Read it.

Gee, I wonder why?

Financial Times.

Buy those votes! Buy those votes!

New York Post.

And yet there are people who will vote for this vegetable. Unbelievable.

Read it.

During the pandemic it was common for many Americans to discount or even disparage the Chinese vaccines. In fact, the Chinese vaccines such as Coronavac/Sinovac were made quickly and in large quantities and they were effective. The Chinese vaccines saved millions of lives. The vaccine portfolio model that the AHT team produced, as well as common sense, suggested the value of having a diversified portfolio. That’s why we recommended and I advocated for including a deactivated vaccine in the Operation Warp Speed mix or barring that for making an advance deal on vaccine capacity with China. At the time, I assumed that the disparaging of Chinese vaccines was simply an issue of national pride or bravado during a time of fear. But it turns out that in other countries, the Pentagon ran a disinformation campaign against the Chinese vaccines.

Navy Matters.

Here’s a time line of the pier:

• Mar 7 – Biden announces Gaza pier plan
• Mar 9 – U.S. Army support ship General Frank S. Besson leaves to begin construction
• May 17 –  pier opens
• May 28 – pier ops suspended after piece breaks off
• Jun 8 – operations resume after repairs
• Jun 15 – Pentagon announces pier will be torn down

So, what can we learn from the Gaza pier effort?

Read it.

How many Americans have been assaulted, raped, maimed or murdered by illegals who have streamed into our country at the invitation of Joe Biden’s open border policies? No one knows, but it is safe to say that Rachel Morin is one among many.

Morin, a 37 year old mother of five, went for a run in Harford County, Maryland. She was waylaid by Victor Martinez Hernandez, who raped, viciously beat, and murdered her. Hernandez is an illegal alien. He reportedly is associated with the MS-13 gang and was wanted for murder in El Salvador, so he fled to the U.S.

A sane country would take every reasonable measure to prevent escaping murderers and gang members from crossing its borders, but we are not a sane country. We elected Joe Biden president. It has been reported that Hernandez entered the country in February 2023, but I am not sure how we know that. Did he use Joe Biden’s app to facilitate his illegal entry? Was he given a free cell phone? I don’t know.

Read it.

“An Arkansas prosecutor on Friday said a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent was justified when he fatally shot the Little Rock airport director during a raid in March,” CBS News reports. “Pulaski County Prosecutor Will Jones said in a letter to ATF that no charges in the shooting would be filed after reviewing the Arkansas State Police investigation of the shooting of Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport Executive Director Bryan Malinowski.” On the other hand, a group of Arkansas legislators had some questions.

I imagine that they do.

TIME.

oday, in a runoff election for mayor, Chicago voters will choose either former teacher Brandon Johnson or former schools CEO Paul Vallas. What’s raising eyebrows is the funding of Johnson’s campaign: Over 90 percent has come from teachers unions and other public employee unions. Vallas has the endorsement of the police union, but his funding is more diverse, including business leaders and industrial unions. Just looking at the money, the race comes down to this: Public employees vs everyone else plus cops.

What is wrong with this picture? The new mayor is supposed to manage Chicago for all the citizens, not to benefit public employees. Chicago is not in good shape. In 37 of its schools, not one student is proficient in reading or math. Its transit system is stuck with schedules that serve no one at great expense. The crime rate in Chicago is among the highest in the country. But no recent Chicago mayor has been able to fix these and other endemic problems because the public unions have collective bargaining powers that give them a veto on how the city is run. Frustrated by the inability to get teachers back to the classroom during Covid, Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot observed that the teachers union wanted “to take over not only Chicago Public Schools, but take over running the city government.”

This is not just a Chicago problem. Los Angeles teachers walked out of class rooms last month supposedly to support striking service personnel, but Los Angeles lacks the resources to help the service employees because of the indebted inefficiencies in the teachers union contract.

Read it.

Baltimore City and Chicago Public Schools are spending taxpayer monies like there’s no tomorrow, yet math and reading test scores are shockingly low. Radical leftists, who are embedded in these school systems, along with the officials in City Halls in these respective imploding metro areas, have ideals and beliefs not rooted in reality. Their progressive agendas have failed the youth and also unleashed a tidal wave of crime and chaos.

These are not new problems for crime-ridden Baltimore City and Chicago. The school systems in these metro areas have been failing the nation’s future generations for years. Still, it’s only now becoming absolutely insane that woke leftists are continuing to run these education systems into the ground.

