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It's Wednesday, May 6, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Some issues are now landing in the headlines in such a way that you simply have to pause for a moment and say, can this actually be about what it says it's about? Okay, so the Trump administration, through the Department of Education, has now taken action against one of the most historic world women's colleges in the United States. We're talking about Smith College. Smith College, one of the seven sisters. In terms of the historic women's colleges as women only colleges in the United States. It goes back to 1871 and a bequest from Sophia Smith. And the reason why this was important is because during this period in the last half of the 19th century, educational collegiate opportunities for women were rare. And so the idea was that there would be the establishment of these women's colleges. They also played into some very different cultural and historical developments. And one of them was the rise of feminism. So not by accident, these colleges, especially in the 20th century, become pretty historic for their social liberalism and for their feminism. All right, so the seven sisters, these seven schools, what are they? O. Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe. That's now a part of Harvard University. Smith, Vassar. Vassar has now gone co ed. And Wellesley. And so those are the seven. And so we are talking about some very elite colleges. There have been other women's only colleges, but these seven sisters, most importantly in the American Northeast, they were the elite of the women's colleges. Okay, so why are we talking about it now? Why would the Department of Education in the Trump administration be taking action, action against Smith College? It is because they say they have a right to discriminate in order to be a women's only college. And yet in 2015, they changed their policy so as to accept as a woman anyone who claims to be a woman who is cisgender, transgender or non binary. Okay, so now remember, in this perverse age, cisgender means you're biologically female and you identify as female. So that is one of those terms that shouldn't even have to exist. But you can understand in this ideology why it exists. It's just one option among the other two, transgender and non binary. So Smith College found itself in a bit of legal difficulty and political pressure about 2013 when it was upholding its policy of being a women's only college and that relating to biological sex. And so they changed their policy. And this is just basically a part of The LGBTQ revolution, that's back in 2015, this is now 2026. And the Trump administration, which you'll remember, has a policy of identifying two and only two biological sexes. President Trump made that clear in his second inaugural address. That was a major turning point in the culture, and I will argue, one of the most important and courageous statements a President of the United States has made in recent years. And to his credit, he's pushing this through. The Trump administration is pushing this through. Legal action has now been at least launched. This is an official investigation into whether or not Smith College is wrongfully discriminating based upon Title 9. That is the 1972 legislation that said that colleges couldn't discriminate on the basis of sex and other characteristics. Later, much later, you had LGBTQ issues affirm sexual orientation and also the transgender agenda. But the point is that back in 1972, when Title IX was adopted, the statement was, you can't discriminate on the basis of gender. So that would obviously mean you can't have an all men's college, which most colleges and universities had been historically. You can't have an all men's institution. You can't have an all women's institution. Well, there was the political reality that there were these very well established women's colleges, and there were also some men's colleges, although fewer in number and quite frankly, not so coordinated in terms of identity. And right now, in terms of non religious male only colleges, there are only three that are commonly known. Hampton Sydney College in Virginia, and Morehouse College, the most famous among them, in Atlanta, and Wabash College in Indiana. All right, now, other than religious schools, let's just say if you have a school for Catholic men, for especially the training of the priesthood, or tied to a monastic order, those schools are exempt. But when it comes to non religious institutions, there can be no discrimination on the basis of sex or gender. And now you have the Trump administration saying, that only makes sense if we know who a man is and who a woman is. That Entire Federal Act, 1972, updated thereafter. It only makes sense to. If schools are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex as a fixed category, if it can mean anything anyone wants it to mean, the category is meaningless, and thus these schools are no longer to be granted this exemption. The Trump administration is basically saying, you can't have it both ways. You cannot have it both ways. You can claim this historic exemption so that you can be a women's only college, but then you have to be. Well, listen to Yourself a women's only college. So let's just go back to the change that was made at Smith in 2015. If you identify as a woman cisgender, that again is biologically accurate. Transgender or non binary, you may apply. Okay, so what exactly is the Trump administration arguing or what is the investigation about? As the Guardian, remember, very liberal newspaper in Britain gives this attention, quote, Title 9, the federal law that seeks to prevent sex based discrimination and in education and extracurriculars includes an exemption for all male or all female colleges. But the department said that applies only to biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity. The statement in the paper is