Read it.

Mexico’s election is now the bloodiest in its modern history after a candidate running for local office in central Puebla state was murdered on Friday at a political rally, taking the number of assassinated candidates to 37 ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Jorge Huerta Cabrera, a candidate who was running for a council seat in the town of Izucar de Matamoros, was gunned down in the attack, according to the state prosecutor’s office.

The killing takes the number of assassinated candidates in the 2024 election season to 37, one more than during the 2021 midterm election when 36 candidates were killed, according to data from security consultancy Integralia.

Sure! Open the border! Let ’em all in! What could it hurt?

Read it.

On Thursday, May 30th, a jury of 12 New Yorkers erased the last distinctive line between Biden’s America and Putin’s Russia. With their verdict against Donald Trump, finding him guilty on 34 counts of forging business records, they verified that the Democrat party—the party of the sitting president—can organize a trial with its party operatives as judge and prosecutor, and get their political opponent found guilty.

The judge in the case, Juan Merchan, is an entrenched Democrat who has been selected to prosecute more Republicans than just Donald Trump. In the America that we all knew before Biden came into office, judges were selected randomly; from now on, ‘random’ means a Democrat when the defendant is a Republican.

The prosecutor, Alvin Bragg, was elected to the position as District Attorney of Manhattan after having campaigned on a promise to prosecute—more appropriately persecute—Donald Trump. In the America that we all knew before Biden came into office, a DA had to first investigate a case before he could judge whether or not to file charges against anyone.

Read it.

As is traditional in today’s female-centric culture, the divorced mom has succeeded in turning her children against her former husband.

This is one reason why men are refusing to get married–in addition to the easy-divorce-give-me-half-your-stuff, the woman gets custody and almost invariably works to turn the children into dad-haters.

UnHerd.

As a youngish white male historian, stuck in a university system that tends to deem your race and sex as a problem inherited from history, what can you do to make your already slim chances of getting a permanent academic job yet more wraith-like? Based on this week’s case study — a hapless Yale University postdoctoral researcher called David Austin Walsh — the answer seems to be: engage in a frustrated social-media rant about how you’re struggling to find a tenured job, and then in a moment of madness add a reference to preferential hiring practices working against your being white and male.

But why stop there? To create even better conditions for career destruction, make sure that — like Walsh — you have hitherto impressive progressive credentials, having just published a monograph putatively connecting US conservatism to racism and fascism. (Only last week Walsh authored a New York Times op ed to advertise said book, alleging that “a generation of young Republican staff members appears to be developing terminal white nationalist brain”.)

For luck, combine your rant about the difficulty of getting a job as a “white dude” with showboating about personal accomplishments and popularity, and the claim that you are better qualified than many of those to whom you have lost out in the past. In doing all this, you will have gifted envious fellow academics the means and opportunity to ruin you reputationally, while pretending to be striking a blow in the name of anti-racism. Meanwhile, a gleeful conservative commentariat will goad and mock you for being a self-loathing sap, for whom the subservient pose did not work in any case.

Read it.

In November, a poll found 68% of Americans across party lines thought parents should be notified “if their child changes their gender identification or preferred pronouns at school.” And while some are shocked this is a controversial topic to begin with, many are not-so shocked to learn the state of California has proved to be an epicenter of these debates.

When the Chino Valley Unified School District board, led by President Sonja Shaw, met in July to discuss a potential policy that would require parental notification if their children attempted gender transitions at school, they were confronted by California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. Later, in August, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, sued the school district after it established a policy “requiring faculty and staff to notify parents of students’ attempted gender transitions,” The Washington Stand previously reported.

Now, the battle continues. Thurmond has brought a new bill to the table, AB 1955, which California Democrats are eager to codify into law. The bill reflects the views of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, which, in effect, would reverse the parent-friendly policy currently in place.

Read it.

SARS-CoV-2 infection may cause severe pulmonary conditions such as pneumonia, inflammation, and acute respiratory distress syndrome, but until now, researchers have not understood the driving force behind lung damage caused by COVID-19.

In a recently published paper in Nature Communications, researchers at Columbia University discovered that a relatively new form of iron-dependent cell death called ferroptosis is the underlying mechanism causing extreme and potentially fatal pulmonary conditions in COVID-19 patients.

“This finding adds crucial insight to our understanding of how COVID-19 affects the body that will significantly improve our ability to fight life-threatening cases of the disease,” Brent Stockwell, chair of the department of biological sciences at Columbia and co-lead author of the study, said in a news release.

Read it.

If the devil is in the details, bureaucracy is hell on earth. Though terrain familiar to the Biden administration, Republicans must prepare to navigate it.