Washington Examiner.

“We recently learned that the Democrat mayor of Denver has been sending illegal immigrants to Utah without proper notification or approval. This is completely unacceptable and follows on the failed catch-and-release policy of the Biden administration,” Cox wrote on X. “Every state has received illegal immigrants and Utah’s resources are completely depleted.”

Where is it written that one state has to have ‘notification or approval’ to send illegal immigrants to another state? Texas obviously thinks that there is no such requirement. Certainly the Federal government feels under no obligation for ‘notification or approval’ before shipping illegal immigrants to a state.

If you don’t like it, ship them back. Or sue.

Read it.

It’s been more than three years since Congress directed the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to investigate the long-term effects of COVID-19—and there are still no answers for the millions of Americans suffering from long COVID.

The Foundry.

The Environmental Protection Agency plays judge, jury, and executioner—and its newest-issued rule is a death sentence to American energy and energy-producing states.

Meanwhile, states like Pennsylvania, which will be disproportionately harmed by the rule because of our abundant natural gas production, hold the key to America’s increasing energy needs, generating immense economic development and reducing the very emissions targeted by this heavy-handed agency.

The EPA unilaterally issued a final rule establishing draconian emission standards that target existing coal and new natural gas power plants nationwide. It requires 90% carbon capture for power-generating facilities by 2032.

Aside from its questionable legality, the new rule is unfeasible. The EPA proposed impossible standards. Current carbon-capture technology—a water- and energy-intensive process that filters and sequesters emissions—neither meets this standard nor projects to do so in the next decade.

Read it.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court has found that the federal government cannot use a decades-old ban on machine guns to ban bump stocks.

“Semiautomatic firearms, which require shooters to reengage the trigger for every shot, are not machineguns. This case asks whether a bump stock—an accessory for a semiautomatic rifle that allows the shooter to rapidly reengage the trigger (and therefore achieve a high rate of fire)—converts the rifle into a ‘machinegun.’ We hold that it does not,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas.

Thomas was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch in deciding the ban was illegal.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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We don’t see a lot of pride flags flying through most of the US, not even during the unilaterally declared “pride month” that has been foisted on the populace every June. The only pride flags we do see are in corporate marketing campaigns and certain government buildings, not to mention certain city crosswalks.

If you have come to the conclusion that the pride movement is nothing more than astroturf sponsored by corporate interests and far-left politicians then you would be right on target. Without these institutions pushing LGBT propaganda on a regular basis the pride movement simply would not exist beyond a minority of useful idiots.

But what is the point? Why fabricate an activist ideology and why force it on the masses as if it is legitimate? There are a lot of reasons, but the primary goal is to create a vehicle for controlling speech and a shield for collectivist ideologues so that they can pursue political power while hiding behind proclamations of “equal rights.” If you are engaging in a coup from a position of weakness it sure helps if your enemies can’t criticize you for fear of being labeled “monsters and insurrectionists.”

Read it.

The Associated Press reported that unnamed U.S. intelligence officials are recycling a familiar narrative ahead of the 2024 election, claiming without evidence that the upcoming presidential election is a target for foreign disinformation campaigns.

An unnamed official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been briefing political candidates and government groups an unspecified number of times, alleging that the risks in 2024 are higher because “presidential elections draw more attention from our adversaries,” according to The Associated Press (AP).

They made similar claims in 2020 when 51 intelligence officials falsely asserted that Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” This letter and the leftist media’s refusal to cover the story ultimately led Big Tech to censor anyone who dared to share the New York Post’s bombshell on the laptop.

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A few months back reports started to emerge of Illegal immigrants taking shelter in Boston’s Logan Airport. Now there are HUNDREDS of them living there, including whole families.

The New York Post reports that there are “throngs of families lining a baggage claim surrounded by suitcases and using sparse blankets for makeshift mattresses.”

“We continue to see migrants at the airport. They come to Logan a number of ways. They also arrive at Logan at all hours,” a representative from MassPort commented.

The rep. also noted that as quickly as the migrants are moved out of the airport to shelters, more arrive.

Read it.

The Department of Education has never educated one person. Not one. Ever.

Roberts, himself a former K-12 and college educator, made the case for abolishing the Cabinet-level department in an interview with podcast co-host Tim Kennedy. Roberts called that policy goal his “life’s work.”

