Crisis Inside America begins with Peter Vazquez welcoming Dr. Juliette M. Engel, MD, physician, radiologist, humanitarian activist, and author of Angels Over Moscow, to confront human trafficking, rescue work, and the corruption that preys on the vulnerable.
From there, Peter turns the fight home: NBA unrest, Mamdani’s taxpayer ideology, ICE abolition rhetoric, NY-25 and NY-21, ballot trust, Regents standards, energy costs, Frederick Douglass, “free” World Cup politics, faith under pressure, and courtroom consequences. This is not just news. It is a warning about truth, order, family, courage, and accountability.
Crisis Inside America. The crisis is not coming. It is here, seated comfortably inside the systems that keep asking for trust. It does not always arrive wearing a criminal’s face.
Sometimes it arrives with a government seal. Sometimes with a campaign slogan. Sometimes with a grant. Sometimes with a school reform plan. Sometimes with a “free” public event. Sometimes with a courtroom full of grief after every adult warning sign was ignored.
That is the story underneath today’s conversation.
Dr. Juliette M. Engel, MD, did not enter Russia looking for a political argument. She entered as a physician, a radiologist, a healer. She found something worse than physical illness. She found systems that had grown comfortable losing children. Hospitals, orphanages, bureaucracies, and public institutions that should have been shields had become corridors. The vulnerable were not merely neglected. They were being routed.
Human trafficking begins long before the handoff, the hotel room, the forced labor site, the false promise, or the border crossing. It begins when a child becomes unseen. It begins when the father is gone, the mother is unsupported, the village is broken, the official is corrupt, the neighbor is silent, and the institution has learned to process suffering instead of stopping it.
That is the first issue: vulnerability is infrastructure for evil.
The numbers prove the point, and they should disturb anyone still capable of moral discomfort. In 2024, the National Human Trafficking Hotline received 32,309 substantive signals nationwide and reported 11,999 potential trafficking cases referencing 21,865 potential victims. The Hotline itself cautions that its data reflects reported situations, not the full universe of trafficking. In plain terms, the visible crisis is already large, and the hidden one is larger.
Globally, the International Labour Organization estimates forced labor generates $236 billion in illegal profits every year. That is not merely crime. That is an economy. An economy of stolen wages, coerced sex, manipulated migrants, trapped workers, exploited children, and human beings converted into revenue streams by people who understand one thing very well: broken systems are profitable.
That is why Engel’s warning matters. Russia was not only a foreign tragedy. It was a preview of what happens when order collapses and moral courage goes quiet. She saw what predators do when families weaken, when institutions rot, when official channels become too slow or too compromised, and when rescue must be built by ordinary people in small networks of trust.
The Angel Coalition became powerful not because it had a beautiful slogan, but because it understood something modern bureaucracy keeps forgetting: rescue is local, human, relational, dangerous, and urgent.
America should not flatter itself into thinking it is immune.
Here, the systems wear cleaner clothing. The language is softer. The press releases are better formatted. The evil is often described more politely.
But the pattern is familiar: children at risk, borders strained, families fractured, schools weakened, cities unstable, faith communities pressured, taxpayers drained, and public officials fluent in compassion but short on consequence.
That is the second issue: disorder is being renamed as mercy.
When immigration enforcement is called cruelty by default, law becomes suspect. When ICE abolition is dressed up as humanity, the question is not whether immigrants possess dignity. They do. The question is whether a nation can protect the vulnerable if it abandons the basic duty to enforce its laws. Traffickers thrive in the fog. Cartels thrive in the fog
Exploiters thrive when institutions argue over language while people disappear. Compassion without order is not compassion. It is exposure.
The same confusion appears in public spending. A government that announces millions for ideological priorities while families struggle with food, rent, energy, crime, and schools is telling citizens what sits at the altar. Public money is not neutral. It endorses. It elevates. It forces participation. It turns private disagreement into public isolation.
The issue is not whether every person should be treated with dignity under the law. That is not optional in a civilized society. The issue is whether government now treats every cultural demand as a taxpayer obligation while basic civic duties remain unfinished.
That is the third issue: the public treasury has become a moral battlefield.