this, quote, admitting transgender students would mean the college no longer qualifies as single sex. They are thus summarizing the Trump administration's argument. Alright, there's another dimension to this which is really important. I mentioned the ideological feminism that's been a part of these colleges. Just think of Hillary Clinton for an example. She is not only a graduate of Wellesley, one of these colleges, but she also was the commencement speaker. Very political event. You had a lot of consciousness raising in terms of feminism and a deep ideological and political commitment to feminism. And once again, this shows you the divide among feminists. And so you take J.K. rowling or you take Martina Navratilova. And so now they're referred to as TERFs. That's T, E, R F, trans exclusionary radical feminists. That's not the choice of their own. That is what they are called by the other feminists who are absolutely committed to the LGBTQ revolution. And thus you have at these historic women's colleges, you have biologically male bodies. Some of them identify now as female. But you also notice that even Smith, when it spoke of the criteria, it says cisgender, transgender or non binary. So long as you identify as a woman, you can apply and be admitted to Smith College on that basis. And the US Department of Education is saying, not so fast, you have an exemption. But that exemption only makes sense. It only makes the slightest sense. It only would make sense to virtually any honest person that if you have the right to discriminate so that you are a women's college, that has to be an objective criterion, not some kind of subjective expression. All right, it's going to be very interesting to see where this goes. I'll tell you. I think this is a phenomenal development. I just have to tell you congratulations to the Department of Education for taking this step. Thank you to the Trump administration for bringing this clarity. It's hard to know exactly where this will Go from here. But you know what? There is no way we can achieve cultural sanity in this society if you don't have press back against these ridiculous ideological agendas. And by the way, once again, you're just dealing with the attempt to separate identity from biology. And as Christians, we understand that's a problem from the very beginning. And it is because we understand the unity of our biological and personal identities to the extent that our biological identity, which is to say biologically male or biologically female, female, is a part of how God reveals to us who we are as one created in his image and as one he has made for his glory. And thus, we are to find the body as revelatory. In this sense, we are to acknowledge the body as revelatory. It actually tells us who we are. We don't tell our body who we are. Back in 2015, the leaders at Smith College made a statement about their change, by the way, and the Guardian cites that they said at the time, 2015. So that's 11 years ago when they decided they're going to accept anyone who identifies as a woman. They said this, and I quote, the mission of Smith College is to educate women of promise for lives of distinction. In the years since Smith's founding, concepts of female identity have evolved. Smith alumnae have been leaders in the movement to afford women greater freedoms of aspiration and self expression. End quote. Okay, just think about that. We are told that since, what is it, 1871, when the college was established, that understandings of what it means to be female have evolved. Well, if they have, that's a problem. By the way, one final note on this. The cause identified by the Department of Education for this investigation is the harm that will come to females by putting biological males in intimate spaces. Okay? So I just want you to remember that that is the basis of any sane society. It is also the substance of what most feminists argued until all of a sudden, they ran into the LGBTQ revolution, and some of the feminists went one way and the other feminists went the other. Which is to say, the feminists on the left simply abandoned any sane definition of what it means to be a woman. And they did so in the name of liberating women. Go figure. All right, change of subject here. When we are talking about how cultures operate, we understand that there are affinities between certain cultures and certain. I raise that because, of course, there is an ongoing tension between the United States and Canada, and at least a part of that is the agenda and statements made by President Trump. And also has to do with tariffs and trade policy. Let's just say it's complex. But what's really interesting is that the current Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, a Labour government, by the way, that's a government of the left. He is increasingly identifying Canada with Europe. And so yesterday's New York Times had a headline story, quote, canada pulls closer to Europe amid tense ties with the U.S. okay? So the bottom line here is that we're being told that Canada is now pulling closer to Europe rather than the United States because of tension between Canada and the U.S. okay, so we kind of understand that. I want to point out, that is not particularly new. And even as there is a clear North American affinity and identity, and there are no two nations on earth classically defined that probably have had better, more peaceful relations than the United States and Canada, at least since, say, 1812. That's more than two centuries. I mean, the fact is that Canada has always had a far more European culture and a far more clear European reference than has the United States. And a part of that has to do with just history. And a part of it is reflected in the present. So, for instance, who is the head of state of Canada? Well, you're talking about King Charles III of Great Britain. Now, Canada has Commonwealth status. It's an independent nation, but it's still a part of the