Read it.

The pushback continues.

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.

A report released on Monday by the U.S.-based think tank Environmental Progress, alleges that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has supported “unethical” medical procedures in its advocacy for transgender health care.

Read it.

Count how many are Persons of Color.

The War Zone.

Five months after the attacks by Hamas on Israel sparked what has been an incredibly violent war, according to multiple reports, the Biden Administration is planning to set up a beachhead to move large amounts of aid to Gaza, from ship to shore. Such an operation, which would be fraught with risk, comes days after the United States joined a growing number of countries executing airdrops of aid into Gaza. Significant portions of the Gaza Strip have been largely destroyed by tens of thousands of Israeli strikes and ongoing ground fighting.
Politico reports that Biden will formally announce the plan during his State of the Union address tonight. Citing three undisclosed senior administration officials, the outlet states that “Biden will order the U.S. military to establish a temporary port in Gaza so more humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in need.” One administration official has reportedly said the plan will not “require U.S. boots on the ground.” How exactly that is possible is not clear. Gaza currently has no functioning port facility.

Read it.

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this evening – what concerns do the political elites on Capitol Hill have that require security crews to erect a large steel fence around the immediate perimeter of the Capitol Complex?

In several posts on X, FOX News Senior Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram said the steel, grated 12-foot fence around the Capitol Complex was erected on Wednesday night on the orders of the Secret Service.

Read it.

Get spotted making your way across the Channel to Britain and the English authorities will wilfully help you on your way, completing the job for which traffickers were paid a grand sum. But get caught trying to leave Britain, to make your way back to France, and you’ll be stopped in your tracks.

This is what a number of illegal migrants have found after successfully arriving in Britain but then, believing it to be a disappointment, being stopped by the police while trying to escape.

Read it.

Politico reports that President Biden has a big announcement to make tonight. During his State of the Union address, he will order the military to establish a temporary port in Gaza so more humanitarian aid can get to Palestinians in need. Enough with the airdrops, or to supplement the airdrops. We’re going in big time to keep Hamas in business.

Read it.

An earthquake has shaken Republican politics in Texas. Sixteen GOP state representatives who previously voted against school choice were on the ballot for the March 5 primary. Six won, six lost, and four now face runoffs. Given the advantages of incumbency, this outcome is staggering. The results are clear: Texas Republicans want school choice, and they’re happy to vote out politicians who don’t.

Some of the biggest opponents to school choice in the Texas House won’t return to the legislature in 2025. These include Steve Allison, Ernest Bailes, Travis Clardy, Glenn Rogers, Hugh Shine, and Reggie Smith. Also, Reps. DeWayne Burns, Justin Holland, John Kuempel, and Gary VanDeavers face highly competitive runoffs—and it’s entirely possible the incumbents lose each one.

School choice indeed was on the ballot. Corey DeAngelis, an education researcher and well-known “school choice evangelist,” calls the results a clear “mandate for school choice in Texas.” Unseating or forcing a runoff for 77 percent of sitting state representatives is astounding. Republicans who backed the government school monopoly—and they really ought to have known better—now face the likely end of their political careers.

Read it.

A longtime Safeway employee from San Mateo, California, has won a court victory after she was terminated for trying to stop a suspected shoplifter, FOX-KTVU out of Oakland has reported.

Read it.

From 1 January 2024, France will no longer accept the presence on its soil of ‘seconded imams,’ i.e., foreign imams who are paid by a foreign country but reside and officiate in France. The measure, designed to reduce the influence of foreign powers on France’s Muslim community, is gradually coming into force, with varying degrees of difficulty.

It was one of President Emmanuel Macron’s wishes, expressed in Mulhouse in February 2020 as part of the fight against “Islamist separatism.” At the time, Macron announced his desire to put an end to seconded imams sent by Muslim countries to officiate in France, so that they could be replaced by imams trained in France.

At the time of the Mulhouse announcement, there were around 300 seconded imams, out of a total of 2,700. Turkey, Algeria, and Morocco are the main countries providing seconded imams.

Read it.

Legislation introduced on March 5 would strip COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers of liability protections, enabling Americans injured by the shots to sue the companies.

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” — various anonymous clever people

Read it.

A controversial bill that would let illegal immigrants receive the same kind of homebuyer assistance as U.S. citizens has advanced in the California state legislature, drawing criticism from those who object to granting perks to people who break the law by entering the country illegally.

Funny how that works.

City Journal.

on the case when it comes to solving one of the most perplexing mysteries of our day: How can the economy be so good, and yet Americans think it’s so bad?

A recent Harris poll found that just 31 percent of registered voters believe that the economy is “on the right track.” That’s the same percentage (in the same poll) who said that Joe Biden is “showing he is fit to be president” rather than “showing he is too old.” Yet the press continues to assure readers that the economy is steaming along like a powerful locomotive.

