Republican News

This post was originally published on this site

Normally, I wouldn’t tap the same subject twice in the same day, but this story is so egregious that I had to get it posted.

Plus, it’s not Sweden. It has everything to do with the US of A, and on the day after Elon Musk bid farewell to his part in rooting out graft, inefficiency, and waste in government, it sort of just puts an emphasis on why a DOGE watchdog in every bureau and agency is needed.

You all remember the copious number of stories I did on the Vineyard Wind debacle. That was the offshore wind farm under construction off the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Where, as you might well imagine, most everyone bought into the renewable dream and were semi-thrilled with the project’s progress.

POWER ! Vineyard Wind 1, which will be the largest offshore wind farm in the #USA (806 MW), is generating clean electricity!

Energy for more than 400,000 Massachusetts families!

A huge milestone in the #energytransition – powered by #renewables pic.twitter.com/o0Qft0LtpJ

— Iberdrola Renewables (@Iberdrola_En) January 4, 2024

Right up to where one of the 300+ foot turbine blades delaminated during a test run on a sunny summer day last July, shredding itself into deadly fiberglass and toxic chemical fettuccine.

We have confirmed this is the broken Vineyard Wind turbine blade approximately 15 miles southwest of Nantucket.

Pieces of it are washing up all over the island’s south shore this morning pic.twitter.com/7wjpzp3bX9

— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) July 16, 2024

The bits and pieces started washing up on the beaches of not only the island, but those of surrounding states, and the ‘we hate Vineyard Wind’ fest was on.

NET ZERO – Oops… Nantucket has closed all its south facing beaches as debris from broken wind turbines has washed ashore.

It’s likely the damage was caused by erm … bad weather.

Massive ecological damage both seen & unseen but it’s ok because they are ‘saving the planet’ pic.twitter.com/dEdrPty64R

— Bernie (@Artemisfornow) July 17, 2024

Lawsuits erupted, the town was poring over the contract’s ‘good neighbor clause’ with Avangrid with a fine-toothed comb checking for the damage clause.

They are still pulling debris out of the water almost a year later.

All because of one blade from a batch of defective ones manufactured at GE’s Canadian Vernova facility.

They are discovering things that have been concealed from the town by the developers, even after receiving the go-ahead to continue building out the project.

It certainly appears as if the lightning strike in February did indeed cause a fire as was rumored but not confirmed at the time: pic.twitter.com/xsuZiijOo2

— Nantucket Current (@ACKCurrent) April 10, 2025

The town chose not to file for damages because the developer agreed to clean things up.

It might have been very different had they also not received the clearance to continue building, and this is where a report in Just the News today comes in.

The Biden administration, in their unholy rush to get these offshore farms moving, gave these wind developers unprecedented clean-up waivers that put the American taxpayer on the hook for all clean-up costs if a project goes belly up within a certain number of years, sometimes as long as fifteen years out from when the first stick goes in the water.

If a company ‘cannot afford’ the clean-up costs for a decommissioned wind project within the initial, contracted  period of X number of years, Joe Biden made sure we would pick up the tab.

I mean, I can’t even with this.

Newly uncovered emails from the Biden administration’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) show that taxpayers could be on the hook for $191 million in removal costs for Vineyard Wind, a 62-turbine wind farm being constructed off the coast of Nantucket, as a result of waivers the administration granted Vineyard Wind and other East Coast projects. 

In its rush to fulfill former President Joe Biden’s goal of constructing 30 gigawatts of wind farms off the coasts of America, the Biden administration had issued waivers for financial assurances on offshore wind projects, saying they present an unnecessary burden to the industry. 

The financial assurance requirement protects the public from decommissioning liabilities. If companies can’t afford to remove the wind towers they’re building after their useful life, the public has an assurance that those liabilities will be covered.

In 2017, Vineyard Wind requested a waiver to delay the assurances for 15 years after the project was built, and it was denied. They requested the same waiver in 2021 under the Biden administration, and the request was granted. The waiver cited long-term power purchase agreements, which guarantee the facility operators a set price for the electricity they produce over 20 years, “robust insurance policies,” and the “use of proven technology.”

Vineyard Wind’s catastrophic single-blade failure – again, one single blade – had all of them scanning the paperwork in a panic over who was going to pay to take this abomination down if it was cancelled.

The American taxpayer was going to be on the hook for at least $191M to clean-up a taxpayer subsidized boondoggle.

…Vineyard Wind began delivering power to the grid in January 2023, and it’s been the source of controversy since it was first proposed. The opposition grew in the summer of 2023 when a blade broke off one of the turbines and littered the beaches of Nantucket with debris, which was estimated to cost the company $700 million. 

Emails exchanged between BOEM officials in January 2024 discussing how to respond to an inquiry about the waiver, which the Functional Government Initiative obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that an early draft of the statement BOEM issued suggested the waiver amounted to $191 million. 

Anyone in their right mind knew the $191M was a pipe dream lowball.

…Amy DiSibio, board member for Ack4Whales, a Nantucket-based group opposed to offshore wind development, told Just the News that she is also skeptical that the figure would cover the costs of decommissioning the project. 

“That’s peanuts next to what it would cost. That’s probably what they want them to start escrowing as a percentage. But it would cost a lot more. It costs as much, if not more, to decommission than it does to commission. These projects cost billions of dollars,” DiSibio said. 

…As of today, MV Times reports, the project has four operating turbines out of the 62 turbines that are planned for the first phase of the project. 

“This was essentially a $191 million gamble with our money. It’s not often you can put a price on recklessness, but BOEM under its previous leadership, was in such a rush to get the risky project underway that it left American taxpayers unprotected,” [Roderick] Law said.

PREVIOUS LEADERSHIP WAS IN SUCH A RUSH TO GET A RISKY PROJECT UNDERWAY

These waivers are the IOU equivalent of the Biden EPA’s ‘gold bars off the deck of the Titanic.’ Unconscionable.

…Whatever the actual costs of decommissioning, if the companies don’t have the finances to cover the costs, it will fall upon taxpayers. 

What are the odds that the company has the money if they’re decommissioning a failed or partially complete project?

I can do THAT math all day long.

This is one more verifiable and malfeasant arrow in the lawsuit quiver of the groups that’ve filed suit against a number of projects, based on the underhanded, truncated permitting process the Biden Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management used to expedite approvals out the door for these wind developments. 

The fight is going to be about stopping projects already in progress, as was unsuccessfully attempted with Empire Wind. You can bet who would be paying to take those towers, etc., out of the water if they did manage to kill it…now that we know the truth of the contract.

The anti-wind activists may well prevail with ones that have yet to start dumping rock.

None of this does anything for the American taxpayer, already on the hook for potentially gasp-inducing amounts in clean-up costs when windbag Biden’s Green fever dreams come crashing back to Earth.

This is infuriating.

This post was originally published on this site

As we all know, LGBTQIA+/-% students are subject to a tremendous amount of disdain and bullying in California schools, and in an effort to make them feel welcome and included, a week was set aside for presentations bringing outside speakers to educate students about such issues. 

Very progressive and compassionate. 

