Who or What Do You Choose to Serve?

My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to the book of Joshua in the Old Testament and a lesson titled “Be Strong and of a Good Courage.” The following information introduced the lesson. 

It had taken several generations, but the Lord’s promise was about to be fulfilled: the children of Israel were finally going to inherit the promised land. But in their way stood the Jordan River, the walls of Jericho, and a mighty people who had rejected the Lord (see 1 Nephi 17:35). And they would have to face all of that without their beloved leader Moses. The situation may have made some Israelites feel weak and fearful, but the Lord said, “Be strong and of a good courage.” What reason did they have to be courageous.” What reason did they have to be courageous? It wasn’t because of their own strength – or even Moses’s or Joshua’s – but because “the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:9). When we have our own rivers to cross and walls to bring down, wonderful things can happen in our lives because “the Lord will do wonders among [us]” (Joshua 3:5).

This scripture block teaches the following principles: (1) God will be with me as I strive to be faithful to Him; (2) The word of God can make my way prosperous (Joshua 1:8); (3) Both faith and works are necessary for salvation (Joshua 2); (4) With faith in Jesus Christ, I can experience God’s “wonders” (Joshua 3-4); (5) Obedience invites God’s power into my life (Joshua 6-8);

(6) “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Joshua 23-24).

I feel prompted to discuss the last principle about the wise use of agency, the choice to choose to serve God. Joshua’s teachings are contained in twenty-four chapters, and the first twenty-two chapters exhort the Israelites to “be courageous, keep the commandments, love the Lord, and neither marry among nor cleave unto the remnants of the Canaanites who remain in the land.”

The final two chapters (23-24) teach important warnings, counsel, and promised blessings. Joshua’s final words include the following verses.

14 ¶ Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord.

15 And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

16 And the people answered and said, God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods;

Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke on the topic of “Choose You This Day” in the October 2018 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He taught the following important concept. 

Our Heavenly Father’s goal in parenting is not to have His children do what is right; it is to have His children choose to do what is right and ultimately become like Him. If He simply wanted us to be obedient, He would use immediate rewards and punishments to influence our behaviors.

But God is not interested in His children just becoming trained and obedient “pets” who will not chew on His slippers in the celestial living room. No, God wants His children to grow up spiritually and join Him in the family business.

How Will You Commemorate Memorial Day?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when individuals commemorate Memorial Day. It is commemorated by visiting cemeteries, memorials, participating in parades, and gathering with family members. It is a federal holiday that unofficially marks the first day of summer.

According to this site, Memorial Day was established to celebrate and honor the men and women who lost their lives during combat while serving in the United States military. Once held on May 30 every year, since 1971 it has been held on the last Monday of May annually. 

Memorial Day is a federal holiday that celebrates and honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Observed every year on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day in a nod to the tradition of placing flowers, or other decorative displays at gravesites.

The origins of Memorial Day date back to the Civil War, which claimed the lives of some 620,000 soldiers. In the aftermath, devastated communities sought to honor its dead. The commemoration caught on across the nation, eventually expanding to honor fallen soldiers from all wars, but it wasn’t until 1971 that Memorial Day became a federal holiday….

Whereas Memorial Day commemorates deceased U.S. soldiers, Veterans Day honors all former members of the military with an emphasis on living veterans. [Armed Forces Day honors all men and women currently serving in the military.] ….

The Civil War, which ended in the spring of 1865, claimed more lives than any conflict in U.S. history and required the establishment of the country’s first national cemeteries. By the late 1860s, Americans in various towns and cities had begun holding springtime tributes to these countless fallen soldiers, decorating their graves with flowers and reciting prayers.

It is unclear exactly where this tradition originated; numerous different communities might have independently initiated the memorial gatherings. Some records show that a group of formerly enslaved people in Charleston, South Carolina, organized one of the earliest Memorial Day commemorations less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered in 1865. A year earlier, three women in Pennsylvania had decorated soldiers’ graves in their town.

Nevertheless, in 1966, the federal government declared Waterloo, New York, the official birthplace of Memorial Day. Waterloo – which first celebrated the day on May 5, 1866 – was chosen because it hosted an annual, community-wide event, during which businesses closed and residents decorated the graves of soldiers with flowers and flags.