“The economic news in 2023 was almost miraculously good,” the New York Times’s Paul Krugman enthuses, as the American “economy continues to look like an amazing success story.” The title of a Financial Times article emphasizes the “strange lack of electoral reward for the success of Bidenomics.” CNN’s MJ Lee reports that the president himself is confused by the “significant gulf” between an economy that seems to be “humming along” and “the public’s stubbornly grim sentiment.”

Read it.

My, what a surprise.

Read it.

Recently approved vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for older adults may be linked to a rare nervous system disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack its own nerves.

In a Feb. 29 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, health officials presented data that appears to show a slightly elevated rate of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) among people who received RSV vaccines by Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).

Power Line.

Politico reports that Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (a Democrat, of course) is accelerating an investigation that may lead to prosecutions of people close to President Trump’s 2020 campaign. Which is odd on its face, since the events that are the basis for the investigation happened more than three years ago. Why the sudden hurry? Obviously, Democrats see that Joe Biden is losing, and are throwing the kitchen sink at Trump.

Ann Coulter.

With the Biden administration hauling in millions of “newcomers” (the latest euphemism for illegal aliens) from booming economies like Venezuela, Senegal and Haiti, we seem to be getting a Kate Steinle every day.

Among the recent atrocities committed by Our Greatest Strength is the savage murder of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal alien released into our country by the Biden administration. The “newcomer” beat Riley so badly that he disfigured her skull.

MEDIA ALERT: Time to roll out the fake studies on low immigrant crime!

The Guardian.

A new drive by the United Nation’s World Food Programme to deliver aid to an estimated half million people at risk of famine in northern Gaza has failed amid further scenes of chaos and violence.

A 14-truck convoy destined for northern Gaza was looted on Tuesday after being held at an Israeli army checkpoint for several hours, aid workers said. As the convoy turned back after the delay, it was attacked and 200 tonnes of food looted by “a large crowd of desperate people”.

Insecurity, logistical bottlenecks, ongoing fighting and restrictions on movement imposed by Israel have combined to limit aid deliveries to a fraction of what is needed, aid officials said.

The Israelis, quite naturally, have to make sure that they aren’t shipping in weapons, since U.N. agencies are notorious for aiding Hamas in its terrorist activities. And it’s quite clear that the Palestinians were the ones doing the looting, although the lefty-wing Guardian does its best to spin it as if they were victims.

Financial Times.

The Biden administration will target billionaires and corporate America with sweeping tax rises as part of a plan to cut the US’s record national debt and boost the president’s standing with voters ahead of November’s election.

So it’s not because of any concern over the national debt, merely an election-year hunt for the usual proglodyte punching-bags.

The proposals, expected to be unveiled in Thursday’s State of the Union address and over the following week, include an increase in the minimum corporate tax from 15 per cent to 21 per cent, as well as a 25 per cent minimum tax for billionaires.

Corporations don’t pay tax; they merely collect tax, which is paid by their customers, which is usually normal middle and working class Americans.

The proposals, which are unlikely to pass Congress but are intended to distinguish Biden’s progressive agenda from that of his Republican rival Donald Trump, come as most voters remain unconvinced by the president’s performance on the economy.

So it’s not a serious proposal, just virtue-signalling by Biden’s puppet-masters. Sheesh.

The Foundry.

Here’s my roundup of what I think are the six most prominent failures of the Biden presidency so far.

Read it.

The Texas House of Representatives last year failed to pass a school choice bill even after Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, repeatedly called the lawmakers back into special session. Twenty-one Texas House Republicans joined with all House Democrats to defeat the school choice proposal.

In response, Abbott took a page out of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ book. If the Legislature wouldn’t support school choice—which had the support of 88% of Texas Republican voters—then he would find a new Legislature.

When the Iowa Legislature voted down Reynolds’ education savings account proposal in 2022, she endorsed nine pro-school choice candidates who were challenging anti-school choice incumbents. Eight of them won.

Read it.

Bethel said the students are in the range of 15 to 17 years old. One of the students was shot multiple times and placed in critical condition.

Authorities are searching for three masked shooters who were inside a blue Hyundai sedan with paper tags, police sources said.

Sailer’s Law says that the high ratio of wounded to fatalities indicate that the shooters were non-white.

Coulter’s law says that the longer it takes for the Narrative media to mention the race of the suspects, the greater the chance of their being non-white.

Read it.

In case you missed it: With recent developments against DEI and a palpable shift in public sentiment – it’s worth noting this story from last year which received little media attention.

Namely – a former Virginia Tech soccer player whose coach benched her for refusing to kneel during a pregame social-justice demonstration settled for $100,000 under a terms of a settlement with said coach.

The American Mind.

If only ideologies worked. It’s easy to see why they tempt us: they promise to absolve us from having to think about complex practical decisions. They hold out the hope of black and white absolutes. We reach for theory when we sense our prudence coming up short.

