RealClearPolitics.

If the economy is so good, why do small business leaders feel so bad?
The latest Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business could hardly be more depressing. It finds that the men and women who run our 33 million small businesses and hire more than half of American workers are in a somber mood. The survey finds that small-business confidence has reached its lowest point in 12 years.
Amazingly, small company CEOs are even more fearful of the future today than during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most businesses were shuttered.

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Epoch Times reporter Tom Ozimek recently wrote in these pages of former President Donald Trump’s encounter with Kayla Montgomery, a young Republican political consultant whose business is to “engage young, black professionals, students, and community members” in the Atlanta area. The ex-president and Ms. Montgomery met at a Chick-fil-A restaurant during an impromptu campaign stop in Atlanta. Ms. Montgomery was effusive in her praise of President Trump, saying, “I don’t care what the media tells you, President Trump—we support you!” A video of Ms. Montgomery and the former president hugging soon went viral, even as the media and Democrats quickly dismissed the interaction as “staged.”

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Nearly 90% of unborn babies prenatally diagnosed with Down’s syndrome in England and Wales (and Crown Dependencies) were aborted in 2021, according to official data released last month. These statistics were published on the day preceding the UK’s four-day Easter weekend, deliberately, it appears, to bury 973 victims whose deaths were assented to by the state—the PR equivalent of scattering twigs and leaves over a shallow grave.

Every year, thousands of unborn children considered undesirable are made to disappear around Europe. A study published in 2021 estimated that there were 9,300 fewer people born with Down’s syndrome annually in Europe between 2011 and 2015 because of abortion, a reduction rate of over 50%. In total, abortion accounted for approximately 155,000 missing people with Down’s syndrome who’d otherwise be alive in 2015. That figure has surely risen.

The proliferation of abortion and non-invasive prenatal testing has wiped out much of the Down’s syndrome population in recent years. In the age of identity, when so-called ‘victimised’ groups gain special protections from the state and a culture that elevates minorities over the majority, the singling out of unborn children with disabilities is accepted and encouraged.

Out of sight, out of mind. The eugenics gene of progressivism expresses itself whenever it can.

UnHerd.

Here’s a version of a story you might have heard before: first feminists got what they wanted, and then they got what they deserved. At some point in the Noughties, the idea that men and women were fundamentally alike in character and aptitude (if not in body) became the only acceptable thing to believe; and at some point shortly after that, the doctrine of transgenderism swept in and swept away every claim feminism had ever made. It’s a classic of the monkey’s paw genre: be careful what you wish for.

According to this account, feminist writers had devoted themselves to rooting out the scourge of “neurosexism”, and they had been all too successful. By rejecting the idea of inherent sex difference, writers such as Cordelia Fine (in Delusions of Gender) and Rebecca Jordan-Young (in Brain Storm) had effectively undone the very class they claimed to represent. The most appealing part of this story is, of course, that it takes a particularly virulent attack on women’s rights and pins the blame for it on women.

But it also has a germ of truth to it: there is a strand of feminism that has always seemed deeply uncomfortable with the idea of sex difference. “Born this way” might make strategic sense as a slogan for other civil rights movements, but for the women’s movement, it would have come close to an admission of defeat: born to be underpaid and sexually harassed. No wonder there was an insistent pull towards a form of blank slatism for some feminists.

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In 2024, virtually all major U.S. cities have certain things in common. First of all, if you visit the downtown area of one of our major cities you are likely to see garbage, human excrement and graffiti all over the place. As you will see below, some of our core urban areas literally look like they belong in a third world country. Most of our politicians don’t seem too concerned about doing anything to clean up all the filth, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that rat populations are absolutely exploding all over the country. In some of our largest cities, the total rat population is numbered in the millions. Meanwhile, rampant theft, out of control violence, endless migration, predatory gangs and the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation have combined to create a “perfect storm” of social decay that is unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before. Millions of law-abiding citizens and countless businesses have been fleeing America’s largest cities, and property values in our core urban areas have been absolutely crashing. We really are in the early stages of a full-blown societal “collapse”, and things just keep getting worse with each passing day.

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In a fit of self-loathing, the European Union has begun to destroy the economic engine that pays its bills. Some of this is well known, but some is not, and it will astonish you.