Among the presenters was Mita Beach:

CARLSBAD, Calif. — Parents are demanding answers after a self-described “science of BDSM” expert from a clinic providing trans surgeries and representatives from organizations that help facilitate gender transitions were scheduled to speak at a California high school during a recent week of events supporting LGBTQ students.

In late March, parents started speaking out against a decision to allow Mita Beach, a self-described BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism) expert, and representative of DAP Health, a medical clinic that provides gender transition surgeries, to deliver remarks at Sage Creek High School in Carlsbad, California. during a lunchtime event in the cafeteria open to all students.

Parents learned that Beach, who lists his pronouns as “they/them” on his LinkedIn account, planned to speak as part of the Gender Sexuality Alliance club’s “Ally Week” of events promoting the LGBTQ community and anti-bullying messaging.

After looking into his business websites and social media accounts, which contained at least one photo of Beach engaged in BDSM and listed workshops he’s led on “Kink 101” and “Examining Self-Injurious Behavior, Erotic Play, and Body Modification,” several concerned parents contacted the high school and district superintendent’s office.

The parents, of course, are bigots, and the school denied their request to sit in on that or any other presentation, or even allow them to pull their children out of the important educational event that would include God knows what about sexually deviant behavior or how best to get “gender-affirming care.” After all, the kids might kill themselves if they missed out on Mita’s body modification lesson. 

SOURCE: https://t.co/ogJD2sgraF

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 28, 2025

Parents at Sage Creek High School are demanding answers after the school scheduled a BDSM “expert” named Mita Beach to speak to students during a school LGBTQ event.

In response to parent complaints, the school reportedly doubled down on their position, claiming they will NOT provide an opt-out for students and will not inform parents about speakers or let them on campus to hear the speakers.

After the parents planned to attend the event anyway, the school notified them that the event with Mita Beach was canceled. However, the district remains in support of denying parents access to certain school activities.

Welcome to California. 

A photo of Beach, appearing to hold up a much smaller person who is grasping his bare back as whips and chains are displayed in the background, along with screenshots of his LinkedIn resume, quickly circulated on Instagram. Within 24 hours of those social media posts, the GSA club canceled Beach’s appearance but moved forward with at least two other speakers from organizations that help facilitate gender transitions and surgeries. At least one of the organizations also works with other LGBTQ groups to provide “unicorn homes,” or “transitional housing” for LGBTQ youth who claim to be homeless because their parents aren’t supportive of their sexual orientation or gender transitions.

Over the last several weeks, parents of students who attend the high school have leveled a flurry of formal complaints about the school’s decision to allow the speakers on campus and the educators’ responses defending the club’s invitations. Each side is digging in and each cites California and federal law. Parents and other concerned citizens also voiced concerns about the Ally Week speakers during a recent school board meeting.

Over the past couple of decades, we have seen a substantial increase in schools delving deeper and deeper into sexuality and gender-identity issues, and all this is part of a movement called “social and emotional learning.” SEL really took off over the past 15 years or so, along with the spread of alphabet ideology in the schools. 

The claim is that SEL exists to support the mental health of children, but a funny thing happens when you look into the statistics: suicide and suicidal ideation among students have skyrocketed along with the spread of SEL. You might–just MIGHT–be able to argue that SEL has nothing to do with the increase in mental health disorders. After all, cell phone use and porn consumption increases roughly correlate with mental health declines. 

But what you cannot do, under any circumstances, is argue that SEL has done anything to improve mental health among kids, which has seen a sharp decline, especially in the past few years. As transgender identification has exploded in numbers, so have suicide and other mental health disorders. 

Among Trump’s first Executive Orders was one barring the grooming of kids into destructive ideologies, and the schools and Blue-state politicians are fighting back hard. I suppose they want to protect their unblemished record in improving child mental health–so much so that they don’t want even pesky parents to know what they are doing or to have a say in whether their kids are subjected to–I mean educated with–the brainwashing. 

LGBTQ advocates and their allies are warning that Trump’s executive order limiting gender-ideology activities and instruction on K-12 campuses could be creating a chilling effect on teachers’ and administrators’ willingness to embrace discussions or curriculum about sexual orientation and anti-bullying lessons on campuses across the country.

The American Civil Liberties Union, and other civil rights organizations, have long supported annual “Ally Week” events on college and high school campuses across the country as a way for students to “identify, support and celebrate” allies to LGBTQ students. The leaders of the clubs hosting the events often ask students, teachers, and staff to sign a pledge supporting efforts to end bullying and harassment of LGBTQ students.

But here in this seaside Southern California city, the GSA club’s Ally Week is going beyond rallying around an anti-bullying message in hosting speakers who have worked with students and even adult military servicemen and women to help facilitate gender transitions.

In response to parent complaints, school officials at Sage Creek High School and its school district argue they have no obligation or even a role in providing an opt-out opportunity for students whose parents disagree with the content on religious or moral grounds. School and district officials also are standing by a decision not to alert parents about the speakers or allow parents on campus to hear the content of these speakers’ remarks.

No doubt, liberals will rally around these fine educators who are just trying to help every child achieve their dream of being a eunuch-identifying demisexual trans-furry bondage freak. It is every child’s dream, even if they don’t know it. Only a fascist Christian Nationalist White Supremacist with a lust for genocide could possibly want to see what their children are subjected to by the fine mental health experts in the school system, who really know what is best for everybody. 

Defund the public schools. 

This post was originally published on this site

Will Donald Trump find a IEEPA sympathy with the appellate court on his Liberation Day tariffs? At the very least, the Federal Circuit Appellate Court has enough sympathy to stay the ruling from the Court of International Trade for a little while as the administration appeals the decision. For now, tariffs are back on the menu, boys:

A federal appeals court on Thursday granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause a lower-court ruling that struck down most of President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Don’t read too much into this action. The per curiam order will only remain in effect for a fortnight or so while both sides prepare motions in the consolidated appeal:

(1) The motions to consolidate are granted. The appeals are consolidated, such that only one set of briefs should be filed for the appeals. The revised official caption for the consolidated appeals is reflected in this order.

(2) The request for an immediate administrative stay is granted to the extent that the judgments and the permanent injunctions entered by the Court of International Trade in these cases are temporarily stayed until further notice while this court considers the motions papers.

(3) The parties are directed to immediately inform this court of any action taken by the Court of International Trade on the United States’s pending stay motions. 

(4) The plaintiffs-appellees are directed to respond to the United States’s motions for a stay no later than June 5, 2025. The United States may file a single, consolidated reply in support no later than June 9, 2025. 

That’s slightly less than two weeks. Presumably, the appellate court will rule on this matter relatively quickly, given that any tariffs in effect at the moment under the IEEPA would continue to damage the plaintiffs. Note well, though, that the stay here does not even mention ongoing damages or the likelihood of the government to prevail. It simply looks like deference to the executive while the matter remains under consideration, and not a signal about which way the court is likely to rule on the matter. 

Jonathan Turley anticipated the stay and the deference, but still believes that Trump will not win this case in the end:

While some have criticized the court as a “judicial coup,” it is a well-reasoned and good-faith decision from judges appointed by Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and Trump.

