Ruth Perry

Please enjoy my season one wrap-up episode, where I share more of my own heart for The Beautiful Kingdom Builders Podcast! 023 I Rev. Ruth Perry Reflects on Season One Lessons & Themes thebeautifulkingdombuilders.com/2026/05/13/023… via @ruthmperry

The President just used his power to exempt himself and his family from audits on every tax return they've ever filed. If that is not corruption to the highest degree, then what is?

Can't stop thinking about Elon Musk, the wealthiest man alive worth $828 billion, spending $290 million to elect Trump, becoming $563 billion richer since Trump was elected and ending humanitarian aid that will lead to the deaths of 4.5 million of the poorest kids on the planet.

Amazon cut 30,000 jobs & got a $7.8 billion tax break Meta cut 8,000 jobs & got an $8 billion tax break PayPal cut 4,800 jobs & paid $0 in federal income taxes Disney cut 1,000 jobs & paid $0 in federal income taxes Corporate tax breaks don't create jobs. They enrich the 1%.

Do our values represent Jesus or America? From my latest podcast episode on The Beautiful Kingdom Builders podcast. youtube.com/shorts/bvIKuqU… via @YouTube

Survivor of Jeffrey Epstein breaks down in tears describing the moment she learned her name was revealed while the rich and powerful remained protected by redactions Roza: I kept my identity protected as Jane Doe. I woke up one day with my name mentioned over 500 times. While the rich and powerful remain protected by redactions, my name was exposed to the world. Now reporters from across the world contact me—I cannot live without looking over my shoulder.

Dr. Frank Mayfield was visiting the Tewksbury Institute when, on his way out, he accidentally bumped into an elderly cleaning lady. To make conversation, he asked, “How long have you worked here?” “I’ve worked here almost since it opened,” she said. “What can you tell me about the history of this place?” he asked. “I don’t know much,” she said, “but I can show you something.” She led him down to the basement under the oldest part of the building and pointed to a small, rusted cell. “That’s where they used to keep Annie Sullivan,” she said. “Who’s Annie?” he asked. The maid explained that Annie was a young girl who had been brought there because no one could control her. She screamed, bit, and threw her food. The doctors and nurses couldn’t even examine her. “I was just a few years younger than Annie,” the maid said. “I used to think, ‘I’d never want to be locked in a cage like that.’ I wanted to help her, but if the doctors couldn’t, what could I do?” “One night I baked some brownies after work. The next day, I put them outside her cage and said, ‘Annie, I made these for you. You can take them if you want.’ Then I walked away, afraid she’d throw them. But she didn’t. She took the brownies and ate them. After that, she was a little kinder to me. I started talking to her, and one day, I even made her laugh.” “One of the nurses saw this and told the doctor. They asked if I’d help them with Annie. So whenever they needed to see her, I went in first to calm her, explain things, and hold her hand. That’s when they discovered Annie was almost blind.” After a year of slow progress, Annie was sent to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where she learned to read, write, and later became a teacher herself. Years later, Annie came back to Tewksbury to visit and help. The Director told her about a letter he had just received from a desperate father. His daughter was blind, deaf, and thought to be “crazy.” He didn’t want to send her to an asylum and asked if anyone could come teach her. That’s how Annie Sullivan became the lifelong teacher and companion of Helen Keller. When Helen Keller later received the Nobel Prize, she was asked who had most influenced her life. She said, “Annie Sullivan.” But Annie replied, “No, Helen. The woman who changed both our lives was a maid at Tewksbury who once brought a little girl some brownies.”

Scripture can be twisted and used out of context to corrupt or to control humans who assume that a pastor is a trustworthy person. This power is intensified by the fact that many see a minister as speaking for God—indeed, a pastor may tell people that they are doing exactly that.

Riley Gaines and Libs of TikTok are complaining about medical bills. David French says adopting a Black child opened his eyes to systemic racism. Laid-off TPUSA employees say workers need stronger protections. Conservatism is the rejection of empathy for others. Once an issue affects them personally, they adopt the progressive position.