Witness the debacle over liquefied natural gas exports, wherein the White House, by “pausing” most new approvals, has catapulted the energy security of key U.S. allies straight into the buzzsaw of its climate ambitions. (The category of exports that will continue to be authorized is tiny.) The Department of Energy claims that a multifactor impact study due in early 2025 is required to determine whether and how the moratorium will be lifted.

Under a certain conception of executive power, it should be simple enough for a second-term Trump administration to end this national embarrassment by pressing “resume” on the authorization process. But as analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies have suggested, merely setting aside the study could provide a basis, however tenuous, for future litigation. In the modern administrative state, it is easier to open than shut the procedural door to delays.

Read it.

Talk about intersectionality: A trans African immigrant murdered a Syrian security guard in an asylum facility in Potsdam. It will take some careful identity calculus to determine which of those involved deserves the greater “victim” status.

John Derbyshire.

So a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all thirty-four charges of having falsified business records in 2017 with the intent to cover up another crime. What wasthat other crime? I don’t know. Does anybody?

What came to my mind on hearing the verdict was an old legal story from 19th-century Ireland when, to quote a history of the time, “violence and sectarians tensions abounded” and “the jury system came under considerable strain.” Juries often sympathized with the accused.

In one of these cases a judge is said to have dismissed a prisoner with the words “You have been acquitted by a Limerick jury, and you may now leave the dock without any other stain upon your character!”

Read it.

Where the old European governments had looked to pacify Muslims abroad, their EU descendants struggled to pacify them at home. And America soon followed. After 9/11, America had been primarily worried about Muslim terrorism coming from abroad. Now it mostly worries about Islamic terrorism coming from Muslim converts and immigrants within the United States.

A history of Islamic colonialism is repeating itself with the complicity of ignorant ideologues who describe the process by which the cruel imperialism that crippled most of the world made a comeback, subjugating women, cultural and racial minorities and all non-Muslims, as liberation.

The long march of Islam across the Middle East, and then Africa and Asia, had climaxed in a struggle in Europe between the invading Muslim armies and the indigenous population. The Gates of Vienna marked a turning point in which the Islamic empires dominated much of what we came to call the Third World, but were prevented from conquering and colonizing Europe.

Read it.

Oliveto is a village in the south of Italy, near Reggio Calabria in the toe of the Italian boot. A butcher in Oliveto recently came home to find his house invaded by burglars. In the ensuing encounter, an altercation arose during which the householder grabbed a knife and stabbed one of the home invaders, who later succumbed to his wounds.

As you might imagine, times being what they are, the butcher is now in deep trouble, having been charged with murder.

Read it.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office provided free consultations and legal assistance to illegal aliens charged with violent felonies in 2023, documents reveal.

The taxpayer-funded consultations were provided to migrants charged with various heinous crimes—including rape, robbery, strangulation, aggravated assault, and homicide by vehicle—in an ostensible effort to help them avoid convictions that would lead to their deportation, documents obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute reveal.

Daily Signal.

If you’re one of the millions of Americans struggling to save for retirement today, get ready for more struggle, at least if President Joe Biden gets his way. He’s proposing a tax hike on savings that would mean a negative rate of return for many people after adjusting for inflation.

As part of his trillions of dollars in tax hikes, Biden has proposed a 45% tax on capital gains, painting it as a tax on the boogeyman of “greedy” billionaires. In reality, 12.5 million Americans—mostly middle class—pay this tax on their retirement savings.

That’s why every American should be horrified that Biden wants to raise this tax to the highest rate in 111 years. Such a move would severely hamper people’s ability to save for retirement, and it would cripple economic growth.

Read it.

Despite ubiquitous reports that there is an overwhelming consensus among scientists in support of this narrative, many scientists, like John Clauser, a 2022 Nobel Prize recipient in physics, see it differently.

Mr. Clauser stated in 2023 that “the popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people.

“Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience,” Mr. Clauser stated. “In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

Read it.

The Republican attorneys general of Mississippi and Tennessee announced Friday that they are part of a multistate lawsuit challenging a new Biden administration rule that redefines Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition against discrimination based on “sex” to include “gender identity.”

“Gender identity” is, of course, mentioned nowhere in the applicable statute. This regulation goes beyond the powers granted in HHS. But they plan to do it anyway because it fits the Democrat fascist political agenda.

The rule change by the Department of Health and Human Services “is the latest effort by the Biden Administration to enshrine sweeping gender-identity mandates without congressional consent,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday at U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi.

The rule would require medical providers to perform surgeries and administer hormone drugs to children and adults for the purpose of gender transition, without regard for a doctor’s medical judgment as to whether that treatment was appropriate, according to a news release from the office of Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch.

Read it.