The American Mind.

The latest release into the American interior of an FBI terrorist suspect who illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border—a twice-freed Afghan national man free to roam America for 11 months until his capture—demands that the federal government regard this patterned problem as a chronic national security emergency requiring elevation to the highest priority within the intelligence community, federal law enforcement, and Congress.

The case of the 48-year-old Mohammad Kharwin, whom an overwhelmed Border Patrol freed into America on March 10, 2023 before agents could confirm the FBI watch list hit that initially flagged him and whom a swamped Texas immigration court freed a second time in February, is the seventh example of its kind that can establish, just from disparate public records, a mortally dangerous failure pattern.

More cases of accidental Border Patrol releases of illegally crossing terrorism suspects, who did not reach the public record, are highly likely if not certain.

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

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

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

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The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a legal challenge to a Texas law that requires voters under the age of 65 to provide justification to vote by mail, meaning that the Democrat-aligned attempt to sharply expand “no-excuse” mail-in ballots in the Lone Star state has failed, with implications for other states.

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BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink’s efforts to push ‘wokesim’ or environmental, social, and governance policies across corporate America have been in reverse in recent years amid the backlash from Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and 19 state attorneys general in conservative states, including Arizona and Texas, who have been fed up with ESG-related policies hurting the economy.

Supposedly, the backlash by anti-woke activists has forced BlackRock to triple Fink’s home security spending. Financial Times says the CEO has become “a target for anti-woke activists and conspiracy theorists.”

According to FT’s numbers, the $10.5 trillion money manager spent $563,513 to “upgrade the home security systems” at Fink’s residences during 2023, on top of $216,837 for bodyguards.

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The Catholic Charities of San Antonio allegedly misused tax dollars to fund the travel of illegal migrants to a “destination of their choice.” “These tax dollars were not intended to be used to fly illegal immigrants all over the country,” Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Tex., said.

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From coast to coast, radical prosecutors and progressive politicians have been pushing illogical criminal justice policies that not only have backfired but transformed many once-safe Democrat-controlled cities into crime-ridden hellholes.

Go down the list of cities. Whether it’s New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Chicago, or San Francisco, and the list goes on and on – these metros are plagued with violent crime, out-of-control youth, carjackings, murders, drug crises, the homelessness crisis, theft waves, and unvetted migrants.

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A group of Columbia University professors held a rally Monday to express solidarity with the anti-Semitic students suspended for holding unauthorized protests on campus and to lambaste university president Minouche Shafik for cracking down on them.

One faculty member, Columbia University history professor Christopher Brown, called for Shafik’s resignation over her decision to call in the NYPD to round up and arrest unruly student protesters who refused to vacate the campus green.

“I have no confidence in the president’s leadership,” Brown said. “She has forfeited the privilege to lead this great university.”

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Abortions conducted by Planned Parenthood are a leading cause of death in the United States, with the organization recommending the procedure to pregnant clients 97 percent of the time, according to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America group.

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The prior period of constant attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria which corresponded with the opening first half of Israel’s operations in Gaza could soon resume, after a Sunday incident saw at least five rockets fired on an American base in northeastern Syria.

The Iraqi militant group Kataib Hezbollah – which has close ties with Iran claimed responsibility, and more importantly announced that it is resuming attacks on US bases in the region.

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), appearing alongside President Joe Biden on Monday, praised the anti-Israel campus protests that have sprung up across the United States.

“It is especially important that we remember the power of young people shaping this country today, of all days, as we once again witness the leadership of those peaceful, student-led protests on campuses like Columbia, Yale, Berkeley, and many others,” the New York Democrat said at an event in Virginia with Biden commemorating Earth Day.

After Ocasio-Cortez spoke, Biden urged the audience to “listen to that lady.”

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Senator Jon Tester’s new $14.5 million ad campaign features footage of the southern border wall and boasts that the Montana Democrat “worked with Republicans” to “target fentanyl traffickers and add hundreds of new border patrol agents.”

There’s just one problem: Tester lobbied against a border wall in 2017 and voted against amendments that funded anti-fentanyl programs.

