Newsbusters.

It seems progressives in Germany may have had too much beer before deciding on this recent law, because no sober-minded individual should’ve voted yes for this!

Earlier this month, the German Parliament, Bundestag, passed a policy that would enable parents to change the gender on their child’s birth certificate if the kid isn’t satisfied with their biological sex at birth, and enforce fines for any citizens who “deadname” or “misgender” other civilians. The Self-Determination Act (SBGG) is an extreme policy that caters to delusion and desire over fact and truth.

As Reduxx reported, parents can alter the sex on a child’s birth certificate once the child turns five, if there is “mutual consent” between the parent and said five-year-old.

Read it.

Pretty much.

As a general rule, rebels without a cause will eventually latch onto the nearest cause of opportunity. It really doesn’t matter what it is, for activists with ample time on their hands and plenty of trust fund money these protests fill the void and make them feel like they have meaning.

Such is the case with the political left and their infatuation with Gaza (or any movement rooted in Islam). It’s been noted by many commentators that the relationship between Islamic fundamentalists and the far-left is a bizarre one. After all, almost every element of Sharia Law is completely antithetical to the proclaimed values of progressives including equal rights for women, equal rights for gays and the leftist penchant for atheism. All of these beliefs might get a person executed in a host of Muslim governed countries, but for some reason the leftist mob wants in on the Islamic bandwagon.

Newsbusters.

If Facebook, the company, had a personal Facebook profile, its “relationship status” with free speech would say, “It’s complicated.” The platform, however, has consistently courted election interference efforts.

MRC Free Speech America researchers compiled 39 times Facebook was caught interfering in U.S. elections since 2008. The platform’s record of election-interfering censorship began in 2012, reached a crescendo in 2020 and has begun fading somewhat in the early stages of the 2024 electoral cycle. All the while, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly made pro-free speech comments including during his famous 2019 speech at Georgetown University.

“We can either continue to stand for free expression understanding its messiness but believing that the long journey towards greater progress requires confronting ideas that challenge us. Or we can decide that the cost is simply too great,” said Zuckerberg. “I’m here today because I believe that we must continue to stand for free expression.”

Read it.

The left-wing nonprofit that bailed out anti-Israel protesters who blocked bridges and highways across the country last week was a multi-year partner of the NFL’s “Inspire Change program” whose work is still promoted on the NFL’s website.

Community Justice Exchange set up a “bail and legal defense fund” for those arrested during last week’s A15 protests. The protests targeted major airports, highways, and bridges in dozens of U.S. cities including San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, and Philadelphia. Their explicit goal was to disrupt economic “choke points” to maximize financial disruption, as explained on their website.

The online fundraiser, hosted by ActBlue and organized in conjunction with A15 Action, told donors that the funds will “support community members who are criminalized in the U.S. for their solidarity with Palestine.”

Associated Press.

Maine Youth Action, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Sierra Club filed their lawsuit on Friday in state court. The lawsuit says the Maine Department of Environmental Protection is under an “existing and ongoing statutory obligation” to reduce emissions and has failed to do so.

The lawsuit harkens back to a similar effort in Montana in which young environmentalists sued state officials for failing to do enough to protect them from climate change. Those activists scored a victory in August.

The Maine lawsuit says the state must enact new rules that cut emissions for cars and trucks to make good on promises made by the Maine Legislature.

Read it.

In April 2023, Bank of America shut down the account of Indigenous Advance Ministries, which partners with groups in the African nation of Uganda to provide care and education for orphaned and at-risk children. The bank closed accounts of a Memphis church which donated to the organization.

The Foundry.

We’re now apparently in the era where using the term “birthing person” makes you a thoughtful speaker and saying “illegal alien” gets you suspended—at least if you’re one North Carolina high schooler.

Last week, “in Davidson County, North Carolina, 16-year-old student Christian McGhee was suspended for three days for using the term ‘illegal alien’ in class when clarifying the word ‘alien’ in a vocabulary lesson,” writes Donna King, editor in chief of the Carolina Journal.

