Republican News

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It’s spring sports season in High Schools across the country, and by now, we all know that sports are one of the key battlegrounds in the alphabet wars. 

That’s why we are being treated with the spectacle of boys pretending to be women dominating in track and field and other sports. My X timeline is filled with outraged parents and activists rightfully complaining about the intrinsic unfairness of biologically male athletes invading girls’ sports. 

🚨BREAKING: A boy competing under the name “Veronica” Garcia just stole the state title in the girls’ 400m at the 2A Washington State Championship meet.

Who’s shocked?

Congratulations to Lauren Matthew, the real Washington State Champion in the girls’ 400m. pic.twitter.com/dFbgdmc15S

— Riley Gaines (@Riley_Gaines_) May 31, 2025

The unsurprising news that Imane Khalif, the Algerian boxer who absolutely dominated women’s boxing at the Olympics, had DNA testing done by the World Boxing Federation showed that he was genetically male. The WBF had informed the Olympic committee of its findings, and as a result, the Olympics rejected the WBF’s and kicked them out of its prior control of eligibility rules for participation. 

Imane Khelif’s sex-test results from the 2023 World Championships have been published for the first time, with the medical report appearing to indicate that the boxer is biologically male.

Just 36 hours after World Boxing ruled that Khelif, a hugely controversial Olympic champion in women’s boxing at last summer’s Paris Games, would need to undergo sex screening to be eligible for any future appearances in the female category, the document at the heart of this extraordinary saga was released into the public domain.

Alan Abrahamson, the American journalist who disclosed in Paris how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had been warned more than a year earlier that Khelif had the DNA of a “male”, produced the result of a test carried out on the boxer in New Delhi in March 2023, triggering the boxer’s disqualification from the championships that year.

The document published on the 3 Wire Sports website summarises the findings on Khelif as “abnormal”, stating: “Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype.” A karyotype refers to an individual’s complete set of chromosomes, which in Khelif’s case has been reported by the International Boxing Association (IBA) as being XY, the male pattern.

The test results carry the letterhead of Dr Lal Path Labs in New Delhi, accredited by the American College of Pathologists and certified by the Swiss-based International Organisation for Standardisation. This directly challenges the account of IOC spokesman Mark Adams, who in a tense news conference at the Paris Olympics described the results as “ad hoc” and “not legitimate”.

Thomas Bach, the IOC president, has gone even further, claiming that the results are the product of a Russian-led misinformation campaign. He pointed out in an interview earlier this year that the IBA, headed by Russia’s Umar Kremlev, had been stripped of IOC recognition in a row over ethics and financial management. The official authentication of the Indian laboratory that conducted the tests on Khelif increases the pressure on the IOC to explain why it believes the results are illegitimate.

In all these cases, there is no genuine dispute about the genetic sex of the participants. No confusion. Surely, there are men who secretly compete as women, but that is not the issue. In a normal world, everybody would agree that would constitute outright cheating. 

Last year CNN’s Laura Coates and Jemele Hill railed against anyone questioning the biological sex of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif.

This entire video is comedy. Coates and Hill made absolute fools of themselves (more than usual). So woke that they ignore what their own eyes see.… pic.twitter.com/GtjwICGJzt

— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 2, 2025

But this is not a sane world. 

Girls humiliated.
Girls silenced.
Women kicked out for standing up for girls.
This is Blue State America In 2025. https://t.co/uHeYGoIfqI pic.twitter.com/rBZDFoBEWx

— XX-XY Athletics (@xx_xyathletics) June 3, 2025

Trans “rights” activists say that they are just trying to ensure that transgender “women” are given the same opportunities as “cisgender” athletes–it is a matter of fairness, they claim. No doubt, some of them believe this, even though this violates every ounce of common sense. After all, despite the rhetoric that claims “trans women are women,” the DNA tests and the actual results on the field show that trans women are, demonstrably, biological males with all the physical advantages that being male bestows. 

We should remember the IOC President Thomas Bach gaslit us all telling us Imane Khelif’s passport was proof he was a woman, rather than simply performing a simple sex test. @iocmedia pic.twitter.com/J4VHCjjXWE

— XX-XY Athletics (@xx_xyathletics) November 4, 2024

The controversy last year about Khelif’s participation in Women’s Boxing at the Olympics was all about Khelif’s right to participate–nobody seriously believed that Khelif was biologically female–based on his self-identification. We know that because the IOC and its supporters had a very easy way to find out–a DNA test, which is even less intrusive than the drug tests they routinely perform to weed out other cheaters, and they fought tooth and nail to prevent it. 