The Voting Rights Act was reauthorized by Reagan and Bush, and enforced by a Republican Supreme Court majority for 55 years. The idea that it was far-left partisan Democratic legislation is just ahistorical.

This is so silly. I worked in restaurants in college. To “86” an item is to take it off the menu (usually because you ran out of an ingredient) and to “86” a person is to kick them out (usually because they’re drunk or making trouble).

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank. It just published a 30-year study showing immigrants paid 14.5 trillion dollars more in taxes than they received in government benefits. Every single year. For thirty years. Without exception. The country was lied to. Here is what the study found.🧵

Ashley St. Clair confirmed the WH runs group chats telling these accounts what to post. Within minutes of shots fired tonight, before there was any news of casualties and before the President said this exact talking point, this was the chat in real time.

Intuit spent $4 million in lobbying last year to kill a federal program that would have saved Americans $23 billion in filing fees. That was a record: $3.9 million in 2025, nearly the same in 2023 and 2024, $53.8 million total since 2004. In November 2025, the Trump administration formally shut down IRS Direct File, the program that let Americans file federal returns directly with the government for free. The ROI math is the best trade in corporate America. Intuit's TurboTax generated $4.9 billion in FY2025 Consumer Group revenue. Treasury estimated Direct File would cost $10 per return to run. TurboTax charges around $128 for a "free" filing once the upsells hit, per a simulation by Senator Warren's office. Then the actual mechanics. 70% of American taxpayers are already eligible to file free through the existing Free File program. Only 2-3% ever do. Intuit and H&R Block added noindex tags to their free-filing pages so Google couldn't surface them. They ran "free" ads that upsold at checkout. The FTC made them pay $141 million to settle in 2022. While lobbying that Direct File was "unnecessary, costly, and unauthorized," Intuit collected federal R&D tax credits roughly equal to what the entire Direct File program cost to run. The company you pay $128 to file is using your tax credits to lobby against letting you file for free. In December 2024, Intuit wrote Trump's inaugural committee a $1 million check. Direct File died 11 months later. Most OECD countries pre-fill your tax return. The government tells you what it thinks you owe, you check it, you submit. America is the only major economy where a private company has convinced the government that "collecting the taxes" and "telling you what you owe" are two separate products taxpayers need to buy one of. That's the scam.

I’ve had women, including my own patients, tell me the only time they’ve ever truly rested was when they were too sick to function, injured, or hospitalized. Because that’s the only time the world stops demanding things from them or the only time they feel empowered to say no. If the only way a woman is “allowed” to rest is by being unwell…what kind of world are we living in?

No clip has ever summed up performative Christianity this perfectly.

One of my biggest concerns is that Christians are being so radicalized with political and racial animosity that we’ll have no desire to be peacemakers moving forward. Algorithms are feeding us nonstop propaganda about how great we are and how awful our political opponents are.

This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America. A Syrian billionaire needed U.S. sanctions lifted so he could cash in on $12 billion in reconstruction contracts. In an attempt to influence American foreign policy, he proposed a Trump-branded golf course, cut Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump into a multibillion-dollar real estate deal for a resort in Albania, and had someone physically deliver a stone engraved with the Trump family crest to a Republican Member of Congress with instructions to take it to the White House to get the President's attention. Trump threw his weight behind repealing the sanctions. They were lifted. The contracts are moving, the Trump family’s deals are expanding, and not a single Washington Republican is willing to say a word about any of it. This is a corruption of everything the office of the presidency is supposed to stand for, and the American people deserve to know about it. nytimes.com/2026/04/19/us/…

Long sentence alert. To deny women gifted by the Spirit of the living God, from being identified with the gift of shepherding or pastor(Ephesians 4: 11, 12), and executing the gift, in partnership and alignment with male leadership, as exemplified in the Priscilla and Aquila model, as some in the SBC are now hellbent on doing-is borderline heresy, elevating at best a secondary theological matter, to a first tier matter—certainly further fracturing an already deeply fractured fellowship—engaging in an act of injustice to the kingdom of God—cementing the identity of the convention as being overshadowed with oppression, submission, and testosterone, as opposed to—evangelism, discipleship, and missions—-and accelerating the decline of the SBC.