Read it.

Previous studies have explored gender and ethnic biases in hiring by submitting résumés/CVs to real job postings or mock selection panels, systematically varying the gender or ethnicity signaled by applicants. This approach enables researchers to isolate the effects of demographic characteristics on hiring or preselection decisions.

Building on this methodology, the present analysis evaluates whether Large Language Models (LLMs) exhibit algorithmic gender bias when tasked with selecting the most qualified candidate for a given job description.

…

Despite identical professional qualifications across genders, all LLMs consistently favored female-named candidates when selecting the most qualified candidate for the job. Female candidates were selected in 56.9% of cases, compared to 43.1% for male candidates (two-proportion z-test = 33.99, p < 10?²⁵² ). The observed effect size was small to medium (Cohen’s h = 0.28; odds=1.32, 95% CI [1.29, 1.35]). In the figures below, asterisks (*) indicate statistically significant results (p < 0.05) from two-proportion z-tests conducted on each individual model, with significance levels adjusted for multiple comparisons using the Benjamin-Hochberg False Discovery Rate correction.

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If you haven’t come across it before, NotebookLM functions as an AI research companion that helps users analyze and interact with their documents, websites, and other content. The tool can generate summaries, create FAQ lists, produce timeline views, and even transform research materials into podcast-style audio discussions with AI-generated hosts. Google originally launched it in 2023, and then launched its NotebookLM Plus plan for businesses, schools, organizations, and enterprise customers in December. NotebookLM Plus is also available as a part of a Google One AI Premium subscription.

One of the big additions with the app is offline access to Audio Overviews, the genuinely impressive feature that sees two hosts have a podcast-style chat about your project sources. Users can now download summaries for listening on the go, which should be handy for those looking to conserve data. Whether offline or online, the app also supports background playback, making it easier to catch up on research insights while multitasking.

The iOS version also adds more interactivity. Users can tap “Join” to engage directly with the app’s AI-powered hosts, allowing them to ask clarifying questions, change the direction of a summary, or toss in an offbeat query.

Sharing content into NotebookLM is now easier than it was via the web app. If you’re viewing a website, a PDF, or a YouTube video, access the share sheet and select NotebookLM to add the material as a source. Google says it plans to expand the range of supported input types over time.

The NotebookLM app is now available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad.

The article has a link that will allow getting the app. It appears to be free, but (as is the way of the world) there may be in-app purchases.

Read it.

It’s true what they say, “they don’t make ’em like they used to.” We know, because our company restores historic windows. Many of these windows are still working well after 100 years. Most brand-new windows will not be in service 100 years from now.

Why? Because wood windows made with “new wood” aren’t made like they used to be. Historic windows made with “old growth” wood, from trees 100 years ago, are the most durable windows there are.

The difference between old growth wood and new growth wood is like the difference between granite and paper. Old growth wood has better stability, durability and longevity. New growth wood and the windows they’re made of, begin to rot and warp after only twenty years.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

The Verge.

One morning last month, I walked into my kitchen to get a glass of water, but my smart faucet was out of battery. I went to sit down in my front room, and the shade was still shut — it was out of battery. I walked down the hall and found a beached robot vacuum — out of battery. I headed outside to feed the chickens, unlocking the back door on the way out. The battery-powered smart lock had done what it was supposed to and automatically locked at 8PM. At least something was working.

The game changer here is wireless charging. Not wireless like putting your phone on a charging pad, wireless like across the room. For the past year, a Wi-Charge transmitter in my ceiling has been shooting infrared lasers at a photovoltaic panel on the specially modified Alfred DB2S smart lock on my back door, keeping its battery hovering at 100 percent. So I never have to deal with a dead lock when going to feed my chickens.

To get this souped-up setup cost around $1,250, required cutting a hole in my ceiling, and is only available through an early access program (the Wi-Charge-compatible Alfred lock can’t be purchased off the shelf). However, despite this extra effort, after a year of living with a wirelessly-powered smart lock, whose battery I never have to mess with, I want this for everything in my smart home.

Read it.

NYU Tandon-led research team discovers unprecedented genetic adaptations in Gowanus Canal organisms, revealing a potential new approach for cleaning contaminated waters and recovering valuable resources

Read it.

While the Colorado Legislature passed a new transgender bill, sponsors compared parental rights groups to the Ku Klux Klan. Now, those groups are suing to block the legislation, mere days after Gov. Jared Polis signed it.

“The State of Colorado cannot stifle viewpoints it doesn’t like simply because it finds those views offensive or disagreeable,” Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at the parental rights group Defending Education, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

The parental rights groups Defending Education, the Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, and Protect Kids Colorado teamed up with the medical watchdog group Do No Harm and a medical doctor, Dr. Travis Morrell, to file the lawsuit Monday, challenging HB 25-1312, which Polis, a Democrat, signed Friday. The law amends the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of “gender expression,” specifically stating that refusing to use a person’s “chosen name” will constitute discrimination.

The Talented Mr. Vance — J. D. Vance could have brought the country’s conflicting strands together. (George Packer/The Atlantic)

South Africa’s President to Challenge Trump on Afrikaner Refugees (John Eligon/New York Times)

Scoop: Vance decided against Israel visit due to new Israeli operation in Gaza (Barak Ravid/Axios)

Trump DOJ changes to civil rights division spark mass exodus of attorneys (Ryan Lucas/NPR)  Saves the effort of firing them.

Trump Has His Law Firms Right Where He Wants Them (Jeffrey Toobin/New York Times)

What you — yes, you — should know about interacting with ICE (Philip Bump/Washington Post)  Never take advice frsom a rabid proglodyte ‘journalist’.

A Terrible Idea — Now is not the time to limit the ability of federal courts to enforce their judicial orders. (Erwin Chemerinsky/Just Security)

Brendan Carr stages a Trumpian show at the FCC (John Hendel/Politico)

Will Anyone Take the Factory Jobs Trump Wants to Bring Back to America? (Wall Street Journal)  No, because all of those people are already on the government dole.

