New York Post.

he privileged daughter of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar amazingly claims she’s homeless and can’t get food after being kicked out of her prestigious $90,000-per-year Barnard College dorm following her arrest at last week’s anti-Israel protests on Columbia University’s campus.

Isra Hirsi, 21, and a handful of other Barnard students were slapped with suspensions after they were among the more than 100 protestors cuffed and hauled away for refusing to clear out from a tent encampment on the Ivy League school’s campus last Thursday.

“I was a little bit frantic, like, where am I going to sleep? Where am I gonna go?” she whined to Teen Vogue after learning she’d been evicted from campus housing and banned from using the dining hall.

Politico.

When prosecutors deliver opening statements Monday in the trial of former President Donald Trump, one of their critical goals will be to convince jurors that the charges are as serious as they are salacious.

It may be a challenge in a case prominently featuring a porn star, a Playboy playmate, the National Enquirer and allegations of about $300,000 in hush money paid in 2016 to keep a lid on allegations of extramarital affairs by Trump.

But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his surrogates have insisted that, beneath the sordid details on the surface, the felony charges are really about election interference. Trump, meanwhile, has claimed that the case itself is election interference of a different kind.

It’s not yet clear how jurors — or Americans voters — will see it.

Joel Kotkin.

Once the putative party of the people, the Democrats are increasingly the party of political “Mean Girls.” Epitomized by the congressional “Squad,” radicalized women are driving the party ever further to the leftist fringe on issues such as embracing Hamas, apocalyptic climate policies, mass illegal immigration, and transgenderism.

Party organs including the New Republic and the New York Times hail these activists as the “future of the Democratic Party.” Unlike traditional Democrats who won over small business owners, members of industrial unions, and aspiring middle class minorities, the Mean Girls have broken with the New Deal tradition that united the party. Rather than appealing to the aspirations of  families, in the new configuration it’s all about “the personal is political,” with lifestyle and sexual orientation as defining issues.

Read it.

A scathing report by three federal judges on the “misconduct” of plaintiff lawyers in a challenge to Alabama’s ban on gender-transition medicine for minors illustrates something we learned a long time ago: Many on the far Left, including radical lawyers employed by self-proclaimed civil rights organizations, believe the ends always justify the means and that rules of ethics don’t apply to them.

The report is the result of an investigation into the lawyers who filed three related lawsuits—Walker v. Marshall, Ladinsky v. Ivey, and Eknes-Tucker v. Ivey—challenging Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act in 2022. The state enacted the law that year to eliminate the use of experimental hormonal and surgical procedures on minors who experience discomfort with their biological sex.

The final report, issued by three judges representing each of the three federal court districts in Alabama, was initiated after Judge Liles C. Burke accused the lawyers of judge-shopping to get a particular judge they wanted assigned to the cases. Judge Burke called it “a particularly pernicious form of forum shopping” and “a practice that has the propensity to create the appearance of impropriety in the judicial system.”

Read it.

An effort to recall a progressive, George Soros-funded district attorney in California has received enough signatures from voters to advance amid an upswing in crime, officials say.

Organizers seeking to oust Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price collected 74,757 verified signatures in support of their effort to hold a recall election, over 1,000 more than needed, county Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis announced Monday.

Read it.

If you pay New York state taxes, you’re paying top dollar and getting bupkis. Nothing in the budget deal announced in Albany on Tuesday changes that.

State tax money is supposed to provide services and improve the state’s economic outlook. But a report released last week shows the state’s economic prospects plunging to dead last among the 50 states.

As for services, New York ranks 47th, fourth from the bottom, in what residents get for the money, according to WalletHub.

New York spends the most per public school student, but students perform worse by every measure than students in neighboring states.

New York’s roads rank 45th, according to MoneyGeek. The potholes and pavement roughness cost the average New York driver $715 a year in repairs, fuel and wear and tear. You need a Sherman tank to navigate the Bruckner Expressway.

