Lou Pelletier talks to Glenn about the contempt of court charges and what comes next for his family

Despite the fact that the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) filed for Lou Pelletier, the father of 15-year-old Justina Pelletier who is being held against her parents’ will, to be held in contempt of court, Lou joined Glenn on radio this morning to discuss what comes next in the fight to save his daughter’s life.

Below is a rough transcript of the interview:

GLENN: I can't believe that Lou is coming on again, but he is on the phone with us now from Connecticut. Hello, Lou.

LOU: Good morning, again. And again, many, many thanks to you and your team for spreading the word of Justina's nightmare.

GLENN: So what happened? When did you hear -- can you even talk about any of this?

LOU: We're all in, Glenn. We're here to save my daughter Justina.

GLENN: Okay. So when did they call you and tell you, and what could possibly happen to you now?

LOU: I was actually at the train station, which was -- speaking of another system -- took forever to get back from New York to Connecticut last night. But I was at the train station waiting and I got the email from my attorney that Mass DCF has filed the contempt of court for speaking to the media, which violates the gag order.

GLENN: And the punishment for that is what?

LOU: It can either be a civil punishment, but it could be criminal.

GLENN: So speaking out to try to save your daughter you could -- a civil punishment would be that they will fine you.

LOU: Correct.

GLENN: Which is, good news is, I don't know if you know this, you don't have anything left anyway. So good luck collecting that one. But the other is you could go to jail. How long could you go to jail for?

LOU: Don't no.

GLENN: Do you know now what you're going to -- what's going to happen? I mean, when do you -- how do you fight this, what, do you go -- have to go to court now? What, because you're doing it again.

LOU: As of now we do have a regular court date session scheduled for February 24th, this coming Monday. I have not heard if we need to be there earlier. Because the first time when this whole gag order issue came out, which was November 17th, I literally had to hop in a car and get to Boston within two hours to be in front of the judge. So who knows if they'll wait until Monday, the next scheduled court date, or they'll try to do something sooner.

GLENN: All right. So tell me what else happened. Tell me, is there any good news that has happened since yesterday?

LOU: Well, again as I said when we first got on, thank you so much. People have been flagged us obviously with donations, with God bless each and every one of you people out there because we are fighting the two-headed monster, the ultimate David against Goliath, State of Massachusetts and DCF, Harvard and Boston Children's Hospital. And their pockets are pretty deep. So again, many, many thanks to everybody that's contributed.

GLENN: Well, I want you to know, Lou, that I was in the meeting this morning and we wanted to call and verify what we had heard, that, you know, you were getting hit from DCF. And I instructed TheBlaze and all of my entire, you know, media empire, if you will, TheBlaze television, TheBlaze.com, Blaze Radio that this is the story, we are doing this story that we've done this one other time before and it was with Terri Schiavo. And so I pushed all the chips in the center of the table today, and we will do whatever we can to help right this wrong and --

LOU: Thank you so much.

GLENN: -- make sure she's not forgotten. I think they are literally trying to bury this story.

LOU: Because there's other pieces too that also need to come out because, you know, it's so hard even in an hour to try to explain the length of what's going on.

GLENN: Give me --

LOU: One of the things I didn't even mention, when Justina was 6 or 7, she had a stroke which we didn't even know about it. It was the left side of her brain. It was a massive stroke. Severely impacted her short-term memory. So one of the things is stress, that little thing that we've been living with for the last year, for somebody who has a stroke and has mitochondrial disease can push them over the edge, could lead them to another massive stroke or worse.

GLENN: Seizures, yeah. Well, is there anything that you -- anything that we can do right now, anything you want to share before we let you go and spend time with your attorneys, who I'm sure you're going to be spending time with?

LOU: Biggest thing is, as I said yesterday, there are people with the power to stop this now. The governors of both states hide behind legal things. But the governors, the attorney generals, DCF commissioners all have the power, executive authority, to stop this.

GLENN: Do you have the numbers and everything on FreeJustina.com?

LOU: They're out there. They have been posted. If you go to the -- there are other, along with, you know, the original site was a Miracle for Justina, which, the judge even put a gag on that. Part of that November 17th gag order was we were not allowed to add anything to the A Miracle for Justina website. So many other websites have been spawned.

GLENN: What do you mean you're not -- what do you mean you're not allowed to add anything to that?

LOU: When that gag order was issued, first of all, we knew nothing of it. It was set in a sidebar basically. You know, we were just told to not add anything to the Free Justina -- to A Miracle for Justina. And this whole idea that we can't speak to the media and all this stuff, you know, was not said directly to us, which, jeez, I thought we had the thing called the First Amendment and that's why we're at the stage we're at right now, making sure we get the word out to try to save our daughter's life.

PAT: Lou, has Duval Patrick said anything about this at all? Has he brought this up? Has he mentioned it?