Head of CBS News to Depart Amid Tensions With Trump (Michael M. Grynbaum/New York Times)

Donald Trump Jr. Mocks Biden Cancer Diagnosis in Heartless Post (Troy Matthews/MeidasTouch News)

Republicans are raiding childcare funding – to push women out of the workforce (Moira Donegan/The Guardian)  Because, as se all know, childcare funding is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government – and the Federal taxpayer.

Trump order targets barcodes on ballots. They’ve long been a source of misinformation (Charlotte Kramon/Associated Press)

Papers please: Trump employs proof of identity tactic to monitor Americans (Sareen Habeshian/Axios)

‘Sesame Street’ Saved, Inks New Streaming Deal With Netflix (Alex Weprin/The Hollywood Reporter)

How Trump’s family-linked crypto deals are threatening a ‘Hunter Biden-style’ scandal at the White House (New York Post)

Transcript: Trump’s Threats to Defy Courts Suddenly Get More Dangerous (New Republic)

The Real Threat of the Nonprofit “Terrorism” Provision in Trump’s Big Bill (Shirin Sinnar/Slate) Terrorism!

Lawyers seek to force Trump to return Guatemalan deportee (Nate Raymond/Reuters)  Good luck with that.

Supreme Court Backs Trump on Ending TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans

Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke protected status for thousands of Venezuelans (Lawrence Hurley/NBC News)

Trump threatens ABC News over Qatar jet coverage (Dominick Mastrangelo/The Hill)

Supreme Court allows Trump to cancel protected status for Venezuelans for now (Justin Jouvenal/Washington Post)

Supreme Court Sides With Trump – Allows Removal Of ‘Protected Status’ From 300,000 Venezuelan Migrants

Supreme Court Allows Trump to Proceed With Plans to Remove Temporary Legal Status for Venezuelans

Supreme Court Lets Trump Lift Deportation Protections for Venezuelans (New York Times)

Grounded by Bureaucracy: Trump’s Chance to Ditch the Feds, Commercialize the Skies

Judge Bars DOGE’s Ending of Institute of Peace

Appeals court allows Trump’s anti-union order to take effect (Lindsay Whitehurst/Associated Press)

Guess Who Democrats Blame For The Mexican Pirate Ship Smashing Into Brooklyn Bridge…

Federal judge overturns Trump’s efforts to take over and cripple US Institute of Peace (CNN)

Supreme Court allows Trump to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans who risk deportation (Mark Sherman/Associated Press)

A Tiny Bank in Trump Tower Is Enriching the President’s Sons (Bloomberg)

Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke immigration protections for 350,000 Venezuelans (Josh Gerstein/Politico)

Scoop: First flight leaves U.S. under Trump’s $1,000 “self-deport” deal (Axios)

Rural Missouri Jails See Windfall in Trump’s Mass Deportation Effort (Jesse Bogan/The Marshall Project)

Whoopi Claims: No Biden ‘Health Cover-Up,’ Trump Could Be Deported

Trump’s FBI bosses are angering the MAGA media bubble they once stoked (Brian Stelter/CNN)

Leavitt: Trump Committed to ‘Obtaining Greenland’

Trump Admin Must Facilitate Return Of Another Wrongfully Deported Man, Appeals Court Rules (David Kurtz/Talking Points Memo)

Republicans Are Making Their Politically ‘Suicidal’ Medicaid Cuts Even Worse (Rolling Stone)

Big, Beautiful Bullshit (Jay Kuo/The Status Kuo)

Scoop: Schumer to seek vote on blocking Qatar’s gift to Trump (Stephen Neukam/Axios)

Another Abrego Garcia, and the Administration’s “Contrivance” to Keep Him in El Salvador’s Prison (Ryan Goodman/Just Security)

Obama-Appointed Judge Blocks Trump’s Bid to Revamp Institute of Peace

Trump Admin Assails Walz for ICE-Gestapo Comparison

350,000 people are losing protection from deportation (Patrick Reis/Vox)

Sources contradict Trump narrative about Qatar offering plane as ‘gift’ (CNN)  Sources! That proves it!

Federal Judge Boots DOGE Out Of Institute Of Peace After Armed Takeover (Kate Riga/Talking Points Memo)

Federal Judge Orders Trump Administration to Restore Environmental Grant Funding (Amy Green/Inside Climate News)

Judge strikes down DOGE takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace (Ryan J. Reilly/NBC News)

Trump Signs Controversial Law Targeting Nonconsensual Sexual Content (Paresh Dave/Wired)  Controversial!

The Supreme Court Has Officially Had Enough Of Donald Trump’s Excuses (Paul Blumenthal/HuffPost)

The U.S. Under Trump: Alone in Its Climate Denial (David Gelles/New York Times)  Denial!

The Inside Story of Trump’s Search for a New Air Force One (New York Times)

The Trump-Supporting Christians Accusing Jews of Antisemitism (Michelle Goldberg/New York Times)

Trump Goes Off Script And Says What He’s Really Thinking About Biden’s Cancer Diagnosis (Taiyler S. Mitchell/HuffPost)

60 Minutes’ Scott Pelley Tells College Grads: ‘Freedom of Speech is Under Attack’ By Trump Administration

Schumer Proposes Ban on Foreign Air Force One Planes

White House officials wanted to put federal workers ‘in trauma.’ It’s working. (Washington Post)

Alien Enemies Act Deportations on Hold in California

Justice Dept. to Use False Claims Act to Pursue Institutions Over Diversity Efforts (New York Times)

Trump’s Pick to Lead I.R.S. Promoted a Nonexistent Tax Credit (Andrew Duehren/New York Times)

‘Dried out prune’? ‘Corrupt’ and ‘incompetent’? It’s getting nasty between Springsteen and Trump (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Donald Trump and the power of the big (fake) number (Paul Waldman/Public Notice)

Trump can complain all he wants – but he can’t stop his own economic mess (Sidney Blumenthal/The Guardian)

Words & Phrases We Can Do Without (Jennifer Rubin/The Contrarian)  Jennifer Rubin votes for censorship.