The Foundry.

Ever since losing control of the Supreme Court to a nominally conservative majority, many of the same liberals who have brazenly called for “packing the court” are now just as brazenly seeking to unpack it.

If ever there was proof that the Left views the Supreme Court as just another legislative body to lobby for their agenda, it’s their shameless efforts to pressure liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 69, to retire before the presidential election in November so President Joe Biden can nominate a younger—and equally or more liberal—replacement.

According to a pair of March 27 articles in The Huffington Post and at AboveTheLaw.com, two leftist law professors are among the loudest voices calling for Sotomayor’s resignation. “I would love to see Sotomayor retire,” one of them, Lucas Powe Jr., a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “I would love to trade her for a 50-year-old justice.”

Presumably one with two brain cells to rub together.

Read it.

Under the ‘Grocery Protection Act’ introduced by city Board of Supervisors member Dean Preston (Democratic Socialist), stores that want to flee all the crime and other increased liabilities will have to provide the city with six months advanced notice, and make efforts to find a replacement supermarket for the location being vacated, Benzinga reports.

The move comes after While Foods shut down its flagship store in San Francisco after being open for just over a year, citing employee safety concerns.

Vox.

‘Mass protest’ is Woke-speak for ‘progressive civil disturbance’ à la BLM and AntiFa.

The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act.

This is, of course, the legal theory under which anyone even remotely associated with the Jan. 6 demonstrations have been tossed in jail. ‘Rules are for thee but not for me.’

Read it.

Donald Trump has outlined his plans for federal taxation should he be elected.

“I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent. You know they expire in a year. And we will cut your taxes even more than that,” he said in a speech in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Feb. 14, 2024.

But President Biden has also made his plan clear: He wants to wallop Americans with a $5 trillion tax increase.

Read it.

Can Democrats take a hint? The answer is obviously no, but with millions of people flooding out of Democrat controlled places and relocating to more conservative regions one might think they would finally get the message.

Blue cities and states across the US have been experiencing a mass exodus of legal residents since before the pandemic event; many of them business owners taking their money (and job opportunities) with them. The hardest hit states in the country include New York, Illinois and California, with cities like NYC, LA, Chicago and San Francisco seeing some of the most aggressive population shift. In states like California the standard operating procedure has been to lie about the situation, using the surge of illegal immigrants to hide population loss in the census.

NewsMax.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments involving a federal obstruction law that has been used to prosecute hundreds of defendants involved in the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and the justices’ decision could affect former President Donald Trump.

The main charge that has sent so many 1/6 defendants to prison is one that had never before been prosecuted in such a context and (it is being argued) beyond the scope of what Congress intended with the law.

Read it.

Sen. Jacky Rosen says she’s committed to cracking down on the corporate landowners jacking up housing costs for her constituents. But the Nevada Democrat has no problem raking in campaign contributions from executives at America’s largest corporate landlord.

Rosen’s campaign and leadership PAC have accepted $83,250 in 2023 from executives of Blackstone, a leading corporate investor in the U.S. housing market, Federal Election Commission records show. Blackstone is the largest landlord in the country, with over 300,000 housing units in its portfolio, and is a direct contributor to the affordable housing crisis, according to a 2023 report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. Among Rosen’s donors is Frank Cohen, the chairman and CEO of Blackstone’s flagship real estate investment fund, which is heavily invested in Nevada. Cohen gave $13,200 to Rosen in August.

Now, Rosen says corporate landowners like Blackstone are responsible for driving up the cost of living for everyday Americans by monopolizing residential housing markets. Rosen introduced legislation in January that she said would limit the ability of companies like Blackstone to acquire an excessive amount of single-family residences in a single market and prohibit them from renting homes at an “unreasonable price.”

Read it.

Bound and determined to drive people with money, upon whom their incipient welfare state depends, out of the state.