Tester was a vocal critic of former president Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the southern border, calling the idea “ineffective and wasteful.” Tester has since said he supports erecting barriers where it “does make sense,” but he has not put forward any legislation that would do so.

Associated Press.

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

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

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

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While Congress failed to pass a border security bill over the weekend amid a flurry of billions in international aid to Ukraine and Israel, they did set aside $3.5 billion for “Migration and Refugee Assistance” for the State Department to “address humanitarian needs of vulnerable populations and communities.”

Navy Matters.

It’s no secret that the military is struggling.  Recruiting is in the tank.  Readiness is near zero.  Maintenance is non-existent.  Gender, diversity, and environmental concerns dominate over warfighting.  The Secretary of Defense has listed climate as one of the top priorities.  The fleet is shrinking despite the Navy stating that a war with China is imminent.  Ships are being retired decades early due to poor planning (LCS, MLP, AFSB, etc.).  Our reserve fleet is nearly non-existent.  Unbelievably, the Army is looking to recall retirees to active duty.

All these problems stem from the quality of the people populating the military. These kinds of problems don’t just happen like the common cold. They’re the result of decisions by people. Bad decisions. Cowardly decisions. Stupid decisions. Traitorous decisions. Criminal decisions.

Naval Gazing.

For those who weren’t paying attention, reports generally seem to agree that Iran (and its proxies in Yemen) launched about 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles and 110-120 ballistic missiles. And to be clear, 300+ missiles (some sources are saying 350, probably with the balance made up by more drones) is a lot. For comparison, during the first Gulf War, the United States launched 288 Tomahawks. Obviously, that was in the context of a much larger air campaign, but this was clearly more than just lobbing a few missiles as harassment.

But the attack was a complete failure, with the net result reported of two Israeli airbases damaged (not clear exactly how much) and a single girl left in critical condition by falling debris. Some of this was because about half of the Iranian ballistic missiles failed during launch and crashed short of the target1 but most of it was a superb performance by Israeli and American ABM systems, and the rapid work of an impromptu coalition of basically everyone who wasn’t Iran in the region to deal with the atmospheric threat.

NPR.

Sy Kirby dreaded the thought of going to college after graduating from high school. He says a four-year degree just wasn’t in the cards for him or his bank account.

“I was facing a lot of pressure for a guy that knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to college,” Kirby says. “I knew I wasn’t going to sit in a classroom, especially since I knew I wasn’t going to pay for it.”

Instead, at the age of 19, Kirby took a job at a local water department in southern Arkansas. He said the position helped him to develop the skills that helped him start his own construction company.

Washington Free Beacon.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft on Monday said he will no longer donate to his alma mater Columbia University due to the “virulent hate” on campus against Jewish people amid widespread anti-Israel protests.

“The school I love so much—the one that welcomed me and provided me with so much opportunity—is no longer an institution I recognize,” the NFL team’s billionaire owner said in a Monday statement, noting he is “deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country.”

“I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken,” Kraft added.

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While pro-Hamas demonstrations continued on campus, Columbia University on Monday barred a Jewish professor who had demanded New York City Mayor Eric Adams “do something” to quell the antisemitism that has erupted at the school.

New York Post.

he privileged daughter of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar amazingly claims she’s homeless and can’t get food after being kicked out of her prestigious $90,000-per-year Barnard College dorm following her arrest at last week’s anti-Israel protests on Columbia University’s campus.

Isra Hirsi, 21, and a handful of other Barnard students were slapped with suspensions after they were among the more than 100 protestors cuffed and hauled away for refusing to clear out from a tent encampment on the Ivy League school’s campus last Thursday.

“I was a little bit frantic, like, where am I going to sleep? Where am I gonna go?” she whined to Teen Vogue after learning she’d been evicted from campus housing and banned from using the dining hall.

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In scenes reminiscent of demonstrations elsewhere in the world, anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University chanted antisemitic phrases that included calling for Hamas terrorists to kill Israeli soldiers.

Politico.

When prosecutors deliver opening statements Monday in the trial of former President Donald Trump, one of their critical goals will be to convince jurors that the charges are as serious as they are salacious.

It may be a challenge in a case prominently featuring a porn star, a Playboy playmate, the National Enquirer and allegations of about $300,000 in hush money paid in 2016 to keep a lid on allegations of extramarital affairs by Trump.

But Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his surrogates have insisted that, beneath the sordid details on the surface, the felony charges are really about election interference. Trump, meanwhile, has claimed that the case itself is election interference of a different kind.

It’s not yet clear how jurors — or Americans voters — will see it.

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I was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University’s campus because I am a Jew.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but since October 7, Yale has refused to take action against students glorifying violence, chanting “resistance is justified,” “celebrat[ing] the resistance’s success,” and fundraising for “Palestinian anarchist fighters” on the frontlines of the “resistance.” In more recent days, the school has allowed students to run roughshod over their most basic policies against postering, time and place restrictions, disorderly conduct, respect for university property, and the rights of others, not to mention stalking and harassment.
Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.

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Scientists developing China’s next-generation nuclear submarine technology say they have found a way to significantly improve the efficiency of the laser propellers that could one day drive the underwater vessels.

The researchers said the new technology can produce nearly 70,000 newtons of thrust – almost the force of a commercial jet engine – using 2 megawatts of laser power emitted through the submarine’s coating of optical fibres, each thinner than a human hair – an efficiency previously thought impossible to achieve.

The laser pulses not only generate thrust but also vaporise seawater, creating bubbles all over the submarine’s surface in a phenomenon known as “supercavitation” which can significantly reduce water resistance.

UnHerd.

Women to the Left, men to the Right. And heaven forbid there is any crossover. These days, young people are floundering in their sex-based political silos wanting different things: girls are still seeking equality and boys miss being the good guys. This isn’t a battle of the sexes — we’re too far apart to fight.

To find the roots of this catastrophic division, let’s take a look at what it’s like to be a young woman looking for men on a dating app. Dive in and you will there find that the feminisation of the public cultural sphere — a response to the cult of toxic masculinity — has divided many men in to defiant and defensive conservatives (bad) and a privileged club of sympathetic male faux-feminists (also bad). Apps have given women the power to shun those who hold the wrong views: “Never kissed a Tory” is a mainstay of girls’ Hinge profiles; “conservative” rarely is.

The Antiplanner.

Today is Earth Day, a day in which we are supposed to celebrate environmentally friendly ideas such as public transit, high-density development, and electric vehicles. My report published last week revealed that the transit lobby has hijacked affordable housing funds so that, in many cities, most of those funds are spent on expensive high-density transit-oriented developments rather than on more affordable low-rise housing.

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Coeur d’Alene, an Idaho city with a population of over 50,000, had too many churches. Alexander Scott Mercurio, a new teen convert to Islam, had a plan to “fix that real soon.”

Ramadan was almost over and Mercurio was unhappy because he believed that he was a bad Muslim who hadn’t even assaulted, let alone killed any Christians, and would go to hell.

“I am a hypocrite who has not even spat in the face of a kafir (non-Muslim),” he complained in online chats. “Let alone spilled their blood and induced terror into their hearts and minds.”

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Check out this headline from today’s New York Times, on the criminal trial that is under way in Manhattan: “Will a Mountain of Evidence Be Enough to Convict Trump?” I understand that readers of the Times tune in mainly to get their daily dose of Trump-hate, but is the Times even pretending to be a newspaper anymore?

Steve Sailer.

The Biden Administration is suing the Sheetz convenience store chain for only hiring job applicants who pass its criminal background check, which the White House sees as disparate impact racial discrimination against the more criminally inclined races.

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The audio guide is being used in the Queen’s House in Greenwich, a publicly funded part of Royal Museums Greenwich.

A section of the guide references a large golden sculpture of Queen Charlotte, claiming: “Queen Charlotte, the nation’s first royal person of colour.”

The guide then states “Yep, you heard me. The insecure white boys writing history conveniently forget to mention that bit, because… well, structural racism.”

King George III’s wife was Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. She was whiter than Megan Markle, and Megan Markle has about as much ‘colour’ as Taylor Swift.

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Mammas, don’t let your children grow up to be Yalies.

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

New York Post.

Thank you, Joe Biden.

These days, why would they be bothered by the cops showing up? Said cops were probably instructed to make sure that no vulgar ordinary citizens disturbed the privileged ‘migrants’.