 

Which Is Best, Regular Time or Daylight Savings Time?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns time and the effects of daylight savings time. The time may come when we will no longer need to change our clocks twice each year. “Spring forward, fall back” may no longer be necessary. Moving to daylight saving time may have been an innovative idea at one time, but it may no longer be one.

According to Jennifer Galardi at The Daily Signal, few people enjoy the biannual shift in time. Most of us enjoy having longer daylight hours in the evening, but other people do not like to get up in the dark mornings. Her article contains other interesting tidbits previously unknown to me. 

It is this lack of consensus, as well as significant pushback from health experts, that has stalled the Sunshine Protection Act (HR 139) in the House Energy and commerce Committee since the beginning of 2025. The broader effort to pass similar versions of the bill has been ongoing since 2018.

Now, it looks as if the sun will rise again on an amendment to make DST permanent for all states, and without much notice.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce late Tuesday night announced a markup meeting for Thursday, May 21, at 10 a.m. On the agenda was a proposal to fold the language of the Sunshine Protection Act into the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act (HR 7389).

This latest attempt would mandate permanent daylight saving time in all states that don’t self-exempt before its effective date, and it would prevent self-exemption after its effective date. The debate is not whether to stop changing the clocks every March and November. Most people, including members of Congress and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, despise the biannual switch. It’s which “version” of time to keep.

The issue doesn’t fall along traditional party lines. It’s not a Right or Left issue. It’s more of a “north vs. south” battle.

Both aforementioned politicians who want to “lock the clock” on daylight saving time are from states below the Mason-Dixon line, as are many of the supporters of the act. States such as Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama feel the warmth of the sun for more time every day in the winter months.

Although the disparity is flipped in the summer because of the Earth’s tilt, Northern states would really bear the brunt of permanent daylight savings time in winter, with the sun not rising in winter until 9 a.m. in some locations. That’s brutal for school-aged kids and anyone who does not have the luxury of sleeping in until the sun rises, and many Northern state legislatures, including Massachusetts, New York, and Alaska [news to me], oppose the change.

This is not merely a geographic issue – it is a fundamental tradeoff between public health and commercial interests.

Congress expanded daylight saving time in two phases: first in 1986, when it moved the start from late April to early April, and again in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which shifted the schedule in 2007 to run from the second Sunday in March through the first Sunday in November.

These decisions were not based on human health, grassroots demand, or even policy to save energy, as some claim. They were made as concessions to the candy and golf industries.

Both major extensions of daylight-saving time were driven by targeted lobbying. In the mid-1980s, a coalition of commercial interests – retail and Chamber of Commerce groups, outdoor recreation industries, and tourism businesses – pushed Congress to extend DST beginning earlier in April to make more money during the evening hours.

The 2005 expansion was heavily backed by the golf industry as well as retail and outdoor recreation groups. The National Confectioner’s Association also supported pushing the DST calendar past Halloween because its members stood to benefit from an extra hour of trick-or-treating – and candy consumption.

Politicians like Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., claim that it is “better for our physical and mental health” to have more sunshine in the later hours. This is consistently proven false by medical experts. In fact, the data points to the exact opposite.

Misalignment of clocks from the sun’s natural position in the sky has been estimated to decrease sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes every night throughout the duration of the DST observation, per a 2019 study. Such misalignment has been found to decrease productivity and earnings up to 4.5% per a 2015 study. Even worse, this misalignment has also been observed to increase fatal vehicular accidents significantly, by 21.8%, resulting in an average loss of $1.8 billion annually, per a 2022 study.

According to a position statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, permanent standard time should replace daylight savings time due to “evidence [that] supports the distinct benefits of standard time for health and safety, while also underscoring the potential harms that result from seasonal time changes to and from daylight savings time.”

Despite the testimony of experts, many in Congress have unabashedly claimed it is great for communities’ bottom line with “more business” to “boost the economy.” However, one study shows that worker productivity decreases during the transition to daylight saving time. Plus, the MAHA movement has made clear that sacrificing Americans’ health to boost consumption (particularly candy!) and line industry pockets is not a tradeoff politicians should make…..

The push to standardize what is not standard – or healthy – is a mistake, particularly for certain geographic areas that will suffer the most. Public policy should reflect the natural order – not manipulate it for profit.