We also know that because they had been informed by the organization that the Olympics had previously relied on to determine eligibility. 

The big question is, “Why?” Why are they doing this, and why is this a Left-Right issue instead of a straightforward “What are the facts?” issue?

The answer is simple: it’s not about sports, it’s about reality itself. It’s about the meaning of words, the malleability of definitions, and who gets to determine what is real and what is not. The alphabet people may care about trans people, but the entire left needs to assault reality itself and seize the ability to define what is real and what is not. 

🚨 NEW: British pupils are being taught that Vikings were “not all white” and that “some were Muslim” — in an effort to ditch “Eurocentric ideas” in the curriculum

This isn’t history. It’s ideological propaganda.

They’re rewriting the past to erase Britain’s identity.… pic.twitter.com/NIuwV1Z97R

— Darren Grimes (@darrengrimes_) June 1, 2025

That’s why there is no common ground, and cannot ever be. If you listen to trans activists (and all varieties of leftists), they never try to establish common ground or ever attempt to reason with anybody because persuading people is not the point. Dominance is. You are either with them or against them. And that is true on every issue. And, on every issue, you always find bizarre and unsupportable claims about what “reality” is. 

Amazon Show features King Edward VI as Black, Gay and Disabled. Lol. pic.twitter.com/GvXvpFu5DR

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) July 12, 2024

This method of seizing power is the essence of Critical Theory, which is self-consciously all about seizing power through defining reality. Categories that define “oppressors” and “oppressed” are defined, and the two are set against each other in what amounts to a fight for all the marbles. 

Look at all the alphabet propaganda, and it has much less to do with expanding the idea of “fairness,” whatever the surface rhetoric implies. It is all about wiping out any solid ground that links people to reality. There is no such thing as biological sex–it is an undefined spectrum that spans an infinite number of identities. What was clear and defined by fundamental categories is now solely defined by a powerful group that gatekeeps reality itself. “Reality” constantly shifts according to their whims. 

Gender is such an important battlefield because it is so fundamental. If you wipe away the meaning of DNA, which is measurable and immutable–you can render everything meaningless. 

That is the whole point, and explains why all Leftists are devoted to “trans rights.” It’s not so much that they agree on the particular issue–I suspect many are queasy about it when it comes to their daughters–but that they all agree that the foundation of reality must be destroyed. 

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Tim Walz’ post-mortem on his own campaign reminds me of a joke, which is hardly surprising, given the joke his nomination and Kamala Harris’ turned out to be. The governor of Minnesota took an opportunity to talk with former Montana senator Jon Tester on his podcast, part of the Democrat effort to find the next Joe Rogan among the leadership clique of the party, to discuss what went wrong in 2024’s presidential campaign. 

Rather than admit the obvious — that voters saw through the four-year fraud that was the Joe Biden presidency — Walz instead has decided that they needed to rearrange the media deck chairs on their sinking ship. Walz lamented the decision to refrain from engaging the media at all levels:

As podcast host and former Montana Sen. Jon Tester argued that the campaign didn’t use Walz effectively, Walz said his argument spoke to a broader point about the Democratic Party not entering “every media environment,” including podcasts and local media. He said, “My God, they’re not watching ‘Meet the Press,’ they’re listening to you guys, as they’re going somewhere, listening.” …

“I think you got to flood the zone,” Walz said. “And I would argue we didn’t see, you know, the vice president when she got in front of people, and I watch her talking to young people, she was magnetic with them. She was optimistic. She was hopeful. But in today’s world, you got to have a lot of that, or it gets lost in the noise. And if you think you’re just going to do a, you know, a ’60 Minutes’ interview, and that’s going to get across, boy, that’s not it.”

Ahem. So the joke goes: An actor collapses on stage in the middle of a sold-out performance. His castmates gather around him and then solemnly announce that the actor has passed away. Amid the shocked gasps from the audience, a little old lady yells, “Give him an enema!” When the other actors repeat that their colleague has died, the old lady yells again, “Give him an enema!” Finally, one of the distraught castmates scolds the woman by saying, “Lady, he’s dead! An enema is not going to help!” To which the old lady replies: “Well, it couldn’t hurt!”