While the court, in my view, should have issued a stay pending appeal, a wide array of experts have questioned the authority under the IEEPA, which is designed to address a national emergency. The authority does not mention tariffs and has never been used for tariffs. There’s a good chance the Supreme Court upholds the ruling. … 

Trump was right about the market barriers and unfair treatment shown by other countries, including some of our closest allies. The resulting deals will be good for the United States and could represent the most significant move toward open markets in a generation.

These are difficult issues, and we need to tamp down the rhetoric. These judges are not the enemy. Neither is Trump. Trump is trying to use every possible law to achieve historic reforms. These judges are trying to guarantee that such priorities do not take precedence over the rule of law.

Again, the original ruling was well-reasoned and based on the law and precedent. That doesn’t mean Trump is wrong to push for his policies, nor to appeal that decision. But it does mean that this particular strategy may not hold up, and that means Trump needs to get ready for a strategy that will. 

This post was originally published on this site

The Free Press just published an interview with Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson about their book “Original Sin.” There have been a lot of these interviews at this point so there aren’t really any brand new additions to the big picture here, but I do think that Bari Weiss, more than some interviewers, focused in on the fact that the media completely missed this story while a lot of people on the right saw what was happening.

The whole interview is nearly two hours long but this topic came to a head in this exchange below where Bari Weiss argued that Joe Biden’s presidential debate performance was shocking for two separate reasons. First, because a lot of people were shocked how bad Biden was and second because it was shocking how clearly and undeniably Biden’s critics were proven to have been completely right about his deteriorating condition, something they’d been called conspiracy theorists for even suggesting.

Tapper responds (to his credit) by saying the critics were 100% right about Biden, but then shifts back to the fact that the Democrats around Biden were lying to everyone including the media. He tells the story about a younger, unnamed reporter who was essentially threatened out of reporting on Biden’s condition by the White House. Here’s the clip.

CNN’s @JakeTapper: Those smeared as right-wing conspiracists were “100% right” about Biden’s mental decline.

“We all should, in retrospect, have been much quicker to label what we saw.

There was a reluctance to say, ‘He seems addled. He seems like maybe he can’t do the job,’… pic.twitter.com/0NX453lwoC

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) May 29, 2025

So you really have these two perspectives on what happened here. One perspective is that the press dropped the ball and refused to see what was right in front of them. The other is that the White House was lying to everyone and that’s why the press wasn’t able to more aggressively go after this. Tapper came back to this idea near the end of the discussion.

I think that there is reporting that I’m proud of that is also part of the record. But on the whole, I wish these 200 sources had talked to us two years ago. And I wish I’d known what I know now. I would not say I was incurious. I would say that I was one of the many people who was asking about this and was lied to—over and over.

You have to remember, the Biden people were not only lying to the press and to the public—they were lying to donors, cabinet secretaries, Democratic members of Congress. A cover-up, and almost a successful one. Even though we all saw him aging, we didn’t know he had these moments of nonfunctioning. It suggests that there’s a lot of people in on something. And whether they were doing it because they believed it or they had been told it, at the end of the day, the Democrats did this. At the end of the day, the Biden family and the politburo—his senior aides— did this.

And yes, there were those of us who should have pushed back more. But if you can’t get officials to tell you it’s really bad behind the scenes—let me tell you how bad it is—I don’t know what more we could have done. And I wish that those people had been more willing to talk to the press.

Let’s just take the bull by the horns here, so to speak. I know there are a lot of people on the right who dislike Jake Tapper and who think he’s not trustworthy on any of this. My own take is that while Tapper is clearly not without fault, which he’s admitted several times, he’s also not lying about what the White House was doing. I say this because I’ve talked briefly with another pretty well-known reporter (who I also don’t think is a liar) who said a version of the same thing, i.e. there were no available sources to question the president’s fitness at the time. No one would talk at all much less tell the truth. This also jibes with what Chris Cillizza has said publicly. The rules of traditional journalism (as opposed to opinion writing) don’t allow you to state conclusions without sources and there were no sources. The White House made sure of that.

In sum, what do you do when all of the people who know the truth are willing to lie?

I really do believe that much is true in this case. The people around Biden were all willing to lie and did lie making it very difficult for journalists who might have reported the truth to get it. And here I think we can probably pin this directly on Anita Dunn, the person running the White House responses to the media and the person who I have long believed was probably behind some of the strategic decisions about how Biden was being hidden from the public. Bluntly, I think she saw outright lying as the only path to a reelection win and she went for it and made sure everyone else was following her lead.

And yet, I don’t think that explanation is enough. I don’t think it absolves the wider media of responsibility. Sure, you were lied to by political apparatchiks and that made things difficult but in my view there’s no doubt that the press would not have accepted the same lies from a Republican White House. Lacking traditional sources, the press would have leaned into videos (which don’t require sources) showing a Republican president’s decline, just as the right did with Biden. Instead we got articles full of BS about “cheap fakes.”

It’s worth noting that elsewhere in the interview we learn that even the White House (probably meaning Anita Dunn) was surprised that some news outlets bit on the cheap fakes nonsense. It was such garbage that they expected it to be ignored, but that didn’t happen. Lots of media types ran with it as a defense of Biden.

Again, that’s the problem. The White House was lying to everyone but the media were too willing to believe them. And I think the reason is obvious if rarely discussed by the media themselves. The word of a Republican is always suspect in the eyes of most major media journalists. The media may report what they say but they aren’t shy about insinuating that it’s bunk or disproven or unsubstantiated. On the other hand, the word of a Democrat is often assumed to be the voice of reason.

This is cultural cognition at work. People don’t put in the work when the answer provided suits their priors. So when 85% of media figures are Democrats, it’s no surprise that Democratic lies go down a lot easier and get less pushback. Republicans don’t get the same treatment.

Note that I’m not saying journalists are part of a secret cabal having meetings where they discuss how to screw Republicans and help Democrats. Well, maybe some are but mostly that’s not how this works. Mostly it’s just likeminded people who find that likeminded Democrats just sound reasonable to them while Republican claims just sound dubious. In this case, the biggest political scandal since Watergate, Anita Dunn was able to exploit that lack of skepticism to Biden’s advantage. Until the media can admit they were a big part of the problem here (and not just the unwitting victims of White House liars), we haven’t really learned much of value. Or, put another way, nothing we’ve learned will prevent something similar from happening again.

Update: Another clip about this. Alex Thompson says the media’s problem wasn’t mostly ideological it was cultural, i.e. getting side-eye from other reporters. Again, I think this is right but he skips over the fact that one of the cultural connections most reporters share with other reporters and people in the Biden White House include their politics. Politics is just a subset of what made them so credulous.

Bari Weiss’ response is exactly what I would have said. You don’t need sources if you have video. Reporters could have made this case without sources they just didn’t feel inclined to do it. They trusted their (lying) sources over their own eyes.

Axios’s @AlexThomp: The media’s failure to report on Biden’s mental decline was less about a liberal ideological mission—and more due to groupthink, intimidation from the White House, concern about being ostracized by peers, and a fear of losing sources. pic.twitter.com/3eQLuQSWfy

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) May 29, 2025

This post was originally published on this site

This could be awkward.

The New York State Attorney General is bouncing from one hot seat to the next, and darn if that isn’t an unpleasant mental picture.

But she brought it all on herself.