The argument then moves from City Hall to the street. After the NBA Finals game in New York, heavy security did not prevent post-game disorder. That matters because security can manage a crowd, but it cannot create self-government. Police can hold a line. They cannot manufacture restraint. A city can host a game, a rally, a watch party, or a celebration, but if the public square has lost discipline, every gathering becomes a test.
Sports used to be one of the remaining places where people could stand together without first declaring a political tribe. Now even shared entertainment feels unstable because politics has become the acid poured over every civic bond.
That is the fourth issue: a people that cannot govern its passions will eventually be governed by force.
And then comes the word every modern politician loves because it sounds generous and hides the invoice: free.
Free watch parties. Free tickets. Free public gatherings. Free experiences. Free unity. Free joy, wrapped in state language and delivered through closed streets, police details, sanitation crews, permits, grants, overtime, public staff, security planning, and taxpayer support. Free is rarely free. It usually means the cost has been moved to someone less visible.
Rochester’s World Cup watch party and New York City’s Central Park spectacle may provide real enjoyment. Public joy is not the enemy. But public spectacle cannot substitute for public competence. A city that cannot secure order after a basketball game should not pretend a larger crowd is evidence of civic health. A government that cannot make life affordable should not expect applause for staging another taxpayer-supported event and calling it unity.
That is the fifth issue: spectacle has become the substitute for repair.
The same substitution is happening in education. New York’s move away from Regents exams as mandatory graduation gates is sold as flexibility and modernization. There are fair critiques of over-testing. No student should be reduced to a test score.
But a diploma is supposed to mean something. It is a public promise. It tells employers, colleges, trades, the military, families, and the student that a certain threshold has been met.
When standards become slogans, the student pays first. Not Albany. Not the bureaucracy. The young person entering adulthood with a certificate that may no longer carry the weight it once did.
That is the sixth issue: mercy without rigor becomes betrayal.
Energy policy tells the same story in a different language. Families need heat. Businesses need power. Working people need utility bills that do not punish them for living in New York.
The debate over the Constitution Pipeline is not just about natural gas infrastructure. It is about whether reality is still allowed to interrupt ideology. A state can declare itself virtuous all it wants, but winter is not impressed by slogans.
High energy costs fall hardest on the people least able to absorb them. That is not compassion. That is policy pain dressed as moral superiority.
That is the seventh issue: affordability is a moral question.
Frederick Douglass stands in Rochester as more than a monument. He stands as an indictment. A city can honor him with ceremonies, wreaths, and speeches, but Douglass did not live for decorative courage. His life demanded truth under pressure. Speech with consequence. Freedom joined to discipline. Justice rooted in moral clarity.
To praise Douglass while tolerating cowardice in public life is to turn memory into furniture.
That is the eighth issue: a civilization that forgets why its heroes mattered will not understand when it is betraying them.
Faith belongs in this conversation because politics cannot heal what politics has broken. Churches, synagogues, and faith communities face a serious challenge: speak truth without becoming campaign machinery and avoid becoming silent ornaments while the world bleeds outside the sanctuary door.
A pulpit does not need to chase every headline. But faith that cannot name pain becomes decoration. When faith retreats entirely, politics fills the altar. And politics is a cruel god.
That is the ninth issue: moral silence creates a vacuum, and something will always fill it.
Finally, the courtroom.
Austin Metcalf was not a symbol. He was not a narrative device. He was a son, a brother, a teammate, a life taken. Karmelo Anthony was found guilty and sentenced to 35 years. The case matters not because it belongs to politics, but because modern culture keeps trying to drag every tragedy into politics before it has the decency to mourn.
Consequences are not cruelty. They are civilization defending the line. Forgiveness may heal the soul, but justice still guards the living.
That is the tenth issue: a culture that excuses rage should not act shocked when rage draws blood.
All of these issues are connected. Trafficking, border failure, street disorder, taxpayer ideology, election distrust, weakened standards, unaffordable energy, hollow civic ceremony, state-sponsored spectacle, timid faith, and courtroom grief are not random fragments. They are symptoms.
The sickness is older than the headlines.
It is the belief that compassion can exist without truth, that freedom can survive without order, that children can be protected without families, that standards can fall without consequence, that government can spend without cost, that justice can bend to narrative, and that citizens can stay passive while the inheritance burns.
