never mind.

🔥 According to polls, Zohran Mamdani, 33, is poised to win. He is an avowed socialist whose agenda sits leftwards of Senator Bernie Sanders, so it is probably fair for Trump to call him “my little communist.” Mamdani —born in Kampala, Uganda— only became a U.S. citizen in 2018. If he wins, he’ll become the City’s first Muslim mayor, first Indian-Ugandan mayor, and its youngest mayor.

Yesterday, President Trump called Eric Adams’ withdrawal a gift. “Can I be honest? I think it’s the greatest thing to ever happen to the Republican Party,” the President told Fox. “It’s a gift. If a communist takes over, it’s sad for New York City, but it will recover. Sometimes you need a shock like that to straighten you out.”

New York City, prepare for a shock.

😇😇😇

On Friday, USA Today ran a story headlined, “Pastor Voddie Baucham Jr. dies at 56 after ‘emergency medical incident’.” One of the most quietly influential evangelical pastors of our generation has gone home to be with the Lord.

Baucham, 56, who did not become religious until college, was married since 1989 and had nine children. He is credited for helping fuel America’s homeschooling revolution, with perhaps a single, tart observation: “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”

His ministry extended far beyond his local church, ultimately encompassing a global audience. Baucham leaned hard into logic and reason, which appealed to many thoughtful intellectuals who were on the fence about faith. He is also famous for his concise and compelling defense of the truth of the Bible: “I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.”

Between 2004 and last year, Bauchum published eight books. He unapologetically defended classical Christianity and systematically but gracefully deconstructed wokeism and sexual politics. He rhetorically battled against the jabs and covid fearmongering. His videos have been viewed millions of times by both the faithful and the curious. Countless comments and tributes on social media, YouTube, and ministry sites recount people turning to faith or experiencing spiritual breakthroughs after encountering his calm, reasoned preaching.

It seems to many Christians like God is doing quite a bit of housekeeping this year, having called home Charlie Kirk, John MacArthur (who defied lockdowns and successfully sued to reopen churches in California), and now Pastor Baucham. Christians mourn for a moment, but “For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21.

🔥 But any sense of momentary tragedy must be offset by the greatest revival anyone living can remember. Fox News headline, yesterday:

For my entire adult life —at least since I started paying attention— corporate media constantly crowed about how young people were fleeing Christianity, seeking spirituality in witchcraft, neo-paganism, and “non-affiliation.” They even called young Americans the “none of the above” generation. But, even before progressives murdered Charlie Kirk, the recent trend has been clear and undeniable.

After Charlie Kirk’s killing, the velocity has only increased to a dizzying speed:

America has experienced two of what historians call “Great Awakenings.” The first arose during the colonial period in the 1730’s, after decades of slipping church attendance and what then-ministers decried as “spiritual indifference” and “theological fuzziness.” By the early 1700’s, historians record that a paltry 10-20% of colonial Americans belonged to a church.

The First Great Awakening reversed that trend, in a single decade, and launched two generations of spiritual resurgence.

By 1800, following the successful War for American Independence, church membership had again slipped sharply. It plunged to a historic low of 10%. Ironically, revolutionary fervor and themes of personal freedom and liberty clashed head-on with institutional religion. Ministers at that time complained bitterly about “drunkenness, gambling, and sexual looseness,” as well as countless other deplorable moral failures, probably including whistling in the street.

I bet they never saw the transgender movement coming.

The Second Great Awakening began with camp meetings and revival preachers in frontier America. It dramatically reversed the post-Independence decline and energized faith across denominations. Between 1800 and 1835, the Nation’s Second Great Awakening provided more durable fruit. Social reforms launched by the revival —abolition, temperance, women’s education, and new Christian movements— remained and even intensified through the Civil War era and beyond, shaping American culture for the next century.

The most recent and steepest decline in American religious faith began in the early 1990s.