“A classmate reportedly threatened to fight Christian over his word choice, but both students and their teacher insisted the exchange was innocent, and the other student’s outrage was in jest,” adds King, who notes the absurdity of politically correct terms such as “birthing person” and “uterus owners” in her column about the incident.

Read it.

Monica Cornejo, an assistant professor of interpersonal communication, was forcibly removed from a Cornell University event this week after disrupting a speech by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. She is only the latest faculty member to seek to prevent others from hearing opposing views. The question now is what Cornell will do about her conduct.

And most of them tend to be women. Coincidence? I think not….

Read it.

Brussels authorities shuttered the National Conservatism Conference on Tuesday, sending police to block entry to the conference and announcing that those inside would be permitted to leave but not to return. However, the action was not the result of any public disturbances or threats. It was a political action by left-progressive politicians who do not like the views being ventilated at the conference—and who fear the increasing success of nationalist and conservative ideas in European politics.

Read it.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will get you punished.

Newsbusters.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell closed out her Tuesday show by deciding to pick a fight with math. Reacting to Monday’s WNBA draft, Mitchell called “sexism” on the fact that number one overall pick Caitlin Clark will have a roughly $76,000 rookie salary while her male counterpart makes slightly north of $12 million.

Mitchell reported that “Caitlin Clark’s record-breaking streak continues with what could be the most watched WNBA Draft ever. Clark was the number one pick, of course, last night, scoring her place with the Indiana Fever. Clark stands to make millions from endorsements, but fans are outraged over the massive gender pay gap in her salary. Clark will reportedly earn, get this, $76,000 for her rookie season. Compare that to the $12 million, million dollars, last year’s number one NBA draft pick made in his rookie year.”

Missing from this monologue was any discussion of revenue. The NBA projected that during its 2021–22 season it would bring in over $10 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, last season, the WNBA’s projected revenue was around $200 million. As of 2018, the league was losing around $10 million a season. Still, Mitchell smeared Americans as sexist for not eliminating the gap overnight, “That gender inequality and the sexism facing women’s sports is a big focus on Saturday Night Live.”

To progressives, ‘revenue’ is only relevant when the government wants to spend some of your money. In their minds, the money that employees are paid just magically drops from heaven into the pockets of management, who are then responsible for distributing it in an ‘equitable’ fashion. But, as Margaret Thatcher famously observed. the trouble with such socialism is that eventually you run out of Other People’s Money.

Newsbusters.

CNN’s legal analyst Elie Honig writing in a Cafe Brief newsletter that was reprinted in New York magazine on Friday presented both the pro and anti Trump ways of looking at the Alvin Bragg case that takes place on April 15 in Manhattan. It is obvious which of the two point of view that Honig thinks is most realistic in “Donald Trump’s Trial Is a Rorschach Test.”

Read it.

The use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 is an ongoing debate. The central conflict is that while many doctors have reported success in using ivermectin, some studies published in major journals suggest it is in fact ineffective.

Even as the FDA recently has been removing misinformation it posted about ivermectin, the agency has maintained its original position regarding its effectiveness, namely that there isn’t evidence.

People who trust ivermectin claim the studies showing ineffectiveness are fraudulent, while people who are skeptical of its use for treating COVID-19 view it as an anti-science conspiracy theory.

The Spectator.

Nor ought she to.

All is not well in the Harry Potter universe. Author of the hit wizarding novels and prominent women’s rights campaigner J.K. Rowling has revealed that, even if they apologize, she will not go easy on the lead actors of the Potter films for their stance on the trans debate. Less, er, expecto forgiveness and more expelliarmus…

Rowling’s comments come in the wake of the published report by top pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass, which found that “remarkably weak evidence’ and a ‘lack of high-quality research” had allowed young people in the UK to change their gender. In a series of tweets, the acclaimed writer blasted supporters of gender-altering treatment in children and said they should apologize to “traumatized detransitioners and vulnerable women.” The writer continued: “Today’s not a triumph, it’s the laying bare of a tragedy.”

One social media user wrote that Daniel Radcliffe, who in the films played Potter, and Emma Watson, who played his best friend Hermione Granger, owe Rowling “a very public apology, safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them.” Rowling simply replied: “Not safe, I’m afraid.” Ouch.