Did you learn something new about time and time changes? I did. Before reading this article, I thought that permanent Daylight Savings Time would be great. Now, I lean toward full-time natural time.

 

What Does the Trump-IRS Settlement Mean?

No one can complain about President Donald Trump being unable to multi-task. While he oversees the situation in Iran, visits China, and indicts Raol Castro, he also delivers the commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy and agrees to withdraw the $10 billion lawsuit that he filed against the IRS for leaking his private tax documents.

Lauren Irwin reported on the settlement in her article published at the Deseret News. As part of the agreement, the Department of Justice has agreed to give “President Donald Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from ever being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service over past tax issues.” This does not say anything about current and future tax issues, but past tax issues cannot be investigated. 

This agreement is “part of a deal the DOJ made when creating a$1.8 billion fund to compensate people or organizations who were prosecuted by past administrations for what the Trump administration says were political purposes.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who was grilled by lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, would not rule out the possibility that people who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol will be considered for payouts from the new fund, per The Associated Press.

The news about the IRS not being able to prosecute the Trump family and organization was quietly added to the press release and was first reported by Politico.

On Monday, it was revealed that Trump would be moving to withdraw a $10 billion lawsuit he had filed against the IRS over a leak of his old tax returns.

The suit was filed earlier this year, but as part of the nine-page settlement agreement Monday, the administration announced the creation of the billion-dollar fund to compensate allies who they say were mistreated by the Biden administration.

A one-page settlement agreement was expanded Tuesday and is an unprecedented step that the administration has taken, benefiting the president and his family directly by saying the IRS is “forever barred and precluded” from pursuing investigations into Trump, “related or affiliated individuals,” trusts and businesses related to the president and their past tax information.

The document was signed by Blanche, who made no mention of the addition when he testified before the Senate on Tuesday.

Trump filed the lawsuit against the IRS in his personal capacity and not on behalf of the federal government. His lawyers moved in April to ask the judge to pause the case while they worked to reach a settlement.

The DOJ said that Trump will receive a formal apology from the IRS over the leak of his tax records but no monetary payment of damages.

DOJ spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre said in a statement to the Deseret News that it is customary for both sides of a case to have executed waivers “of a variety of claims that were or could have been brought.”

“There would be little point in settling several significant claims if either party could simply turn around and seek to initiative more adverse claims that could have been pursued previously,” she said.

Democrats hope to block ‘weaponization’ fund.

House Judiciary Democrats said on Monday they had filed a motion to block the $1.8 billion fund and asked a judge to step in and stop the administration from “engaging in collusive lawsuits.”

On Tuesday, the group of Democrats called the IRS’s exception for Trump a “super-pardon,” and said it was a “total free ride.”

Ranking members Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., said they were demanding Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Blanche and the IRS CEO “preserve records and provide answers” about the fund and the agreement given to the Trump family. The Democrats say that a president has never pursued corruption “this brazenly or on such a colossal scale.”

Two law enforcement officers who protected the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a lawsuit suing the Trump administration to block the implementation of the fund. Harry Dunn, a former member of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Daniel Hodges, a current member of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, say the new fund goes against the Constitution.

The officers argued the fund would fuel violent groups.

However, Trump, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said the people who would benefit from the fund were “destroyed” and went to jail, their families were ruined and they “committed suicide.”

“The Obama administration started it and the Biden administration, was horrible in terms of what they’ve done to people is incredible,” he said. “And we’re reimbursing those people for their legal fees and for their costs and for anybody involved.”

 

 

Do You Want to Learn More about the American Founding?

With 2026 being the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is good for Americans to learn more about this historic national document. Dr. Matthew Brogdon, senior director and Miller Family Chair in the Center for Constitutional Studies at Utah Valley University, shared his opinion about the importance of the Declaration. 

The so-called Olive Branch Petition, published a year earlier as a last-ditch effort to make the colonists’ case to the crown, had been copied out in manuscript on parchment and signed by the delegates. That hand-delivered document, a personal appeal to the king – who refused to read it – can be seen today at the British National Archives.