In 1990, nearly all —about 90%— of U.S. adults identified as Christian. But the percentage began steadily falling, picking up speed in the 2000s and 2010s, with especially steep drops among Millennials and Gen Z.

Guess when that decline halted? In 2020, the year of the Pandemic.

More recently, on top of the surge of young people —especially young men— returning to chuch, we’ve witnessed Supreme Court decisions unleashing school prayer, states returning the Ten Commandments and Bible study to public school (most recently, Texas), an entirely unlikely and unexpected “Tradwife” movement, high-profile conversions by influencers (like Russel Brand) and occult superstars (Kat Von D), and full-throated, unapologetic emphasis on Christian belief from our top leaders including our Vice-President JD Vance, who seems likely to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2028.

“Experts” say it is simply too soon to name the present moment a Third Great American Awakening. To qualify, the current revival must last more than a couple years and result in a measurable popular increase in Christian belief. But what difference does the name make? It will take a decade or more to satisfy experts, but we can all sense the undeniable pressure of unfolding events, a kick in the teeth to our collective consciousness.

Chaos attends even positive change. Progressives view religious revival with terror and loathing. The party of tolerance is unlikely to long tolerate the expansion of Christian political participation. In 2023, the Atlantic ran a story headlined, “The Only Thing More Dangerous Than Authoritarianism.” I’ll give you one guess what that Democracy-destroying threat the Atlantic identified as the “only thing” more dangerous than the abhorrent “a” word.

Not only was Charlie Kirk’s assassination inextricably intertwined with his faith, but progressives shooting up churches has become a regular (albeit muted) news item. This murderous trend is likely get much worse before it gets better, and will likely increase in intensity along with the trend in public faith that is creating the environment for the conflict. CNN, one month ago:

Robin Westman, before killing himself, slew two and shot 18 others in his attack on an Annunciation church service. ‘Robin’ was born Robert Westman. According to independent journalist Andy Ngo, Westman considered himself a member of “Trantifa” (transgender Antifa). You cannot find that fact reported in corporate media platforms.

Likewise, the murderer in a 2019 school shooting in Colorado tolerantly wrote on Facebook, “You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays.” On its “National Hate Map,” the Southern Poverty Law Center tolerantly lists conservative Christian groups alongside KKK chapters.

🔥 The left’s new Emmanuel Goldstein, Christian nationalism, can be distinguished from “regular” Christianity in that it refuses to lock religious expression up behind the shuttered doors of the sanctuary. That’s no exaggeration; the left’s terror of Christian nationalism lies in combining politics with faith. But the real historical anomaly is not political involvement. Just the reverse. Historically, American Christians have always been loudly political. Only in the last 50 years has the strict interpretation of “Church-State separation” evolved into an omerta against religious political speech.

Yet, until relatively recently, the historical norm in America was public, political Christianity. Religious motivations fueled abolitionism, suffrage, prohibition, civil rights, anti-abortion activism, and many other movements. American Christians have always been “loud,” forming political parties, holding raucous rallies, and preaching from fiery pulpits about candidates and causes. Religious participation is profoundly American.

That’s not even debatable. In his classic 1830s opus Democracy in America,French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville wrote at length about the role of religion in American politics. He said, “Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions… It regulates the state by regulating the souls of the citizens.”

If the maniacal excesses of the secular Twentieth Century —with its two world wars and the monstrous catastrophe of communism— have taught us anything, it is not about the threat of Christian participation in politics. The real threat is the absence of Christian participation in politics.

Now, at last, the pendulum is swinging back toward where it began. Prepare for turbulence.

🔥🔥🔥

Public health! Yesterday, the London Standard ran a story headlined, “NHS faces backlash over guidance on first-cousin marriages.” Last week, Britain’s government-run National Health Servcie (NHS) published new “guidance” promoting first cousin marriages (common among muslims), saying the long-taboo practice offers “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages.”

