Read it.

“First, you allege a problem exists without any scientific basis. Then, you identify a ‘study’ with findings you like that can be used to form a basis for policy advocacy, which you pass onto your former fellow activists who are now in the administration, and let them run with it.”

Read it.

After enduring bullshit school shutdowns during the COVID pandemic, many students concluded that school itself must be bullshit and have skipped attending classes. Government bureaucrats are panicking since subsidies are tied to the number of students’ butts in chairs each day. Duke University Professor Katie Rosanbalm lamented that, thanks to the pandemic, “Our relationship with school became optional.”

School absences have “exploded” almost everywhere, according to a New York Times report last week. Chronic absenteeism has almost doubled amongst public school students, rising from 15% pre-pandemic to 26% currently. Compulsory attendance laws are getting trampled far and wide.

The New York Times suggested that “something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting.” Connecticut Education Commissioner Charlene M. Russell-Tucker commented, “There is a sense of: ‘If I don’t show up, would people even miss the fact that I’m not there?’” The arbitrary, counterproductive school shutdowns destroyed the trust that many families had in the government education system.

Read it.

elow is another report by the journalist Eugenia Fiore about the ongoing Islamization of Italy and the resulting oppression of women. It begins with an account of a parricide by a young Muslima, and then visits various cities to look at the compulsory veiling of very young girls, and the de-facto institution of purdah to keep Muslim women secluded.

Read it.

The US Navy released a rare assessment of its “shipbuilding challenges,” indicating that the first Columbia-class submarine, classified as the future cornerstone of America’s strategic deterrence, is facing delays, as are other next-generation vessels.

“The purpose of the review is to provide an assessment of national and local causes of shipbuilding challenges, as well as recommend actions for achieving a healthier US shipbuilding industrial base that provides combat capabilities that our warfighters need, on a schedule that is relevant,” the document states, as quoted by Breaking Defense.

Power Line.

When I was growing up, most families I knew had four children. More, if they were Catholics. That is one of the fundamental ways in which our society has changed: today, people generally have fewer children. And now, if you show me a family with four children, I will lay heavy odds that they are Republicans.

In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds writes about the fact that the world needs more babies. Beginning in the 1960s, fueled in part by the prophecies of Paul Ehrlich, an entomologist who had an almost unbroken record of being wrong about everything, fears grew of a population explosion. Governments tried to reduce fertility, but in the West, social trends no doubt contributed more to the ensuing baby bust.

Today, most countries outside of Africa face an uncertain future due to a lack of fertility.

It’s not a lack of fertility–people can still have as many kids as they want to. The problem is that far fewer want to. Children used to be an economic benefit, but now they are merely an expense, an expense that increasingly only the relatively rich can afford.

Read it.

The Italian city of Trieste lies at the head of the Adriatic, close by the Slovenian border. In the late 19th century Trieste was the epicenter of Italian Irredentism; today it is a hotbed of Muslim infiltration into Italy. The Balkan Route is currently one of the predominant pathways for clandestine immigration into the European Union, and Trieste is the western gateway on that route, opening into Italy and points further north and west.

The following report from Trieste features interviews with various participants in the migration drama, both Muslims and (persecuted) Christians.

Power Line.

Some of the most sophisticated work on energy in the country is being done by Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling of Center of the American Experiment. Here, Isaac explains in understandable terms why the supposed costs of wind and solar projects that you see reported in the press, and alleged by “green” advocates, are always wildly off base.

Read it.

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

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

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

The Guardian.

NK Beale knew something was wrong when her boss started sending her listings for other job openings.

“My manager was advising me to put in my notice,” said Beale, who is 40 and lives in Washington DC. “It was kind of weird, because we had a pretty good relationship, and I felt as though he was someone I could trust.”

There had been a shift in leadership at her tech company during a tumultuous time in the industry, with mass layoffs at Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Beale wondered if maybe her boss had encouraged her to put in her notice before they had a chance to officially lay her off so the company wouldn’t have to pay severance. The stress of it all started to affect her sleep and wellbeing.

