Erick Erickson.

Inflation numbers are out. Living costs are decreasing, but that does not mean things are cheaper. It just means things are not getting more expensive as quickly as they were. The cost of living is still high, and rental and mortgage prices continue to rise. During these times, the Biden administration has found a new target for their ire: airplane bathrooms.

Over the past few years, morbidly obese and mentally ill TikTok “influencers” have raised a ruckus on airplanes because the aisles are not wide enough, the seats are not big enough, and the bathrooms are not expansive enough for them. In the past few years, airlines have made bathrooms uncomfortably small. But they did so for a specific reason: They needed more seats.

Every seat added to a plane is a reduction in price for travelers. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, only the rich and business travelers could afford to fly. People dressed up. Meals were served. It was an experience and one that cost a pretty penny. Today, thanks to former President Ronald Reagan’s deregulation plans, air travel has been democratized. It is more cramped. It is more crowded. It has few amenities. But a family of four can now take a trip without taking out a second mortgage. The trade-offs have reduced ticket prices.

The Biden administration, with Vice President Kamala Harris as the frontwoman, wants to mandate larger bathrooms for the small contingent of inconvenienced TikTok influencers of America. Doing so will price the middle class out of air travel. It is all part of the plan. The Biden administration and the Left, in general, are at war with the middle class.

Minn AG Keith Ellison compares Justice Clarence Thomas to house slave character in blockbuster hit

WATCH: Far-Left Minnesota AG Compares Clarence Thomas to House Slave From ‘Django’

Congratulations, Massachusetts Liberals: Your ‘Millionaire Tax’ Just Cost the Patriots an All-Pro Wide Receiver

Former Hollywood Exec: Strike Could Lead to Industry Collapse Note the assumption that only the centralized union-dominated Hollywood can make movies.

The WHO Is A Real And Present Danger

“I Am The Regulator!”: EU Commissioner Warns Social Media To Censor After French Riots

Church of England Schools Propagating Critical Race Theory 

GOP senators rattled by radical conservative populism (The Hill)

Sweden Announces Latest Crackdown On Immigration Rules As Govt Seeks To Dissuade New Arrivals

PBS Film Fest Runs the Lefty Hits: Abortion, LGBTQ, ‘White Supremacist Patriarchy’

Groomerous! Star of Netflix’s Queer RomCom ‘Glamorous’ Wants Debaucherous Trans Character to be Role Model for Kids

Trudeau says Muslims against LGBTQ ideology in schools are misled by ‘misinformation and disinformation’ from the ‘American right-wing’ (The Post Millenial) Trudeau’s ability to live in an alternate reality is astonishing.

How Gretchen Whitmer Made Michigan a Democratic Stronghold (The New Yorker) Michigan has been a Democrat stronghold for decades before Whitmer got there. (Note the assumption that ‘policies young people want’ are proglodyte policies.)

Washington Post Editors Forced to Correct Florida FAKE NEWS by Jennifer Rubin

Poll: Two-Thirds Support Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision

The View PANICS Over Third Party Push that Could Harm Biden Reelection

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

John noted yesterday Jen Rubin’s astonishing faceplant in the Washington Post about net migration to Florida, and this is a subject we keep up with closely, so let’s see the latest about California, which may just supply the next Democratic candidate for president.

Berkeley Law Dean Caught Telling Class He’d Lie In Deposition About ‘Diversity Hiring’, Now Says He Was Joking

Oakland Eviction Moratorium Set To End Today

Hungry College Students Might Lose Food Stamps

The War On Cash Centers On “Controlling The Individual”

Stunning Video Shows How American Education Has Become A Leftist Cult

How The ‘Great Society’ Destroyed The Nuclear Family Structure In One Chart

Five Essential Truths About the Modern Left

‘Snow White’ Producers Circumvent Actors’ Strike By Casting 7 Random Hobos From San Francisco (Babylon Bee)

‘Teaching Toward Social Justice’: California’s New Math Framework Aims to Create ‘Equitable Outcomes’ Between Students (Washington Free Beacon)

Ky. Ban on Gender Transition Care Takes Effect as US Judge Lifts Injunction (NewsMax)

Cycling’s Global Governing Body To Ban Trans Athletes From Women’s Races

Guns Are Not the Leading Cause of Children’s Deaths

Dylan Mulvaney Flees US To Peru For ‘Safety’ Only To Return Days Later To Attend LA Event

China Perfecting Techno-Totalitarianism For Export Around The World: Rep. Gallagher

Judge Holds Strict Oregon Gun Law Constitutional (NewsMax)

Sweden Hardens Family Reunification Rules Citing Integration Woes

The Electoral College is the big factor in a third-party nightmare for Democrats (Politico)

Woke ‘Barbie’ Bait and Switch in the Works?

MSNBC Host Claims ‘My Audience Doesn’t Have Conspiracy Theorists’  Yeah, sure, I believe that.

California Approves Math Curriculum Promoting “Social Justice” Over Standard Skills

No Labels releases proposals to guide third-party presidential ticket (Washington Post)

Veteran-Owned ‘Clean Beef’ Company Says It Would Rather Shut Down Than Accept mRNA Injections In Cattle

“Not Some Fringe Theory”: Flip-Flopping Virologist Thought Lab Leak “Highly Likely” Before Toeing Fauci’s Line

COVID-19 No Longer An Issue For UK Travelers

How Fauci and NIH Leaders Worked to Discredit COVID-19 Lab Leak Theory

PBS Notices Massive COVID Learning Loss, Doesn’t Notice Its Cause: Teachers Unions

SBA Report: COVID Fraud Over $200B

Dennis Prager.

There is a pandemic in the Western world — especially, but not only, in America — that few are talking about, let alone addressing.

This pandemic doesn’t actually kill people. But it does destroy people, ruin lives, crush families and cause permanent, debilitating pain — far more than have the vast majority of cases of COVID-19.