This is the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis. It is not outside the gates anymore. It is inside the house, wearing authority, spending the inheritance, lowering the standards, staging the spectacle, softening the law, counting the victims, and asking the innocent to applaud.
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Welcome to The Next Steps Show with Peter Vazquez, a starting point for discussion and a bit of direction.
Peter Vazquez:
Ladies and gentlemen, there are stories that arrive as headlines, and then there are stories that arrive as warnings.
This story does not begin in a campaign office, a think tank, or a television studio. It begins with a physician who went to Russia carrying medical skill and humanitarian conviction, only to discover that the sickness ran deeper than the bodies she was treating.
It was institutional. It was cultural. It was spiritual. It was an old evil dressed in modern clothing: the buying and selling of human beings.
Today, for the next few minutes, we are going to talk about trafficking, rescue, corruption, courage, and the sacred duty to protect the innocent before they become another case file in another broken system.
Joining me is a physician, radiologist, humanitarian activist, founder of the Angel Coalition, and author of Angels Over Moscow: Life, Death, and Human Trafficking in Russia. And this is not just about Russia.
Let me quote my guest before I bring her on: “The Angel Coalition grew into an underground railroad that assisted thousands of victims.”
The honorable Dr. Juliette Engel. Ma’am, thank you. Bienvenida to The Next Steps Show.
Dr. Juliette Engel:
Hello. Thank you for the nice introduction. I am glad to be here.
Peter Vazquez:
I am glad you took the time, not just to do the work you do, but to come on the show with little old me, Peter Vazquez, here in Upstate New York. The problem is too big.
Let me share some numbers for our listeners as we lay down the basis for this discussion. The National Human Trafficking Hotline identified 11,999 potential trafficking cases involving 21,865 potential victims. Not in Russia. Here in the United States, ma’am.
Dr. Juliette Engel:
Yes, and it is more than that. The State Department identified hundreds of thousands of children who were brought across the border during the last two years and supposedly disappeared. That is our future. It needs to be addressed immediately.
I was fortunate enough to be in Russia and have my eyes opened, and to help them build a network to respond to it. That was in the 1990s and early 2000s. I have been back in the United States since 2010, trying to get people in America to realize this is happening here.
It is happening on our southern border, but it is not just Mexican children being brought across. It is people from every war zone in the world. Wherever the father is removed from the family, wounded, or killed, they take the children and exploit the mothers.
We have children coming from the Middle East right now. They bring them up through the Darien Gap and Mexico. This is being facilitated through international migration systems, yet the headlines are almost absent from that.
Peter Vazquez:
Let me share a number with you, ma’am, because you mentioned fatherless homes, and this is a battle we fight locally. In Monroe County, in the county next to us, we have very high fatherlessness, one of the worst-performing school districts in New York State, and one of the highest-paid school districts.
We also have high immigration numbers and pockets in the urban center where some of the most ignored people happen to be illegal immigrants. That is not the topic, but it is a point I want to make because they do get targeted. They are invisible.
Dr. Juliette Engel:
Yes. When men are absent, when men are removed from the family, working remotely, or on the battlefield, the community cannot defend itself. That has to change.
It does not matter whether the group is illegal immigrants or anyone else. Pitting races against each other perpetuates the removal of men from the family. Families have to become intact.
That was the biggest change in Russia. The Soviet system was like the United States is now. Families were a disaster. Things were broken down. There was no reason for men to stay in homes and relationships.
Russia changed that when it re-Christianized. It went from being an atheist country to a heavily Christian country, and other religions that existed before the revolution also came back. Fathers went back into homes. Families became secure again. Villages became secure, and people united against evil.
When I came back here, I thought it would be the easiest thing in the world to get Americans to see what had happened there and realize that it has to happen here.
We are not defending our children. By “we,” I mean all of North America, from South America through Canada. The trafficking networks are the same.
Peter Vazquez:
This is not a political conversation, but it just so happens that this is a topic you do not hear enough from people who can really make a difference financially and through stature. Too many people ignore it.
I want to get into the Angel Coalition and Angels Over Moscow, because those are important tools and reads that our listeners should get. But first, Doctor, what pulled you away from medicine, a lucrative profession in the United States, into a situation where your life was endangered simply to rescue other people’s children?