When it got to be too much, Beale’s partner suggested that she speak to an old colleague named Cierra Gross, who founded an independent human resources consulting firm called Caged Bird HR.

Read it.

In the post-pandemic period of Covid, there’s now a concerted effort to comprehend and explain the damage that was caused by our capitulating to the hysterical overreaction and overreach of the ‘experts.’ There’s a long list of policy failures to examine; mask mandates were a disaster that accomplished absolute nothing of value, but instead led to tremendous harms, many of which continue today.

Read it.

An explicit requirement that Iowa’s state, county, and local decision-making bodies be balanced by gender was repealed Wednesday, a move that Gov. Kim Reynolds said was common sense but one that critics decried.

Read it.

Senator Jacky Rosen says she wants to stop congressional staffers from becoming lobbyists, and vice versa. But her office is teeming with former lobbyists, and many of her former staffers have gone on to become lobbyists.

As part of her “efforts to clean up Washington,” the Nevada Democrat in March signed on to the Close the Revolving Door Act, which would ban former members of Congress from lobbying and boost restrictions on congressional staffers from becoming lobbyists and vice versa. Rosen says the bill would “reduce the influence of powerful special interests and their lobbyists in Congress by increasing transparency and accountability.”

But Rosen has helped keep the revolving door spinning since taking office in 2015. Rosen has hired several former lobbyists to serve as senior policy advisers since taking office in 2015, and she’s seen other staffers leave to start lucrative careers as lobbyists. Rosen has also accepted over $720,000 in campaign contributions from registered lobbyists, including nearly $35,000 from former lawmakers who became lobbyists upon leaving office.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Read it.

Run by the public university, the farm is a research, education, and extension project “focused on ecological farming and food justice,” according to its website. It welcomes the public to harvest food if they “help with weeding, planting, and watering.”

However, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which filed the complaint last week, said the program discriminates against white people.

“Saturdays are exclusively BIPOC,” a farm manager wrote in a series of text messages cited in the complaint. “Exceptions have only been made for events that are BIPOC-centered and with plenty of advance notice and planning.”

Read it.

When people couldn’t afford housing during the Great Depression, they built shantytowns from scrap construction supplies and named them “Hoovervilles,” after President Herbert Hoover. Today, Americans increasingly live out of their cars because they can’t afford housing. If history is any guide, will parking lots full of Americans soon be known as “Bidenvilles”?

The problem has gotten so bad that Sedona, Arizona, recently set aside a parking lot exclusively for these homeless workers. The city is even installing toilets and showers for the new occupants.

Apparently, the City Council thought installing temporary utilities was cheaper than solving the area’s cost-of-living crisis.

Read it.

The Biden administration is secretly using migrant flights to dump illegal aliens into the United States. It turns out that most of them are being flown into Florida and Texas.

Hmm. Is it a coincidence that two red states that are being vigilant in securing their borders are receiving 90% of the migrant flights? I don’t think so.

The Center for Immigration Studies analyzed available public information on U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) website. It’s difficult to know the full picture since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refuses to publicly identify the dozens of international airports it has approved for direct flights from abroad for some inadmissible aliens.

My, what a surprise.

ZMan takes a look at the shit-show.

In the early days of the internet, the public places were mostly populated by people who assumed wide open was the natural order. As opposed to the real world with its silos and private spaces, the internet would be wide open. Everyone could go into this new public square and say and hear what they liked. That is why the first public forums were wide open and comprehensive. The idea was that you had one big forum, and everyone could pile in and have their say.

It did not take long for that to fail. The early forums quickly splintered as factions that would develop and soon the forums were a riot of antagonistic posting. This was long before the smart people made it easy for the progressive kooks to get online, but even in a world of smart, tech savvy people, factionalism was an issue. Bulletin boards then UseNet and then message boards followed this pattern. They started centralized and open and soon balkanized into private platforms.