Read it.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent string of rulings – including a 2022 New York case – that placed clear limits on how much state and local governments can restrict firearms ownership and possession, Democrat-run jurisdictions seem intent on persisting.

Read it.

Liberals are mounting a pressure campaign to force liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire from the bench so President Joe Biden, who faces a tough reelection fight in November, can appoint a younger liberal successor before the election.

The Guardian.

When the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, announced that it would be suing the world’s largest meat company, JBS, for misleading customers about its climate commitments, it caused a stir far beyond the world of food. That’s because the suit’s impact has the potential to influence the approach all kinds of big businesses take in their advertising about sustainability, according to experts.

Not to mention driving even more businesses out of New York.

Read it.

Nations are either based on the rule of law or the rules dictated by the powerful. The former is meant to restrain, or better said, eliminate the possibility of the latter. But, as we’ve witnessed with the relentless political persecution of former President Donald Trump and, lately, of Elon Musk, laws only work when they’re fairly applied and enforced.

Neither of those things are happening with President Trump or Mr. Musk. President Trump was found guilty of fraud by a left-wing judge who determined this without considering, or despite, mountains of evidence to the contrary. The New York Attorney General Letitia James accused President Trump of over-valuing his real estate to obtain loans.

Coincidentally, Ms. James ran for the office of attorney general in 2018 with the campaign pledge to go after Trump, showing clear political animus toward President Trump. What’s more, Judge Arthur Engoron has been accused by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York of violating “political giving rules with financial contributions to Democrats as recently as 2018, and ignored a decision on the appropriate statute of limitations in the case,” according to NBC News. Ms. James prosecuted President Trump in a civil trial, which was by design; criminal court cases require a trial by jury and proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

The American Mind.

“I don’t feel responsible for the sins of my father and grandfather. I feel responsible for what the situation is today for sins of my own generation, and I’ll be damned if I feel responsible to pay for what happened 300 years ago.” – Senator Joe Biden, 1975

Major political and social phenomena do not spring up fully armored and ready for battle, like Athena from Zeus’s head. They have powerful motivations that drive them and gestate for years before they can come into being—they also have powerful interests that they serve. I believe that many of the fundamental trends in anti-white politics and rhetoric serve a common ideological purpose. That purpose is to create an intellectual and cultural environment to justify the expropriation of land, property, and other wealth from whites while instituting a permanent regime of anti-white employment and legal discrimination.

While this statement may seem alarmist, in fact, this expropriation is already ongoing. In many cases, it is still on the margins of our popular politics, but like so many other leftist political movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, what was marginal will soon become mainstream.

The Foundry.

This past weekend a funeral was held for Officer Jonathan Diller, who was fatally shot during a traffic stop in Far Rockaway, Queens, in March.

The event was attended by hundreds of police officers and a few politicians.

Some of those politicians, among them New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, weren’t exactly warmly welcomed. That shouldn’t be a surprise, as the top officials in New York seem more consumed by their ideological, banana republic-style crusades against former President Donald Trump and his supporters than in dealing with escalating chaos in the city.

The Foundry.

insanity: They keep trying and failing to legalize racial preferences, and yet, they expect a different outcome each time.

When will they learn from their failures?

Not any time soon.

Read it.

The “Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime” gathered this week in Memphis, Tennessee to discuss the dangers of crime across the US, as well as apparent solutions to the growing threat. The question is, was the meeting really about stopping crime, or, was it all about maintaining optics and making the public believe crime is going down when it’s not?

It’s difficult to say because public and media access to the event was strictly limited. In many states private meetings between public officials related to policy are illegal. However, in Tennessee the regulations are a bit more lax in terms of what constitutes a “meeting subject to law.”

The Tennessee Open Meetings Act defines a “meeting” as “the convening of a governing body of a public body for which a quorum is required to make a decision or to deliberate toward a decision.” A “governing body” is “any public body [consisting] of two or more members, with the authority to make decisions for or recommendations to a public body on policy or administration.”