New York Times: Trump’s Approval Still Up Because of ‘Lower-Information’ Voters

Donald Trump Drops Crude Line At Kennedy Center Dinner In Bizarre Rant About 2020 Election (Lee Moran/HuffPost)

Trumpism’s growing split: Bannon vs plutocrats (Edward Luce/Financial Times)  There is no such thing as ‘Trumpism’, and if there were Bannon would be no part of it.

The President Will Destroy You Now — One thing stands out amid all the chaos … (Thomas B. Edsall/New York Times)

Insider Advantage Poll: Trump Approval Up to 55 Percent

Trump tries to persuade, and threaten, GOP to support his budget bill (Washington Post)

Noem botches habeas corpus questions at Senate hearing (April Rubin/Axios)

Kristi Noem flunks an important test on the basic meaning of habeas corpus (Steve Benen/MSNBC)

Democrats Are Greenlighting Trump’s Crypto Corruption (Chris Lehmann/The Nation)

Democrats Unveil DOGE BROS Act To Punish People For Meddling In Private Data (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)

A Top Law Firm Said Trump Was Infringing on the ‘Rights of All Americans.’ It Runs a Scholarship That Excludes White Students.

DOGE sought access to Government Publishing Office (Katherine Tully-McManus/Politico)  I guess that comes as a surprise to some people.

Republicans keep clinging to Biden’s health to ignore Trump’s decline (Rex Huppke/USA Today)  He looks pretty active to me.

Kristi Noem Should Probably Know What Habeas Corpus Is (Jonathan Chait/The Atlantic)

Democratic senator says he has recordings of favors ‘promised’ by Trump’s IRS pick (Tobias Burns/The Hill)

Read it.

According to Messerinzidenz, a website in Germany devoted to recording the number of knife attacks that happen in the country on a daily basis, there have been 189 such incidents so far this month, and a staggering 1474 this year.

Knife attacks committed by migrants have become a daily occurrence in Germany, and the current and previous governments have failed to address the issue, ie. put a stop to illegal migration and deport migrants that had committed these heinous crimes.

Only last weekend, a 35-year-old Syrian man seriously injured four men and a woman with a knife and a swordstick (a cane containing a hidden blade) in front of a bar in the western German city of Bielefeld on Sunday.

Read it.

According to Europol, teenagers are increasingly being recruited as hitmen or enforcers in Europe’s criminal underworld. Although this phenomenon has emerged as a new form of criminal activity among immigrant criminal gangs in Sweden, its spread to other countries is a more recent development.

“I’ll be honest, most of it started in Sweden,” Andy Kraag, a senior manager at Europol who heads the center for serious and organized crime, told SvD. Kraag is part of a Swedish-led taskforce focused on combating the trend, which, he says, is spreading “like wildfire.”

Young people, recruited online through apps like Instagram or TikTok, are promised money and status for committing crimes, from transporting drugs and weapons to contract murders. Gangs often target vulnerable children and teenagers, and communication and coordination are then handled via encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram and Signal.

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The law firm of Marc Elias, the Democratic campaign lawyer who played a key role in the Russiagate conspiracy theory, is suing the state of Kansas to allow wealthy foreign nationals to fund state ballot initiatives and constitutional referendums.

Elias Law Group is one of the firms representing Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, a pro-abortion group behind a 2022 Kansas ballot initiative that reaffirmed the state’s constitutional protections for abortion.

Kansans for Constitutional Freedom filed a federal lawsuit last week against Kansas officials to block HB 2106, which limits the campaign activities of organizations that take money from foreign donors or foreign corporations. The bill prohibits groups involved in ballot initiatives and constitutional referendums from taking large donations from foreign nationals and foreign corporations.

Democratic groups have a significant financial stake in maintaining access to wealthy foreign donors—the most prominent of which is Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss.

Read it.

Maine State Rep. Laurel Libby, a Republican, filed a federal lawsuit against Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau for censuring her after she sounded the alarm on a biological male student beating his female competitors at the Maine State Class B Championship in pole vault for girls.

Fecteau asked her to apologize for the post, and after she refused, censured her.

“This is a victory not just for my constituents, but for the Constitution itself,” Libby said on X. “The Supreme Court has affirmed what should NEVER have been in question — that no state legislature has the power to silence an elected official simply for speaking truthfully about issues that matter.”

And what did the Usual Suspects do?

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson were the only two to vote against Libby and her battle to defend women’s sports.

Read it.

Rules for thee but not for me.

Across the country, a new defense is being heard in state and federal courtrooms. From Democratic members of Congress to judges to city council members, officials claim that their official duties include obstructing the official functions of the federal government.

It is a type of liberal license that excuses most any crime in the name of combating what Minn. Gov. Tim Walz called the “modern-day Gestapo” of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The latest claimant of this license is Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), who was charged with assaulting, resisting, and impeding law enforcement officers during a protest at Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, New Jersey. McIver is shown on video forcing her way into an ICE facility and striking and shoving agents in her path.

ZMan reads the news.

Hannah Arendt coined the term “banality of evil” while covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961. She noted that Eichmann was not the cartoonish villain one expected, given the accusations against him. Instead, he appeared to be a normal man who performed the tasks assigned to him, without having any ideological or emotional attachment to them. This led Arendt to argue that evil could be the result of the work of ordinary people who were not inherently malicious.

Her formulation turned out to be useful to generations of evil people who used this framework to accuse ordinary Americans of being evil, for the crime of living their lives as white people. That was probably why the line became so popular, but that does not strip it of its truth value. Human systems are capable of turning the ordinary acts of the people in the system toward evil ends, even though the people themselves may not be evil in the ordinary way we think of it.