Read it.

Oh so now in America we can’t even display the American flag without triggering people?

The Borderline Dance team was kicked out of a Seattle dance convention called the Emerald City Hoedown for wearing American flag-themed shirts, which reportedly made others feel “triggered and unsafe.”

Nope, this isn’t a joke.

Read it.

Entirely as predicted, Police Scotland has been deluged with vexatious and politically-driven ‘hate crime’ reports, with one top official complaining “we cannot cope.”

Under the new legislation, anyone deemed to have been verbally ‘abusive’, in person or online, to a transgender person, including “insulting” them could be hit with a prison sentence of up to seven years.

That instantly led to a flood of bad faith reports, including from conservatives making a mockery of the system and from deranged left-wing activists trying to punish their ideological adversaries.

Read it.

Father Matthieu Raffray, a Catholic priest of the traditionalist society Institut du Bon Pasteur, posted a video to social media last month encouraging Christians to fight against their sins, which he says are forms of “weakness.” Among the sins Raffray named was homosexuality. He preached, “We all have weaknesses: those who are greedy, those who are angry, those who have homosexual tendencies!”

The priest faced immediate backlash from LGBTQ activists and organizations, and French Minister for Gender Equality and Fight Against Discrimination Aurore Bergé called Raffray’s preaching “unbearable.”

Read it.

A small group of demonstrators disrupted the Lincoln Park Apple Store in Chicago on Saturday to protest Apple’s use of labor in Africa and its disciplining of at least one employee wearing pro-Palestinian clothing items.

The political is personal.

Politico.

If you’ve been watching television or tracking trending topics over the last few weeks, you’ve probably seen or read something about “white rural rage.” This is owed to the publication of a new book, White Rural Rage, by Tom Schaller and Paul Waldman, whose thesis is that white rural Americans, despite representing just 16 percent of the American electorate, are a “threat to the world’s oldest constitutional democracy.”

In an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Schaller gave this unvarnished assessment of the rage he sees overflowing in the heartland. Rural whites, he said, are “the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay geo-demographic group in the country.” He called them, “the most conspiracist group,” “anti-democratic,” “white nationalist and white Christian nationalists.” On top of that, rural whites are also “most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”

This premise has triggered a backlash towards rural voters from some on the left. Amanda Marcotte, writing for Salon, said she’s tired of handling rural voters “with kid gloves,” and time has come to pop the “racist, homophobic, sexist bubble” they all live in. Daily Beast columnist Michael Cohen agreed, writing that “these aren’t hurtful, elitist stereotypes by Acela Corridor denizens and bubble-dwelling liberals… they’re facts.” David Corn, the D.C. bureau chief at Mother Jones, piled on, agreeing that “white rural voters [are] the slice of the public that endangers the constitutional future of the republic.”

Amanda Marcotte is famous for her hatred of non-proglodyte America, as are the people who write for Daily Beast and Mother Jones.

Read it.

Recently we covered the exposure of leftist activist run “consulting firms” that have been discreetly involved in the widespread wokification of the video games industry. These firms have been know to operate on a protection racket-like model: They threaten video game developers with the cancel-culture mob unless they hire said firm to “fix” their games for them. This fixing usually involves a host of DEI requirements, from forced diversity to the inclusion of LGBT related propaganda for the kiddies.

The reason these consulting outfits exist is singular – They do not care about games, gaming or gamers. In fact, they seem to hate game consumers with a passion. Their only purpose is to inject as much woke ideology as possible into an industry they know has immense influence on the next generation. Leftists see video games as a platform to manipulate the collective thinking of the future.

One agenda which has been incredibly important to them is their war on the “male gaze” and western beauty standards in general. The reasons for this are varied.

Wear a hijab and ‘male gaze’ will not trouble you. Problem solved. Ask me a hard one.

The Spectator.

With Donald Trump confirmed as the Republican nominee, a group of NeverTrump conservatives have tried to hit the former president somewhere vulnerable: the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Lincoln Project, an organization led by old-school Republicans, has released a video parodying one of the tunes most associated with Trump’s rallies — the theme song from The Phantom of the Opera.

Power Line.