By contrast, Congress hired a Philadelphia printer, John Dunlap, to print 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence as broadsides meant for wide public distribution. Copies were sent to each colony’s legislature and to George Washington’s Continental Army, then camped out in Manhattan awaiting a British invasion. Three copies still reside in the British National Archives, but not because Congress bothered to send them. They were collected by British officers in North America and sent to the ministry in London.

The “engrossed” – or signed – copy of the Declaration of Independence on display at the U.S National Archives actually came later, almost as an afterthought, and remained rolled up among documents possessed by federal officials for decades. No one outside that small circle of bureaucrats would have seen the engrossed copy until five decades later, when William Stone produced a copperplate engraving at the behest of the State Department, allowing the handwritten text to be readily copied and distributed.

Charles Thomason, the secretary of the Congress in 1776, even pasted a copy of the Dunlap broadside into the official journal, as if emphasizing that the declaration is a public document for dissemination, not a missive from North American subjects to the crown.

The declaration rapidly proliferated through the ordinary operation of a free press, as colonial printers churned out innumerable copies in newspapers and broadsides. Their counterparts in England and Europe followed, and by the fall of 1776, the entire reading public of Europe had encountered the declaration’s immortal words.

In America then – and in modern times – the Declaration of Independence sits at the center of civic life. It sets a high bar for good government. Our national squabbles and scrums are routinely about whether we as a people and our governments live up to that standard.

In the midst of our national crisis over slavery, and while he himself was cut off from the blessings of American citizenship by the color line, the great orator Frederick Douglass urged his audience to hold fast to the Declaration of Independence as the “ring-bolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny…. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

While Americans spend a great deal of time arguing over the principles of equality, representative government, and the God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we spend precious little time in our educational system learning about them.

These saving principles of our national freedom – the “ringbolt,” as Douglass termed them – did not appear out of thin air. They were and are the hard-won result of long experimentation and serious thinking. They are the fruit of Western civilization in all its complexity, building on biblical religious traditions, classical civic republicanism, natural rights political philosophy and the English legal tradition that gave us the blessings of the common law. Few Americans receive a civic and humane education sufficient to appreciate and savor this constitutional and intellectual inheritance. Indeed, few universities possess a faculty eager to teach it.

As we celebrate the semi-quincentennial of American independence, the time is ripe to recover our love of the intellectual and political tradition that bequeathed us the American Founding. And not just for those fortunate enough to find their way into a classroom where that tradition is being faithfully taught. Like the Declaration, which was sent out into the world for everyone to read, Utah Valley University’s Center for constitutional Studies is offering free master classes to anyone who wants to learn more about the Declaration and the ideas that gave birth to the American experiment in self-government.

Each class, taught by professors from UVU, BYU and the University of Oxford, will introduce viewers to the key ideas and history that animate the fundamental document of American independence….

You can find information about the Declaration classes at this site. 

Who Is Spencer Pratt?

My VIP for this week is Spencer Pratt, Republican campaigning for mayor of Los Angeles. As Brooke Brandtjen, “It is rare that mayoral campaigns receive national attention, but Spencer Pratt’s bid for mayor of Los Angeles is an exception.” 

Since his initial campaign announcement in January, Pratt has been gaining momentum and is now polling in second place behind incumbent Mayor Karen Bass (D). His campaign has primarily focused on restoring the city to its former glory, particularly in the wake of the damage from the horrific Palisades fires of 2025.

If politicians want to connect with voters, especially the next generation of voters, they will have to become good communicators online.

Two weeks ago, he uploaded his now-viral campaign ad featuring the hit song “Not Like Us,” showing the untouched properties of Mayor Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman. The video then showcases the charred ruins where Pratt’s home previously stood, along with the trailer he now resides in.

Whatever the fate of Pratt’s campaign, he has hit on a messaging strategy that right-wing candidates would do well to emulate going forward if they want to be successful in the digital age.

Conservatives have had trouble breaking out of their image as out-of-touch intellectuals. Pratt’s message has more emotional impact. And his language is assertive. In the past, Republican leaders like George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and Mike Pence had a cultural reputation for being passive. Pratt’s add makes him look like something out of the “John Wick” action series.

What Can You Do Against the SPLC?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the importance of an honest, law-abiding justice system that holds every individual and organization to the same standards. In particular, the topic is how to hold the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) accountable. Tyler O’Neil explained the following in excerpts from an update of his 2020 book, What You Can Do to Hold the Southern Poverty Law Center Accountable. He explains the history of SPLC, why the organization faces criminal charges, and what you and I can do against SPLC. 