Commonwealth. If you look at the state messaging coming from Canada, state affairs are either undertaken by the British monarch or an emissary deputized as, for instance, Governor General there in Canada, the crown is very much a reality. That's the British Crown. And let's just say that hasn't been a part of the United States since 1776, roughly 250 years. So one of the ways, especially over the course of the last, say, 40 or 50 years, Canada has more closely tracked with, say, Europe in particular. One of the ways has been in moral change and so on a host of issues. Canada is actually more European than North American. And we have recently been talking about the issue of assisted suicide or medical assistance in dying there in Canada, euthanasia. And the fact is that Canada is increasingly acting like, say, Switzerland or Belgium or another, or the Netherlands, another European nation in this sense, by the way, going even to the left, at least at the current moment, from Great Britain and closer to the European mainland and many of the liberal societies there on the sexual revolution, also something very similar. More fundamentally in Canada, it's the secularization of the culture. And at one point in the 20th century, Canada was more religious than the United States, I'm using that term just as the sociologists use it in terms of church attendance, ratio of population, percentage of population. At one point, Canada was more churched than the United States. But over the last 50 years, that has been flipped remarkably. And Canada is so increasingly and aggressively secular that it is now to the point where it's working through the legal code, and I just mentioned assisted suicide in such a way as to basically throw overboard any kind of Christian influence and overt threats to religious liberty. And that means the religious liberty of Christians in Canada. That's something that is increasingly clear. And so as you're looking at this headline, Canada pulls closer to Europe amid tense ties with the United States. Well, you know, that's not as new as the headline would indicate. And for Christians looking at this from a Christian worldview perspective, I want to point out that the issues are a lot deeper than many would recognize. By the way, a couple of news stories from Britain that just underline the moral change and the velocity of moral change there. For instance, there is a news source in the Netherlands known as jup, and a story coming from JUP tells us that the Dutch in the Netherlands are now celebrating a beautiful anniversary. And that's the anniversary of the fact that the Netherlands became the first country in the world to legalize same sex marriage 25 years ago. So now just understand in terms of cultural and moral change how revolutionary same sex marriage is. It's the repudiation of creation order, after all. And just notice how recent it is. We're talking about something that took place 25 years ago. So that's 2001. You know, let's just state the obvious. There are billions of people alive now who were alive then on planet Earth. And that just tells you the velocity. This news source in the Netherlands is celebrating this. They're going on Saying it's been 25 years since gay men, lesbian women, and others in non heterosexual relationships have been allowed to marry. And yet they say something feels off because maybe the progress hasn't gone far enough. And so anyway, they're saying that it looks like, quote, we Dutch apparently stand for equal rights for only our own LGBTQ people, not those who had to flee their homelands to survive, end quote. So that tells you how the left there is tying this even to the immigration issue. But again, moral progressivism, it's not even. And it is. It was far quicker in showing up in Europe than in North America. Canada is, in many ways emulating Europe in this sense. The other has to do with an article that appeared in France at Liberation, and it's headlined the end of our Lively Gay Culture. And here's what some authorities in France are lamenting. They are grieving the loss of a homosexual male culture and a lesbian culture. And that's because all of what used to fill Paris quote, with electric energy is now withering away. And for instance, you're looking at gay bars and other places like that kind of shutting down. And I'm not going to read to you some of what's published in the article. Let me just say that there were a lot of sexual relationships that began in this context, and you don't need that context anymore. These gay bars aren't needed anymore. You've got online sites that allow connections without having to go to a gay bar. And so here is. This just tells you how culture works. Here you have certain people who are grieving the fact that that the larger the platform for the LGBTQ agenda. They've lost some of their historic culture, right down to the necessity of bars for gay men and lesbians, which, by the way, were very much a centerpiece of the culture. And this doesn't mean that the LGBTQ culture is now more conservative in some sense. It actually doesn't mean that at all. It just means that now everything, with most of it unmentionable, is now available by connection online. You don't need a bar anymore. One gay person cited in the article, and again, this is coming from Paris, said that back in the good old days, quote, we all breathe to the same rhythm, speaking of what went on there in the bars, quote, today everyone breathes through their screen, end quote. Well, I guess that's one way to put it. Okay, today I want to conclude with an issue. You can file this under truth is stranger than fiction, but for Christians, I think this is really important. And I guess for Christians of my generation, there is a certain echo we're clearly hearing here. Okay, the headline is in a recent story from USA Today. New technology aims to defeat AI artificial intelligence, clones and bots. The subhead says, world ID helps humans fight