This is the subtext to the broad indictment of managerialism. The fascists, understood through the lens of managerialism, created a ruthless machine, animated by ideology, that dehumanized their society. The Soviets were close behind in creating a communist machine that forced everyone into the moral framework of the ideology. Those who could not fit into the ideology were destroyed. This is what made fascism and communism evil. They mechanized and normalized brutality.

Read it.

A must-read column was published a few days ago on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Courage Media: Does America Have a Muslim Problem?  It’s long, but please read the whole thing.

It explains that Europe is rapidly being destroyed by an occupying force, and America is making many of the same mistakes.  It points out that while 1% of the American population is Muslim, in the UK it’s 6%, in London it’s 15%, in Sweden it’s 10%, in France it’s 13%, and so on.  Even though half of British Muslims were born in Britain, 71% of them consider themselves Muslim “first and foremost,” and 27% view themselves as primarily British.  I suspect that 71% would be much higher if the person asking the question were an intense, bearded Middle Eastern man wearing traditional Muslim garb on the front porch of the person being interrogated.  Which he will be, soon.

Britain now has over 3,000 mosques, 130 Sharia courts, and 50 Sharia councils.  But this couldn’t happen in America, right?  Well, America now has a Muslim-majority city, Hamtramck, Michigan.  It’s a city of nearly 30,000 people near Detroit.  At first Hamtramck’s city council was Muslim-majority.  Now it’s a Muslim monopoly.  A couple of years ago, the all-Muslim city council unanimously banned Pride flags from the city.  American progressives, who endorse mass immigration from Muslim countries, were appalled.  Why?  I’m not sure.

UPDATE: Germany Rocked by New Migrant Knife Attacks

Quillette.

From the moment it was unveiled in Times Square in New York City on 29 April, British artist Thomas J Price’s 2025 sculpture Grounded in the Stars has been mired in controversy. The twelve-foot (3.65-metre) bronze depicts a nondescript black woman with braids and a Body Mass Index in the thirties range. Dressed in a T-shirt and trousers, she is posed with her hands placed insouciantly on her hips and a blank look in her eyes. “I hope Grounded in the Stars will instigate meaningful connections and bind intimate emotional states that allow for deeper reflection around the human condition and greater cultural diversity,” Price told Artnet back in February.

Read it.

The Justice Department charged Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., with assaulting, resisting, and impeding law enforcement officers during a recent confrontation outside an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey.

Read it.

Diversity is our strength? Well, not so much….

Read it.

CNN host Jake Tapper has been under fire since announcing he was writing a book about President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and the extensive “cover-up” to convince American voters they were too dumb to see what was happening with their own two eyes. Many have pointed out that Tapper, his network, and the mainstream media in general were active participants in the scandal. They neglected to report on Biden’s decline, allowed themselves to be cowed into submission by White House aides, and attacked anyone who suggested the president wasn’t fit to serve, which he was not. Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again finally came out on Tuesday, further inflaming critics who are disgusted by what they see as Tapper’s attempt to profit by “exposing” an obvious reality—after the fact—despite helping to conceal that reality when it mattered most.

Tapper, renowned in political circles for his aggressively defensive response to criticism, hired Risa Heller, a crisis communications expert, to assist with the book rollout and teach the CNN host how to be “nicer” to critics. She has advised a slew of shady characters including Zoom masturbator Jeffrey Toobin, dick-pic peddler Anthony Weiner, and former CNN boss Jeff Zucker, the office romance maestro who gave Jake his seven-figure contract and turned him into an anti-Trump avenger. Early indications suggest Tapper might be heeding some of Heller’s advice. Last week he described “some of the criticism” of his Biden coverage as “fair,” acknowledging he didn’t do “enough” to cover Biden’s cognitive impairment. “I look back on it with humility,” he said, unconvincingly.

A comprehensive review of Tapper’s past coverage of Biden’s decline suggests that far more humility is required than the CNN host is prepared to convey, especially when viewed in light of the details recounted in Original Sin. CNN has claimed that Tapper “fairly and accurately covered” Biden’s entire career “through years of dogged Washington reporting.” The evidence laid out below in what some have described as the official “Tapper Dossier” shows otherwise.

Read it.

Yes, really.

Research by the think tank Policy Exchange uncovered one book that makes this claim, Brilliant Black British History is being used widely in schools.

The book, written by Nigerian-born author Atinuke, has sparked outrage among historians, parents, and anyone with a passing interest in, you know, facts.

Read it.

From atop the flawed foudndation of the Labor Theory of Value, Karl Marx made a series of predictions about capitalism that time has proven incorrect. Among these are the immiseration of the masses due to capital accumulation, chronic overproduction, capitalist-driven imperialism, and the inevitable rise of monopolies.

Read it.

An official with the anti-Israel Council on American-Islamic Relations who also serves on a California state civil rights board is cheering former president Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis and expressed hope that President Donald Trump’s “time will come too,” citing the presidents’ stances on Israel’s war against Hamas.

Zahra Billoo, the executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco branch, said on social media that Biden’s cancer diagnosis was “God’s wrath” for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Billoo added that she’s praying Biden’s cancer will be “as aggressive” as Israel’s military actions against Hamas.

…

Her remarks came after Biden announced he was diagnosed last week with a highly aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. Other anti-Israel activists cheered the grim prognosis. Former Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun King called Biden a “genocidal monster,” adding that, “I hope his final days are painful.” Former Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz wrote that “Hopefully [Biden] rots in hell and rests in piss.”

Read it.

Break into this country and keep breaking the law, especially violently, and there will be no limit to the love that today’s Democrats will show you.

— Consider Milwaukee Judge Hannah C. Dugan. She faces federal obstruction and concealment charges for helping Mexican illegal alien Eduardo Flores-Ruiz escape her courtroom, just as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers closed in. As Paul Simon once sang, Dugan told Flores-Ruiz: “Slip out the back, Jack.”