Back in 2019, the SPLC smeared conservative Christian groups as “anti-LGBT hate groups,” [its education arm] Teaching Tolerance was spreading critical race theory and transgender ideology, and the SPLC was trying to convince donor-advised funds to blacklist “hate groups.”

In the intervening years, however, things only got worse….

In 2023, the SPLC released its “hat map” for 2022, and it included 702 “antigovernment extremist groups.” Prominent among these “antigovernment extremists” was the “anti-student inclusion movement.” The “hate map” featured no fewer than 230 chapters of Moms for Liberty, along with the policy group Parents Defending Education.

The next year, the SPLC added groups led by medical professionals, such as Do No Harm and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, to the “hate map,” branding them “anti-LGBTQ hate groups” because they oppose experimental transgender “medicine” to make men appear female and vice versa. The SPLC even branded Gays Against Groomers – a group of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who oppose the sexualization of children and transgender ideology – an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” suggesting that their key target of hate is … themselves.

The following year, the center added Turning Point USA, the largest conservative grassroots youth organization in the country, to the map, stating that its “primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear that white Christian supremacy is under attack.” The SPLC also added PragerU, a conservative group that makes You Tube videos to educate the public, to the map….

Despite the SPLC’s many scandals, President Joe Biden’s administration welcomed this morally bankrupt smear factory with open arms….

Documents showed that R.G. Cravens, manager of research and analysis at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project, spoke at a conference for Justice Department prosecutors on Nov. 7, 2023. A program for the event noted that Cravens would focus on “the anti-LGBTQ movement” and “help investigators and prosecutors identify potential evidence and motivations for bias crime.”

Under President Donald Trump, the FBI has officially distanced itself from the SPLC. FBI Director Kash Patel told The Daily Signal that the SPLC’s “disgraceful record makes them unfit for any FBI partnership. Even so, Democrats’ defenses of the SPLC suggest that it may return to federal influence should another Democrat follow President Trump in the White House in 2029….

Why, exactly, does the SPLC face criminal charges?

Before acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the criminal charges on April 21, 2026, the SPLC put out its own statement. The SPLC announced that it faced a criminal investigation for what it described as the use of “paid confidential informants to gather credible intelligence on extremely violent groups.”

SPLC Interim CEO Bryan Fair said the informants were “necessary” to protect the SPLC from “countless credible threats.” He added that while the SPLC fed information to law enforcement, it did not “share our use of informants broadly with anyone.” He said the group no longer works with paid informants, even though they previously “saved lives.”

The indictment claims, however, that the SPLC was funding the very “hate” it claimed it exists to destroy. The indictment refers to the payees as “field sources” or “Fs.”

The list incudes F-37, “a member of the online leadership chat group that planned the 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ event in Charlottesville, Virginia and attended the event at the direction of the SPLC.” The indictment states that this field source “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC and helped coordinate transportation to the event for several attendees.” Between 2015 and 2023, the SPLC allegedly paid this field source more than $270,000.

The SPLC does not face charges merely for paying members of white nationalist groups, but for defrauding donors, lying to banks, and conspiring to cover up the activity….

The indictment confirms my suspicions that the SPLC had not just been exaggerating “hate” by smearing conservatives, but also by supporting racist extremists. It also underlines the key warning of “Making Hate Pay”: that the SPLC has become a corrupt smear factory. If the SPLC lied to banks, as the indictment suggests, it will be very difficult for the center to weasel its way out of a guilty verdict….

What You Can Do Against SPLC

If you work at a company that works with [the software company] Benevity, please consider asking your employer to opt out of using the SPLC “hate map” filter.

If you notice Learning for Justice materials in your school, please speak up.

If you worked for a company that the SPLC and its allies bullied into blacklisting “hate groups,” and are willing to speak on record or anonymously, I’d love to hear from you.

If you hear someone considering giving to the SPLC, please let them know how corrupt this smear factory is.

The Trump administration and conservatives increasingly know the truth about the SPLC – we need to make it so obvious that Democrats and the Left cannot ignore it.