“The Department of Education got it wrong on the first minute of its existence in 1979,” he contended, “because it is such a terrible idea to centralize or attempt to centralize education policy, education funding, [and] curriculum questions.”

The department was created near the end of the Carter administration at the behest of the teachers unions.

Read it.

The House committee with oversight of elections is subpoenaing 15 members of the Biden administration’s Cabinet regarding the implementation of the president’s executive order to use federal agencies to partner with left-leaning groups for get-out-the-vote purposes in 2024.

The House Administration Committee is investigating President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14919, signed in March 2021, that requires federal agencies to partner with private interests to boost voter participation. The committee previously advanced legislation to block funding of the order.

“Elections are partisan, but our election administration should never be partisan,” House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said in a public statement. “Allowing federal employees from the Biden administration to flood election administration sites threatens election integrity and reduces Americans’ confidence.”

The Biden administration has been secretive about the implementation of the plan. Critics of the order have called it “Bidenbucks.”

Read it.

House Republicans voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt — they don’t like him either, but the vote was official business. They voted to hold him in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the subpoenaed recording of President Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur. Hur found President Biden to be incompetent to stand trial and thus found charges based on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents to be inappropriate. Not unreasonably, House Republicans want to go to the tape.

What does it matter? Ask Eric Holder what happens to an Attorney General held in contempt of Congress. (Hint: Nothing.)

Read it.

The price tag for a ‘first-class’ high-rise for the homeless and drug addicts in the utopian progressive hellhole neighborhood of Skid Row, located in downtown Los Angeles, has topped nearly $600k per unit. The building comprises 228 studios and 50 one-bedroom apartments, with the total project costing taxpayers $165 million. This project was financed by state housing funds and $56 million in state tax credits.

Read it.

Republican House lawmakers joined Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) on Wednesday in releasing the 32nd annual edition of the “Congressional Pig Book,” a compilation of “pork-barrel” projects in the federal budget.

Read it.

As they do.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which oversees American-funded news outlets across the globe, attempted to stonewall a congressional investigation into corruption at the agency and privately pleaded with a lawmaker to end the probe as investigators began to uncover widespread misconduct at the organization’s highest levels, according to a report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), determined that senior USAGM employees spent years trying to shield agency executive Setareh Sieg from discipline over allegations she “used taxpayer funds for personal travel, falsified her educational credentials to obtain high-level employment, and engaged in a pattern of favoritism that materially benefitted some employees at the expense of the public.”

The report on the committee’s investigation, released Tuesday and reviewed in advance by the Free Beacon, shows that the allegations against Sieg, the onetime director of Voice of America’s Persian News Network, “have merit and are supported by substantial evidence.” The conclusion was reached even as USAGM officials tried to protect Sieg from scrutiny and pleaded with McCaul’s team to drop the years-long probe.

Read it.

A U.S. appeals court on June 9 upheld a ban preventing a Massachusetts middle school student from wearing a shirt reading “There are only two genders.”

Another prohibition by school administrators, this time blocking the same student from wearing the shirt with “only two” covered by tape, on which was written “censored,” is also allowed under court precedent, according to the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Time to leave.

“The question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them—educators or federal judges. Based on Tinker, the cases applying it, and the specific record here, we cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make ‘an environment conducive to learning’ at NMS to us rather than to the educators closest to the scene,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron wrote for a unanimous panel of the court.

The question is not whether to have censorship – that is obviously yes – but who is to do the censoring. Time to leave.

“[The school] permissibly concluded that the shirt invades the rights of others,” Judge Talwani said before quoting Tinker. “Schools can prohibit speech that is in ‘collision with the rights of others to be secure and be let alone.’”

Orwell, you were SO right….

Read it.

They made a mess of the area, desecrated monuments to heroes of the American Revolution, burned American flags, harassed officers of the law—the very few who even arrived to do anything at all—and despite many wearing face masks, revealed the true face of their movement.

I don’t say “pro-Hamas” lightly here. Many were wearing Hamas headbands.

Read it.

The White House took the unprecedented step of intervening in an international labor dispute last year after a push from powerful U.S. labor unions. Then, months later, a multi-nation tribunal threw the case out, handing a defeat to the administration and its labor allies.