Dr. Juliette Engel:
In 1990, I had my own medical department in Seattle, Washington, and I was an assistant professor at the University of Washington. I was invited to visit Russia and evaluate their maternal and infant health care system. This was when the Iron Curtain had just dropped.
I went with the first group of American doctors who went into Russia. The situation there was tragic. It is in the book, and everyone should read it because you will start seeing that we are going that way.
I did not see how the country could recover when childbirth was so awful. As I became more involved, I realized children were being taken and sold right from birth houses. If they did not go from birth houses, they were raised in orphanages, where they were picked off when they became teenagers and shipped all over the world.
I discovered that one of the top destinations in the world was the United States. I came back and told this to people. I presented it at the United Nations, to Congress, and to the State Department. No one wanted to listen. I had names, flights, destinations, and networks. I knew who was doing it. It did not matter. They did not care.
Peter Vazquez:
Did you ever figure out why they would not listen?
Dr. Juliette Engel:
At first, I thought it was ignorance. Now I am much more suspicious that it is a source of income for people involved in these systems. When you are talking about trafficking children, forced labor, and exploitation, someone is making money. This is all wrong. It is all backwards.
Peter Vazquez:
Doctor, I have had guests on this show with firsthand accounts of human trafficking and organ harvesting in China. I want to make sure we get into this because your work exposes the difference between sympathy and sacrifice.
Sympathy sees suffering and feels sorrow. Sacrifice helps people.
The International Labour Organization estimates forced labor generates $236 billion in illegal profits. Global estimates place 27.6 million people in forced labor worldwide, including sexual exploitation.
You describe the Angel Coalition as a consortium of nongovernmental organizations across Russia. By 2002, the coalition had grown to 120 organizations and expanded into Asia. The coalition created trust networks.
What did it take to build trust in a place where corruption and fear were part of daily life, when you could not even get Congress, which we should trust, to listen to the numbers and experience you shared?
Dr. Juliette Engel:
You could not trust their Congress either. The trust was built in little networks, neighborhoods, small towns, and villages across Russia. I visited every part of Russia.
You find an uncorrupted police officer. You find the head of a school who wants to get involved. You find a media person who is not paid off. You create tiny networks. When they communicate with each other and share information about how traffickers work and who the traffickers are in their villages, they become powerful.
That is something very discouraged in this country. At that time, NGO meant something different than it means now. The whole NGO structure has been corrupted again by international systems. NGOs used to be tiny community organizations that really did things.
Doing something could mean walking to your neighbor’s house, pulling out a child who has been trafficked, and turning that child over to the one person in the social department you know is not corrupt. It is effective, and we need to do it here. It is hands-on.
Peter Vazquez:
Dr. Juliette Engel, you wrote Angels Over Moscow. Can you tell our listeners two things before we go? Where can they find the work you are doing so they can get involved or contribute, abroad or locally? And tell us briefly about your book, where they can get it, and any last message you have for our listeners.
Dr. Juliette Engel:
They can go to my website, julietteengel.com. My three books are there, along with information about how to contact me and connect with my work.
The books will tell you what you need to know. It is a template for everyone in the United States to understand that we are heading into economic crisis. Trafficking is about to get worse. Exploitation is getting worse. This entire American system is going to face serious strain, and we need to be ready to rescue the children because they will be victimized the most. They are already being set up for exploitation.
I am so glad to be talking to the people on your network.
Peter Vazquez:
The honor is ours, ma’am. Thank you, Dr. Juliette Engel. Ladies and gentlemen, that is julietteengel.com. Ma’am, thank you for your time, and may God continue to bless you and the work you do.
Dr. Juliette Engel:
Thank you. You too.
Peter Vazquez:
Ladies and gentlemen, the doctor’s warning does not stop at borders. The same trafficking is happening right here in America.
Do not change those dials. As a matter of fact, get ready to pick up those telephones and tell me what you think. You are my guest coming up. Soy yo, Peter Vazquez, and The Next Steps Show right here on the Voice of Liberty, WYSL and WLEA.