In other words, a quorum is required, which means Tennessee was very carefully chosen by the Black Mayor’s Coalition (the vast majority of them Democrats) because it allowed them more legal room to hold closed door meetings. But why not include the press and the public in this discourse?

Perhaps they don’t want people seeing what goes on behind the curtain?

Read it.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) was confronted by a mourner during the wake for slain NYPD officer Jonathan Diller Friday afternoon, after which a round of applause could be heard as she left the scene.

Newsbusters.

For some American Jews, the months since Oct. 7 have felt like a horror movie, as they watch, with increasing alarm, as our president—for whom many voted, and in whom many placed inviolable trust—seemed to, moment after crucial moment, throw Israel under the bus.

Earlier this month, a U.N. report from its Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary General revealed what Israel has been saying for months, namely that Hamas committed the most vile sexual violence and torture on Oct. 7, and such treatment likely continues to be perpetrated on hostages. Experts from the U.N.—an organization that is routinely hostile to the Jewish state—actually found “clear and convincing information that some [hostages] have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and it also has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”

In reaction, Joe Biden’s State Department chose to level the charge of sexual abuse—at Israel. Recently, IDF Brig.-Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi recounted his meeting with a senior State Department official—since identified as Jill Hutchings, director of the Office of Israeli and Palestinian Affairs—who proceeded to accuse Israel of “systematically sexually abusing Palestinian women.” The State Department’s claim was based on information from Hamas pushed by Al Jazeera—which ended up deleting the story after it proved to be fabricated.

Read it.

Baltimore leader Brandon Scott appeared on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show to assert that white conservatives “should be afraid” of the consequences of calling him the ‘DEI Mayor’ and that his “purpose in life” was to make them uncomfortable.

Watch the white people leave your city. Whom will you get to run it then?

Read it.

During a speech at the Human Rights Campaign Dinner in LA Sunday, Jill Biden suggested that not having gay porno books available in children’s libraries in schools is akin to Nazi Germany.

Biden’s wife stated “Rights are being stripped away. Freedoms are eroding. More and more state laws are being passed…Just last night, we had to fend off more than 50 anti-gay amendments that Republicans tried to force into the government funding bill… they served only one purpose: to spread hate and fear.”

She continued, “History teaches us that democracies don’t disappear overnight. They disappear slowly. Subtly. Silently.”

Well, Democrats certainly know about that….

Jonathan Turley.

Below is my column in the New York Post on reported plan of the Democratic National Committee and allied groups to try to block third-party candidates from the 2024 ballot. The contradiction is stunning as these groups raise money to “save democracy” by limiting democratic choice.

Read it.

The Chicago Board of Elections says it “mistakenly left out” 10,000 vote-by-mail ballots when tabulating the results for the Democratic primary race for Cook County state’s attorney that is currently separated by approximately 2,000 votes, the Daily Mail has reported.

Imagine that.

UPDATE: Election Fraud Never Happens. Election Fraud Never Happens. Election Fraud Never … Oh, Wait — Chicago?

Read it.

Let us examine the 2024 Democrat political narrative surrounding abortion, including efforts to leverage the 2022 Dobbs decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that has roiled American politics for 50-plus years and counting.

Rolling Stone.

Long before Trump began leading in battleground-state polling — and years before he was a declared 2024 candidate — the ex-president and many of his influential allies were already busy plotting ways to tilt the election in his favor. These yearslong efforts, conducted both secretly and out in the open, have already yielded tangible results for Trump and the conservative election denier movement. These wide-ranging operations have alarmed the Democratic Party elite, who aren’t just worried about Biden’s sagging poll numbers. Numerous Democratic lawmakers, operatives, Biden campaign advisers, and administration officials tell Rolling Stone that if the president does ultimately beat Trump this November, the election will be exceedingly close.