Already under fire for her creative accounting tricks and faulty memories while juggling paperwork for out-of-state properties while looking as if she was trying to avoid more city interference and fees on her Brooklyn residence – and who hasn’t mistakenly said they married a parent on official documents?

BREAKING: Letitia James is facing 30 years in federal prison and a 1 million dollar fine. She lied on loan applications to get better interest rates, and even listed her father as her husband on one of them. pic.twitter.com/Ppx41M2Icn

— kekius tees (@kekmaximusk) May 11, 2025

Leititia James can’t seem to get her name out of the headlines for the worst stories.

Back at the beginning of the month, as inquiries into James’ various dealing began really heating up, the New York State Assembly was trying to get their budget passed in Albany at the same time.

They finally did, and it all would have gone by with the usual grumbling, except for a last-minute add-on that funded Letitia James’ personal legal defense bills in these burgeoning scandals. 

…Both houses of the state legislature passed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s massive $254 billion state budget package Thursday night following days of debate and over a month delay past the April 1 deadline.

Lawmakers made the final votes on the spending plan Thursday evening after fierce debate over a provision slipped into the budget — first revealed by The Post — that could leave state taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars of legal fees for Attorney General Letitia James.

The revelation came a day before sources confirmed the FBI has opened an investigation into an allegation that the attorney general committed mortgage fraud by misrepresenting her primary residency on paperwork.

“I can’t imagine a majority of New Yorkers not being outraged that their hard-earned dollars that go to the government are now being used or can be used to pay for private attorneys to defend public officials against charges of crimes that they committed having nothing to do with their elected position,” Lanza said.

However, Deputy State Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) argued that the law is needed “because we are currently in an environment politically where the legal system, the prosecutorial system, investigative bodies of government are being used to target political enemies.”

People were kind of upset about it when they heard, as the current messiness has nothing to do with the performance of her official duties, no matter how much she insists they’re politically motivated, aka Trump payback. NY Senate Republicans were working on finding a way to turn the $10M ‘slush fund’ tap off.

Irate state Republicans want to bottle up a sneaky $10 million “slush fund” that could be used to pay Attorney General Letitia James’ legal bills as she faces a criminal probe.

Not a penny should be spent from the controversial fund that Democrats slipped into New York’s 2026 budget, state Senate Republicans urged Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in a letter obtained by The Post.

Certain New York officials can tap into the fund to pay for legal expenses, even as part of probes not related to their state employment – a provision widely seen as giving James a path to pay for her legal defense during US Justice Department probes into her alleged fraudulent real estate dealings.

In the meantime, NY Senate Dems are covering for her, though, and, oddly enough, so is the media.

Politico named her the US Attorney General in their ‘shadow cabinet’ exercise the other day. As Sam Antar, the fellow who broke the mortgage story, points out, Politico’s author left out a few gems in James’ resume.

Politico just named Letitia James their “Shadow Attorney General.” And Bill Scher—who wrote the piece—didn’t mention a single word about her federal criminal investigation for mortgage fraud.
That’s not journalism. That’s reputational laundering.

FULL ARTICLE (10 M READ):… pic.twitter.com/mVN9cg3XH8

— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) May 29, 2025

…Let’s break down what Bill Scher deliberately left out :  

James lied—under oath—on a federally backed mortgage application. 

On Aug 2, 2023, she wrote: “This property WILL NOT be my primary residence” for her Sterling St, VA property. 

On Aug 17, she signed a sworn declaration stating the opposite. 

That false statement got her over $100,000 in benefits: lower interest, reduced down payment, waived reserve requirements. 

The mortgage required BOTH borrowers to live there. She never moved. Two top AG staffers witnessed the lie. Meanwhile, her Brooklyn property has 5 legal units—but James claimed only 4 on loans, permits, and a federal loan mod. For 20 years. 

That’s textbook mortgage fraud. That’s a federal felony. 

And Politico’s Bill Scher? He ignored it all. Not one mention of the April 14, 2025 DOJ referral. Not one citation of the mortgage documents. Just fluff and fiction. Why? 

Because James sued Trump. That’s her media shield...

Her shield seems to be cracking among colleagues in professional settings, though, as the Free Beacon is just reporting.

President Donald Trump and his allies aren’t alone in accusing New York attorney general Letitia James of abusing her prosecutorial powers. A former high-ranking official in her office is now on the record saying the same.

Former assistant New York solicitor general Brian Ginsberg, who reported to James from 2019 through 2022, warned the Supreme Court in a May 12 filing that James is abusing her prosecutorial powers in an ongoing Title IX case against a western New York school district over four disparate sexual misconduct allegations between its students. Ginsberg minced no words about his former boss, urging the Supreme Court in his writ of certiorari to take up the case to “disabuse opportunistic attorneys general” like James from the notion they can misuse their parens patriae powers—the doctrine she used to justify her involvement in the case which enables the government in limited instances to prosecute lawsuits on behalf of individual citizens.

Ginsberg reminded the Supreme Court that James has a history of allegedly abusing her powers, citing comments from a justice of the New York supreme court in November 2024 reprimanding James for bringing forward a politically charged environmental case against Pepsi, which the court tossed.

“The same New York State Attorney General who initiated this action against the School District has been judicially chastised for abusing her power to initiate representative actions to launch ‘predatory lawsuits that seek to impose punishment while searching for a crime,'” Ginsberg wrote in his Supreme Court filing, citing comments from New York supreme court justice Emilio Colaiacovo in the Pepsi case.

He frames James as just a big, abusive bully who’s been giving black eyes to friends and foes for quite a while. 

This is yet another one of those long obvious but verboten facts which ‘can now be spoken‘ of by a collusive press corps which did its level best to ignore and deny the truth.

“I think it is problematic when people run for prosecutor and promise to go after a specific politician … And I think that there was a degree to which that was tolerated by the media writ large.”

Jake Tapper admits that Letitia James and Alvin Bragg were conducting “lawfare”… pic.twitter.com/1I9Gtrt0vO

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) May 29, 2025

I KIND OF THINK ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR WAS SORT OF TOLERATED BY THE PRESS ~ Jake the Snek

This James woman sure is lousy at taking punches herself, even when they’re legitimate questions about truly questionable activities.

People are bringing the receipts, too, every chance they get.

BREAKING: Letitia James isn’t just under DOJ investigation for mortgage fraud. Her own former top lawyer—Brian Ginsberg—just told the Supreme Court she abuses her prosecutorial power for political gain.

And that’s only the beginning.
1/ Ginsberg, former Assistant Solicitor… https://t.co/hISnirSF1z

— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) May 29, 2025

…1/ Ginsberg, former Assistant Solicitor General under James, accused her of launching “predatory lawsuits” that impose punishment while searching for a crime. He urged SCOTUS to rein in “opportunistic” attorneys general like her. This is her own senior staffer.  

2/ Ginsberg’s warning aligns with a mountain of evidence: — In 2023, James declared a Virginia house her “principal residence” to get a federally backed mortgage—while still serving as NY AG.  

3/ For 20+ years, she misrepresented her Brooklyn brownstone as a “1-family” or “4-family” in mortgage filings—even though official records show it’s a 5-unit building. That let her qualify for easier, cheaper loans she wasn’t entitled to.  