Only in this case, a legitimate media enema would definitely have made things worse. Harris’ handlers knew it, based not just on the moment at hand but five years of incompetent media appearances and public engagements. For that matter, they probably figured more media exposure of Walz would have done damage too, an impression that got reinforced every time Walz cosplayed a Democrat idea of masculinity in public.

Using the 60 Minutes interview to make this point reveals Walz’ continuing cluelessness. Harris did so badly that the CBS show was forced to recut her answers to make her sound coherent, a point that is currently roiling CBS News and Paramount C-suites. On the rare occasions that Harris engaged media, she performed so terribly that it became clear she had no idea what she was talking about, not even from the start of a sentence to its end. Harris’ labyrinthine word salads had already become legendary for their utter lack of substance, and were bad enough for her one-heartbeat-away status as VP. 

Walz hardly did any better. For one thing, he was clearly the He’s Not a Jew choice by Harris, who was widely expected to pick Josh Shapiro to bolster her strength in Pennsylvania, but that isn’t Walz’ fault. Instead, Walz tried to make a campaign slogan out of calling Republicans “weird” while strutting across stages like Freddie Mercury on a coke binge. Walz also talked a lot about “freedom” and “Mind Your Own Damn Business” from a governor who established a literal snitch line for Minnesotans to rat out family and friends for supposed pandemic sins — a Stasi-esque operation that ran for more than two years in Minnesota. Harris supposedly picked Walz as a masculine role model to attract younger male voters, which speaks largely to Harris’ lack of intellectual capacity.

But the media-strategy excuse is a sideshow. Voters rejected Harris and Walz not because of their media strategy, but because of their fraud strategy. Harris knew that Biden was too cognitively incapacitated to be president, and yet not only didn’t take any action (as the Constitution required) but went along with the shocking fraud of having Biden on the ticket for another four years. Walz also participated in that fraud, both before and during the campaign, by pretending that Biden was fully competent and in charge. Had the Protection Racket Media not tried so hard to kneecap Donald Trump in favor of first Biden and then Harris, voters might have given Trump a ten-point and forty-state win. 

Walz is still attempting to distract from the real defeat for Democrats in 2024 — the exposure of their corruption and perversion of the Constitution. Governor Jazz Hands McSnitchline is perhaps the real poster boy for Democrats in 2024.

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For decades, phonics was the gold standard for teaching children how to read. 

There’s a pretty good reason for that: the alphabet and written word are symbolic visual tools used to convey sounds, words, and phrases that are aural. Finding a way to associate the aural with the visual is an obvious way to bridge the gap. 

The human brain is wired for spoken language, which is why children focus on words, facial expressions, and lip movements very early in life and begin speaking fairly young, and also why people with fairly profound intellectual disabilities still learn to speak and understand. We are speaking beings. 

Not so with reading, and especially not so with alphabets, which is why pictograms preceded alphabets, which associate individual letters with sounds. That is a level of abstraction one step beyond pictures. Alphabets just beg to be taught with phonics. 

That is a concept so obvious that, of course, “education specialists” decided that it couldn’t be so, and they went in search of alternatives. The result? More and more kids can’t read. 

Could phonics solve California’s reading crisis? Inside the push for sweeping changes https://t.co/efHluaorbf

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) June 2, 2025

So phonics is making a comeback!

To look inside Julie Celestial’s kindergarten classroom in Long Beach is to peer into the future of reading in California.

During a recent lesson, 25 kindergartners gazed at the whiteboard, trying to sound out the word “bee.” They’re learning the long “e” sound, blending words such as “Pete” and “cheek” — words that they’ll soon be able to read in this lesson’s accompanying book.

Celestial was teaching something new for Long Beach Unified: phonics.

“It’s pretty cool to watch,” she said. “I’m really anticipating that there’s going to be a lot less reluctant readers and struggling readers now that the district has made this shift.”

The Los Angeles Times reports this as an innovative approach to the literacy crisis, which to me is dispiriting. I really can’t say for sure how I learned to read–I did so long before I went to school, and was an avid reader even before I became a motormouth–in a family of 4 kids, there was little point to interjecting myself into the chaos. But I certainly remember phonics being used to teach others to read, and parents have been using it to teach kids at home forever (in families where reading is prioritized and parents don’t rely on teachers to mess up their kids’ education). 

Years ago, Mississippi threw the experts in reading out of the classroom and reimplemented phonics, and as a result, the state went from the bottom of the pack toward the top–hey, did you know Mississippi is doing well in education now?–and it is liberal California that is having to rediscover common sense after trying every single other thing. 