This pandemic consists of adult children who have decided never again to speak to one or both of their parents. The vast majority of these people were never sexually or physically abused. In fact, nearly all were loved by their parents.

So, then, why have these people decided to hurt their mother, their father or both in one of the worst ways possible?

Disney’s Feminist Indiana Jones Sequel Bombs Hard – Media Pretends They Don’t Know Why

CBS & NBC Ignore GOP Grilling FBI Director, ABC Whines Over GOP ‘Attacks’

1 In 3 Federal Student Loan Borrowers Spent Money They Thought They Wouldn’t Have To Pay Back (Intelligent.com)

Democrats Try a Novel Tactic to Revive the Equal Rights Amendment (N.Y. Times)

Alex Soros In His Own Words

EU Nature Restoration Law Set To Reignite Dutch Farmer Protests

‘No Way in Hell’: Ilhan Omar Announces Boycott of Israeli President’s Address to Congress

Pence Calls Out Omar for ‘Sickening’ Attacks on Israel

New York Is Ordered by Appeals Court to Redraw House Map (N.Y. Times)

‘Racist,’ ‘grooming’: Why parents are trying to ban so many picture books (Washington Post)

WATCH: Nadler Miserably Attempts to Run Cover for FBI’s Big Tech Collusion

WATCH: CNN Anchor Apologizes for ‘Misgendering’ Dylan Mulvaney

‘A Whole New Level of Awful’: Seattle Public Schools Offer Free ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ to Kids

New WHO Regulations Set to Control Healthcare, Information

GOP Rep. Calls Out CNN’s ‘Cute And Lawyerly’ Attempt To Avoid The Hyde Amendment

These 49 Senators Voted to Confirm Biden EEOC Pick Seen as Likely to Force Transgender Ideology on Employers

Kansas Judge Upholds Order Barring Gender Change on IDs

California Dems Can Now Set Wages for Private Businesses. Critics Say This Will ‘Destroy Jobs.’  Time to leave.

Boston Mayor Wu Announces Residential Conversion Program for Office Buildings

Victor Davis Hanson.

Iowa Republicans pass bill banning most abortions after about 6 weeks (NPR)

Iowa Republicans pass a new 6-week abortion ban (NBC News) Notice that it wasn’t the legislature that passed the ban; oh no, it was Republicans, as if Republicans were the only people who had anything to say about it.

Defund the police movement wrecks America’s third-largest city (Fox)

Exclusive: Razor wire along the Rio Grande is blocking border agents from reaching at-risk migrants (Houston Chronicle) The job of border agents is not to ‘reach at-risk migrants’, it’s to keep them out of the country, which razor wire does very effectively.

You Might Be Safer in Afghanistan Than in Nation’s Capital (The Foundry)

Idaho Sued for Making It Crime to Help Minors Get Abortions Minus Parents’ OK

Liberal Nonprofit Finds Solution to Portland’s Homeless Crisis: A Million Dollars for ‘Equity and Inclusion’  When in doubt, spend more other people’s money.

Parents Stunned by Woke Girl Scouts’ New ‘Culture Code’

Rise of the NIMBocrites

Sotomayor Busted Muscling Universities Into Buying Her Books

Legacy Media Gasps As Spain’s Elections Tilt ‘Far-Right’

Ex-Twitter Exec Promoted GDI to DHS Subcommittee (NewsMax)

S.F.’s Anchor Brewing is shutting down after 127 years (S.F. Chronicle) Blue state blues.

California Democrats Block Bill To Lock Up Repeat Child Sex Traffickers: Prison Is Not the Answer

Major League Baseball Has Turned Its Back on America’s Pastime

Seattle Public Schools to Offer ‘Gender Affirming Care’

The Foundry.

Republicans can only imagine what it would feel like to win four national elections in a row—wielding executive and legislative power for more than a dozen years.

Franklin Roosevelt, who died early in his fourth presidential term, had that kind of tenure. He used it to build the modern welfare state.

What could conservatives accomplish with an opportunity like that?

The answer from across the Atlantic is: not much, if Republicans make the mistakes Britain’s Conservative Party has made since 2010.

Britain’s ‘Conservative’ party isn’t, really, any more.

UN Report Castigates Religion for Stymieing the Sexual Orientation-Gender Identity Agenda

San Francisco’s Honduran Drug Dealers Are Building Mansions Back Home: Report

Irrelevant, Mistake-Prone Liberal Justice Is Supreme Court’s ‘Voice,’ Media Say

The Smiling Face Of Censorship: Welcome To Zuckerberg’s Vision of Internet “Kindness”

Vanlords – A New Form Of Urban Encampment

Nearly 40% of students at Brown University identify as LGBTQ+ — doubling what it was in 2010 (N.Y. Post) Whose turn is it to be the victim?

The New Dark Ages? Draft New Zealand High School Curriculum Drops Mentions of Hard Science

Americans’ Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply (Gallup)

Where Is Everyone? Disney World “Just About Empty”

Sotomayor Uses Supreme Court Staff To Hawk Her Books  Who is surprised by this?

NYC Cancels Free Bus Rides For Arriving Migrants

Tennessee Law Banning ‘Gender Transition’ of Minors Sees Initial Win in Federal Court

It’s a Man’s World: Trans Former Violent Prisoner Threatens ‘TERFs’ While Waving Antifa Flag

Texas A&M recruited a UT professor to revive its journalism program, then watered down the offer after “DEI hysteria” (Texas Tribune) The TT is the local fringe lefty ‘news’ org for Austin. The professor in question was an affirmative-action hire and the TT got butt-hurt because Texas is fixing that sort of thing.

Cycling Competition Creates Third Category for ‘Transgender’ Athletes

The Global Immigration Backlash (N.Y. Times)

Transgender-Identifying Man Beats Out Women to Win Netherlands’ Miss Universe Pageant

Megan Rapinoe blames Dave Chappelle for ‘violence’ against trans people (N.Y. Post)

Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-For-All Would Destroy America’s Health-Care

Read it.