LOU: Not to me personally.

PAT: Has he spoken to anybody in the media?

LOU: No.

PAT: No?

LOU: But if you just Google Mass DCF and Duval Patrick, he's had a few other things going on in his plate up there.

PAT: Yeah.

LOU: Kids, you know, a third of the Mass DCF social workers not licensed, kids dying left and right you understand their watch. You can just pick your -- you know, they are trying to get rid of Olga Roche, the DCF commissioner who Duval Patrick is backing to the Nth degree. So I think that's been taking up a little bit of his time versus the story of a child that not even from his state that they have full control over.

STU: Good news is people are starting to move here, Lou. Right now on Twitter nationally, the hashtag freeJustina is trending for the first time that we know of. And that's the people just starting to wake up on this story and just starting to hear about it. So at least there's some positive momentum.

GLENN: Can I tell you something, Lou? I thought about this, this morning in the meeting. As you're sitting there in bed at night and if you're anything like my wife and I, you know, we'll go to bed and that's when we really start to talk, and I have to believe that there have been times when you have said "We've got to speak out. We have got to do this. We are going to post on -- we're going to post on Free -- or A Miracle for Justina. We're going to do it." And you had the argument back and forth, "Honey, you can't. Because it will make things worse. Because if you make things worse, then what good are you? And we've got to keep the family going." I mean, you have had to have those conversations with your wife.

LOU: Many times. Because it's a double, double-edge sword. Can something happen to me? Well, I'll take the bullet for that. But even more importantly, can they do something even worse to Justina, above and beyond what they've already done to her. You know, she's defenseless. From the get-go she's totally been treated than any other patient when she was at Boston Children's. That's verifiable and identifiable. Hidden, you know, holidays and things where everybody else could see their families and talk to them, she was never allowed to see or talk to them, on Easter, Mother's Day, you name it, you know. So tell me that they haven't had their own agenda for Justina from the get-go.

GLENN: Lou, people are probably going to start listening to this for the first time. This will start to hit people in a different way. And I know my wife said this, I know Pat's wife said this. I don't know if Stu's wife said this. But when we went home and we said this to our wives for the first time, each of our wives said, that can't be. There's got to be something.

PAT: This is America.

GLENN: This is America. There's got to be something we don't know. Could you just address that, for anybody who is hearing this for the first time that say "There's got to be something about the family, there's got to be something here that's not being told"?

LOU: The bottom line is, you look at two key components of this situation. Number one is a doctor who diagnosed her, Dr. Korson from Tufts Medical Center. He's the one that officially diagnosed, you know, Jessica, Justina's older sister, with a medical -- a biopsy to prove that she has mitochondrial disease. So Dr. Korson, who's been treating her successfully for almost two years, has not been allowed to have any involvement in her care. Number two, the doctor she came to see who transferred from Tufts to Boston Children's just a month earlier who Dr. Korson wanted her to see because he was involved with her whole stomach scenario, her GI system, was involved with putting in the cecostomy tube which really saved her life because she wasn't able to go to the bathroom, he has been blocked. I mean, when Justina was taken over by Mass DCF roughly on February 14th, about a week later Dr. Flores tried to go see her. My wife was in the room, my other daughter. We were downstairs and visiting. Dr. Flores came into the room, gave my daughter a big hug, gave my wife a big hug. In the blink of an eye, a social worker came into the room, literally grabbed Dr. Flores by collar and dragged him out saying, "You're not allowed to see this patient. You cannot be in here."

PAT: How can a social worker stop a --

LOU: A social worker.

PAT: -- physician from seeing a patient? That's inconceivable. That's amazing.

LOU: It's all verifiable.

PAT: Wow.

LOU: This is the world we've been fighting. This is world we've been dealing with. It's like at times you wonder, is the whole world crazy and we're the only sane ones? Or maybe we're the crazy ones. It's -- you get to a point where left and right just don't -- nothing seems to add up anymore. You know, in the last piece -- and I have to repeat this -- is regarding this gag order. The largest newspaper in Massachusetts came to us back in April because there was many other people this had happened to. We were going to be the final piece to this story, and everybody knew that this newspaper was going to be printing a story. DCF, the legal system, the judges. But no gag order. It wasn't until the local Fox Connecticut station aired the story on November 17th seven months after the Globe announced they were going to publish the story that a gag order came out. So why was there no gag for seven months when the largest newspaper in Massachusetts was going to print something but then Fox Connecticut was going to air something and all hell breaks loose. Those are the things that just make you shake your head, among so many other things.

GLENN: Lou, thank you so much. We'll talk again.

LOU: Glenn, God bless. God bless America.

GLENN: All right. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Learn more about how you can help the Pelletier family HERE.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

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Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

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When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

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Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

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Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

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If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

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Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

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Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.