Station Break
Peter Vazquez:
It is a family affair, ladies and gentlemen. To quote one of the most respectable men I know, Pastor Mike Hennessy, executive director, chief, life-saving Mike Hennessy: the consequences of no consequences.
When a nation lets children be hunted, streets be ruled by rage, ballots shadowed by doubt, schools trade standards for slogans, when does it end?
The crisis is no longer at the gate. We allowed it into our home. What does the Bible say about letting evil into your house? Evil does not come unless you invite it. That is what I believe.
You do not answer the door and let a villain in. You should not open your door to allow evil in. You can define that for yourself, because it is inside the house. It is wearing authority. Look at the politicians. It is spending the inheritance we have left for our children, generation after generation. The crazy part is that evil is asking the innocent to applaud its presence in their home.
Remember Isaiah 59:14: “Justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter.”
Let me grab my notes from the last show. The International Labour Organization estimates forced labor generates $236 billion in illegal profits. You wonder why there is never really a solution.
Ladies and gentlemen, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble, X, LinkedIn, we are there. All our shorts and replays are on social media. NextStepsShow.com. WYSL1040.com, podcast tab. This information is not just to entertain. It is to inform.
Let us look at Game 3 in New York City, the NBA Finals. Under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden, it sounds great. President Trump was there. Basketball should have been enough: a championship game, a roaring crowd, tight security.
But what happened after the game?
Harassment. Attacks. A city that, despite the security, became a ground for fights and destruction.
That is ideology. City Hall tells citizens what government values. And should government values ever really be a mystery? You elected them, or you did not.
I voted for Trump. I am proud of that. I researched, paid attention, and understood his values. I did the same for his opponents.
When government shows us its values, let us look at New York City for a second. It has some of the largest numbers in almost everything, including human trafficking.
The lines are open: 585-346-3000 or 866-552-1009.
New York City’s administration announced a $15 million investment. Not in small business. Not in education. Not in expanding pathways to the trades. Not in creating anything meaningful.
They are investing $15 million into gender-affirming care, framed through the language of dignity, safety, and freedom.
I had Dr. Juliette Engel on, and she has been dealing with human trafficking. Who did she say are the targets?
This is not an issue of adults deserving dignity under the law. God, country, and family also covers life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the issue is that government now treats every ideological priority as a public obligation.
Then they work on low-information voters, demonizing people by race and class.
Audio Cut: Mamdani on Gender-Affirming Care
“As a first step, my administration has made a fifteen million dollar investment in gender-affirming care over the next two years. And we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that trans and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers can live with dignity, safety, and freedom they deserve.”
Peter Vazquez:
There it is. Fifteen million dollars. Not whispered. Not hidden. Celebrated.
Look at the people celebrating it. It is interesting. Public spending tells you what leaders value. The deeper question is whether working New Yorkers still have meaningful consent over the moral direction of the public treasury.
Remember the Vanbōōlzalness Crisis. It is no longer at the door. It is in your home.
These are people dead set on protecting an ideology that has damaged the Western way of life. The politicians can hold fancy meetings and make presentations look pretty, but you can look out your own window and see reality.
Audio Cut: Mamdani on ICE
“To be very clear about the fact that I believe that ICE raids are cruel, they are inhumane, they do nothing to serve in the interest of public safety. I’ve shared that directly with the president, I’ve shared that in public. It is a feeling that many New Yorkers share. And I also do believe that ICE as an entity is one that should be abolished and that we should return to an immigration system that has more humanity.”
Peter Vazquez:
More humanity.
On my way into the show today, I was listening to different news stations. I heard President Trump speaking and sharing statistics about illegal immigration and serious crime. I will get those numbers for a future show, but I am sharing that for context.
The narrative here in New York is clear. Enforcement becomes cruelty. Abolition becomes compassion. They say get rid of ICE. Get rid of government entities that are meant to enforce the law. We heard the same with “defund the police.”
Anyone asking for order is accused of lacking humanity.
Let us look locally. New York’s 25th Congressional District is a battlefield right now because there is a primary coming up soon. Early voting starts this Saturday.
Joe Morelle says he is the incumbent responsible for 771,000 people. He says he is their only representative. His Democratic primary opponents would disagree.
Sherita Traywick said there is no Democrat price and no Republican price. Groceries are too expensive.