Once the internet was made accessible to the midwit progressive, this pattern became more toxic and nastier. Instead of college football forums unable to maintain civility amongst rival fans, it was the tone police and moral scolds creating dissention and demanding their rivals be censored. They worked to gain control of the platforms and then set about driving off their bogeymen. This led to alternative forums for the people who had been purged from the main platforms.

Read it.

President Obama often said that he was confident in the success of his leftist policies because modern progressives “…are on the right side of history”.  I always thought that was just a clever way to acknowledge the obvious flaws in his thinking, while convincing people to do as he says anyway:  “Yeah, I know this goes against your ethics, patriotism, experience, religion, and logic.  But all those things are temporary.  Once we change all those things to something else, then believe me, you’ll wish you had just agreed with us initially.”

The concept that there is a ‘right side of history’, and that they are on that side, is the essence of the creed of progressivism. It stems from Hegel (as lifted and polished up by Marx) that there is an inevitable arc to history and that you all had better get on board the train if you don’t want to be left by the side of the tracks.

Newsbusters.

What are the odds that three network newscasts would spit out the same talking point on migrant crime while covering a Trump campaign event? It turns out the odds are pretty good if the media need to firefight for President Biden on immigration, as they did tonight.

Read it.

I couldn’t help but notice that the Salafist preacher featured in this story (who was expelled from Switzerland) is described as a “German-Greek” named Abu Alia. It seemed an amusing description, but apparently the real name of the Islamic firebrand is “Efstathios T.” — which sounds Greek to me. It seems he must be a Greek who converted to the Religion of Peace and then became a dangerous zealot.

Read it.

A Chinese national illegally in the United States was arrested last week after sneaking onto a Marine Corps base in California and refusing to leave, according to an official from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

In a March 29 post on X, Sector Chief Patrol Agent Gregory Bovino confirmed that agents were called out to the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California after the Chinese national entered the facility without authorization.

New York Post.

Starting last summer, vagrants – believed to be from Oakland’s homeless encampments – used small boats to raid the large ships and steal valuables. Homeowners fought back and chased would-be thieves across San Francisco Bay.

Read it.

Scientists have developed a new solar-powered system to convert saltwater into fresh drinking water which they say could help reduce dangerous the risk of waterborne diseases like cholera.

Via tests in rural communities, they showed that the process is more than 20% cheaper than traditional methods and can be deployed in rural locations around the globe.

Building on existing processes that convert saline groundwater to freshwater, the researchers from King’s College London, in collaboration with MIT and the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy Systems, created a new system that produced consistent levels of water using solar power, and reported it in a paper published recently in Nature Water

The Foundry.

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

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

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

Read it.

Heavy equipment businesses have filed a suit against California over the state’s rule that truck and van fleets must electrify their vehicles—a mandate that will likely apply to almost as many out-of-state companies as in-state companies—alleging that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s protections for interstate commerce and other federal laws.

“The rule is extraterritorial, burdensome, and impractical. It is riddled with exemptions that allow [California’s air regulatory agency] to micro-manage fleets and play favorites, one vehicle at a time,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit, from Illinois-based trade association Associated Equipment Dealers and the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, a conservative group chaired by former Iowa governor Terry Branstad (R.), targets a state regulation stating that any company with 50 or more vehicles anywhere in the world, or $50 million in gross yearly revenues, must start replacing their vans, trucks, yard tractors, package delivery vehicles, and buses with electric models starting next year. Fleets must be fully electric within 10 to 18 years, depending on their category.

Read it.

In a mandatory course on “structural racism” for first-year medical students at the University of California Los Angeles, a guest speaker who has praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel led students in chants of “Free, Free Palestine” and demanded that they bow down to “mama earth,” according to students in the class and audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, who has referred to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks as “justice,” began the March 27 class by leading students in what she described as a “non-secular prayer” to “the ancestors,” instructing everyone to get on their knees and touch the floor—”mama earth,” as she described it—with their fists.