UPDATE: NYC High School Soccer Game Cancelled After Migrants Refuse To Leave The Field

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An April 11 edition of the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights’ NGO Action News, which provides updates about civil society organizations worldwide “relevant to the Palestine issue,” linked readers to the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) list of “5 Ways to Take Action for Tax Day.”

Included within the list were instructions about how protesters who did not “want [their] tax dollars to fund genocide” could “disrupt for a free Palestine.”

The second item on USCPR’s list was a hyperlink for protesters seeking to engage in a “coordinated multi-city economic blockade to free Palestine,” an effort organizers noted was “not affiliated with USCPR.”

BBC.

The reclining armchairs and plush leather sofas coming off the production line at Man Wah Furniture’s factory in Monterrey are 100% “Made in Mexico”.

They’re destined for large retailers in the US, like Costco and Walmart. But the company is from China, its Mexican manufacturing plant built with Chinese capital.

The triangular relationship between the US, China and Mexico is behind the buzzword in Mexican business: nearshoring.

The Foundry.

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

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

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

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Insulted as “scum” and “Nazi” by pro-Palestinian protesters at a rally in London, a Jewish activist — who wasn’t part of the demonstration – is accusing police of treating him like a criminal, and calling for the city’s top cop to be fired.

UPDATE: “You Are Quite Openly Jewish”: London Police Under Fire For Confrontation With Man Near Anti-Israeli March

We’ve all had that experience.

The Atlantic.

Moments after receiving my lunch order, the robots whirred to life. A clawlike contraption lurched forward, like a bird pecking at feed, to snatch dishes holding a faux-chicken cutlet and potatoes, then inserted them onto a metal track that snakes through a 650-degree-Fahrenheit oven. Seven minutes, some automatic food dispensers, and two conveyor belts later (with a healthy assist from human hands), my meal was sitting on a shelf of mint-green cubbies. It was a vegan fried-chicken sandwich, a cucumber salad, crispy potatoes, and a smattering of other sides.

This is Kernel, a fast-casual venture that opened its first store, in Manhattan, this February. Its founder, Steve Ells, kicked off the lunch-bowl boom when he started Chipotle in 1993. Now, he told me during my visit, he is betting that machines will trigger a “reinvention of how a fast-food or fast-casual restaurant can run.” Robots, he prophesied, will bring faster and more accurate service at lower overhead costs. Plenty of chains have tested out semi-automated cooking, with mixed success—including deep-frying robots at Jack in the Box and robotic bowl assembly at Sweetgreen and Chipotle. But Kernel has been built from the ground up for robots. Just three employees are needed in the restaurant at any time, compared with the dozen required for a typical fast-casual restaurant. Soon many more people may be eating robot-prepared vegan chicken: Ells has raised $36 million and hopes to expand quickly, starting with several more locations throughout New York City this year.

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We’ve been told for decades that heart disease is caused by saturated fat found in butter, meat, and eggs, but recent research reveals that the studies promoting these messages were heavily compromised.

Any organization is, first of all, an organization, which means it eventually is run by people who would rather run an organization than do what the organization is all about in the first place. The opportunities for corruption are obvious.

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Even before our first surface stations report in 2009, The Heartland Institute led the way in reporting on problems with the surface temperature record.

We have highlighted how the surface station record did not correspond to the temperatures recorded by global satellites and weather balloons, two alternative temperature data sources whose data sets closely track each other. Heartland has repeatedly exposed instances in both the United States and abroad where official agencies tamper with past temperature data at pristine stations, adjusting it to appear cooler than what was actually recorded, while adjusting recent temperatures upward. We were all over the adjustments made by corrupt NOAA scientists in 2015 before the Paris climate treaty negotiations—mixing data from unbiased ocean buoys with heat-biased temperature measurements taken from ships’ engine water intake inlets, which made it appear the ocean was suddenly warming faster than before.

Also, first, foremost, and most forcefully, we independently documented the serious problems with the official surface temperature record arising from the fact that the vast majority of temperature stations are poorly sited. Stations fail NOAA’s own standards for quality, unbiased stations in reporting temperatures skewed by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

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Apparently they don’t love Big Brother.

(One of the benefits of government-provided health care is that it’s easier to do this kind of thing.)