I am not saying anyone on the Democratic primary list is someone I want to vote for in the general election. We have a strong Republican candidate, Virginia McIntyre, who is doing work in the Monroe County Legislature now.
Robin Wilt talks about health care, economic justice, equal protection, and due process. But affordability, trafficking, and real solutions still do not get the attention they should.
Primary Election Day is June 23. Early voting runs June 13 through June 21. Check your district.
Station Break
Peter Vazquez:
We talk about a lot of heavy things. I have a lot of topics today. Lines are open: 585-346-3000 or 866-552-1009.
Caller Dick:
Thanks for having me. I wanted to make a comment related to your first guest. There is an organization that probably a lot of people do not know about that is dedicated to helping children and getting them out of terrible circumstances. That is the Tim Tebow Foundation.
Peter Vazquez:
Tim Tebow, like the football player?
Caller Dick:
Yes. He started the Tim Tebow Foundation, and he is dedicated to saving children and getting them out of exploitation. It is a good organization. I give to it, and I wanted to make people aware so maybe they can contribute and help.
Peter Vazquez:
Absolutely. I really appreciate your call. That was the Tim Tebow Foundation. Thank you for your time and for stepping up.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you know of strong organizations helping children, support them. This issue is destroying America’s future. That is intentional, and people are profiting from it.
The Tim Tebow Foundation is one. Locally, there is Angels of Mercy. This is the work that matters.
Now back to the big picture. Fifteen million dollars in gender-affirming care is not intended to create anything in the way working people are asking for. Let us play that again.
Audio Cut: Mamdani on Gender-Affirming Care
“As a first step, my administration has made a fifteen million dollar investment in gender-affirming care over the next two years. And we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that trans and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers can live with dignity, safety, and freedom they deserve.”
Peter Vazquez:
There it is, right from the mayor’s mouth. That is not a whisper. That is not something to cheer at when working people are asking what government is doing for safety, affordability, and real opportunity.
The question is whether working New Yorkers still have meaningful consent over the moral direction of the public treasury.
These politicians make everything look polished in the state of the city and in presentations, but people can look out their windows and see reality.
Audio Cut: Mamdani on ICE
“To be very clear about the fact that I believe that ICE raids are cruel, they are inhumane, they do nothing to serve in the interest of public safety. I’ve shared that directly with the president, I’ve shared that in public. It is a feeling that many New Yorkers share. And I also do believe that ICE as an entity is one that should be abolished and that we should return to an immigration system that has more humanity.”
Peter Vazquez:
That is the narrative. Enforcement becomes cruelty. Abolition becomes compassion.
But what happens when leaders say every structure that enforces law must be dismantled? We heard this with defund the police. It collapsed. Now there is a new slogan. Anyone asking for order is accused of lacking humanity.
Let us look at New York’s 25th Congressional District again. This primary matters. Joe Morelle says he represents 771,000 people. Sherita Traywick says groceries are too expensive and there is no Democrat or Republican price. That is a powerful line because the receipt does not care about your party.
There is also NY-21. That brings us to another Republican question.
Caller Keith:
My comments on immigration have to do with people who are supposedly on our side but let us down. Mamdani became naturalized in 2018 during Trump’s first administration. The year before that, in 2017, when he was filling out citizenship papers, he indicated support for certain extremist organizations, yet he was naturalized under a Republican administration.
In New Jersey’s 12th district, there is another troubling candidate being allowed to run as a Democrat. It goes on and on. I am disappointed with some of the people supposedly on our side, including Trump and Stephen Miller. They talked about millions being deported, but the numbers have not matched that.
Trump has estimated there are more than 20 million illegal immigrants in the country. If we do not get them out while he is in office, they may never be removed.
Peter Vazquez:
Keith, I appreciate the call. You make an important point, and it leads right into this next topic.
New York 21 is a very important primary. Elise Stefanik is no longer in that race, and these districts matter because they have been Republican strongholds. But to Keith’s point, not all Republicans are built the same way.
Even under strong Republican leadership, things happen. The question is what happens tomorrow, when Trump is no longer in power.
Robert Smullen and Anthony Constantino represent more than two candidates. They represent a larger Republican question: experience versus outsider force, party machinery versus Trump-backed disruption, governing record versus business record.