4/ The Federal Housing Finance Agency formally referred her to DOJ for mortgage fraud and perjury. They say she falsified bank documents and property records to get favorable loan terms—both in Brooklyn and Virginia. 

5/ And at least two women have accused her longtime aide, Ibrahim Khan, of sexual misconduct. Instead of protecting them, James allegedly tried to silence the victims.  

6/ This is the same Attorney General who said, ‘Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage.” Letitia James allegedly did exactly that—twice. 

7/ So now we have: A Supreme Court brief from her former top deputy A DOJ criminal referral Mortgage fraud across multiple properties Tenant complaints Sexual misconduct allegations inside her office And still no accountability. 

8/ Letitia James weaponized her office. Now her own team is calling her out, her filings are under federal scrutiny, and her public image is collapsing. 

9/ This isn’t partisan. It’s prosecutable.

And, dang – it’s not pretty.

But it sure is about time someone did.

This post was originally published on this site

Can you think of a policy that the 21st-century “liberals” pursue that actually results in the advertised outcomes?

Seriously, can you? The energy transition? Maybe rail transit? Homeless policies? Drug legalization and “harm reduction?” Immigration? Gender-affirming care? Education policies? Affordable housing? Criminal justice reform? Public health policies in recent years? 

Every liberal policy makes things worse. It is almost an iron law. Conservatives may often get it wrong, or not execute well, or not do enough, but there are plenty of successes

I can’t, and I have often wondered why. It’s not that liberals are stupid, and I continue to deny that the ordinary liberal voter (rather than the self-described “liberals” at the top who are just gaslighting the rest) is anything other than a generally well-intentioned, low-information voter who is persuaded by the emotionally charged appeals of the elite left. 

I know plenty of good, decent liberal people who really believe their leaders and “influencers” are trying to make the world a better place and who are outraged whenever a conservative criticizes or tries to defund an obviously destructive program or policy. 

To me, the interesting question is, why, after all the evidence that liberal policies fail time and again, do these liberals act like Charlie Brown trusting Lucy with the football? How can people look at Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, or Seattle and not recoil and reconsider their allegiances? 

The answer, I think, is the power that liberals give to words and ideas, and a fundamental rejection of the demand that good ideas should lead to good results. Words are like magical incantations, and more real than what they see before their eyes. To the extent that there is a disconnect between what the words promise and the results show, it is because people have not sacrificed enough to the gods through increased taxes and reduced freedoms. 

Think of this in terms of the Aztecs’ response to the invasion of the Conquistadors. The Aztec Empire was huge and ruled over about 6 million people. Cortez led about 500 Conquistadors and managed to conquer that empire in some of the most hostile conditions faced by Europeans in their history. 

Nobody knows how many people the Aztecs sacrificed specifically to petition the gods to help them fight off the Spanish and their indigenous allies, but it could not have been a small number. Unfortunately, as with everything else these days, there is an ideological fight over the scale of these sacrifices–you can’t make indigenous peoples look bad, you know. 

Beege has written a lot about how Europe and various countries have been sacrificing their access to energy to appease the climate gods, and the results have been disastrous for Europe. Despite all the promises of cheap, abundant energy and a happy Gaia, the results have been non-existent economic growth, deindustrialization, and the destabilization of political regimes in Europe. 

Mass immigration was supposed to revitalize Europe and America–diversity being our strength!–and lead to stronger communities, a more compassionate society, and of course better restaurants. How has that worked out for us? Politics in every Western country has been upended, and our fine, compassionate leaders have turned on their own citizens to suppress dissent. 

Criminal justice reform? Enough said. 

How about the explosion of “Social and Emotional Learning,” including the spread of alphabet ideology and “inclusiveness” training? We are told that this is necessary for the mental well-being of children and suicide prevention, yet the mental health crisis has exploded and suicide among children has skyrocketed. 

The war against disease? The vaccine, social distancing, masks, and “following the science” would eradicate COVID-19. We are still paying a huge price for that, and everybody knows it. But liberals still applaud the people who imposed the COVID fascist regime because they meant well, and some still blame the dissenters for not making the magic incantations work well enough. 

We can argue about how evil or merely stupid the “experts” were–as you know, I believe they were evil–but most liberals will defend all of these policies and more as well-intentioned, and never hold accountable the people who have been destroying everything they touch. Moreover, they still hate the people who got any or all of these policies right as evil and ill-intentioned.

It’s the words and the emotions they invoke. Spin a yarn about some horrible thing that is happening, and present a nice-sounding magical solution, and liberals are all in every time. Trains will turn cities into utopias, and the fact that they are empty but for drug dealers and users and the prime location for overdoses is no barrier to signing up to build the next light rail. 

“I have a plan to end homelessness!” The fact that homelessness increases just proves that we didn’t sacrifice enough to the homeless gods to make the magic work. 

Consequences don’t matter in this world, and policymakers know that. In government, every failure proves the need for bigger government and more spending–liberals actually give more money and power the more you fail–so the leaders produce more pretty words and more actual failures, and liberals get angry at you for pointing to those failures. 

They point to the words and say that intentions are good so the actual results don’t matter. 

This post was originally published on this site

Elias Rodriguez shot and killed two people for the crime of working for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. The murder was premeditated, brutal, and an act of political terrorism. 

It also is, according to the Democratic Socialists of America Liberation Caucus–a subsidiary of the party that endorsed members of The Squad and other Democratic Party politicians who have become rising stars in Democratic Party circles– a hero of the liberation movement. He is a political prisoner who must be freed. 

A reminder that most of “the squad” came out of the DSA. https://t.co/nB0IxlLKbU

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 28, 2025

To be fair, the DSA Liberation Caucus is not officially recognized by the DSA because no ideological caucus is. On the other hand, the DSA encourages members to create grassroots caucuses, and all the members of the Liberation Caucus are DSA members, and many are leaders within the DSA. 

The Liberation Caucus identifies itself as “A Marxist-Leninist-Maoist caucus in DSA,” and it lives up to its description.They remain members of the DSA because they agree with its basic description of Democratic Socialism, which is the normal pablum that the DSA and everybody who describes themselves as Democratic Socialists mouth:

Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.

We believe there are many avenues that feed into the democratic road to socialism. Our vision pushes further than historic social democracy and leaves behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history.

We want a democracy that creates space for us all to flourish not just survive and answers the fundamental questions of our lives with the input of all. We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation. We want the multiracial working class united in solidarity instead of divided by fear. We want to win “radical” reforms like single-payer Medicare for All, defunding the police/refunding communities, the Green New Deal, and more as a transition to a freer, more just life. 

We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control.

If you read that, you might think that they want our country to become kinder, gentler, and more equal. “Medicare for All!” 

And, of course, the road to that is total war. 

The DSA itself has only kinda-sorta distancing itself from the call to violence, but doesn’t condemn the statement of the Liberation Caucus. 

Democratic Socialists of America seek to democratically transform our society and reject vigilante violence. We condemn the murder of Israeli embassy workers. Any statement otherwise is not the stance of DSA.

— DSA (@DemSocialists) May 28, 2025

That’s hardly a full-throated rejection of the Liberation Caucus. It’s more akin to a difference of opinion on how best to overturn capitalism. “Sure, we all want the same thing, but disagree on tactics” is about as far as it goes. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), a long proponent of Israel, condemned the DSA—whose members include Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—for their “grotesque” statement.