Last year, the AFL-CIO and United Steelworkers—which collectively represent more than 13 million American workers and regularly funnel millions of dollars to Democratic campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission data—made their formal appeal to the White House’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), according to legal filings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

In the appeal, the unions called on the administration to invoke a little-known clause in the 2020 North American trade agreement in support of Los Mineros, a Mexican miners’ union locked in a years-long labor dispute with the massive San Martin mine in Zacatecas, Mexico. The White House, which regularly claims to be the most pro-union White House in U.S. history, soon obliged and assembled a panel to review the case.

Washington Poop.

The draft rules, arriving less than five months before Election Day, are part of President Biden’s argument that he is addressing pocketbook problems.

Yeah, by picking the pocket of people who loan money to make things easier for deadbeat Democrats (but I repeat myself). No wonder the economy is in the toilet, with the government changing the rules every time you turn around.

Buy those votes! Buy those votes!

Read it.

In the midst of the infamous “Pride Month,” with rainbow flags seemingly in every store window and on every company logo, we got an inside look at how two federal agencies celebrate Pride Month—especially their inclusion of the criminals they supervise by providing them resource guides for LGBTQ-friendly housing, employment, mental health groups, and more.

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U.S. taxpayers will likely be footing the bill for the majority of first lady Jill Biden’s cross-Atlantic travel where she traveled from France to the United States then back to France in less than 48 hours.

Read it.

The latest fiasco involves a RICO case against one rapper named Young Thug and co-defendants, in which Mr. Thug (Jeffrey Lamar Williams) and pals have been charged with several gang-related crimes related to the “Young Slime Life” group.

During a Monday court hearing, Mr. Thug’s attorney, Brian Steel, was arrested after alleging that the judge, Ural Glanville, arranged a “secret” meeting with a key witness, Kenneth Copeland (a no-no).

Judge Glanville gave Steel until 5pm to disclose his source regarding the secret meeting, arguing that Steel wasn’t supposed to have any communication with a state witness sworn to testify.

Steel, facing a contempt charge, refused to reveal his source citing attorney-client privilege – after which he can be seen being taken into custody.

Read it.

The University of California, Los Angeles, medical school has gone to extraordinary lengths for over five years to shield its admissions practices from internal scrutiny, stonewalling data requests from concerned professors and refusing to assure admissions officials that they would not face retaliation for cooperating with an internal probe of the school’s admissions office, according to three sources with firsthand knowledge of the situation and documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Since at least 2018, the school has refused to provide members of its faculty oversight board data on the relationship between admitted students’ academic credentials and their performance in medical school, two former members of that board said.

It has also slow-walked, since November of last year, its response to a public records request for similar data, pushing back the estimated date of availability four times over the course of six months, according to emails from UCLA’s public records office.

Read it.

The city of Alexandria, Virginia, is drawing fire for painting Pride flags that include transgender symbols over the crosswalks in historic Old Town Alexandria.

The rainbow crosswalks are permanent, City Council member R. Kirk McPike told a local publication, The Zebra.

“Last June, in response to resident requests, I brought a memo before [the] Council, which my colleagues supported, asking staff to put together a proposal for permanent Pride street artwork,” McPike told The Zebra. “Staff brought a proposal to us last fall, which [the] Council approved, leading to these beautiful new crosswalks.”

He also said in a tweet that the unveiling of the rainbow crosswalks was met with “great media fanfare” and an “exciting drag story time” in which men dressed as women in drag read books and danced for children.

In addition to his role on the Alexandria City Council, McPike serves as chief of staff to a California Democratic congressman, Rep. Mark Takano. McPike is married to a man.

Read it.

President Biden’s executive order to curb the illegal alien invasion was nothing more than optically pleasing headlines before the September presidential debates. Just days after the order was signed, US Customs and Border Protection agents in the southern California sector received a memo instructing them to release single adults from all but six countries.

Fox News’ Bill Melugin obtained an internal CBP memo sent to agents in the San Diego sector following Biden’s executive order last Tuesday. The memo instructed them to release single adults from over 100 eastern hemisphere countries, except for six (Uzbekistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan) deemed “mandatory referral” countries. This means despite the president’s promise of stopping the invasion between border checkpoints, the majority, including Chinese, Middle Eastern, and African adults, are still being released into the US.