against deep fakes. Jennifer Jolly is the USA Today writer. Okay, the article raises the question, how do you even know if someone online is real anymore? All right, USA Today had previously reported on something called the orb, which is a technology that screens an individual's iris and create something called a World id. And it turns out that it's made by a company called tools for humanity. Tfh. Not by coincidence. Co founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Then listen to this. Quote on April 17, so that's just a matter of days ago. On April 17, the company dropped what it's calling its most significant World ID upgrade yet, including a new dedicated app currently in beta that puts your Proof of Human badge in your pocket, ready to use whenever you go online. TFH also announced major new partnerships with Zoom and Tinder, as well as ways it can help real fans, not bots, get tickets to see their favorite concerts. The article continues. Quote Zoom now is integrating World ID's DeepFace feature so that the person on your call can prove in real time that they are who they say they are, with a verified human badge appearing on your screen. This is to combat scammers, we're told. I'm reading from the article. Using AI to create real time deep fakes that can look and sound exactly like your boss. Okay, so this is a technology, and Sam Altman's behind at least one of these technologies. All the technologies covered here are attempting to claim that they can use biometric data or something else to prove that you are human and to identify you. This is how the orb works. Quote look into the orb once it scans your iris, more unique than a fingerprint, and confirms you're a real unique human. Your biometric data is scrambled and deleted instantly, like a glitter bomb. According to the company, what's left lives only in the World app on your phone. Tools for Humanity says it has no access to it. And when you use your World ID to verify somewhere, that platform receives exactly one piece of information. Yes, this is a real human, nothing else. Okay, then the writer at USA Today goes on to say, but this is where it gets tricky. And this writer says that she sees a real issue of caution here. And a part of it is about Sam Altman himself and just trusting him to say, hey, no problem here. This is safe. You shouldn't worry about this at all. But as she says, this isn't going to go away. Bots and AI generated identities already are distorting social platforms, financial systems, online marketplaces. Zoom and Tinder aren't experimenting with this out of curiosity. They're responding to a growing threat. Later in the article, we read there's no perfect here. Government IDs raise privacy concerns, behavioral detection can be fooled, and biometric tools, even when designed to protect your anonymity, still ask you to trust the company behind them. And yet the article ends simply by saying that this kind of thing just could be inevitable. Quote the direction is clear and the article concludes. Quote as AI makes it easier to fake Being human, proving that you actually are one matters a whole lot more. Okay, so this biometric information, and it is biometric information, and there are other technologies that are also used here, but the technologies are supposedly to be able online to prove that you are a human being. That's step one. And secondly, for transactions that you are who you say you are. And eventually the implication is, without this kind of biometric data or this kind of affirmation, no one's going to trust that you are who you say you are online. And of course, that comes down to transactions. And of course, you get dating apps and all kinds of things in here, but transactions are a major part of what goes on online. Okay, I mentioned my generation. Why? It is because back in the 1970s, when I was a teenager, the apocalyptic speculation at the time was very much centered on a coming world government that would fulfill the biblical references to the mark of the beast that indeed no one would be able to buy or sell without this mark. Let me just remind you that that's based in Revelation 13, beginning in verse 11, when John writes, then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon. And it exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast whose mortal wound was healed. Skipping down to verse 15. And it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast might even speak and might cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain. Also, it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark that is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666. Now, those of us who believe that the Bible is the inerrant, infallible word of God, know that every word of Scripture is true, and every word of scripture will be put perfectly, comprehensively fulfilled. And so when you look at something so specific here as the mark of the beast, and without the mark, you cannot buy nor sell. And you just look at this headline, it at least reminds us that we are living in an age. And I am not intending to be overly apocalyptic here. I do, however, want to understand that when we're looking at this kind of technology, nothing like this was available in any prior human generation. It does remind us, at the very least of what is at stake and makes I'll just say this, it makes it all the more clear how something like we read of the mark of the beast in Revelation chapter 13 could actually be biometrically carried out. Let's be clear. I am not saying that this news story is the literal fulfillment of Revelation chapter 13. I am saying that we're living in an age in which exactly what's being proposed here has to be read in such a light, and such a thing should humble us to even look at the very last verse of the Book of Revelation. Even so, Lord, come quickly. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbts.edu for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.