“The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has publicly endorsed the barbaric murder of a young Jewish and Israeli couple,” Torres wrote. “Its call to ‘Free Elias Rodriguez’ is a grotesque attempt to glorify a cold-blooded murderer.”

“After being shot, Sarah Milgrim struggled to crawl away,” he added. “Elias Rodriguez walked over and executed her at point-blank range. This is the antisemitic demon the DSA has chosen to lionize.”

When pressed on whether DSA endorsed the post from the Liberation Caucus, the organization directed JNS to a statement it posted to X on Wednesday.

The DSA could be about to elect the next Mayor of New York–the second largest Jewish city in the world. According to a newly released Emerson poll, its candidate Zohran Mamdani is running second after Andrew Cuomo among Democrats. 

It is right to rebel against the enemy. This is a Maoist law. pic.twitter.com/j8CoHKWOaU

— DSA Liberation Caucus ‍ ☭ (@dsaliberation) May 27, 2025

Every member of the DSA or fellow traveler needs to answer whether they can do more than mouth anodyne rejections of violence; they should be forced to stake out a clear position on whether or not the DSA Liberation Caucus itself is legitimate and whether its members are welcome as part of the Democratic Socialist movement. 

Emerson/PIX 11 NYC Dem mayoral poll shows Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani the clear top two candidates, with Cuomo ultimately beating Mamdani 54-46% in the 10th round of ranked choice tabulations.

Crosstabs show Mamdani doing best with younger, college-educated white voters: pic.twitter.com/sv4W42l0J6

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) May 28, 2025

Leftists have been playing this “I don’t approve of violence, but…” game for too long. Unless they reject the violence and its motivations in a meaningful way, and do not try to explain it away as going too far in the service of a good cause, they are playing word games. 

Leftists are getting more violent–ratcheting up their tactics from using their free speech rights to violent action. Peaceful, permitted protests are free speech. “Occupations,” assaults, and now assassinations are not, yet we keep hearing approval for and tolerance of such actions from far too many leftists. Short of murder, leftists taking direct action, as they call it, are being applauded, getting donations, helping them break the law, and radical “criminal justice reformers” are giving them a free pass. 

Tut-tutting after things get this far means nothing. 

This post was originally published on this site

The ruling in this case was unanimous but the conservatives and the liberals wrote separate decisions reaching the same conclusion. The conservative decision was written by Justice Kavanaugh and the liberal one by Justice Sotomayor. Justice Gorsuch recused himself from this one because Democrats and environmental groups had complained a billionaire ally of his, Philip Anschutz, had a financial stake in the case. If they were hoping his recusal would help their chances, it didn’t work out that way. It’s an 8-0 decision instead of 9-0.

Ultimately, the decision limits the scope of environmental reviews mandated by a Nixon-era law called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in a way that should make it easier for developers to build big projects. It’s being seen as a big setback for environmentalists. 

The case is about a railway which was proposed in northern Utah. If built, the railway would allow production of oil in the north of Utah by connecting it to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Before it could be approved, the developers had to perform a time-consuming environmental review known as an environmental impact statement (EIS). They did so, producing a report that was 3,600 pages long.

The environmental impact statements required by a 1970 federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act, can be quite elaborate. Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing seven Utah counties that support the project, told the justices when the case was argued in December that the law was “the single most litigated environmental statute.”

He added that the board had acted responsibly.

“It consulted with dozens of agencies, considered every proximate effect and ordered 91 mitigation measures,” he said, referring to measures intended to, among other things, dampen noise pollution and protect wildlife. “Eighty-eight miles of track should not require more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis.”

But environmental groups said that wasn’t enough. They sued and argued that the review of the 88-mile railway did not look at possible upstream and downstream consequences of its construction. For instance, if completed, the railway would lead to more jobs in northern Utah drilling oil which could impact the environment there. And the delivery of more of that oil to the Gulf Coast (using the new rail line) could impact the Gulf Coast environment as well.

A DC Court of Appeals heard the case and sided with the environmental groups, saying the 3,600 page EIS didn’t go far enough. They vacated the approval of the project until the other possible consequences could be considered.

But today the Supreme Court unanimously said enough is enough. Environmental reviews are limited to consideration of the project at hand, not every conceivable consequence. From the decision written by Justice Kavanaugh:

Simply stated, NEPA is a procedural cross-check, not a substantive roadblock. The goal of the law is to inform agency decision making, not to paralyze it…

The Board’s EIS addressed the environmental effects of the railroad line. But the U. S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit nonetheless faulted the EIS for not sufficiently considering the environmental effects of projects separate from the railroad line itself—primarily, the environmental effects that could ensue from (i) increased oil drilling upstream in the Uinta Basin and (ii) increased oil refining downstream along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas.

On that basis, the D. C. Circuit vacated the Board’s EIS and the Board’s approval of the 88-mile railroad line. As a result, construction still has not begun even though the Board approved the project back in December 2021.

We reverse. First, the D. C. Circuit did not afford the Board the substantial judicial deference required in NEPA cases. Second, the D. C. Circuit ordered the Board to address the environmental effects of projects separate in time or place from the construction and operation of the railroad line. But NEPA requires agencies to focus on the environmental effects of the project at issue. Under NEPA, the Board’s EIS did not need to address the environmental effects of upstream oil drilling or downstream oil refining. Rather, it needed to address only the effects of the 88-milerailroad line. And the Board’s EIS did so.

As mentioned above, the court’s liberals reached the same conclusion but came at it in a somewhat narrower way.

The court’s three liberals – Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed with the outcome of the case but had different reasoning. Writing for the three, Sotomayor said that such environmental reviews conducted by federal agencies should be limited to their own expertise. The Surface Transportation Board, which conducted the review in this case, is primarily focused on transportation projects, not oil refining.

“Under NEPA, agencies must consider the environmental impacts for which their decisions would be responsible,” Sotomayor wrote. “Here, the board correctly determined it would not be responsible for the consequences of oil production upstream or downstream from the railway because it could not lawfully consider those consequences as part of the approval process.”

This decision should limit environmentalists’ ability to endlessly multiply the federal requirements put upon developers trying to complete a project. From now on they only need consider the project at hand.

This post was originally published on this site

California’s high school athletics’ playoff and championship governing body, commonly known in the Golden State as CIF, hastily took action in the wake of the threat this week by Donald Trump of pulling funding, perhaps permanently, from California if biological boys were allowed to continue competing against biological girls. 

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is pretty straightforward when it comes to discrimination in high school and college athletics, and more importantly, equal opportunity. Congress has a pretty good primer of what Title IX covers. 

Separate Athletics Teams

While Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in recipient schools’ athletics programs, this prohibition does not mean all sex-based distinctions are banned. According to Title IX regulations, schools may offer separate athletics teams for each sex where selection is based on competitive skill or the activity is a contact sport. In addition, subject to the obligations described below, while schools must provide equal athletics opportunity to members of both sexes, they do not necessarily need to offer the same sports for each sex. Even so, if a school only offers a sport for one sex, and opportunities for the other sex have been previously limited, a student from the excluded sex must be allowed to try out for the team unless it is a contact sport. (Contact sports include boxing, wrestling, rugby, ice hockey, football, and basketball.) In addition, Title IX does not require equal aggregate expenditures for men’s and women’s athletics programs.