Predictable and scorching-hot backlash properly ensued. As of this morning, it appears the NHS guidance has been hastily deleted from its website. Never mind!

Saturday’s C&C discussed the linguistic trickery behind the Orwellian term “public health.” Well, it only took one day to find the latest exhibit. Ask yourself: what business does the NHS have in promoting incestuous unions as “healthy marriages” in the name of public health? Setting aside the morality issue, first-cousin marriages aren’t healthy. It’s not even controversial. Rates of birth defects in incestuous unions are higher; we’ve always known that, and no one disputes it.

How are NHS termites even qualified to discuss marriage? Most NHS bureaucrats would rather push dogs in strollers, not babies. They think the world is overpopulated anyway and have no personal reproductive plans. (But I digress.)

Here, public health doesn’t actually mean health. And it’s not public, since it sneers at the sentiments of most of the public, who instinctively recoil at the grotesque idea of procreation among close relatives. But to the Marxists at the NHS, the lack of public support is the point. They seek to “destigmatize” (ignore the public) a minority-muslim practice. That’s politics, not health, and it’s not in the public interest, at least not in any way that word has even been defined.

This is not even an argument against first-cousin marriages. The practice is illegal in just over half (25) of U.S. states. The point is that this is what public health means. It’s anti-health and anti-public. It’s just a label that allows progressives to advance all their stupidest and wokest ideas, and we should never use the phrase in polite company.

Down with public health! Whatever it is.

🔥🔥🔥

So predictable. Attention Portlanders: if you want out of C&C’s snark crosshairs, you must stop doing stuff like this. Late yesterday, the Hill ran a story headlined, “Oregon sues to block Trump’s National Guard deployment.” It only took six hours. They filed on Sunday.

First thing Sunday morning, War Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, to safeguard a federal immigration facility that local Antifa goons keep obsessively attacking. By early afternoon, the City of Portland and the State government had filed a joint lawsuit asking the court to bar the National Guard from helping make Portland safer.

“President Trump is using his lawful authority to direct the National Guard to protect federal assets and personnel in Portland following months of violent riots where officers have been assaulted and doxxed by left-wing rioters,” White House spokesman Abigail Jackson explained.

🔥 Among a salad bar of other arguments, Oregon’s lawsuit hilariously argued the Tenth Amendment, a simple declaratory sentence that reserves to the states all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government. Oregon’s reliance on the Tenth Amendment was most entertaining because conservatives have almost always been the ones who argued for the Tenth Amendment, with liberal judges laughing maniacally and reminding everyone that the Tenth Amendment was meant to be ignored.

More specifically, over the years, SCOTUS has interpreted the Tenth Amendment as an aspirational policy statement— not as a law. Meanwhile, dissenting conservative Justices and constitutional scholars have harshly criticized the Court for giving “mere lip service” to the Tenth Amendment, and for “barely acknowledging that the Tenth Amendment exists,” arguing that the Court’s flaccid interpretation of the Tenth Amendment undermines federalism itself.

So … it’s another Trump miracle! He’s got the flummoxed leftists now arguing for states’ rights, and arguing that a long-overlooked part of the Bill of Rights should be upheld. And now the Tenth Amendment issue is about to be teed up for the most conservative Supreme Court in living memory.

Anyway, Oregon’s other arguments are more likely to grip, focusing on the use of military without a declaration of national emergency, such as in the case of an insurrection. But —haha!— in more delicious irony, Democrats will soon collide with the brutal fact that on January 6th, 2021, they re-defined “insurrection” to mean an unarmed, unplanned, unintentional trespass of federal property by political protestors. So.

Prepare for hysterical Democrats to deny that January 6th was ever really an “insurrection” in the “legal sense.” In other words, never mind again!

Have a magnificent Monday! Coffee & Covid will return tomorrow morning at the same time, with more hard-hitting essential news and chuckling commentary.

Give a gift subscription

Share

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