But it’s best not to be an ideologue if you can help it. Falling for ideology means inviting dogmatists and snake oil salesmen to make your decisions for you. This is never more true than when it comes to education. The sad fact is that public school isn’t always and everywhere a bad option. Even worse—homeschooling isn’t always a good idea. It depends. You have to figure it out for yourself.

As long as ‘traditionalists’ keep denying the realities pointed out to us by evolutionary psychology, they will flounder around like crabs in a bucket and make no progress.

Read it.

Because that has worked so well in the past.

Read it.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced plans Wednesday to send the National Guard to the New York City subway system to help police search passengers’ bags for weapons, following a series of high-profile crimes on city trains.

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

Read it.

“It’s gonna get a little hot in this city in the next few months” over contract negotiations with teachers. That’s from Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates’ address to the City Club of Chicago yesterday.

That sure sounds right based on the rest of her speech. Gates told us what the CTU is. “We are a whole bunch of people who have been told no. Don’t, Forget about it. Don’t even think about it. No. Poo.” And this time, they won’t accept those answers, which was the primary point of the speech. It’s all part of the CTU’s broader “movement,” a term she used throughout the speech.

Teaching has gone from a socially useful profession to being a jobs program for the fashionable victim categories.

Read it.

San Francisco residents on Tuesday voted to let police conduct more vehicle chases and deploy drones and surveillance cameras to fight crime. They also ordered mandatory drug screening for childless adults who receive welfare and housing assistance—benefits that will now be yanked from those who refuse testing.

Both measures passed by wide margins. The police initiative, which voters approved by nearly 20 points, would give law enforcement more leeway in when and why they can chase down suspects fleeing in vehicles. Officers are currently barred from chasing suspected thieves and can only go after those who they believe have committed a violent felony or pose immediate danger to the public. Police would also be able to deploy drones, facial recognition, and other surveillance technology to fight crime.

The welfare measure, which passed by 26 points, would require poor and homeless adults under 65 and without dependent children to be tested for drug use, and if they don’t pass their screening they would have to enter treatment to receive San Francisco’s cash payments and housing assistance. Those who fail a drug test and refuse to receive treatment will not be eligible for benefits.

Steve Sailer.

One of the stranger aspects of the long-running American affirmative action debate is that both supporters and critics of racial quotas seldom admit in public how scarce blacks would be in cognitively elite institutions without the now traditional massive thumb on the scale in their favor.

Liberal racial preference advocates tend to argue as if black representation in prestige positions in percentages close to their share of the population (12 percent or 14 percent, depending on whether or not you count individuals who identify as black and another race) merely requires tie-breakers favoring African-Americans among extremely equal applicants. They present an image of affirmative action as resembling the baseball rule that “a tie goes to the runner”: In the rare instances when the baserunner (black applicant in this analogy) and baseball (nonblack applicant) arrive exactly simultaneously, the umpire is obliged to declare the runner safe.

Who could object to something so trivial?

Racists, that’s who!

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.

Shortly after the activists were promptly escorted out, some 25 fellow protesters initiated a sit-in at the parliament’s visitor’s hall. They chanted slogans, including “Free Palestine,” “Ceasefire now,” and “shame on [outgoing Prime Minister Mark] Rutte, blood on your hands.” Most disturbingly, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” was chanted—which calls for the eradication of the Jews and the abolition of Israel as a nation.

Read it.

As a partial government shutdown looms, the House Freedom Caucus has called on Republicans to oppose the ‘Swamp Omnibus’ bill, criticizing it for containing a ridiculous amount of pork. This government funding package is designed to prevent a partial shutdown set for Friday.

Tim Graham.

The pro-Biden media perpetually pat themselves on the back. They are a gift to the people, the essence of democracy, as in, “We inform the voters and then we expect the voters to make smart choices” (the ones we recommend). But when journalists lose, they have a disturbing tendency to argue democracy lost.

On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously disapproved of the Left’s latest desperate attempt to rip Donald Trump’s name off the ballot, pushed by blue states, among them Colorado and Illinois. Their novel theory was that the 14th Amendment contains Civil War-era verbiage about keeping “insurrectionists” off the ballot.

To the average American, it might seem odd that it’s somehow “protecting democracy” to remove the Republican front-runner’s name from the ballot. That looks like throwing large obstacles in the way of democracy, not protecting it.

ZMan notes some anomalies.

People have noted that the response of the West to the Ukraine war is a globalized version of the cancel culture and censorship pogroms. Most of what Western leaders did over the last two years was about “isolating” Putin. It was as if they thought excluding him from the cool kid table would humiliate him to the point where he would either resign or be deposed. It never occurred to them that he and his government did not understand what any of this meant.

Read it.