Republicans are wrestling with unity, credibility, and who can actually deliver results.
Smullen emphasizes government experience, district knowledge, border security, energy policy, and service. Constantino emphasizes President Trump’s endorsement, manufacturing, job creation, and outsider leadership.
The question for that district is this: who is best prepared to respond to the crisis people are actually living through? I do not live there, so I am leaving that to the voters. But voters will suffer the consequences of their choice.
Now, real quick before I move on, let me talk about Austin Metcalf, Karmelo Anthony, and the cost of consequences.
Megan Metcalf told Anthony, “I have been sentenced to a lifetime without my son.” Jeff Metcalf said the public response sickened him and insisted, “This was never about race or politics.”
When someone feels they can pick up a weapon and take a life, that reveals something broken. Especially when that life is leaving in front of them. This is not a talking point. This is life, liberty, justice, pursuit of happiness, God, country, and family.
Churches play a role, do they not?
A good friend from the Frederick Douglass Foundation once said Christians were going into the closet while everyone else was coming out of the closet. That has happened.
Faith leaders are now wrestling with what every serious congregation faces: how to speak honestly about the world without letting politics devour the sanctuary.
Rabbi Greg Weitzman spoke of sacred places where people across beliefs can still gather. Reverend Michael Aaron Poindexter said, “You always go back to the Bible.” That is the answer I like, because you cannot go wrong there.
Father Bob Longobucco said, “A church that does not respond to what hurts is not doing its job.”
That is how we end up with leaders like Mamdani. That is how we end up with leaders telling us to accept ideologies that replace God, country, and family.
Again, the basketball game in New York City was a phenomenal game. Everybody talked about Trump being a disruptor. Not enough people talked about how after the game, despite security, chaos broke out in the streets.
And then we hear Governor Kathy Hochul promoting a World Cup watch party.
Audio Cut: Hochul on Free World Cup Watch Party
“We are having the largest watch party, the biggest match in the world, largest watch party, biggest match in the world, right here in Central Park. You heard it. First tier. And guess what the price tag is? It is free. So right here on the Great Lawn, there is no better place, the quintessential New York experience, to bring everybody to this location.
And in a moment where sports experiences and memories they create have grown increasingly unattainable for working people, we will make this viewing party 100% free. Tickets will be available, as the governor said, beginning this Thursday at 10 a.m. And we have set 20% of those tickets for New Yorkers who help make our city what it is: nonprofits and New York City service volunteers. This is but one of a larger effort to make the World Cup belong to every New Yorker.”
Peter Vazquez:
Free, free, free.
But who is paying for free? Police, cleanup, permits, street closures, staff, overtime, grants, and taxpayers. That is not free. That is cost relocation.
Rochester is doing the same thing at East and Alexander with a World Cup watch party. A free event. Did they not shut that area down to regular people before, the ones who believe in safety and doing the right thing?
Be a leader. Do not let a second go by where you are not a voice for liberty.
God bless you. God bless the United States of America.
Physician, Radiologist, Humanitarian Activist, and Author
Dr. Juliette M. Engel, MD, is an American physician, radiologist, humanitarian activist, and memoirist whose life’s work has taken her from medicine into the front lines of human trafficking rescue.
In 1999, Dr. Engel moved to Moscow, where she founded the Angel Coalition, an anti-trafficking network that grew into what has been described as an “underground railroad” assisting thousands of victims across Russia and the former Soviet world. Her work exposed the brutal intersection of institutional failure, orphanage vulnerability, organized exploitation, and the urgent need for courageous local rescue networks.
Dr. Engel also co-founded Women and Children First, a municipal orphanage staff training center, and helped build the Babushka Brigade, a nationwide support program for single mothers. Through these efforts, she worked to strengthen families, protect vulnerable children, and confront the systems that allow trafficking to flourish.
She is the author of Angels Over Moscow: Life, Death and Human Trafficking in Russia, a memoir that recounts her years in Russia, the rise of the Angel Coalition, and the dangerous realities of standing against trafficking networks. Her story is one of medicine turned mission, compassion turned action, and moral courage tested in the face of corruption and human suffering.