The long and short of it is if you offer a competitive sport for boys, you have to offer an equivalent sport or opportunity for girls. Note that the equivalent sports do not have to be the exact same sport if the exposure of harm to girls, being that they’re not boys and all, makes it unsafe for them to participate. The law recognizes that equal opportunity does not mean boys and girls are exactly the same. There are some boys sports, like football, that girls should not, and are not, included on those teams. Girls’ flag football? You bet. 

Among the hundreds of executive orders signed by Donald Trump since January 20th, there was one formalized on February 5th with a lot of female athletes of all ages surrounding him as he autographed the document without the use of Anthony Bernal’s autopen. 

President Trump signs Executive Order banning boys from girls’ sports

Young Girl: “God bless you, Mr. President.”

This is what it’s all about. pic.twitter.com/uI6WzcSTme

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 5, 2025

Shortly after, a defiant Maine Governor Janet Mills dug in her heels, refusing to restrict athletics in her state to competitions between members with the same chromosome makeup. The full weight of the federal government, including withholding federal funding, ensued. The courts are currently chewing through it, but the prospects do not look good for Mills long-term. Nobody thinks Title IX is going to be overturned by the Supreme Court anytime soon. 

In California, there is a boy named A.B. Hernandez who is a junior, currently competing in three different track events as a girl. Naturally, he’s been dominating the field and has qualified for the state final. Here’s a little taste of Hernandez in action.

NEW: Transgender long jumper wins the CIF Southern Section Masters meet, continues to dominate the female competition.

Hernandez, who was born a male, jumped 19’ 3.5’’. The “second” place jumper, Kaylee Best, a female, jumped 19’ .75’’.

During a recent interview, Hernandez said… pic.twitter.com/TpvYFAvA7j

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 25, 2025

YES. @AAGDhillon and @USAttyEssayli are investigating California for letting boys compete in girls’ sports.

The Trump administration is cracking down on this insanity. pic.twitter.com/ijO8jl1pvW

— American Principles (@approject) May 28, 2025

President Trump got wind of it and threated to pull money, perhaps permanently, from California if they continued to violate both his executive order and Title IX.

pic.twitter.com/2JTlGvdoqu

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 27, 2025

California’s Governor, Gavin Newsom, who looks in the mirror every morning and sees POTUS-48 staring back at him, who loves standing up to Republican archvillains such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and President Trump, folded like a $40 dollar lawn chair six hours later. I know $40 dollars seems outrageously high for a cheap lawn chair, but this is California. We’re about to pay hotel and airport worked in Los Angeles a $30 minimum wage. Nothing is cheap.

Newsom is a progressive, a radical, and totally devoid of sound economic theory, but he’s not a dummy. He knows which way the wind is blowing on the trans athlete issue nationally, and he also knows his state’s deficit is currently in the red by upwards of $12 billion dollars. If Trump were to follow through and yank somewhere north of $17 billion just in K-12 funding alone, much less federal money given to colleges and universities, California goes bankrupt overnight. There is no way to replace that with current governance. 

The Governor appeared on a podcast with Salem host Charlie Kirk a while ago in an effort to rebrand himself for a future national presidential campaign, and signaled he was willing to walk away from the trans-athlete controversy. 

Gavin Newsom knows it is unfair to have boys competing against girls in sports. He just doesn’t have the spine to do anything about it.

Fortunately, for girls in California President Trump does. pic.twitter.com/DXbD2NVqJI

— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) May 27, 2025

So with the Governor getting wobbly knees well before the funding threat by Trump, when the warning finally did drop on Truth Social and X Tuesday morning, CIF decided to change a rule very quickly. 

At the conclusion of the CIF Section’s Track and Field qualifying meets this past weekend, the CIF made the decision to pilot an entry process for the upcoming 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships. Please see the following statement: pic.twitter.com/qOjWl6eybR

— CIF State (@CIFState) May 27, 2025

Notice what’s admitted to in the second paragraph by CIF. Any biological girl who lost a shot to compete because of a transgendered boy knocked them out of the bubble sure sounds to me like CIF is conceding the points that A) biological girls are not the same as boys identifying as transgendered girls, and B) offering a remedy, even in haste, demonstrates there were girls harmed by the previous policy. You can almost see the vision in your head of a brand-new track event – the 100-meter discriminatory lawsuit filing.

While a baby step in the right direction, this rule change alone isn’t nearly enough, and it doesn’t really fix the problem in the track finals taking place this weekend, let alone across the board in every girls’ sport. Who wants to be the mom or dad that has to have the conversation with their daughter that it’s great you got to compete, but sorry you ended up being one of 9 other losers instead watching 8 other losers from the stands? 

Left unsaid in this flurry of CIF rule-making activity is what about all the other sports. So far, this only talks about the track and field state finals. What about a 6’9″ boy pitching on the girls’ softball team and throwing 10 mph faster than any girl? What about boys playing on girls’ volleyball teams and leaping feet above what girls can jump? Nothing from CIF as of yet. Perhaps it’ll take another Trump threat to motivate them to revisit the rules in every other Title IX sport, too. 

And speaking of the rule-making process, CIF seems to not have followed their own rule-making rules. 
 

My message to the CIF Executive Director Ron Nocetti @CIFState @CIFNocetti,

Mr. Nocetti, could you tell me who at CIF made these changes to this weekend’s CA state track and field championship meet?

If government and elected officials were involved (school board trustees and… https://t.co/HG9DK2EBkt pic.twitter.com/OrRgFxjSll

— Beth Bourne (@bourne_beth2345) May 28, 2025

I can promise you that in the six hours between Trump’s tweet and the rule change by CIF, there was not a formal agenda drawn up, and public notice given of a public hearing to discuss the rule change, as California’s Brown Act requires. I guess rule of law is only demanded when Republicans are in power. 

Very shortly after CIF tweaked the rule, Governor Newsom weighed in on the change, and revised it. 

It’s what has been asked for. Separate categories.
So will the trans athlete have a separate podium now?
Girls won’t have to share the podium? pic.twitter.com/2I5YZnLMVf

— Kel in Cali (@KinCali1) May 27, 2025

He pulled a Jedi mind trick. That wasn’t the rule change you thought it was. What CIF meant, Newsom said, was there would now be three divisions for this upcoming track meet – boys, girls, and where necessary, trans. There might be three different winners at a podium ceremony. It remains unclear about whether trans athletes would compete amongst themselves, or whether CIF would still lump them in with the girls and just score them separately. If trans and girls have to compete together, but are scored and rewarded differently, isn’t that the nonsensical Separate But Equal doctrine of Plessy V. Ferguson that gave us Jim Crow laws in the South before being overturned by Brown V. Board 58 years later? 

And on what authority does Newsom have to inject himself here? Absolutely none. CIF is a bottom-up organization staffed and organized on recommendations from local school districts and county superintendents. There are no gubernatorial appointments on the senior membership of the federation. But by Wednesday morning, CIF, upon further review of Governor Newsom, clarified their rules. 