There’s a debate raging over who’s responsible for the surge in homicides and violent crime across the country. California Gov. Gavin Newsom blames Republicans, saying that “8 of the top murder states are red.” Left-leaning think tank Third Way claims it’s “red” state-level leadership and policies that are responsible for the nation’s homicide problem. And Politico’s recent analysis on gun violence claims the problem is most acute in places “where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.”

The problem with those arguments is that local governments, and not states, are overwhelmingly responsible for managing crime. Yes, state officials set criminal penalties and some broader parameters, but it’s mayors who control police and policing, local prosecutors who decide what to prosecute, and district/county judges who determine who to sentence.

State-level gun laws are often cited as the key factor explaining murder rates, but gun-friendly Maine, Idaho, Utah, Iowa have some of the nation’s lowest homicide rates, according to most-recent CDC data. Then there are states like Illinois, Maryland and Delaware that have strict gun laws and yet have relatively high homicide rates. Illinois often complains that the permissive gun laws of its neighboring states are to blame, but that doesn’t explain why its neighbors have much lower homicide rates.

The answer is that it’s not a red vs. blue state debate, but rather a red vs. blue city one. And when you look at America’s homicide hotspots, the vast majority are run by blue leadership and they have been for decades. The evidence is overwhelming.

AOC dragged for answer in ‘softball’ MSNBC interview with Jen Psaki: ‘Really pathetic’ (Fox)

Century-old business latest casualty of San Francisco retail closures (Fox)

Texas floating barriers will cause ‘imminent and irreparable harm,’ lawsuit claims (The Hill)

Who Truly Threatens the Church? (N.Y. Times) David French continues to push the Narrative.

Driverless Cars Hit By ‘Coning’ Incidents As San Francisco Group Rebels

One-Third Of Seattle Residents May Flee City Over Crime, Costs

50 Cent Says LA ‘Finished’ After No-Bail Policy

CNN Is Disappointed That 10,000 Babies DIDN’T Die From Abortions

Former reporter suing CNN for unfair dismissal and racial discrimination (The Guardian)

Top Democratic Operatives Were Quietly Pulling the Strings at a Voting Rights Group. Lawyers Say They May Have Broken the Law.

Documents Provide Rare Glimpse Into How Arabella Advisors Exerts Centralized Control Over a Vast Left-Wing Advocacy Network

Court Reinstates Tennessee Ban on Transgender Treatments for Minors

“Domestic Abuse Is A Severe Crime”: British Parents Could Be Prosecuted for Refusing to Pay for Transgender Treatments

BBC Engulfed In Another Child Sex Abuse Allegation Against One Of Its Hosts

“1,000-Year Rainfall Event” Batters Hudson Valley With Flash Floods

Eurobarometer: Migration is Now Third Biggest Threat

Judge Bars Kansas From Changing Transgender People’s Sex on Licenses

This Is The Hometown Of San Francisco’s Drug Dealers  (S.F Chronicle)

6,000 Congregations Leave United Methodist Church Over LGBTQ Schism

Tuition costs have risen 710% since 1983 (1200% since 1980). Inflation: 194%

UK Ruling Should Encourage Americans to Stand Firm on LGBTQ Insanity

Fang Fang, Bang Bang: Nets Punt on Stunning New Details About Chinese Woman, Swalwell

White Flight from Asian Immigration: Evidence from California Public Schools

Liberals’ ‘Solutions’ for Illegal Immigration, Shoplifting Only Make Matters Worse

Not Just Bud Light: Anheuser-Busch’s Other Beer Brands See Sales Crash

The View Defends Biden Shunning Young Grandkid, DEMANDS You Ignore It

State AGs Warn Target of ‘Concerns’ Over Pride Merch for Kids

The American Mind.

Administrators at America’s universities never stop invoking diversity as the salve to heal America’s wounds, and continue to repeat the theme that diversity, unaccountably, is our strength. Diversity is “essential to our mission,” said MIT President Sally Kornbluth. Harvard put out a letter in response to the Supreme Court’s decision lauding how racial diversity brings “progress and change.”

No academic administrator effused more ardently on this issue than the University of Alabama’s dean for the College of Education. Usually diversity is defended as a means to an end. For Dean Peter Hlebowitsh, however, diversity must be “deeply embedded in the telos of the university.” But even that extraordinary formulation understates the importance of diversity. “Diversity,” for Hlebowtish, “is better expressed as the essence of life.”

The diversity industry is setting up shop at the University of Alabama (UA) and Auburn University, as we show in a new report at the Center for the American Way of Life. Both Alabama and Auburn have active diversity strategic plans aimed at transforming the universities. Both have central administrators dedicated to achieving greater diversity among the student body and faculty and to transforming the culture of the universities. Both are transforming university curriculum to emphasize the ideology of diversity. Estimates show that each school spends more than $2.5 million on diversity salaries and initiatives. These schools in the heart of Dixie are going woke in a big way.

Read it.

The Athletic has an interview with Boston Celtics forward Grant Williams about his decision to move to the Dallas Mavericks: “In Boston, it’s really like $48 million with the millionaire’s tax, so $54 million in Dallas is really like $58 million in Boston and $63 million in L.A.”

The Boston Herald noticed this and headlined it “Millionaire’s Tax helped push Celtic forward to Dallas Mavericks.”

This is a nicely concrete example of the effects of this tax in pushing talent out of Massachusetts and in increasing the cost of Massachusetts employers to retain talent. It was entirely predictable—opponents of the tax predicted that this would be the effect, as it has been when other states adopted similar measures. Yet the voters in Massachusetts narrowly approved the millionaire’s tax anyway in November 2022 after a fraudulent union-backed mail campaign. The new 4 percent tax in the Bay State comes on top of the 5 percent that is already in place, bringing the total marginal state income tax rate to 9 percent.