So, he did.

But FBI agents nabbed him.

So, who is Flores-Ruiz, to whom Dugan expressed so much love? Was he a misunderstood farm worker or a Wisconsin dad trying to help his twin daughters graduate kindergarten?

“This criminal illegal alien has a laundry list of violent criminal charges, including strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse,” said Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin. “Ruiz illegally entered the U.S. twice.”

Read it.

The U.S. Department of Justice began an investigation into Mayor Brandon Johnson on Monday over allegations of race-based discrimination, citing his recent remarks at a Woodlawn church in which he emphasized how many Black people he’s hired in his administration.

Johnson received a letter from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon saying there is “reasonable cause” to believe the mayor “made hiring decisions solely on the basis of race,” in potential violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The probe was the latest attack on Johnson, a freshman progressive mayor, from Republican President Donald Trump since he returned to the White House this year and began cracking down on liberal-leaning cities.

Dhillon’s letter quoted several examples of what she said suggested discriminatory hiring practices from the mayor’s Sunday panel with Bishop Byron Brazier of Apostolic Church of God. The appearance was part of a series of stops Johnson has been making on the South and West sides to shore up his Black voter base.

The Foundry.

Smith College, which presents itself as a women’s college, just granted an honorary degree to a man, and not just any man, but one of the most influential campaigners against women’s rights.

Yes, in a piece of fresh Orwellian insanity, a women’s college granted an honorary degree to Rachel Levine, a man who has fathered children and who has weaponized his medical position as a doctor to attack fairness in women’s sports, privacy in women’s intimate settings, and a generation’s ability to have children.

Levine received the honorary degree at the Smith College commencement Sunday.

UPDATE: Historic Women’s College Gives Honorary Degree To Rachel Levine (A Man)

Read it.

The Tariff Tantrum has proven that consensus was wrong about soaring inflation and an economic slump. Why? The exaggerated perception of tariffs’ economic impact stemmed from the belief that American consumers would bear the full burden of tariffs. Why were they wrong?

The first reason was that most analyses relied on a simplistic calculation of tariffs, treating supply chains as if they only involved buyers and sellers. Supply chains are very complex, and most exporters must deal with overcapacity challenges and working capital problems. Thus, the impact of tariffs is likely to be absorbed by numerous links in the supply chain, including transport, storage, distribution, manufacturing, retailers and purchasing chains.

Furthermore, most exporting companies face a significant problem of overcapacity and working capital; if they don’t sell their products fast and effectively, their debt soars, and the losses at warehouses can lead to a chain of bankruptcies.

Read it.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel is closing down the agency’s Washington, DC, mothership office and moving at least 1,500 employees out of the DC area to regional offices.

…

During the Biden Administration, it was determined that the 50-year-old Hoover building headquarters was structurally decrepit. More germanely, no prior FBI director had ever explained why nearly a third of the FBI workforce was centered in offices in Washington, far from where most of the serious crime in America occurs.

The news is welcome for reasons well beyond the safety of agents in an apparently unsafe headquarters.

It is no exaggeration to state that most of the FBI scandals of the last decade were born in the Hoover building headquarters, suggesting that the agency had long become top-heavy, politically weaponized, and deeply embedded in and compromised by the Washington apparat.

The Washington Poop, a Voice of the Crust.

An Arizona judge has ordered state prosecutors to send back to a grand jury a case in which Republicans were charged last year for their alleged roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election, potentially jeopardizing the high-profile indictments.

Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam J. Myers sided with the Republicans and found that prosecutors failed to provide the grand jury with the text of an 1887 federal law that is central to the Republicans’ defense. The law, known as the Electoral Count Act, spells out how presidential electoral votes are to be cast and counted.

“We are extremely pleased with the court’s ruling, and we think the judge got it exactly right,” said Stephen Binhak, the attorney who spearheaded the effort to get the case back to a grand jury.

The decision is a major setback for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who promised to appeal the ruling so she could keep the prosecution going.

Newsbusters.

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Philadelphia confronting the radical black group MOVE in an incendiary assault that killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed a residential block. PBS News Weekend on Saturday marked the anniversary of with a dose of radical chic, omitting unflattering details about the bizarre urban enclave MOVE.

PBS spent six minutes and 40 seconds on this, even as they have ignored the Jake Tapper-Alex Thompson book on hiding Biden’s decline. There were no ideological labels, unless you count MOVE touting themselves in a clip as “revolutionary.”

 

Newsbusters.

On Tuesday, CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, is officially out. Prior to its release, bombshells were dropped about how Biden didn’t recognize longtime associates, even actor George Clooney.

So how much time did the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS) devote to the recitation of Biden’s shortcomings long known by conservatives but suppressed by Tapper and his press colleagues?

MRC analysts looked at ABC, CBS and NBC’s evening and morning news programs, as well as PBS’s News Hour from May 13 through the morning of May 19 and found they spent a grand total of 7 minutes and 16 seconds on the reporting from Tapper and his co-author Alex Thompson.

Most of that coverage (6 minutes, 17 seconds) was aired on NBC. ABC only spent 37 seconds on the topic. CBS offered just 22 seconds on the Tapper book disclosures. PBS’s News Hour did nothing on the Tapper/Thompson book.

The broadcast networks swept it all under the rug just as they hid Biden’s decline before he dropped out of the 2024 race.

These networks have covered up their own cover-up.

WIRED, a Voice of the Crust.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

Read it.

Amid running tensions with President Donald Trump and facing a lawsuit on alleged campaign rigging for doctoring a Vice President Kamala Harris interview, CBS News President Wendy McMahon is stepping down, according to reports.

“It’s become clear the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon wrote in a memo, The New York Times reported Monday.

McMahon’s departure comes after”60 Minutes” Executive Producer Bill Owens recently resigned. She had allied herself closely with Owens, according to the report.

Read it.