At least half of the assembled students complied, two students said. Gray-Garcia, a local activist who had been invited to speak about “Housing (In)Justice,” proceeded to thank native tribes for preserving “what the settlers call L.A.,” according to audio obtained by the Free Beacon, and to remind students of the city’s “herstory.”

The Foundry.

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

When will they learn from their failures?

Not any time soon.

Gizmodo.

Saw that comin’.

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

Wonder how many of them used the Just Don’t Pay program?

Wonder how many of those were Fashionable Victim Minorities?

Inquiring minds want to know….

USA Today.

The Bradford pear tree, with its fluffy white early-spring blossoms, is a looker. Even the tree’s putrid aroma emitted at full-bloom hasn’t kept it from becoming a go-to ornamental option for developers and landscapers for decades.

But the tree is now planted smack in the dab of a growing problem across the U.S.: It’s contributing to the spread of related invasive trees that are taking over some urban green spaces and pastureland and encroaching on forests.

“It’s really easy to just drive down the road and see how much it is spreading,” Lori Chamberlin, forest health program manager for the Virginia Department of Forestry, told USA TODAY. “It really does well along disturbed areas so along roadsides, along fields and along forest edges. In some cases we are seeing it actually invade forests. It’s displacing native tree species and preventing native trees from growing.”

Victor Davis Hanson.

Professor Hanson goes right down the line and lays bare the falsehoods peddled by the Narrative Media and the Cloud People.

The American Mind.

The internet has a lot to say about whom we should marry. From memes about the ideal woman to viral posts about how much money a man should spend on a first date and pseudo-scientific lectures about why women break up with their boyfriends, we are inundated with pronouncements about how to find (or be) the perfect mate. While it would be easy to dismiss all this as the shallow-minded mishigas of the very young, that misses the point: everyone is desperate for love, but no one seems able to find it.

…

The young want to be loved the way that Mr. Rochester loves Jane in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. It’s my favorite love story, and I’ve been rereading it lately. Every time I get to the proposal scene—that moment where Rochester tells Jane, “You—you strange, you almost unearthly thing!—I love as my own flesh,”—I feel an almost unbearable yearning. Happily married and settled as I am, I feel a heart-cracking ache that is both exquisite and devastating.

But the problem is, no one can see and know and love us the way Rochester loves Jane. Because Rochester is Jane. He’s a creation of the same mind that created her. This is true for any great fictional love story—Pride and Prejudice, Cinderella, Romeo and Juliet, take your pick. We look at these lovers and think, “Yes! That! That is what I want!” And then we look at our actual lover—or some potential lover—and think, “Why can’t you be that?”

Read THE RATIONAL MALE by Rollo Tomassi. Then search for ‘red pill’ on YouTube.d

Power Line.

What is your fair share? They never do tell us.

Why so shy? We we can never quit worrying about their coming back for more. There is a reason they never tell us what our “fair share” is.

Read it.

The oldest recognizable map in the world comes from Ukraine and is dated as much later than cave art, around fifteen thousand years ago. An etched mammoth tusk was unearthed along with many mammoth bones at a site called Mezhirich. The scratched lines on the tusk are not random but form a drawing or picture that is likely some kind of map. The design is made with lines, some straight, some zigzagging, presumably to denote a topographical feature. There seems to be a river at the bottom of this first map, and marks of a mountain or hill have been placed at the top. In between are more small lines that look like houses or huts. All the slashes are lines; none of them are curved in any sort of artistic way. There are also no animals and no human figures. This tusk is markedly different from any cave painting in its lack of story and figurative representation. Then, there is its straightforward presentation, which also makes it seem more map-like.

Read it.

members of the goth subculture is probably very low. Their dedication to a nocturnal lifestyle and collective fetish for ghostly pale skin is both an ideological rebuke to shiny, happy consumerism and a great way to avoid melanoma.

With another global-warming summer ominously approaching, I chopped it up with some creatures of the night to get some tips for us normies on how to protect ourselves from the accursed sun (and look fabulously ghastly doing it).

Read it.