San Francisco loses 2 big conferences (S.F. Gate)

Tenn. ban on gender-affirming care for minors can proceed, federal court rules (Washington Post)

Who Is Funding ‘Drag Story Hours’ At California Public Libraries?

French Riots Show That Decades Of Mass “Colonizing Immigration” Could Lead To “Collapse”, Says Former Head Of French Counter-Intel Agency

French MEP Warns of Muslim Brotherhood Trojan Horse

Read it.

In exceptionally rare comments given press, Pierre Brochand—the former director of the French Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE), which is among the world’s eminent foreign intelligence agencies—during an interview with Le Figaro, described the past days’ events as an “uprising or revolt against the French national state by a significant part of the youth of non-European origin present on its territory.”

“In terms of amplitude, official statistics suggest—for historians to verify—that nothing comparable has happened in French cities since the Revolution of 1789 or, at the very least, the weeks following the Revolution,” Brochand, who formerly served as France’s ambassador to Hungary and Israel, told the newspaper.

OpIndia.

On Saturday (July 8), pro-khalistani elements gathered outside the Indian High Commission building in London in the United Kingdom to protest against the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

As per reports, about 40-50 of them demonstrated outside the Indian High Commission with flags and banners between 12:30 pm and 2:30 pm on Saturday. They also carried posters which incited violence against Indian High Commissioner Vikram Doraiswami and the Consul General of India in Birmingham, Dr Shashank Vikram.

The development came days after posters surfaced on social media wherein Khalistanis were seen threatening Indian diplomats. After India demanded protection for its diplomats, security was increased in the area to avert any untoward incident. According to journalist Aditya Raj Kaul, the Khalistani event was a ‘major flop’ and only a handful of people participated in the protests.

2 Arrests in Texas Fourth of July Festival Shooting

Queens Shooting Spree Leaves 1 Dead, 2 Hurt

Paul Craig Roberts.

Like all indoctrinated economics PhDs, I used to teach students that the Federal Reserve was created as a central bank in order to provide cash to banks experiencing a run on deposits so that bank failures would not become general and collapse the money supply and, thereby, employment and output. It all sounds so reasonable and rational until you realize that finance least of all is idealistic.

The Federal Reserve was actually created in order to save the big New York banks from their greed-driven mistakes, and that is the Fed’s principal activity. In recent decades the Fed has gone beyond merely saving the big banks from their mistakes to helping the big ones concentrate more banking into their hands. The Fed causes banking crises and then provides funds for the big banks to absorb the troubled regional banks. The Fed’s current policy of raising interest rates after a decade of negative interest rates has the entire banking system insolvent. This resulted in runs on the banks, which the Fed did not save by expanding reserves, instead permitting failure and acquisition. Obviously, what I had been trained to teach was false.

This is true of so much of what is taught in every subject.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid was afraid to leave house on July 4th: ‘America is awash with guns’ (Fox) Considering how much she hates America, and how public she is about it, that was probably a wise decision.

Ball Park Loses Some Charm After Being Renamed ‘Corporate Financial Insurance Bank Services Park’ (Babylon Bee)

Spanish minister proposes €20,000 ‘universal inheritance’ from age of 18 (The Guardian)

WHAT?! RFK Jr Offers Gov’t-Owned Social Media as Censorship Solution  Whatever else he may be, Kennedy is still a Kennedy and a Democrat.

Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Burns Bill of Rights at Assange Rally (NewsMax)

Cocaine in the White House: Nothing To See Here!

NYC Mayor Fabricated ‘Coffee-Stained’ Photo Of Fallen Officer To Peddle Political Lie

CNN Host: We Should Yield To Government Censorship Demands

MSNBC’s Morning Joe Panics Over Dems Losing Young Voters

The Muddled Mindset Of Progressivism

French Gun Control Failed, Leaving Law-Abiding Citizens Helpless As Nation Burned

EU Court: Conviction of “Serious Crime” Is Not Enough for Stripping Asylum 

Target Pride Campaign Raises Child Protection Concerns

Non-white Moderates Are Real Democrats — Not GOP Pawns (New York Magazine) Jonathan Chait exercises his vestigial noblesse oblige muscle.

every store is CLOSED in San Francisco

Queer-friendly Berlin sets itself apart

Ex-Cop with Ties to Eric Adams Among Donors Charged With Campaign Finance Scam (The City)

California Dem Won’t Say If Book That Teaches Minors to Use Gay Hookup Apps Is ‘Appropriate’

Wisconsin Governor Raises School Funding For 400 Years Via ‘Partial Veto’  If a Republican tried a stunt like that, he’d get impeached immediately. A Democrat does it, and everybody just yawns.

California’s Scandal-Plagued Progressive School Chief Eyes Governor’s Mansion  It’s a perfect match.

RFK Jr Blasts Media’s “Organized Conspiracy” To Suppress COVID Information And Stick To “Government Orthodoxy”

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Harvey Mansfield once quipped that the Democratic Party is a coalition of college professors and morons, which prompted “Lucretia” to remark on a podcast that it is impossible to tell the difference. But if higher education wasn’t an adjunct of the Democratic Party, surely the left would be charging the industry with consumer fraud and price gouging. The likes to talk endlessly about the soaring cost of health care, but the cost of higher education has risen more than any other sector of our economy over the last 40 years, because government has turned higher education into a giant subsidy-capture machine. And few things have been more central to increasing subsidies colleges could capture than easy student loans. One may hope the Supreme Court decision on Friday to disallow forgiveness of student loans by executive fiat will pump the breaks on college costs, but don’t count on it.

Read it.

A tourist who sparked outrage for engraving his initials into a wall of the Colosseum has apologized, saying that he wasn’t aware of the monument’s ancient significance.

Ivan Danailov Dimitrov, 27, in a letter to the city’s prosecutor and mayor, expressed regret for causing damage at the UNESCO World Heritage site while apologizing to the people of Italy and the global community.