Read it.

ocial Security faces a potential funding shortfall by 2033-2035, threatening its ability to meet commitments to retirees. A significant issue is the payroll tax cap, which limits taxation to incomes up to $168,000. This cap hasn’t kept pace with the rise in high earners, contributing to the shortfall. Removing the cap could address 70% of the deficit. While raising the retirement age or increasing taxes are other options, the political feasibility of taxing higher incomes makes it a likely solution. Retirees are advised to continue investing in their retirement accounts to supplement Social Security benefits.

Only a fool depends on Social Security for their retirement. (If I had been able to put the money taken from me in Social Security tax and put it into an IRA, I’d be miles ahead.)

The American Mind.

For most of my life, June signified the arrival of summer and opened wedding season. In recent years, a small but boisterous group of activists have claimed it as Pride Month, replacing the traditional focus with honoring an ever-changing flag that represents the worship of a postmodern Baal. As society has surrendered to this iteration of humanistic religious practice, the military complex has followed suit.

The American military that could not be defeated by global nuclear powers was conquered by a band of people dedicated to sexual disorder. Since the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) in 2010, the Department of Defense (DOD) capitulated to the revolutionary cause of Pride Month with nearly the speed of Kabul’s fall to the Taliban. In doing so, it usurped the concept of selfless service to others with the celebration of self for the sexually divergent.

The Pentagon, and all branches of the military, publish internal public affairs guidance documents laying out exactly how military leaders from top to bottom are expected to celebrate LGBTQ values in speech and action. This now includes sending honor guards in full military dress to formally kick off pride parades. The American flag and military colors have long shown up in battles throughout American history. Now they wave in cultural battle—on the side of those who want the nation deconstructed.

Gothamist.

The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money — in this case, the taxpayers.

Time to leave.

Forbes.

S Corporation shareholders and partners in a partnership could see their effective federal income tax rate increase by 30% by the end of December 31, 2025, due to the expiration of certain tax laws. With the sunsetting of the 199A deduction and an increase in individual federal income tax rates scheduled to occur as of December 31, 2025, the effective tax rate for pass-through entity owners will jump from 30% to 39.6%. Taxable income could also increase due to the sunsetting Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, including the capitalization of research and experimental expenditures, bonus depreciation dropping to 60% in 2024 and to 40% in 2025, and the application of a more restrictive interest expense limitation calculation.

A dramatic increase to the effective tax rate may catch many pass-through entity businesses by surprise. Doesn’t Congress have to pass a bill to change federal income tax law? Unfortunately, not in this situation. For tax law to be passed, the Senate normally needs a 60-vote majority to overcome a filibuster. However, provided the political party controls the Presidency, House and Senate, laws can be passed under the budget reconciliation process where only a simple majority in the Senate is needed. The budget reconciliation process was utilized to pass the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) in December of 2017, which bypassed the need for bipartisan support. Under the reconciliation process, the bill cannot increase the deficit beyond a 10-year budget window. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, taxes were reduced substantially between 2018 through 2025, resulting in an anticipated $1-$2 trillion increase to the national deficit. Both parties have used the budget reconciliation process when controlling the Presidency and Congress. In 2010, the budget reconciliation process was utilized to amend the Affordable Care Act and modify the federal student loan program. This process was utilized most recently in 2021 to enact additional COVID-19 relief via the American Rescue Plan.

Thank you, Joe Biden.

Read it.

If it weren’t for double standards, we wouldn’t have any standards at all.

Read it.

The new Nancy Pelosi?

Don’t you wish you were a Congresscritter, so you could own a California winery?

NavalNews.

The decommissioning schedule for the U.S. Navy’s remaining 13 Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers has been set. Next to leave service will be the Vicksburg (CG 69) in June 2024, followed by the Cowpens (CG 63) in August, Antietam (CG 54) and Leyte Gulf (CG 55) in September. Overall, the last two cruisers will likely be Chosin (CG 65) and Cape St. George (CG 71), both to be decommissioned in fiscal 2027. The close of their careers will bring an end to the service life of the class, the world’s first to be equipped with the Aegis combat system.