Vermont on Friday became the first state to enact legislation that requires oil companies to pay for damages resulting from alleged climate change after Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

Scott, a popular governor who is seeking reelection in November to a fifth two-year term, decided against vetoing the bill because the General Assembly has a veto-proof majority in both chambers. He voiced his concerns about the bill in a letter Thursday to John Bloomer, a Republican who has been secretary of the state Senate since 2011.

“Taking on ‘Big Oil’ should not be taken lightly,” Scott wrote. “And with just $600,000 appropriated by the Legislature to complete an analysis that will need to withstand intense legal scrutiny from a well-funded defense, we are not positioning ourselves for success.”

Read it.

Some residents of the Clinton Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn say they are tired of addicts doing drugs in plain sight on their street.

And they are fed up with a city-backed harm reduction group giving them the drug paraphernalia to do so, reported the New York Post.

Vocal-NY, a statewide grassroots membership organization that offers harm reduction services to people who use drugs in New York City, has been distributing free needles, crack pipes and devices to “cook” heroin every Wednesday at the entrance to the Clinton–Washington Avenue subway station on the C line, according to the Post.

Read it.

Radical progressive leaders across the Western world, along with leftist non-governmental organizations, are continuing to facilitate an unprecedented migrant invasion into Europe and the US. This poses a significant national security risk as terror threats surge into summer.

Not all Muslims are terrorists, but the vast majority of terrorists are Muslims.

Forbes.

S Corporation shareholders and partners in a partnership could see their effective federal income tax rate increase by 30% by the end of December 31, 2025, due to the expiration of certain tax laws. With the sunsetting of the 199A deduction and an increase in individual federal income tax rates scheduled to occur as of December 31, 2025, the effective tax rate for pass-through entity owners will jump from 30% to 39.6%. Taxable income could also increase due to the sunsetting Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions, including the capitalization of research and experimental expenditures, bonus depreciation dropping to 60% in 2024 and to 40% in 2025, and the application of a more restrictive interest expense limitation calculation.

A dramatic increase to the effective tax rate may catch many pass-through entity businesses by surprise. Doesn’t Congress have to pass a bill to change federal income tax law? Unfortunately, not in this situation. For tax law to be passed, the Senate normally needs a 60-vote majority to overcome a filibuster. However, provided the political party controls the Presidency, House and Senate, laws can be passed under the budget reconciliation process where only a simple majority in the Senate is needed. The budget reconciliation process was utilized to pass the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) in December of 2017, which bypassed the need for bipartisan support. Under the reconciliation process, the bill cannot increase the deficit beyond a 10-year budget window. Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, taxes were reduced substantially between 2018 through 2025, resulting in an anticipated $1-$2 trillion increase to the national deficit. Both parties have used the budget reconciliation process when controlling the Presidency and Congress. In 2010, the budget reconciliation process was utilized to amend the Affordable Care Act and modify the federal student loan program. This process was utilized most recently in 2021 to enact additional COVID-19 relief via the American Rescue Plan.

UPDATE: The Potential Impact of Expiring Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Provisions on Taxpayers (JDSupra)

UPDATE: Stalled Congress unlikely to take up tax law (Albuquerque Journal)

UPDATE: Navigating the 2025 Tax Landscape: Changes on the Horizon for Taxpayers (FedSmith)

Read it.

Dyson Spheres have been a tantalizing digression in the hunt for alien intelligence. Just recently seven stars have been identified as potential candidates with most of their radiation given off in the infrared wavelengths.

Potentially this is the signature of heat from a matrix of spacecraft around the star but alas, a new paper has another slightly less exciting explanation; dust obscured galaxies.

There are a number of ways to hunt for aliens and one of them is to look for signs of large scale projects in space. Enter the Dyson Sphere. The idea was first proposed by Freeman Dyson in 1960 to describe that an advanced civilizations would position power collectors and even habitats around a star to harness its power.

SciTechDaily.

Researchers have discovered a neurodevelopmental disorder linked to mutations in the RNU4-2 gene, a non-coding gene, which could impact tens of thousands globally. This finding enhances our understanding of genetic factors behind such disorders and paves the way for improved diagnostics.

Scientists have identified a neurodevelopmental disorder, caused by mutations in a single gene, that affects tens of thousands of people worldwide. The work, published in the May 31 online issue of Nature Medicine, was conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bristol, UK; KU Leuven, Belgium; and the NIHR BioResource, currently based at the University of Cambridge, UK.

The findings will improve clinical diagnostic services for patients with neurodevelopmental disorders.

UPDATE: Mutations in a non-coding gene associated with intellectual disability (Ars Technica)

New York  Post.

This whole discussion is about What Women Want and about What Men Need To Do. Nowhere is there any consideration of What Men Want and What Women Need To Do.

That tells you everything you need to know about Why Dating Is Hard These Days.