Government schools.

ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.

As I race toward decrepitude, my interaction with the healthcare system will increase, thus raising my awareness of its many faults. At this point, I am lucky to only have to see the doctor once a year for a physical. I have had occasional injuries in the past, but none of those required more than a single visit. Even so, the lunacy of the healthcare system is obvious even at this stage of my life.

The thing about the system is that it works to the interest of everyone except the patients, but we insist on calling it private healthcare. There is nothing private about it as every aspect is controlled by corporate interests, which both advance and direct government interests in the system. If you want to understand fascist economics, spend some time in the American healthcare system.

Something I did not mention in the show is that a sizable chunk of what passes for healthcare is either unnecessary or not healthcare. The legions of bureaucrats and functionaries that serve only the interest of the system are a great example of Pournelle’s iron law of bureaucracy. The system is an upside-down pyramid with the doctors and nurses at the bottom.

Federal Complaint Says Harvard Legacy Preferences in Admissions Violate Civil Rights Act (Harvard Crimson)

Pro-choice Catholics fight to seize the narrative from the religious right (The Guardian) There is no such thing as a ‘pro-choice Catholic’. If you’re ‘pro-choice’, you’re not Catholic, period.

At UChicago, a Debate Over Free Speech and Cyber Bullying (N.Y. Times)

Judge Blocks Wyoming School District Gender Policy

Vietnam bans Barbie movie over pro-Chinese map of disputed S. China Sea

Ariz. AG Won’t Enforce State’s Abortion Laws, ‘Period’

Migrant Workers Flee Florida as New Immigration Law Takes Effect (Wall Street Jornal) Not back where they came from–Oh, no! Perish the thought!

“The World Is Laughing At Us”: U.S. Army Shares Story Of Suicidally Depressed Transgender Major

Judge Blocks Elections Law Banning Noncitizens From Handling Voter Forms

Radley Balko Finally Finds a Single Data Point to Support His Life’s Work

“We’re Coming for Your Children:” Activists Against Childhood

A viral left-wing Twitter account may have been fake all along (Washington Post)

The Numbers Don’t Lie: Corporations Are Realising Going Woke Kills Business

Indiana Supreme Court Rules Abortion Ban Is Constitutional

California Reparations Report Hits Child Support Debt  God forbid that black men be required to support their children. Baby mama, you’re on your own. (With the government’s help, natch.)

US program is leaving asylum seekers stranded in Mexico, advocates say (The Guardian) They say that like it was a bad thing. (“Advocates” are always advocates for the “asylum seekers”, never for the country they are trying to invade.)

Conservative French mayor’s wife and child injured after home attacked by rioters in ‘assassination attempt’ (Washington Examiner)

Moms for Liberty’s focus on school races nationwide sets up political clash with teachers unions (Associated Press)

The Media’s Weirdest Pride Coverage of 2023

In Canada, ‘Decolonization’ Has Become a Profitable Enterprise

Anti-terror Laws Put UK Village Halls ‘At Risk’ of Closure

Texas Sends Another Busload of Migrants to LA

How sellers of L.A. mansions are dodging a tax to help the homeless (Washington Post) It’s impossible to write a law that can’t be dodged if there’s enough money at stake–which is why bureaucrats is always outmaneuvered by the market.

Macron Demands Platforms Delete Riot Content; Blames Social Media & Video Games For Protest Spread

Bud Light’s Disastrous Pro-Trans Marketing Sparks Major Job Losses As Bottle-Suppliers Start Shutting Down

The Antiplanner.

More than 5,000 people are homeless in Oregon’s Multnomah County, most of them in Portland, and Oregon has the fourth-highest rate of homelessness in the nation. According to community-service worker Kevin Dahlgren, the problem is that the bureaucracies and non-profit groups that work on the homeless issue spend their time enabling people to remain homeless, rather than trying to rehabilitate them so they can get a job and housing.

Affirmative action for white people? Legacy college admissions come under renewed scrutiny (Associated Press)

Why Dems aren’t campaigning on affirmative action (Politico)

The affirmative action ruling is big. Now elite colleges need to think bigger. (Washington Post)

Can’t ‘defund’ our way out of homeless crisis (New York Post)

In Wake of Supreme Court Decision, Liberal Media Stands Up for Discrimination

I’m not a lawyer. But I see what the same-sex wedding website case will mean. (Washington Post) Amazing how ‘journalists’ have no hesitation emitting opinions in areas where they admit that they’re unqualified.

After Fostering Cesspool Of Crime, Gavin Newsom Finally Gets Serious About Fentanyl In San Francisco

Oregon County Sues BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon for $51B Climate Damages

Elizabeth Warren Says Without Affirmative Action, A Native American Girl Like Herself Would Never Have Been Accepted To Rutgers (Babylon Bee)

Morning-After Pill Vending Machines Gain Popularity on College Campuses  My, what a surprise.

San Francisco may soon get 24/7 driverless cabs. City leaders are fuming. (Washington Post)

Affirmative action divided Asian Americans and other People Of Color. Here’s how (NPR) Really? People have to have this explained? (Getcher Narrative, right here!)

CNN Lets Buttigieg Suggest Christian Website Designer Case Was Made Up

HBO’s ‘Sex and the City’ Reboot Promotes Grooming as Moms Openly Lust After Teen Boy  My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is big business these days, and even though we all know it does more harm than good, the industry is set to expand from an estimated $3 billion in 2020 to a whopping $17 billion by 2027. Those who want a piece of the action are vying for access to your children as close to in utero as humanly possible. Whether it’s drag queen ‘story time,’ demanding children accept 73 genders, schools encouraging 4-year-olds to ‘gender transition’ without parental consent, or ‘Maoist’ consultants ‘decolonising’ the minds of nursery school children by telling them they’re racist, the ‘woke’ Gestapo takes no prisoners.