St. Louis Park, Minnesota, used to have very good public schools. I suppose it was a matter of demographics: the suburb was, at one time, referred to as “St. Jewish Park.” But those days are long gone. Today the St. Louis Park school district is in the hands of the same kinds of morons who generally run our public schools. Minnesotan David Strom has the story:

The Saint Louis Park School District, located in the suburbs of Minneapolis, is hiring an assistant superintendent to “examine the presence of Whiteness” in the district.

It’s a good gig, paying between $134,000 and $201,000.

I suspect that Celebrating Whiteness would be a best-selling book that nobody would dare to write. (Go to Amazon and search for ‘whiteness’ for a taste of what would happen.)

Power Line.

Let’s assume the House of Representatives votes to impeach Joe Biden. Assume further that Fox News were to hire conservative Hollywood actors–both of them–to do dramatic readings from the Articles of Impeachment, with sinister background music. What do you suppose the reaction would be? The stunt would be ridiculed as the dumbest political move in history, and rightly so.

But, amazingly enough, that is exactly what the Democrats have done. MSNBC, one of the Democrats’ captive media outlets, hired Liam Neeson, Glenn Close, Peter Coyote (no idea who that is) and Renee Elise Goldsberry from the play Hamilton to read aloud from indictments of Donald Trump, to accompanying background music. You literally can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

The SPLC, which began as a civil rights law firm representing poor people in the South and established a name for itself by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, publishes a “hate map” that plots mainstream conservative and Christian organizations like ADF alongside Klan chapters, insinuating that they are driven by a similar form of hate. Amid a sexual harassment and racial discrimination scandal in 2019, a former employee said the SPLC’s “hate” accusations are a “highly profitable scam” to scare donors into ponying up cash. The SPLC has an endowment of more than $740 million.

“They don’t care about rights. They don’t care about America,” Farris says of the SPLC. “They care about using the progressive ideology to raise a ton of money and spend it on themselves. But they’re using it by terrorist tactics. You know, terrorist tactics wrapped in a little bit of velvet.”

In 2012, a terrorist used the SPLC’s “hate map” to target the Family Research Council, a Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C. The council’s building manager foiled the attack by the terrorist, who later told the FBI he had planned to massacre everyone in the building.

The Family Research Council remains on the “hate map” to this day.

The Free Press.

The world has been horrified—and amused—by the extreme ideological bent of Gemini, Google’s much-hyped new AI tool, which the company launched last month.

But Shaun Maguire, who was a partner at Google Ventures, the company’s investment wing, from 2016 until 2019, had a different reaction.

“I was not shocked at all,” he told The Free Press. “When the first Google Gemini photos popped up on my X feed, I thought to myself: Here we go again. And: Of course. Because I know Google well. Google Gemini’s failures revealed how broken Google’s culture is in such a visually obvious way to the world. But what happened was not a one-off incident. It was a symptom of a larger cultural phenomenon that has been taking over the company for years.”

UnHerd.

“Surreal.” This was how Professor Michelle Shipworth described her ordeal at University College London, after a Chinese student complained about an innocuous presentation slide on slavery in China. Instead of leaping to her defence, UCL accused her of being anti-Chinese and endangering its lucrative income from Chinese students. After she was banned from teaching her “provocative” energy and social sciences course, her case was taken up by the Free Speech Union, which presented documentary evidence of what they called “undue deference to the sensitivity of some Chinese students that is utterly incompatible with academic freedom”.

Shipworth is not the first to run into trouble. And that’s because the problem is more profound than many realise. Many universities need these students. Were their fees to disappear entirely from Britain, with no other income found to replace them, many institutions would go under within a year or two. Some universities will even accept Chinese students without proper qualifications or basic English-language skills, so great is their desire for the fees.

Sometimes, issues arise because many Chinese students have been moulded by the jingoistic politics of authoritarian China. Xi Jinping’s promises to deliver the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and “Reunification of the Ancestor-land” make Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra seem gentle by comparison. The emotion this inspires can move people to respond aggressively to perceived slights upon China’s character. Such displays of nationalism may be sincere, or they may be a means of improving one’s own reputation, fishing for a reward or promotion, or going viral on CCP-controlled social media. Universities should back academics in the face of pressure from these nationalists.