Over the past year, Team Biden has been conducting war games, crafting complex legal strategies, and devoting extensive resources to prepare for, as one former senior Biden administration official puts it, “all-hell-breaks-loose” scenarios. The preparations include planning for a contingency in which Biden’s margin of victory is so razor-thin that Trump and the GOP launch a tidal wave of legal challenges and political maneuvers to rerun his 2020 election strategy: declare victory anyways, and try to will it into existence.

The Law of Progressive Projection says that this indicates that the Left is intending to steal the election, and how it intends to do so.

The New Neo.

I’ve had a number of interesting – although short – conversations with friends about the lawfare cases against Trump. A pattern has emerged: they’re upset that the cases have been stalled, and they perceive the courts and prosecutors as going too easy on Trump.

I find this extraordinary. But when I really think about it, it’s not so very extraordinary at all. For starters, they probably read and hear plenty of information in the MSM from “legal experts” about how valid and righteous these cases are. In addition, most people are unfamiliar with the details of law and why they protect both sides if followed scrupulously. That part of our education has been either neglected in the first place or forgotten by most people if once learned. Lawyers remember, but so many lawyers are activists (and on the left) these days that they mostly employ their knowledge and skills in sophistry to help the left.

Read it.

All carefully calculated not to touch rich Democrats and rich Democrat donors.

The Foundry.

I’m guessing they’re for it.

CBS News.

The thought of fewer New Yorkers is a blessing that everyone can get behind.

Now, if we could only make it mandatory in blue states….

Read it.

During a segment on the political sentiments of Black voters in Georgia, a reporter was shocked when a couple who were formerly Democrats declared that they are now going to vote for Donald Trump.

Read it.

“Don’t be so down on D.C.,” Bowser said when asked about the crime surge at the Axios What’s Next Summit Monday night. Bowser, who is in her third term leading the nation’s capital, has faced growing scrutiny over her handling of the district’s crime spike. In 2023, while many cities saw crime rates fall, D.C. saw homicides increase by 35 percent, robberies by 67 percent, and carjackings by 82 percent.

UPDATE: DC and our dying blue cities

Read it.

I wonder whether French has given over pretending to be a conservative? Probably not.

Power Line.

Donald Trump has held a narrow but consistent lead in just about every poll for several months now—having never led in the polls in either the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. More significant is where this lead has come from. Trump has not improved his share of white vote at all; his improved standing has come from huge gains in minority votes, as John pointed out recently in drawing our attention to a Financial Times meta-analysis of polls going back several cycles.

Read it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has been a young darling of the Democratic Party, but residents of a Queens neighborhood in her district have become disenchanted with the lawlessness and illegal activity, including prostitution.

My, what a surprise….

You can’t say she doesn’t reflect her district.

Read it.

In 2022, Seattle’s City Council passed an ordinance mandating a minimum earnings floor for app-based food delivery drivers in the city. The law finally went into effect in January 2024, but so far the main result has been customers deleting their delivery apps en masse, food orders plummeting, and driver pay cratering.

The ordinance, part of a legislative package called “PayUp,” was passed under the banner of protecting gig workers. By setting a compensation floor for app-based delivery drivers based on miles driven and amount of time worked, the ordinance operates as a (supremely complicated) minimum wage.

The wage floor is based on labyrinthine calculations: the “engaged minutes” for drivers are multiplied by a “minimum wage equivalent rate,” which is then multiplied again by an “associated cost factor” and then multiplied yet again by an “associated time factor.” Next, this sum is added to the total of “engaged miles” of drivers, multiplied by the “standard mileage rate” and then multiplied once more by the “associated mileage factor.” (If you’re lost, don’t worry—the text of the ordinance itself literally does the math for you).

Read it.

Apparently making up lies about Republican-adjacent celebrities is a genuine career path these days.

Read it.

Fulton Country district attorney Fani Willis must fire her former lover Nathan Wade if she wants to continue to prosecute former president Donald Trump for election interference, a Georgia judge ruled on Friday.