With medical experts saying the seriousness of Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis must have been known well before the former president left office in January, Donald Trump Jr. asked whether former first lady Jill Biden took part in a “cover-up.”

Biden’s office announced Sunday that the former president has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Prostate cancers are given a rating called a Gleason score that measures, on a scale of 1 to 10, how the cancerous cells look compared with normal cells. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.

Biden and his handlers lied. They’re Democrats. That’s what they do.

Washington Free Beacon.

Three House committee chairs threatened Harvard University’s nonprofit status following a Washington Free Beacon report revealing that the Ivy League school repeatedly trained members of a Chinese “paramilitary organization” after the U.S. government sanctioned the group for its role in the Uyghur genocide.

Republican representatives Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Tim Walberg (Mich.), and John Moolenaar (Mich.)—who chair House Republican Leadership, the Committee on Education and Workforce, and the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, respectively—sent a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber on Monday demanding comprehensive details about the university’s activities with the Chinese Communist Party.

Those activities include hosting and training members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which the U.S. Department of the Treasury described as a “paramilitary organization … that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party” while announcing sanctions on the group in 2020. China-focused research group Strategy Risks first uncovered a 2023 training, while the Free Beacon uncovered a second that took place in 2024.

Foreign Affairs, a Voice of the Crust.

Spend a few minutes browsing political commentary or scrolling social media and you will discover a seemingly settled truth: inequality in the West is soaring, the middle class is being hollowed out, and democracies stand on the brink of oligarchy. The idea is seductive because it fits everyday anxieties in many Western countries—housing has grown increasingly unaffordable, billionaire wealth mushrooms unfathomably, and the pandemic exposed yawning gaps in social safety nets. Yet the most influential claims about inequality rest on selective readings of history and partial measurements of living standards. When the full balance sheet of modern economies is tallied—including taxes, transfers, pension entitlements, homeownership, and the fact that people move through income brackets across their lives—the story looks markedly different. Western societies are not nearly as unequal as many believe them to be.

This is not a call for complacency. Concentrated economic power can distort markets and politics; pockets of deep poverty persist in rich countries; and in the United States, the top of the distribution has indeed sprinted ahead of the rest. But focusing only on the eye-catching fortunes of tech founders or hedge-fund managers obscures a quieter, broader transformation: households across the income spectrum now own capital on a scale unimaginable to earlier generations, and basic measures of well-being in Western societies—including life expectancy, educational attainment, and consumption possibilities—have improved for nearly everyone.

Getting the facts right matters because bad diagnosis breeds bad prescriptions. If governments assume that capitalism is inexorably recreating the disparities of the Gilded Age, they will reach for wealth confiscations, price controls, or ever-larger public sectors funded by fragile tax bases. If, instead, the evidence shows that free-market economies have enriched middle classes by expanding asset ownership, that entrepreneurs’ fortunes are associated with advances shared with the broader public, and that much of the post-1980 rise in recorded inequality reflects methodological quirks, then a different agenda follows: states should encourage ambition, protect competition, widen access to wealth-building, and ensure that public services complement—not smother—private prosperity. In short, before treating inequality as an existential crisis, it is worth double-checking the thermometer.

Read it.

Despite the millions of dollars some business owners earn each year to become part of the nation’s 1 percent—or, in some cases, 0.1 percent—those individuals aren’t associated with the flashiness and glitter that Jeff Bezos, George Clooney, or top Goldman Sachs executives are. Instead, these entrepreneurs represent the “stealthy wealthy” who build their fortunes by turning bland business activities into potent, albeit discreet money-making machines, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The road to riches is paved with cup holders, burgers and miles of elementary school carpeting,” the Journal said in a story profiling prospering founders whose styles and success are far more Buffet (Warren) than Kardashian (take your pick).

Why focus on relatively rare entrepreneurs who’ve wound up becoming millionaires? Because statistically speaking, the Journal says, those owners of thriving small and medium-sized regional businesses are the “largest source of income for the 1 one highest earners in the U.S.”

Trump orders the government to stop enforcing rules he doesn’t like (Washington Post)  Just like Joe Biden and the immigration laws.

Big Donald Is Watching You: Sliding into autocracy under Trump 2.0 (MSNBC)

Trump Shares QAnon Meme, Call for Military Tribunal of Obama (J.D. Wolf/MeidasTouch News)  “Q-Anon meme”?

Trump says he killed DEI. So why isn’t it dead yet? Cracks emerge in war on ‘woke’ (Jessica Guynn/USA Today)

Concerns rise over medical coverage losses from ‘big, beautiful bill’ (Nathaniel Weixel/The Hill)  Concerns!

Virginia Dem: GOP tax cuts would be on ‘backs of millions of Americans’ (Elizabeth Crisp/The Hill)  On their backs!

Librarians take on MAGA in California beach town (Emily Schultheis/Politico)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Romanian Centrist Scores Victory Over Far-Right Trump Loyalist (Bloomberg)  “Trump loyalist”? In Rumania?

‘It’s Real Y’all’: People Are Sharing Their Tariff Receipts, And My Wallet Is Not Ready For What’s Coming (Megan Liscomb/HuffPost)

The Website Where Lawyers Mock ‘Yellow-Bellied’ Firms Bowing to Trump (Elizabeth Williamson/New York Times)

Vanity Fair Scribe Raises Trump Obsession with MARK TWAIN Biographer Ron Chernow

Schumer bizarrely claims DOGE may have been partly to blame for Mexican ship’s deadly Brooklyn Bridge mishap (New York Post)

Owner of Trump’s Qatari Air Force One Linked to Bob Menendez Corruption Scandal  Linked to! That proves it!

The argument’s over: Americans pay for tariffs (Ben Berkowitz/Axios)  When someone says ‘The argument’s over’, it usually indicates that one side is trying to shut down discussion.