The CIF State office has issued a followup to their statement on Tuesday about the state track meet this weekend. pic.twitter.com/Djcove4KMW

— James Escarcega (@James_Escarcega) May 28, 2025

Looks like separate but equal is now a thing, at least in track. Still unclear whether the events are now broken into three groups as they should. 

Democrats throughout this entire process have managed to anger and alienate girls, parents of girls, teams, schools, the law, and now, the LGBTQ community. 

“California is basically instituting a sports ban… It is a remarkable capitulation to Trump,” trans journalist Erin Reed wrote via Bluesky on Tuesday. By Reed’s reasoning, even though Hernandez will still be allowed to compete, the state has discriminated against Hernandez by placing her in her own competitive category and no longer treat her like all other girls. 

“A limited ban is still a sports ban,” she continued, adding, “This blatantly violates [California] civil rights protections around gender identity. I hope they take it to court.”

To me, the obvious reason you’re seeing all these boys competing in girls’ events at high school and collegiate levels is because they have an enormous competitive advantage, and for relatively little training and effort, they enjoy very high odds of winning and setting records no other girl will ever touch. If you put trans athletes in a category of their own, you might have one trans athlete competing in triple jump. Obviously, that athlete stands a good chance of standing atop the podium, albeit alone. Congrats. You beat…no one. If a scenario develops where there is a statewide final of 8 trans athletes all competing for an event, my guess is over time, the novelty wears off. And with the allure of dominating the field against the girls no longer being a motivating factor, many will be dissuaded from competing in the first place, and this issue will recede from societal relevance. 

If we are to keep in compliance with Title IX, and for that matter, common sense, there should be boys competing against other boys in boys’ events, girls against other girls in girls’ events, and let those who refuse to adhere to biological science compete against other science deniers. That new third grouping might actually make the track meet a little more money as it’ll signal a visit the concession stand. It will be the athletic version of a drum solo at a rock concert. 

Regardless, all three groups should have their own locker rooms for privacy, something not addressed in the revised CIF or Newsom rules, and all given equal opportunity to compete. And may the best man, woman, or, well, you know, win.

This post was originally published on this site

Are Donald Trump’s tariff policies “in a IEEPA trouble,” as Andrew Stuttaford quipped at The Corner, after last night’s ruling by the Court of International Trade (CIT)? Perhaps not, even if the appellate courts refuse them relief on the Liberation Day and trafficking tariffs. Will we see the Tariffinator in T2: Liberation Day Redux? 

Politico reports this morning that the White House is already promising a Plan B:

At the end of last week, administration officials had three deals that were “basically ready for the President’s decision,” Hassett said. “There are many, many deals coming, and there were three that basically look like they’re done.”

If the administration does lose on appeal, there are other statutes the White House could use to pursue Trump’s tariff agenda, Hassett continued.

He did not identify any by name, but Trump used Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of tariffs from China during his first term and Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act to impose impose or threaten duties on various industrial sectors, such as steel, aluminum and autos.

While the administration considered IEEPA the best option, “there are three or four other ways to do it,” Hassett said.

True, but the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) was the easiest path to unlimited tariffs, or so the White House hoped. Congress intended the use of the IEEPA for true emergencies, and its predicate (as the CIT explained) was a wartime-powers act that Congress softened later, but only in a limited fashion. In those extraordinary circumstances, Congress envisioned a need for maximum flexibility, which perhaps they should revisit soon.

Trump could be on stronger ground with the two laws mentioned, but those also come with significant limitations. First off, the tariff potential is capped at much lower rates than Trump attempted to impose on trading partners in his Liberation Day rollout under the IEEPA. Second, any tariffs imposed will have time limitations unless Congress votes to adopt them:

“The administration could quickly replace the 10% across-the-board tariff with a similar tariff of up to 15% under Sec. 122 [of the 1974 Trade Act],” analysts at Goldman said. They noted, however, that such a move would only last for up to 150 days after which law requires congressional action.

There is more flexibility on rates under other sections of the 1974 Trade Act, but the White House would have to conduct investigations to justify the punitive measures and pinpoint the behaviors that have to change in order to reverse the tariff actions. The first Trump administration used that approach with China and got what it wanted, but it takes time and preparation to implement such actions. It took nearly three years for Trump to finally escalate tariffs on China in the first term under these other statutes:

“We have had section 301 tariffs on Chinese goods even under the previous administration, which were pretty harsh. So I can imagine that the administration will look at these provisions again and see if they can use 232, or 301, or some other mechanism where, whereby they can enforce the tariffs,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.

Schulz also pointed to the fact that such tariffs require investigations.

“I think that’s the difference here. All of the tariffs that we’re talking about today with IEEPA were issued under executive order and pretty much just by the executive branch,” she said. “When you look at these other sections, you’re going to have the involvement of the Commerce Department and other agencies investigating whether there really has been damage” to justify tariff action.

The other limitation that comes with these statutes is that the application of tariffs need to be more targeted. As I mentioned in the previous post, Trump has used Sections 301 and 232 to apply tariffs on autos, steel, and aluminum already, but not for the kind of sweeping universal tariffs that Trump prefers. Trump could try another path, however, in Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 … better known as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which Ben Stein taught to an entire generation of movie-goers:

 Let’s just say that this may not have as much appeal to the electorate as Trump hopes. However, it’s still law, and Section 338 addresses what may be Trump’s real point in Liberation Day anyway:

Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 empowers the President to impose additional duties on imports from countries that discriminate against U.S. commerce. Section 338 directs the President to impose tariffs when a foreign country either: 1) imposes unreasonable charges or regulations on U.S. products; or (2) disadvantages and discriminates against U.S. commerce “by or in respect to any customs, tonnage, or port duty, fee, charge, exaction, classification, regulation, condition, restriction, or prohibition.” Tariffs imposed under Section 338 may not exceed 50% of the value of the goods

A U.S. president has never imposed tariffs under Section 338. However, President Trump may invoke 338 in implementing new tariffs on countries that are identified under his February 21st memo on Defending American Companies and Innovators From Overseas Extortion and Unfair Fines and Penalties, or his February 13th memo on Reciprocal Trade and Tariffs.

Take special note of the fact that presidents have never used this law in the 95 years of its existence. That actually makes it a little more attractive for Trump in that there are no court precedents that might stand in his way. However, this law also carries a maximum tariff rate of 50%, according to Goldman Sachs and noted above, and only if Trump can prove discriminatory conduct. Even stacking the tariffs in these provisions gets Trump to just 65%, well below some of the threatened rates, and at least some of that would expire in 150 days whether Trump cuts a trade deal or not. 

This might still be a good path with China, where access to the American market is critical to the stability of the regime and the discriminatory conduct is easily demonstrated. It will not be as easy to apply Section 338 to other trading partners, but perhaps the threat of it will be enough to keep them at the negotiating table. Trump now has a very discrete window of time to get these deals on paper before losing the leverage these tariffs would allow, which means that our other trading partners have the option of waiting Trump out if necessary — but they will more likely just increase their demands for more favorable terms. It doesn’t really do anyone much good to keep the conflict rolling, and Trump will need our other trading partners for a longer fight with China.

So indeed … they’ll be back. But they may only get one sequel out of it.