Biden’s first campaign ad attacked conservatives for keeping ‘Lawn Boy’, a book featuring a 10-year-old performing sex acts, out of schools. The Department of Education launched a civil rights investigation of a Georgia school district for pulling books containing graphic sexual content from middle school shelves. At a Pride Month event at the White House, it was announced that a special coordinator would be waging lawfare against schools that try to shield children.

The Biden administration sued Tennessee over the ‘Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act’. Democrat judges have illegally blocked similar measures in Florida, Arkansas and Alabama. In Washington and California, Democrat majorities legalized the abduction of children by the state for transgender procedures. Similar legislation is pending in other states.

“This game of defense can get tiring. We want offense,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra demanded at a Health and Human Services ‘Pride Summit’. “Let’s play on the offensive.”

Beyond the usual motives of groomers looking for fresh victims, what is behind the unprecedented obsession with sexualizing children by an entire political party?

Read it.

A new killer has emerged in the illegal drug market, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. Synthetic opioids called nitazenes—up to 20 times more potent than fentanyl—have infiltrated street drugs from heroin to benzodiazepines, catching unsuspecting users in a web of addiction and overdose (OD) death.

These opioids have evaded authorities and fueled a silent epidemic, presenting novel dangers law enforcement is only beginning to grasp.

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.

Under President Biden’s disastrous open southern border policies, there is a significant concern among federal officials that terrorists are entering the United States freely and could be plotting assassination attacks against former and current government officials.

First reported by Semafor, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Miami Field Office released new information on an Iranian intelligence officer by the name of Majid Dastjani Farahani, who is wanted for “questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States, to include lethal targeting of current and former United States Government officials.”

Lifehacker.

Apple Podcasts is hardly the best podcast app for your iPhone, but it is the one that comes preinstalled. For many of us, that means it’s the only podcast app we’ll ever bother with, which means the more improvements Apple makes to Podcasts, the better. Fortunately, the company’s latest change, arriving with iOS 17.4, is actually pretty great.

With the new iOS update, Apple has added a transcripts feature to Podcasts. The results are honestly impressive: Not only do transcripts allow you to read along with any given podcast episode, they seem automatically available on all new podcasts on the app—so long as the podcast is in English, French, Spanish, or German. That means, going forward, Apple will add transcripts to episodes shortly after they drop. For older episodes, the company says transcripts will be added “over time.” For what it’s worth, The Daily has transcripts on its episodes all the way back through May 4, 2023, as of this writing.

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.

Breaking Defense.

Early last month, the US Army sent four Stryker-mounted 50-kilowatt laser prototypes to the Middle East for real-world testing that includes facing down dust particles, the service’s new vice chief, Gen. James Mingus, revealed to Breaking Defense.

“It’s a prototype, but we want to experiment in a live environment,” Mingus said Wednesday in his first interview since being sworn in as the vice-chief in January. “Is it 100 percent ready? Is it going to work perfectly? Probably not, but we’re going to learn from it.”

New York Post.

Electric vehicles release more toxic particles into the atmosphere and are worse for the environment than their gas-powered counterparts, according to a resurfaced study.

The study, published by emissions data firm Emission Analytics, was released in 2022 but has attracted a wave of attention this week after being cited in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Sunday.

It found that brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to modern tailpipes, which have “efficient” exhaust filters, bringing gas-powered vehicles’ emissions to new lows.

Today, most vehicle-related pollution comes from tire wear.

Power Line.

Israel’s war on Hamas has had several side effects. One such is the exposure of UNRWA a functional arm of Hamas.

Read it.

A district court ruled Monday that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission violated the First Amendment by attempting to force religious health care workers to provide gender-transition procedures.

In 2021, the Christian Employers Alliance filed a lawsuit against the EEOC over two mandates requiring religious employers to provide health insurance that covered gender transitions as well as forcing religious physicians to perform sex-change procedures or face charges of discrimination based on gender identity. The District Court of North Dakota ruled in favor of the Christian Employers Alliance, arguing that the rules would violate an employer’s or doctor’s religious beliefs.

Read it.

A United Nations report on Monday confirmed evidence of Hamas terrorists committing acts of sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and against hostages the terrorist group captured.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of sexual violence took place with victims being subjected to rape and/or gang rape and then killed or killed while being raped,” Pramila Patten, U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, wrote in the report, describing Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion. Patten and nine other U.N. officials visited the invaded regions of Israel last month, meeting with Israeli officials and interviewing survivors, witnesses, and released hostages of the Oct. 7 invasion.

“Several fully naked or partially naked bodies from the waist down were recovered—mostly women—with hands tied and shot multiple times, often in the head,” Patten noted, adding that on Oct. 7 Hamas terrorists perpetrated acts of sexual violence “in at least three locations, namely: the Nova music festival site and its surroundings, Road 232, and Kibbutz Re’im.”