This result shouldn’t surprise anyone. Inflation has driven up operational costs for businesses across the US and shrunk profit margins for major food chains in the past few years. This has led to higher menu prices (like the “$18 Big Mac”) and slowing sales for every major fast food company. Another anchor dragging on the restaurant business in many regions was at least two years of covid stimulus coupled with rent moratoriums, creating aggressive labor shortages and raising wages in upwards of $16 per hour for brand new no-skill employees.

…

Mass layoffs are now a guarantee with many restaurants already firing thousands of workers as well as some chains closing multiple locations because the cost of operation will be higher than the benefits.

…

The “digital options” that many fast food franchises are referring to are automated ordering systems as well as robot workers which are slowly but surely becoming more cost effective than human laborers. At least one fast food location in California is testing a fully robotic restaurant with no human workers.

Washington Post.

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly advanced an argument Monday that President Biden poses a greater threat to democracy than Donald Trump, a comment that drew swift rebukes from several historians and experts.
Kennedy, speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday night, criticized the Biden administration’s push for social media companies to monitor their platforms for medical misinformation. Kennedy was temporarily banned by Instagram for spreading misinformation online about vaccines. Kennedy claimed Biden was “censoring me” and is “weaponizing federal agencies.”
He added that Trump — who has alarmed some experts with rhetoric and stances they have compared to authoritarian leaders, plotted a more extreme second term and inspired his supporters to fight the results of an election he continues to falsely claim was stolen — is not as significant a threat to democracy.

Read it.

Spike protein could remain in immune cells for more than 245 days following vaccination, according to a recent preprint. The study evaluated 50 patients who developed long COVID-like symptoms after the COVID-19 vaccine; none had been infected with the virus.

Power Line.

America’s colleges and universities have damaged our country badly, and don’t show any sign of reform. So one obvious path to improvement is for fewer people to attend them. Happily, that is happening: not only that, but young people are finding better alternatives.

Read it.

A candidate for mayor of a violence-wracked city in Mexico has been killed just as she began campaigning.

No wonder so many ‘migrants’ are heading north.

Read it.

Army Futures Command announced last week that troops from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, have received the Army’s next-generation rifles and light machine guns chambered in a new 6.8mm round. These new weapons are replacing the decades-old M-4 and M-16 battle rifle platforms.

Military Times reports soldiers from 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell were handed XM7 Next Generation Rifle and XM250 Next Generation Automatic Rifle ahead of training in April.

Produced by firearm maker Sig Sauer, the XM7 is a 6.8×51mm gas-operated, magazine-fed assault rifle that replaces the M-4 carbine for close combat fighting. The XM250 is a 6.8×51mm gas-operated, belt-fed light machine gun that replaces the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, or SAW. Both rifles are chambered in 6.8×51mm, a new round for the Army that will increase range and improve lethality against the most advanced body armor used on the modern battlefield.

Anyone with a brain knew that the M16 sucked; the existence of a built-in forward assist is testimony to that. The fact that it has taken this long to replace it doesn’t give one much confidence in the competence of our government.

Read it.

There have been widespread reports of mass deportations of Muslim migrants from Russia in the wake of the March 22 terror attack on the Crocus City Hall venue in a Moscow suburb which killed at least 140 people and left hundreds more wounded and injured.

This trend is said to be the result of a significant uptick in raids by authorities on apartments and dorm complexes known to house Central Asian migrants, amid concerns that Islamic radicals could carry out more attacks.

Read it.

Preventive mental health therapy for children may be doing more harm than good—and there’s research to prove it, author Abigail Shrier suggests in her new book “Bad Therapy.”

“What you might not know is that the stuff that travels under the headline ‘mental health’ is really harmful for kids,” she said at a recent book-signing event hosted by the Lincoln Club at Newport Beach. “I’m telling you that according to the best psychological research available, it’s exactly what you would want to do if you wanted to break kids down.”