The bill is the capstone to decades of debate and controversy in California on how best to teach reading amid stubbornly low test scores. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged his support, setting aside $200 million to fund teacher training on the new approach in the May revise of his 2025-26 budget proposal.

“It’s a big deal for kids, and it’s a big step forward — a very big one,” said Marshall Tuck, chief executive of EdVoice, an education advocacy nonprofit that has championed the change.

California has long struggled with reading scores below the national average. In 2024, only 29% of California’s fourth-graders scored “proficient” or better in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP.

It’s been called the “Mississippi Miracle.” Reading scores still suck, as they do overall in America, but the state ranks #1 when you adjust for demographics, and it has seen the fastest improvement of all the states over the past decade. 

In 2013, Mississippi implemented a multifaceted strategy for enhancing kindergarten to third grade literacy. The Literacy-Based Promotion Act focuses on early literacy and teacher development. It includes teacher training in proven reading instruction methods and teacher coaching.

Relying on federally supported research from the Institute of Education Science, the state invested in phonics, fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension. The law provided K-3 teachers with training and support to help students master reading by the end of third grade.

It includes provisions for reading coaches, parent communication, individual reading plans and other supportive measures. It also includes targeted support for struggling readers. Students repeat the third grade if they fail to meet reading standards.

California has been using a totally insane method of teaching reading that only an “expert” can love:

For decades, most school districts in California have been devoted to a different approach called “whole language” or “balanced literacy,” built on the belief that children naturally learn to read without being taught how to sound out words. Teachers focus on surrounding children with books intended to foster a love of reading and encourage them to look for clues that help them guess unknown words — such as predicting the next word based on the context of the story, or looking at the pictures — rather than sounding them out.

“The majority of students require a more intentional, explicit and systematic approach,” Zoroya said. “Thousands of kids across California in 10th grade are struggling in content-area classes because they missed phonics.”

What is so infuriating about all this, aside from the obvious fact that generations of kids have been unnecessarily hampered in their education and hence their lifetime achievements, is that liberals are always given a pass for ruining things, and when they shift to proven methods, they somehow get credit for doing the obvious. 

We see this in how the COVID response is evaluated. The liberal approach was going to be an obvious disaster, and now that everybody agrees that closing schools, mandating vaccines, and so many of the authoritarian methods failed, there is no accountability. We are still supposed to “trust the experts” who ruined everything. 

Hell, we are supposed to increase their resources–they need it, right?!

It’s insane. 

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Closing the tabs …

Yesterday’s horrific attack in Boulder, Colorado, WILL NOT BE TOLERATED in the United States of America. He came in through Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly. He must go out under “TRUMP” Policy. Acts of Terrorism will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law. This is yet another example of why we must keep our Borders SECURE, and deport Illegal, Anti-American Radicals from our Homeland. My heart goes out to the victims of this terrible tragedy, and the Great People of Boulder, Colorado!

Ed: All true, and yet this DoJ seems too reticent to take control of this clear case of domestic terrorism. Don’t leave this for Colorado’s local prosecutors — make sure Soliman spends the rest of his miserable life in a Supermax and that his family bears the financial burden of restitution. Do that often enough and the disincentives will have a real effect.

===

Joe Biden foolishly let the alleged terrorist in Colorado into our country through his reckless immigration policies.

And instead of deporting him after his visa expired – the Biden Administration let this monster stay in America.

President Trump is putting a stop to this… pic.twitter.com/q8iGhMlnHc

— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) June 2, 2025

Ed: How many more Solimans are there? Will it take more arsons to find out?

===

But even as Jews in America are being attacked with increasing regularity, we have not seen the birth of a “Jewish Lives Matter” campaign. No nationwide reckoning. No marches filling the streets. The continued targeting and killing of Jews does not appear to summon the same political urgency or cultural solidarity as other forms of hate. That silence is only broken by the continued death chant of “Free Palestine”.

One answer lies in the narrative war unfolding alongside the real one. Just hours before the Boulder attack, major media outlets rushed to report that Israeli tanks had opened fire on starving Palestinians at an aid distribution site in Rafah. The headlines were brutal, the claims unchecked. There were no videos. No forensic evidence. The sources? “Local health officials” and “witnesses” – terms that in Gaza almost always mean Hamas.