The ugly truth about Trump’s big, beautiful bill (Andrew Prokop/Vox)

Elon Musk fades into the background (Politico)  I.E. the Narrative Media realized that nobody cared about bashing Musk.

The ugly truth about Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” (Judd Legum/Popular Information)

New Video of Mahmoud Khalil’s Arrest Shows Trump Admin is Lying in Court (Prem Thakker/Zeteo)

The White House, LLC (El Pais)

Critics say Trump’s religion agenda will benefit conservative Christians the most (Peter Smith/Associated Press)  They say that like it was a bad thing.

Read it.

“Dilbert” creator Scott Adams said on Monday morning that he expects to die soon from prostate cancer, the same disease former President Joe Biden announced he is battling.

Adams made the jarring revelation during the latest episode of “Coffee With Scott Adams,” the Rumble show he hosts during weekday mornings.

“I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it – well, longer than he’s admitted having it,” Adams said. “So my life expectancy is maybe this summer. I expect to be checking out from this domain sometime this summer.”

Seriously bad news.

T. E. Fehranbach:

Generations that have been shielded from the brutalities of the past are poorly equipped to cope with those of their own times.

ZMan runs the numbers.

One of the realities of the late managerial age is that the sorts of numbers managers love and therefore produce in volume, are increasingly unreliable and often manufactured to fit an agenda. Good data is usually too late to be actionable or is simply the accurate version of the previously reported fake data. Economic data is the most obvious example of this trend. It used to be central to the news cycle but has now become so corrupt the media will ignore it.

In the Biden years, much like the Obama years, it became popular with the reporting agencies to produce fake economic numbers and then come back at a later date to “revise” the previous data so they could pretend they were being accurate. It was always a cycle where new data contained information about how the previous data was revised in a way negative to the administration, but often made the new data look like the administration was doing a great job.

Peak managerial mendacity was Covid. The CDC stopped reporting deaths as a real-time number so they could report fictionalized accounts of bodies in the streets, always somewhere not where you live, which explained why you did not see the bodies in the streets, but they were somewhere! Old metrics that relied on hard data, like dead people showing up in morgues, were massaged to the point where you could no longer get the number of actual dead people.

Read it.

Hundreds of World Health Organization officials will join donors and diplomats in Geneva from Monday with one question dominating their thoughts: How to tackle crises from mpox to cholera without their main funder, the United States.

Guess they’ll just have to pay for their own shit. Quel dommage.

Read it.

For those of us who have often wondered about the “A Note on the Type” notices in the backs of books, this is a good read.

Read it.

Hungary has recently decided to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC), with the decision confirmed by the country’s parliament in late April. In Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has praised the Hungarian decision, calling it “a sovereign and courageous choice.” He’s right: Budapest’s decision is not merely a diplomatic snub; it is a commendable assertion of national sovereignty against a leftover of the decaying globalist order.

Founded in the early days of “end of History” euphoria, the ICC was sold to the world as a guarantor of universal justice and a mechanism to hold the world’s tyrants to account. Yet, in practice, it has morphed into a highly politicised instrument, infringing on the autonomy of nations and browbeating them into—liberal—ideological conformity. Hungary is right in wanting to break free from its control.

The ICC’s foundational design flaw lies in its assault on national sovereignty. Nations are only meaningfully sovereign entities when and if they are answerable to their own laws and to the interests of their people. The ICC, however, absurdly claims a global and supranational authority, asserting the right to prosecute individuals—often state officials—without regard for domestic legal systems. Incredibly—indeed, illegally—itt claims jurisdiction even over states that are not signatories of the Rome Statute that created the Court. This is hardly justice; it is overreach. And it is unacceptable.

Power Line. Deconstructing Tim Walz.

To belabor the Tim Walz U-M law school graduation speech, the descriptions and headlines of his rant don’t do it justice. Here’s what he said to the graduates,

Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets, they are in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons, no chance to mount a defense, not even the chance to kiss a loved-one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared. To be clear, there’s no way for us to know whether they were actually criminals or not, because they refuse to give them a trial. We’re just supposed to take their word for it.

To begin, Walz is unable to pronounce the word “Gestapo,” so he is unlikely to have any idea of what the word means.

What Walz is describing is the process by which U.S. ICE deports illegal aliens subject to a Final Order of Removal. They already had a trial, they lost. By the time the “masked men” in those “unmarked vans” roll around, the alien in question is a fugitive.

We do not give fugitives prior warning. The prior warning was the removal order. And yes, we know they are “criminals” because the Final Removal Order declared them so.

They do not get to start from zero with a release and a new trial. That’s not “due process,” that’s endless process.

Read it.

Ocasio-Cortez hasn’t been pictured wearing her engagement ring since November 2023, according to an extensive Washington Free Beacon review of Getty and Associated Press images, as well as the lawmaker’s social media posts and public appearances. The ring’s 17-month absence, which has gone unnoticed in the press until now, raises questions about the status of her betrothal to her low-profile fiancé, web developer Riley Roberts, who proposed to Ocasio-Cortez during a vacation to Puerto Rico in April 2022. No news of their nuptials has emerged in the three years since.

Ocasio-Cortez confirmed in May 2022 that Roberts proposed to her with a “zero emission” ring made from “recycled gold.” The ring, which she later reported as a gift from Roberts worth $3,057.04, was a constant presence on the ring finger of her left hand during the first year and several months of her engagement. She flaunted it to her followers on Instagram Live, sported it on her overseas junket to Latin America, and wore it to televised committee hearings. The ring can be seen in almost every photo taken of the lawmaker in public with a clear shot of her left hand from May 2022 through November 2023.

And then it seemingly disappeared. Since the start of December 2023, Ocasio-Cortez has given a primetime speech at the DNC, attended several televised committee hearings, appeared on the Late Show, and toured the nation on a private jet with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), among countless other public appearances. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t wear her engagement ring to any of those events, though she frequently sported several other bands on the fingers of both her hands.

Read it.