In “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up,” which hit The New York Times’ best seller list, Ms. Shrier investigates the mental health industry and its negative impact on children, and concludes that when it comes to preventive therapy—especially for children—more is not always better.

Read it.

Donald Trump must stop verbal attacks on family members of a New York judge and others in his upcoming trial on business transactions, the court ruled Monday, after the former president called out the judge’s daughter for being a Democrat fundraiser.

Read it.

Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic uncovered one of the mechanisms that a type of virus called Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) uses to induce cancer.

The study, published last month in Nature Communications, found that the KSHV virus activated a specific pathway responsible for cell metabolism and the way cells grow and multiply. Using current U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved breast cancer drugs, they were able to reduce the replication of the virus, stop the progression of the lymphoma, and shrink existing tumors in preclinical models.

Read it.

The White House on Friday welcomed the formation of a new Palestinian Authority government, suggesting the West Bank-based PA was on track to take over administration of Gaza from Hamas.

President Joe Biden’s administration “looks forward to working with the new cabinet,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement. “A revitalized PA is essential to delivering results for the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza and establishing the conditions for stability in the broader region,” Miller added.

However, at least two of the newly installed PA ministers have advocated Palestinian terrorism against Jews.

My, what a surprise.

Washington Free Beacon.

To hear the Biden White House and their allies tell it, Third Circuit judicial nominee Adeel Mangi—whose nomination is all but dead following three Democratic defections—is the victim of a vicious right-wing smear campaign.

White House chief of staff Jeff Zients charged that “some Senate Republicans and their extreme allies are relentlessly smearing Adeel Mangi with baseless accusations.” Mangi, Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) told the Senate chamber on the verge of tears, has been “trashed and smeared and maligned.” And in the Atlantic, Mangi’s law colleague, Gregory L. Diskant, recently seen filing an amicus brief to the Supreme Court pressing the justices to toss former president Donald Trump off the ballot, writes that Mangi faces “opposition grounded in hate.”

Sounds bad.

The Spectator.

Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president such as Joe Biden, expressing solidarity with co-religionists on Easter ought to be a well-practiced routine.

It took genuine incompetence and obtuseness for the Biden White House to muck up the chance to reach out to fellow Christians on the holiest day of their calendar. But that’s exactly what the White House did on Sunday — Easter Day — by stressing its strong backing for Transgender Day of Visibility. All they had say was, “We love trans people and we will celebrate Visibility Day on Monday this year.” But noooooooo. It’s hard to think of a more obvious train wreck a-comin’. But this White House ignored the flashing red lights, drove right onto the tracks and parked.

The Spectator.

Mirabile dictu, as we Latin lovers like to say. In other words, wonderful news! Attractive women have fallen for ancient Rome — and for classicists.

Well, that’s what the British Museum thought when it cooked up its advertising campaign for its new show, Legion: Life in the Roman Army, about Roman legionaries. The museum put up a controversial social media post, promoting the exhibition as an opportunity for single women to find single men.

I spotted a lissom blonde in green T-shirt and tie-dye trousers. We fell in step as we approached the gift shop

The post read: “Girlies, if you’re single and looking for a man, this is your sign to go to the British Museum’s new exhibition, Life in the Roman Army, and walk around looking confused. You’re welcome x.” It added: “Come for the Romans, stay for some romance.”

Washington Free Beacon.

California’s $20 minimum wage for fast food workers became law Monday and quickly caused chaos, with pizza chains preparing to cut hundreds of employees, ice cream and pretzel shop franchisees struggling to learn if the law applies to them, and industry leaders eyeing price hikes in the state.

California governor Gavin Newsom (D.) last week signed more carve-outs for the law, which already exempted bakeries and chains inside grocery stores, adding increased confusion over which franchisees must comply with the mandate.

The chaos over the law could deal a political blow to Newsom, who became the face of negotiating the $20 fast food wage as a “compromise” between unions and business interests. Newsom, whose approval ratings have tumbled in recent months, signed the legislation last September after a rushed and secretive process, but critics say the fallout is only beginning.