Vicksburg and Cowpens had been two of the seven cruisers inducted in the mid-20-teens into the Navy’s Cruiser Modernization Program, and the cost of their protracted, never-finished modernizations has approached nearly one billion dollars. Although Congress had directed otherwise, the U.S. Navy in early 2024 ordered all further work on the ships to stop and they were placed on the decommissioning list. Of the seven cruisers in the program, only Gettysburgand Chosin have been redelivered, with work continuing on Cape St. George. Two other ships in the program, Hue City (CG 66) and Anzio (CG 68), were decommissioned in 2022 in poor condition and far from completion.

Read it.

Nuclear plant construction is often characterized as exhibiting “negative learning.” That is, instead of getting better at building plants over time, we’re getting worse. Plants have gotten radically more expensive, even as technology has improved and we understand the underlying science better

…

Most nuclear plant cost increase in the 1970s-80s can be attributed to increased labor costs. An estimate by United Engineers and Constructors found that from 1976-1988, labor costs for plant construction climbed 18.7% annually, while material costs escalated by only 7.7% annually (against an overall inflation rate of 5.5%) Of those labor costs, over half were due to expensive professionals: engineers, supervisors, quality control inspectors, and so on.

…

Why did labor costs increase? According to most observers, increasing regulation made plants increasingly burdensome to build. During the late 60s and early 70s, regulatory requirements steadily increased.

 

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Like every regulator grant of power to the administrative agencies of the executive branch, the agency has grabbed the power and expanded it beyond its original intent. Take the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards imposed by the Department of Transportation/National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — please. The origin of federal fuel economy standards dates to the oil embargo of 1973-1974 imposed by Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the subsequent tripling in the price of crude oil. Americans could not be trusted to seek cars with better mileage on their own.

Like the old Temporary North of Mines Building at the University of Minnesota, it’s a long way to temporary. The CAFE standards have now become a tool wielded by the Biden administration to club Americans into submission to electric vehicles. We want nothing more than to be left alone, but they want to run our lives. Count the ways.

It’s a long list that includes the displacement of cars powered by internal combustion engines by electric vehicles. We love the former and reject the latter. Thus the latest edition of NHTSA’s CAFE standards, announced yesterday.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Read it.

When is a ban not a ban? When it’s a Biden.

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Yeah–electric cars don’t need gas, and gas taxes are what they use to (not) repair their streets.

Read it.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked the Democrats’ “Right to Contraception” bill. The bill sought to provide more money to places like Planned Parenthood to facilitate more abortions and promote transgender surgeries on kids. Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) proposed the bill called “Right to Contraception.” Critics have more appropriately titled the bill as the “Payouts for Planned Parenthood Act.”

The Foundry.

Arizona’s two largest cities allocated tens of millions of dollars to fight homelessness in the past several years, but little has changed, according to a Goldwater Institute investigative report released Thursday.

“We’ve seen Phoenix and Tucson spend, combined, almost half a billion dollars on this issue with very minimal improvements in the area of homelessness,” Austin VanDerHeyden, municipal affairs liaison for the Goldwater Institute, told The Daily Signal.

The Goldwater Institute, a public policy research and litigation organization based in Arizona, launched an investigation into what Phoenix and Tucson officials are spending to address homelessness, who is receiving the funding, and the results of the investment.

Read it.

Note that these are members of his own party. When did you ever see Democrats criticize a fellow Democrat for wearing a decoration that he (or she) didn’t earn? (That would be Never.)

Read it.

The United States is preparing to announce a new $225 million weapons package for Ukraine this week, coming two weeks after the last package, which was at $275 million and featured badly needed artillery rounds. And a few weeks prior to that, in early May, the US administration rolled out with $400 million in defense aid —  thus it appears the White House is planning to apportion new packages about every two or three weeks, drawing from Biden’s $60 billion in recently approved total funding for Ukraine.

Currently, Ukrainian soldiers are resorting to literally trying to find leftover, unexploded artillery shells scattered in the ground at prior battle sites. The Wall Street Journal recently underscored this severe lack of ammo along Ukraine’s front lines in writing that “Kyiv’s ammunition shortage is so acute that a soldier who hunts for Russian shells—and makes his own bombs—has become an important supplier for some units.” 

The dangerous trend can be summarized as follows: the more desperation there is on the ground as Ukraine loses more and more ground along frontline positions, the greater the bellicose posturing on the part of NATO and the West. Western publications are even openly airing contingency plans for US troop movements in Europe in a WW3 scenario involving war with Russia in the heart of Europe. As another alarming and somewhat absurd example of this trend, look what European Commission chief is positively boasting about…