FBI Director Kash Patel suggested in a recent interview that the agency under former Director James Comey operated independently from the Trump Department of Justice by choosing which cases to prosecute, and ostensibly how it chose to report that information to the public.

While speaking to “Sunday Morning Futures” on the Bureau’s investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James over alleged mortgage fraud, Patel told host Maria Bartiromo that the agency was biased in its Crossfire Hurricane investigation, when it tried to paint President Donald Trump as a patsy to Russia.

“You asked in the beginning,” Patel said, “how the FBI was weaponized. Well, the FBI hijacked the constitutional responsibility of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General, and James Comey and others specifically decided what cases to prosecute and not prosecute. Don’t believe me? Go to the videotape in the Hillary Clinton investigation.”

Read it.

President Trump’s second term will likely be regarded as a major public health inflection point, driven by the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement. The initiative aims to revolutionize a broken system rigged against patients—creating disease and then profiting from it—while also targeting reform of the nation’s food supply chain, which is dominated by the processed food industrial complex.

Goldman analysts Leah Jordan and Eli Thompson provided clients with early indications that consumers are shifting and seeking “better-for-you options” at the supermarket.

“Softer snacking demand with outperformance in better-for-you options,” Jordan wrote in a note to clients earlier this month.

Read it.

On Saturday morning, a parked SUV exploded outside the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic, killing its driver and wounding at least four bystanders. Federal agents branded the blast an act of terrorism aimed at in-vitro fertilization. Shortly after, a bare-bones website—promortalism.com—surfaced, where the bomber, 25-year-old Guy Edward Bartkus, condemned “the disease of life,” and urged visitors to mirror and share “the recorded stream of my suicide & bombing”1 234before censors intervened.

Bartkus’s rhetoric will be familiar to not only anyone who’s followed my reporting on efilism and promortalism, but anyone who has watched the strange after-life of utilitarianism (and early heterodox YouTube debate culture) on the Internet unfold. What you see in efilism is something you see across the web—a distinct style of moral bookkeeping.

Walz calls Trump a “tyrant” who abuses power and violates rule of law (CBS News) Like many Democrats, Walz has a string coming out of his back – pull the ring and his mouth spouts the latest party line.

How a tornado tested a Kentucky weather office that cut its overnight staff (Scott Dance/Washington Post)  Because, as we all know, tracking the weather is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government – and the Federal taxpayer.

‘Fight back and don’t let them win’: actor Pedro Pascal decries Trump’s attacks on artists (Philip Oltermann/The Guardian)

Food For Millions Rots in Storage After Trump’s USAID Cuts (Jack Revell/The Daily Beast)  So why wasn’t it distributed? This food didn’t just appear in warehouses when Trump was elected.

NY Times, Back on Censorship Kick, Frets Over Trump’s ‘Misinformation Research’ Cuts

Trump Justice Dept. considers removing key check on lawmaker prosecutions (Perry Stein/Washington Post)  This office was weaponized by Democrats when Trump was elected to his first term. Now that Republicans have their fingers on the trigger Democrats are suddently deeply concerned.

NIH Could Be Directed To Study ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

The $7 Billion We Wasted Bombing a Country We Couldn’t Find on a Map (Nicholas Kristof/New York Times)  The fact that Kristof can’t find Yemen on a map says more about Kristof than on the American public.

Meet the small-business owner suing Trump over tariffs (Washington Post)   So she doesn’t really make anything, she just sells stuff made in China. Tariffs are certainly going to put pressure on these arbitrageurs.

The Coalition That Powered Trump to Victory in 2024 Is Starting to Fray (Wall Street Journal)  They hope, they hope, they hopw.

One Thing Helping Trump’s Approval Rating: Some People Are Not Paying Attention (Ruth Igielnik/New York Times)  More to the point, they’re not believing Narrative Media lies.

America chose wrong. Sanders would’ve been a better president than Trump or Biden. (USA Today) America has ‘chosen wrong’ since Eisenhower. America dodged a bullet by not electing Sanders.

Donald Trump keeps declaring national emergencies. Why? (Vox)  Because Democrats have loaded the statute book with legislation allowing (presumably Democrat) Presidents to ‘declare an emergency’ and then rule by decree – which we say on display with Obama and Biden. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, they have found a Strange New Respect for the separation of powers in the Constitution.

Trump Shares Unhinged Plan to Release ‘Terrorists’ On Justices’ Doorsteps (Jack Revell/The Daily Beast)

2M New Yorkers could lose health coverage under GOP’s ‘beautiful bill,’ estimates show  Because, as we all know, New York health coverage is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government – and the Federal taxpayer.

Thousands of federal employees are on a roller coaster of being fired, rehired (Dinah Voyles Pulver/USA Today)  Rather than soaking in the warm hot-tub of invincible government employment. Yeah, my heart breaks for them.

How to Take Medicaid from Millions of Americans, in Less Than 72 Hours (Jonathan Cohn/The Bulwark)  Because, as we all know, people are ENTITLED to having their medical care paid for by the Federal government – and the Federal taxpayer.

SCOTUS to Trump: Due Process! (Joyce Vance/Civil Discourse …)

Bruce Springsteen Again Calls Out ‘Unfit President’ Trump at Second Manchester Concert (Daniel Kreps/Rolling Stone)  No doubt Trump is cut to the core by the disapproval by a superannuated musician.

Springsteen, Undeterred by Trump, Keeps Up War of Words From Foreign Stage (Wall Street Journal)  Such people suffer from the delusion that everybody cares what they think, or that it will change people’s minds. Neither is correct.

Exclusive: Al Green on Trump Impeachment Push–‘Don’t Wait’ for ‘Tanks’ (Peter Aitken/Newsweek)

Cooking the books? Fears Trump could target statisticians if data disappoints (Robert Tait/The Guardian)  Democrats have been ‘cooking the books’ for decades. Why all of this hand-wringing all of a sudden?