Read it.

Planet Fitness is defending its decision to ban the membership of a customer in Alaska who spoke out about a “man in women’s locker room shaving.”

Patricia Silva left the gym in Fairbanks, Alaska and shared a video on Facebook where she said: “I just came out of Planet Fitness. There is a man shaving in the women’s bathroom.”

She also said the man “woman” was in the locker room at the same time as a 12 year old girl.

Gates of Vienna.

Based on the following article, the Culture Wars in Germany are at least as advanced as they are here in the Woke States of America. As far as “Deconstructing Whiteness” goes, Germany may even be ahead of us.

NPR.

Considering the number of black athetes in college accused of sexual assault, this might prove a big win for Florida.

Read it.

I guess they’re running out of Muslim hate groups to crack down on. Ya think?

Read it.

Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla said in a recent television appearance that so-called Christian nationalists believe our rights “come from God,” rather than “any earthly authority.”

After getting eviscerated online, she backpedaled to nuance her position. After all, Thomas Jefferson would qualify under her definition, since he wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights … .”

But rather than clarify her point, she retreated into vagueness and equivocation—all the better to camouflage her own parochial views.

The Hill.

DEI — the identity-obsessed dogma that goes by “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — has now trained Google’s new AI to refuse to draw white people. What’s even more alarming is that it’s also infected the supply chain that makes the chips powering everything from AI to missiles, endangering national security.

The Biden administration recently promised it will finally loosen the purse strings on $39 billion of CHIPS Act grants to encourage semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. But less than a week later, Intel announced that it’s putting the brakes on its Columbus factory. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pushed back production at its second Arizona foundry. The remaining major chipmaker, Samsung, just delayed its first Texas fab.

This is not the way companies typically respond to multi-billion-dollar subsidies. So what explains chipmakers’ apparent ingratitude? In large part, frustration with DEI requirements embedded in the CHIPS Act.

Reality is what’s left when ideology crashes and burns.

Power Line.

I think the answer to that question is Yes. In reality, the whole point of DEI is bigotry, so the fact that its exponents keep getting outed as haters is not at all coincidental. The latest case comes from Johns Hopkins, where the Chief Diversity Officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine has resigned following a hateful outburst.

Read it.

Protesting New York Attorney General Letitia James and supporting former President Donald Trump might be putting some of New York’s bravest under fire with the New York City Fire Department leadership.

Power Line.

Referring to an illegal alien as “illegal” in unscripted remarks during his State of the Union Address this past Thursday, President Biden inadvertently offended a core Democratic constituency (i.e., illegal aliens). That could not stand and it didn’t. As John notes nearby, Biden recanted and apologized within 48 hours.

Illegal or undocumented — which is the correct term. As a matter of fact, “Illegal alien” is the correct term.

 

Read it.

The district paid $900,000 for a one-year contract to Californians for Justice (CFJ), a “youth-powered” non-profit that pushes racial justice ideology on children, the Free Press reports.

Of that, $60,200 was allocated to pay 33 students and 10 families or parents $1,400 each to participate in CFJ’s training programs.

According to the contract, the program exists to “provide assistance to teachers, administrators and selected students in building strategies to support cultural understanding and change.”

The Spectator.

“We fight for every inch,” declared Nikki Haley after she won her first primary in the District of Columbia last week. Her fight didn’t last long. The former governor of South Carolina managed to win one state primary on Super Tuesday, handing the presidential nomination to Donald Trump. Haley’s campaign is over — and with it went the hopes of the NeverTrump movement.

Why did the attempt to reclaim the Republican party from Trump fail so badly? There are 340 million people in the US: all the NeverTrump campaign needed to do was find one who’d make a more convincing Republican candidate. Not only did no candidate emerge, no one came close. Almost from the get-go in the Republican primaries, there has been no contest.

It hasn’t helped that the NeverTrump movement has been essentially faceless. Serious people — including former Republican presidents and presidential candidates — have spoken out against Trump over the years, but no one has wanted to lead the charge against him. You can understand why: it often doesn’t end well for those who stand up to him. (The Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney lost her seat when she did it.) But if you’re going to try to take on a man who has a bigger political profile than any living politician, you need a charismatic challenger.