Liberal lawyer Bradley P. Moss, Esq., who frequently appears on CNN, posted his reaction to the news on social media. “I am trying to imagine something scarier right now than being prosecuted by an angry Fani Willis,” he wrote.

Come on, dude. You must not be trying very hard. Here are 10 things that are definitely scarier than being prosecuted by an angry Fani Willis.

The Antiplanner.

“What drives Republican opposition to transit?” asks Governing magazine. I’ve often wondered the reverse of this question: Why do Democrats support transit?

Governing‘s implicit assumption is that transit is a good thing and anyone opposed must have some warped reason to question it. The magazine’s answer is that opposition to transit reflects an urban-rural divide and since Republicans are more likely to represent rural areas that get less or no transit service than urban areas, they have little reason to support it. This belief may be why the Federal Transit Administration is so eager to support rural transit as it is a way to co-opt more political support for transit in general.

Power Line.

As John notes, blue collar workers or minorities voting for policies that actually help them is an important trend, and a complement to Steve’s post about the border problem. As he showed, “immigration” helped to flip California from red to blue in presidential elections, so Democrats seek to repeat that trend “across the entire country.” That’s why Biden has brought in millions, and that’s a problem.

The possibility of becoming a public charge can cancel the prospect of legal immigrants becoming legitimate American citizens. On the other hand, for many illegals becoming a public charge is the goal. The ideal set-up is to get on welfare and work under the table for cash. That’s what enables the transfer of more than $63 billion to Mexico in 2023, a seven-percent hike from the previous year. In effect, the USA subsidizes the Mexican government.

Those on welfare have a problem becoming U.S. citizens and that’s what California attorney general Xavier Becerra was on about when he cited 10 million “immigrants” in California alone. It is illegal for foreign nationals and even registered aliens to vote, but California’s “motor voter” program registers false-documented illegals to vote when they get their driver’s license. Squads of politiqueros bribe, coerce and threaten the illegals to vote “a certain way,” code for Democrats.

Read it.

And, of course, guaranteeing to get Paul’s vote(s), which is the whole point.

Axios.

New data shows that Democrats’ longtime advantage with Black, Latino and Asian American voters has shrunk to its lowest point in more than 60 years — creating a massive vulnerability for President Biden and congressional Democrats.

Why it matters: One of the most loyal parts of the Democratic coalition is suddenly in danger. Black and Hispanic men could vote Republican in numbers not seen since President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in the 1950s.

The big picture: Latinos, the nation’s largest non-white group, still lean Democratic. But they’ve been shifting Republican over the last two decades, and are no longer the slam-dunk Democrats they were in 1960 when JFK ran for president.

PETA.

Ahead of the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, PETA sent a letter to Dr. Jill Biden today asking the first lady to modernize the celebration by replacing eggs with dyed Easter potatoes. PETA notes that an annual “White House Potato Roll” would please everyone who doesn’t eat these cholesterol bombs for health, cultural, religious, or environmental reasons or because they don’t want to support filthy factory farms, where hundreds of millions of hens are confined to cages smaller than a letter-size sheet of paper, unable to stretch even one wing. In starch contrast, potatoes are cheaper and healthier than eggs and leave birds in peace.

I rather suspect that everybody working for PETA is pro-abortion. I guess a bird’s egg is more worthy of respect than a human egg.

Of course, if ‘Dr.’ Jill Biden is in need of a vegetable to roll, Creepy Joe is right to hand.

Read it.

Joe Biden has claimed that his opponents are assaulting democracy on the basis of the January 6, 2020, buffoonish riot.

Aside from the fact that storming the Capitol Rotunda sometimes is apparently deemed permissible – as in the recent pro-Hamas takeover of it – or aside from the fact that disrupting a federal government proceeding is deemed exempt – as in the recent pro-Hamas throng that blocked the route of the presidential motorcade and thus delayed the State of the Union address to the nation by 26 minutes – who really is attacking democracy?

Read it.

Your tax dollars at work.