Cue Bright Horizons, a £4.7 billion, U.S.-based company which runs 1,000 childcare facilities globally, and appears to be setting out its diversity stall in an already crowded marketplace. The company came to the attention of the British press over the weekend, when it was accused by a Kent mother of having a “left-wing campaigning agenda” and “dictating to parents their own political views on how to raise their children.”

Read it.

In accounting we have a thing called Good Will. That’s an intangible asset. Take a company with a super well established name and track record. There’s no physical asset for the name, Coke a Cola or McDonald’s, but there’s an asset value for how incredibly well known those are, and that needs to get accounted for in the valuation. Companies like that aren’t valuable just because they own stores or factories or lots of inventory, but because everybody knows who they are. Basically Good Will exists because customers know who you are, what you do, and generally like that. With big corporations, Good Will is worth billions.

Good Will goes down when companies turn off those customers, or the name starts to have negative connotations and they become less valuable (Anhauser Busch for a recent example).

The Star Wars novels are a perfect example of this. That was once the biggest and most beloved IP on Earth. Novels in that setting should be a license to print money. The Good Will was off the charts. A reboot was a chance to kinda forget the worst of previous products, and come out the gate strong with quality products. In a sane world, the novels of an IP that big should crush the rest of us by orders of magnitude, just off of name recognition and customers being inclined toward checking out products from that brand.

Nope. They went the opposite direction.

Read it.

As we head to Independence Day and a celebration of this nation’s founding, the angry chorus of haters with idle hands and minds gets loud. They prefer we dwell on the nation’s sins and ignore our great progress toward an always more perfect union. No longer just angry academics and activists, the press too has joined the act. It is a reminder that the secular religion that dominates cultural institutions is a religion without grace or forgiveness, perpetually anchored in the grievances of the past.

The New York Times produced its 1619 Project to, in the words of its creator, retell the story of our founding. She claimed it was not to be taken as true fact, but narration. She recast the United States and its revolution as about the preservation of slavery. Widely criticized by historians across the political perspective, the damage was done and proudly so. Many people who had grievance and needed a story around which to weave their grievance latched on to the false claims.

The fabulists ignored the Northern colonies moving against slavery long before Great Britain did. They ignored the writings of our founders, including Thomas Jefferson, who knew the institution of slavery undermined the words “all men are created equal” and would have to end. They ignored the reparations paid in blood on battlefields across America as white men from the North killed their kin from the South to set slaves free.

French youths clash with officers in 4th day of riots over fatal police shooting (Times of Israel) None of these ‘French youths’ are actually French. As with ‘American youths’ in race riots, they seem mostly occupied with stealing stuff.

Violent protests continue in wake of French teen’s fatal shooting by police (CBS News)

France in crisis as riots escalate (BBC News)

Boston University law students offered therapy in response to recent Supreme Court decisions (Fox News)

He’s The Trans Son Of An Anti-Trans Influencer. It’s His Turn To Speak. (Huffington Post) If he were the anti-trans son of a trans ifluencer, would he be allowed to speak? I think not.

Minn. Abortions Surge, Partly Due to Patients From Restrictive States

How Christians and Drag Queens Are Defending the First Amendment (N.Y. Times) David French continues carrying water for the Left.

It’s the First Amendment, Stupid: Supreme Court Holds That Free Speech Prevails in Challenge to Anti-Discrimination Law

Heartbreak City: Here’s How ABC/CBS/NBC Handled Friday’s SCOTUS Cases (Hint: Not Well)

New York City Now Sheltering More Illegal Immigrants Than Homeless Citizens: Deputy Mayor

40% Of Californians Are Considering Moving To Another State Due To Cost Of Living

French Police Say “We’re At War With Vermin” As Nationwide Riots Spread Like Cancer

“Believe Their Lies Or Pay The Consequences” – Tucker Carlson Blasts Trans Ideology As “Just Another Religious War”

Elena Kagan Has Had Enough (N.Y. Times) She’s still in a minority.

Dem La. Gov Vetoes Gender-Transition Care Ban

Associated Press.

Americans who came of age during the pandemic are skipping college in big numbers. Many have shunned traditional college paths, turning instead to hourly jobs or careers that don’t require a degree. Still others feel locked out, deterred by high tuition and the prospect of student debt. Colleges nationwide saw undergraduate enrollments drop 8% from 2019 to 2022, with continued declines even after the return to in-person classes, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Economists say the impact could be dire. Fewer college graduates could worsen labor shortages in fields from health care and engineering to information technology.

Fewer college graduates would mean that a college degree would actually mean something.

Supreme Court, President Biden Take Aim at Legacy Admissions (Harvard Crimson)

More than 400 arrested as third night of violent protest sweeps France after 17-year-old shot dead by police (CNN) Unmentioned: The rioting is by non-French immigrants from Africa, mostly Muslims. Moroccans have a key role.

Key document may be fake in LGBTQ+ rights case before US supreme court (The Guardian)

New York Dems put abortion on the ballot in bid to retake the House (Politico)

‘As Bad as Dobbs’: Randi Weingarten Laments End of Affirmative Action

In Virginia, School Choice Triumphs in GOP Primary Races

Unanimous Supreme Court Upholds Employee’s Right to Religious Accommodation

To Unions, Organizing Time Is Fine When It’s On The Taxpayers’ Dime

Washington Post Promotes Two Confused/Depressed Trans Kids

Roasted: CT Dem Slammed After Saying Catholics Support Abortion

MSNBC MELTS DOWN After Affirmative Action Ruled Unconstitutional

Geraldo Rivera Says He’s Quitting Fox News Altogether After ‘The Five’ Ouster (Huffington Post)

‘Pride Month’ Has an Enemy: Giorgia Meloni

Silent Scrub: Google Quietly Alters Drag Show Plans After Christian Opposition Spreads

Asian Americans Celebrate Affirmative Action Ruling With 5-Minute Study Break (Babylon Bee)

Outrage As Planned Parenthood Declares Virginity “A Social Construct”

University Creates Language Guide That Erases ‘Man’ And ‘Mother’ From Existence

Supreme Court rules businesses can refuse service to LGBTQ+ customers (Axios) Well, no, they didn’t.