Read it.

Progressive groups are renewing calls to expand the number of seats on the U.S. Supreme Court after the court’s ruling to prevent Colorado from removing former President Donald Trump from the ballot.

Read it.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision Monday shut down state efforts to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot but left a few options open for Democrats seeking to disqualify him, which some began exploring soon after the ruling dropped.

Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin already said he is working on a bill that would create a pathway to disqualify candidates, stating it is “good news” the Supreme Court did not challenge the Colorado court’s finding that Trump engaged in insurrection. Rather, the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado on the basis that it is Congress, not the states, that has the power to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against federal officials and candidates.

Apparently, ‘our democracy’ is making sure people don’t have the opportunity to make the Wrong Choice. Good that we cleared that up.

Read it.

Whenever people argue that we’re exaggerating or overemphasizing the free speech crisis on campus, we have to take a deep breath and count to 50 — sometimes 100. We have been pummeling the public with numbers and data about shout downs, heckler’s vetoes, and disinvitations and deplatforming of campus speakers for years, and it can be exhausting to hear people continue to dismiss it as a non-issue.

But honestly, all we have to do is wait — because you can set a watch to the emergence of new examples that prove our point. As we will show below, 2023 was the worst year on record for deplatforming attempts and successes, and 2024 is unfortunately already looking like it can top it.

Read it.

New York City police officers discovered an explosive device in the back seat of an Uber but several anti-Israel protesters blocked traffic, keeping them from getting to it but leading to the protesters’ arrest.

The discovery was made Saturday afternoon by the Uber driver after dropping off a potential terrorist in Times Square for the Millions March for Palestine, the New York Post reported.

The explosive device was reported to police, leading to a response from the Emergency Services Unit and Bomb Squad, but protesters blocking traffic kept them from getting to the Uber at 42nd Street and 7th Avenue, according to the police report.

Read it.

The mainstream media for years downplayed and denied the border crisis. They largely avoided the term itself and sometimes outright derided it.

Then, in late January, the White House backed a border security bill and congressional Republicans killed the legislation, saying it was too weak. Suddenly, “border crisis” was in the headlines, and news outlets were suggesting Republicans didn’t care enough about the out-of-control illegal immigration.

NOW: Ahead of dueling visits to the southern border on Thursday by President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, who are once again facing off for the presidency in 2024, outlets leaned into the crisis. A New York Times liveblog about the border visits featured the word “crisis” 26 times.

Newsbusters.

John Hendrickson used most of his Atlantic magazine article on Tuesday criticizing No Labels. There was no big surprise in his critique of No Labels, “The Dangerous Confusion of No Labels,” which portrays that sort of party as confused, impractical, and even downright goofy.

Deep into the story, Hendrickson revealed something that should have been the main focus. The desperation of the Lincoln Project to keep a No Labels presidential ticket off 2024 ballots in the states to the extent of threatening to ruin the lives of individual members.

Let us take a look at what was buried many paragraphs down in the story but should have been right at the top due to what it revealed about the shockingly heinous nature of the Lincoln Project.

David Harsanyi.

The other day, Politico reporter Heidi Przybyla appeared on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes” to talk about the hysteria de jour, “Christian nationalism.”

Donald Trump, she explained, has surrounded himself with an “extremist element of conservative Christians” who are misrepresenting “so-called natural law” in their attempt to roll back abortion “rights” and other leftist policy preferences.

What makes “Christian nationalists” different, Politico’s Przybyla went on, was that they believe “our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority.”

As numerous critics have already pointed out, “Christian nationalism” sounds identical to the case for American liberty offered in the Declaration of Independence.

Then again, the idea that man has inalienable, universal rights goes back to ancient Greece, at least. The entire American project is contingent on accepting the notion that the state can’t give or take our God-given freedoms.

Read it.

Before New York Attorney General Letita James launched her selective prosecution of former President Trump, the former public defender was advocating for the “criminal justice reforms” that empowered criminals and terrorized a state.