CNN Worries ‘The Wheels Are Coming Off’ For Borrowers After Student Loan Case

Hyperbolic MSNBC Predicting Return of Segregation

Democratic Strongholds Are Seeing Their Tax Revenue Plummet

The Tide Is Turning On Transgender Tolerance

Colleges, affirmative action, and the quest for cosmic justice (The New Neo)

He will be sorely missed.

The Antiplanner.

Portland used to call itself “the city that works,” and I pointed out in a paper 16 years ago that, not only was it not working, it was especially ironic that it borrowed that claim from Chicago, another dysfunctional city. But if Portland wasn’t working in 2007, it is anti-working today, that is, actively working to alienate as many people and businesses as possible.

The Other McCain.

Most students at elite universities come from affluent backgrounds. Their parents are usually college-educated professionals, and the offspring of such families are expected to follow a similar career trajectory, to emulate and hopefully exceed their own parents’ success. Highly intelligent, they are recognized as top students at an early age, chosen for “gifted” classes in elementary school, put onto the academic fast-track of honors classes in high school, and steered toward highly selective universities — the Ivy League, Northwestern, Stanford, etc. — where merely being admitted to the freshman class is a prestigious honor.
These youth are repeatedly told by their parents and teachers, like the chorus in Greek tragedy, that there is no limit to their future achievements. Nothing is beyond their reach, they are assured, and their experience of scholastic achievement — valedictorian, admitted to a very selective university — gives them no reason to doubt this prophesy of success. Their ambition is boundless. They expect to win.
Well, the freshman class at Harvard is nearly 2,000 kids, and the freshman class at Yale is over 1,500, and there simply aren’t enough chairs at the table of Ivy League greatness to accommodate every clever freshman who wants a seat. It is proverbial that the hardest part of graduating from Harvard is getting admitted to Harvard — well over 95% of freshmen eventually get their diploma — but then what? Harvard, Yale, Duke, NYU — go on down the list of elite universities, total up their graduating classes, and you realize that the top 20 schools are cranking out something over 30,000 “elite” graduates every year. Some of them are trained in fields like engineering or banking where their degrees will automatically qualify them for lucrative employment, but what will become of the liberal arts majors? A degree in English literature from Yale is a more prestigious credential than a similar diploma from a second-tier state university, but it’s still not a coupon that can be automatically redeemed for a big house and a new car.

UPDATE: Why So Many Elites Feel Like Losers

Read it.

Ouch!

A 40 minute presentation of propaganda and misinformation by President Biden was destroyed overnight with one unquestionable, government-data-driven, sentence by The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board:

“The Bureau of Labor Statistics says real average hourly earnings have fallen 3.16% during the Biden Presidency.”

As we noted yesterday ahead of Biden’s speech, real wages are down on a YoY basis for 26 straight months (i.e. since the president’s term began), but that never stopped the exaltation of so-called “Bidenomics” by The White House and its media lackeys…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Move To Florida To Escape New York Pizza Oven Ban (Babylon Bee)

Female Comic Goes Record 6 Seconds Before Mentioning Her Vagina (Babylon Bee)

Push to tie Medicaid to work is making a comeback. Georgia is at forefront. (Washington Post)

Kentucky Governor Says Puberty Blockers and Hormone Therapy for Kids Are ‘Basic Medical Decisions’

Corporatism Has Replaced Liberalism

NBC Frets Race-Based College Admissions Headed for Dustbin of History

Why shouldn’t public funds go to religious schools? Where to begin … (N.Y. Times) Let’s begin with the proglodyte hatred of religion.

‘We’re Coming For Your Children’ chant at NYC Drag March elicits outrage, but activists say it’s taken out of context (NBC News) Seems pretty clear to me.

Software Engineer, Fiancee Sentenced To Prison For Developing Application To Break China’s Internet Censorship  A reminder that Red China remains Red.

Stanford Law School Promised Free Speech Training. It Delivered a Campus Joke.

The Supreme Court Rejected a Dangerous Elections Theory. But It’s Not All Good News. (N.Y. Times) Dangerous to Democrats, maybe. Certainly dangerous to Democrat vote fraud.

‘Exploitation of Vulnerable People’: Drag Troupe Accused of Sexualizing People With Down Syndrome

Anheuser-Busch CEO: Still Supporting LGBTQ Activism

Interfaith Coalition of Parents Protests Maryland School District’s LGBTQ Curriculum Opt-Out Policy

‘Good Guy With Gun’ Swept Under Rug by Las Vegas Police

Read it.

In 2022 Norway’s third richest man, Kjell Inge Røkke, announced in an open letter to shareholders he was moving to Lugano, Switzerland.

“My capital will continue working in Norway,” wrote the fishing magnate turned industrialist who launched his empire four decades ago with a 69-foot trawler he bought while saving money working on ships off the coast of Alaska.

Røkke, who Forbes estimates has a fortune of $5.1 billion, will cost the Norwegian government an estimated 175,000,000 kroner annually (roughly $16 million) with his departure. That might not sound like a lot of money, but Røkke is not the only wealthy entrepreneur leaving Norway, The Guardian notes.

“More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv,” reports wealth correspondent Rupert Neate. “This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, [the paper] added.”

Did you catch that? More “super rich” Norwegians left Norway in 2022 than during the previous 13 years combined. The reason wealthy Norwegians are fleeing the country is not a secret.

Lightfoot’s Outgoing Executive Orders Defy Precedent; Court Conflicts with Council (Better Government Association) BRAAAAAAAINS!

House Republicans Unworried by Dems’ Focus on Abortion

‘My Kid Can’t Sleep’: Gun Violence Drives Denver to Return Armed Police to Schools (Wall Street Journal) More accurately, Blue State crime.

‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming for Your Children’: 6 Scenes From NYC Pride Events

Brzezinski, Hochul: Women ‘Die’ Without Abortion, Need Military Assets  Notice now they can never cite a single instance of a woman who ‘died’ because she couldn’t get an abortion. By contrast, every abortion is a child who dies.

SPLC Silent When Asked For Evidence the Lawyer Charged With Domestic Terrorism Didn’t Engage in Violence

After Affirmative Action Ends (The New Yorker)

The Left Can Have Islam or LGBTQA+. Not Both

Conditions at Guantánamo Are Cruel and Inhuman, U.N. Investigation Finds (N.Y. Times) As cruel and inhuman as what these Islamic terrorists do to innocent civilians?

Harvard Melts Down Over Threat to Affirmative Action

Two-Thirds of Californians Say They Are Considering Leaving the State

Penn State Equity Officer Praises Looting, Lawsuit Claims

“Gone, Gone”: Anheuser Busch Fires Pro-Trans Marketing Execs Who Destroyed Brand

The View Claims Education on Firearm/Self-Defense Laws Is Malicious

Scandal-Plagued Dem Senator Sold Up to $400K of Gold Amid Federal Investigation

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

Tirien Steinbach is an attorney who has served as associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion at Stanford Law School. You may recall the role she played in the shoutdown of Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at the law school. She took the lectern at the event to lecture Judge Duncan in support of the shoutdown. Steve Hayward and I covered the story in a series of posts that are accessible here. At least word this past March, Dean Jenny Martinez announced that Steinbach was “on leave.”

Steinbach now writes in a column posted at The Hill in defense of the continued use of racial preferences in higher education. Her column is headlined “Diversity, equity and inclusion: The new American battlefield.” Her introductory paragraph heads off in the direction of War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Shun Randi Weingarten as the monster she is (N.Y. Post)

This Period Of De-Globalization Is Temporary: ‘Global Money’ Is Coming

‘Disgusted’ New Zealand Surgeons Now Required To Consider Ethnicity Of Patients

New York City LGBT Activists Chant ‘We’re Coming For Your Kids’ (Daily Caller)

NYC Drag March Condemned for ‘Coming for Your Children’ Chant

San Francisco’s Homeless

Ban On Encouraging Illegal Immigration Not Unconstitutional: Supreme Court

How Crime Novel Became Reality for 8 Cities With Soros-Backed ‘Rogue Prosecutors’

Starbucks Workers Strike Over Pride Decor

Disney’s Downhill Slide

The grievance industry

Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss was an inside job (N.Y. Post)

Florida immigrants detail their exit following DeSantis immigration law: ‘I had to leave’ (NBC News)

For Workers, Unions and Public Pressure Get the Goods (The American Prospect) The ones that still have jobs.

The next president’s $4 trillion problem (Axios)

Chain Migration Fears After Bundestag Slashes Family Reunification Criteria

Pedophile Jailed For Flashing Kids At Playground Kicking Himself For Not Doing It At Pride Parade Instead (Babylon Bee)

Hochul Declares New York ‘Safe Haven’ for Trans Youth  Just waiting for the buses from Florida and Texas….

Sage Journals.

Desperate San Fran Mayor Wants To Demolish Buildings To Revitalize Crime-Ridden Downtown Apparently taking a knee with head bowed is the virtue-signal for True Believer.

We Need to Talk About Overturning the Dobbs Decision (N.Y. Times) Hey, the Constitution is what we law professors say it is.

People ‘Assigned Female at Birth’ Are ‘Going to Be Dying,’ Pro-Abortion Activist Says One Year After Roe v. Wade Overturned

California Bill Would Expand College Financial Aid To Asylum Seekers  The best person to be in California is an illegal alien. Actual citizens and legal residents can fend for themselves.

Box Office Analyst: Disney Has Lost Nearly $900M Past Year  Get woke, go broke.

Nordic and Conservative: The Rising Shift to the Right in Sweden and Its Nordic Neighbors

NYC’s migrant shelter population surges to nearly 100K, costing taxpayers $8M a day (N.Y. Post) Sanctuary City! Be careful what you wish for….

They tried and failed to get an abortion. Texas family grapples with what it’ll mean (NPR) It means you can’t kill an innocent child.

National Parks Sponsor Pride Marches, Create LGBTQ ‘Teaching’ Resources With Taxpayer Dollars

We Muslims Used to Be the Culture War Scapegoats. Why Are Some of Us Joining the L.G.B.T.Q. Pile-On? (N.Y. Times) Well, for one thing, it’s in the Koran. If you were actually a Muslim, you would know that.

DC School Board Approves Curriculum Centered on Critical Race Theory

Arizona Gov. Hobbs strips counties of abortion prosecution authority (Axios)

Democrats call for DACA health care expansion (The Hill)

4 in 10 California residents are considering packing up and leaving, new poll finds (L.A. Times)

Judge Blocks Florida Ban on Minors Attending Drag Shows

CNN Producer Sentenced To 19 Years In Prison For Pedophilia

San Francisco Ranked Worst-Run City In America

The Endless Lies Democrats Tell In Defense Of Their Failed Californian Utopia

Why Some Americans Buy Guns (N.Y. Times) Dirt People anthropology for Cloud People.

Attorneys General Take Pride

Flashback: Big Media’s Big Double-Standard on SCOTUS Blockbusters

New Study Finds Bizarre Connection Between Being Liberal And Having Giant, Googly Eyes (Babylon Bee) I’ve always wondered about that.

Almost A Third Of America’s Homeless Population Lives In California, Study Finds  And why not? Where else are you going to get a better deal?

Anglican Church Unveils Tuck Friendly Vestments (Babylon Bee)

Harvard Scholar Who Studies Honesty Is Accused of Fabricating Findings (N.Y. Times)