AG James had run for office promising to “reform NY’s criminal justice system and to investigate and prosecute Trump’s family businesses” and she kept her word. Criminals now roam free in the state while prosecutorial resources were dedicated to targeting political opponents.

In New York, criminals have nothing to worry about from the Attorney General’s office, only Republicans do. And this is becoming the norm among “progressive prosecutors”.

Newsbusters.

Tech giant Meta has proudly unveiled its plan to control content as censorship … er, election season nears in the European Union.

Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — has a whole slate of actions planned ahead of the upcoming EU parliament elections. From its partnership with the biggest fact-checking network to weaponized artificial intelligence (AI) to an Elections Operations Center, Meta is fully committed to election-related censorship. This Feb. 25 release comes soon after Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg accidentally admitted on CNBC News that a majority of the company’s employees are involved in censorship activities.

It appears that anti-free speech European legislation has spurred Meta’s zeal, as the press release cited the Digital Services Act and EU Code of Practice on Disinformation. Meta bragged that it invested over $20 billion in “safety and security,” which is leftist speak for “censorship.” The release further cited that Meta “quadrupled” its safety team which now has “around 40,000 people,” including 15,000 “content reviewers.” A CNBC hot mic really put that number into perspective, highlighting the enlarged team as approximately 60 percent of the platform’s workforce.

The Spectator.

“Dear White Staffers”, an Instagram account that blew up just a couple of years ago for reporting alleged mistreatment of staff on Capitol Hill, is now under fire from some members of the progressive left for allegedly engaging in performative activism.

The account joined Instagram in 2020 and quickly built a reputation for being a place where congressional staffers could anonymously share horror stories about their offices and dissuade others from joining toxic work environments. The account has more than 100,000 followers and is closely watched by members of Congress — and now the Biden administration, as White House employees have started making their own submissions to the “Dear White Staffers” DMs.

In addition to sharing submissions, “Dear White Staffers” engages in activism, posting in support of a union for congressional staff and, more recently, in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. After Aaron Bushnell self-immolated in front of the Israeli Embassy in an effort to “free Palestine,” “Dear White Staffers” shared an anonymous statement from Biden administration staffers praising the airman’s actions.

The Foundry.

Is America on the verge of establishing a theocracy? The Left’s recent warnings about the rise of “Christian nationalism” suggest that a powerful, conservative Christian cabal is pulling the strings behind the scenes to forcibly convert the entire nation, or something.

In the past week, Politico’s Heidi Przybyla has been hammering the drum on this issue, first claiming—apparently without concrete evidence—that former Trump administration official Russell Vought has prioritized “Christian nationalism” by name in documents for a potential Trump second term, and then defining Christian nationalism as the doctrine that rights come from God, not government.

“The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists—not Christians, by the way, because Christian nationalism’s very different—is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don’t come from any earthly authority, they don’t come from Congress, they don’t come from the Supreme Court, they come from God,” Przybyla said in an appearance on MSNBC. She also complained that “it’s men” determining “what God is telling them.”

Read it.

A Seattle comedy club canceled on four stand-up comedians after angry community activists complained, according to the comedians involved. The shows at Capitol Hill Comedy/Bar purportedly offended left-wing community activists and progressive comics. The news broke as comic Shane Gillis finally performed on and hosted NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” following his termination before even appearing because activists feigned outrage at a politically incorrect bit.

Read it.

On one of my first days at The New York Times, I went to an orientation with more than a dozen other new hires. We had to do an icebreaker: Pick a Starburst out of a jar and then answer a question. My Starburst was pink, I believe, and so I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken.

The HR representative leading the orientation chided me: “We don’t do that here. They hate gay people.” People started snapping their fingers in acclamation. I hadn’t been thinking about the fact that Chick-fil-A was transgressive in liberal circles for its chairman’s opposition to gay marriage. “Not the politics, the chicken,” I quickly said, but it was too late. I sat down, ashamed.

UPDATE: Chick-fil-A-Loving Employee Quickly Becomes New York Times ‘Heretic’

UPDATE: Bringing Receipts: Ex-NYT Editor Ripped by Colleagues for Cotton Op-Ed Speaks Out