Hours later, drone footage emerged showing a very different reality: quiet crowds, no gunfire, no chaos. The Israeli footage was not conclusive, but it did raise a simple, devastating question – was there even a mass casualty event? And if there was, what happened?

Ed: It only happened in Pallywood — the Palestinian PR apparatus that Hamas has largely co-opted in Gaza. They use the same actors over and over again as victims, corpses, journalists, and so on. And the gullible Left and the Protection Racket Media keep eating it up time after time. 

===

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyam also criticized Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino for calling the attack terrorism, accusing them of getting “way ahead” of local agencies.

“I’m going to be quite direct here. The FBI director and deputy director got way ahead of where the local police were. The language that the FBI used in their tweets included words like ‘violence,’ ‘targeted terrorism’ and ‘violent.’ They got ahead of where the local police knew where the investigation was,” Kayyam said. “I know — I want to just make it clear here. This could have been an anti-Semitic attack, which is terrifying, in particular for people in the community. We don’t know that because the Boulder Police officer, at least according to the Boulder Police officer, they’re not sure if the people injured were people at the the Jewish rally, the Jewish gathering. Now, maybe others in organizations know that. We know ADL and other organizations have been out on this. Maybe they have more evidence.”

Ed: YGBFKM. Maybe they just looked at the video — widely available well before this CNN conversation — and saw the perp screaming “Free Palestine” and other slogans before setting people on fire with Molotov cocktails. The same morons who leapt to the conclusion that Elon Musk meant a wave as a Nazi salute now want to argue that we are supposed to ignore actual evidence. 

===

“What are we coming to? How does that happen?”@MegynKelly on left and media trying to bury yet another anti-Jewish terror attack in America, now by an illegal immigrant.

Watch below, and subscribe:https://t.co/Y12z2uLeBJ pic.twitter.com/88P7NvUisH

— The Megyn Kelly Show (@MegynKellyShow) June 2, 2025

KELLY (~ 11:45 mark): You’re an idiot … Oh my God … You’re a partisan hack idiot.

Ed: Yeah, can’t improve on that. 

===

Soliman’s assault is the third high-profile anti-Israel and anti-Semitic terror attack in the U.S. in recent months. It follows the double murder outside of the Washington, D.C. Jewish Museum less than ten days ago and the attempted firebombing of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home in April. The increasing tempo of violence makes the pattern hard to ignore: the American anti-Israel movement has radicalized.

It is also hard not to draw a connection between the rhetoric used by radical protesters over the past two years and the recent wave of violence. “There is only one solution,” students and marchers have chanted, “Intifada! Revolution!” This—lighting humans on fire to advance your political goals—is what an Intifada looks like. And until we treat it as such, and respond with the full force of the law, it will continue to endanger lives.

Ed: The last twenty months have proven this argument. We didn’t apply consequences for crimes and intimidation campaigns, and that allowed the Globalize the Intifada movement to metastasize. Now we have to cut it out of the body politic as forcefully as possible to ensure their cancer does not spread any further. 

===

From @NateSilver538, this is Democrats’ problem in a nutshell. pic.twitter.com/95Jhbvc9ts

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) June 2, 2025

Ed: This explains their weird connection to terrorist movements as fashion or fad, too. 

===

Shortly after 11 p.m. on April 19, 2024, a group of people gathered to chant together on Broadway, just outside the Columbia University campus. A reporter for The Free Press recorded the chant, and I quoted it in “Springtime for Sinwar,” an essay in Quillette about the campus demonstrations. There is a vile clarity and frankness to the unadulterated hatred and support for Hamas evident in this well-practiced chorus. While wearing masks and keffiyehs, the assembled chanted the following:

Al-Qassam, make us proud! Kill another soldier now!
We say Justice, you say How? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!
Hamas, Hamas, we love you! We support your rockets too!
Red, black, green, and white! We support Hamas’s fight!
It is right to rebel! Al-Qassam, give them hell!
It is right to rebel! Hamas, Hamas, give them hell!
FREEEEE, FREE PALESTINE!!
FREE, FREE, FREE PALESTINE!!

Who were those people? How many other people who took part in the pro-Hamas demonstrations of the past 18 months share their views? Chances are that people who “love” Hamas approve of the murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. How many of them have guns and are making plans to use them?

Ed: How many of them are making firebombs … and other bombs? 

===

🚨Tara Palmeri tells Scott Jennings that violence comes from the extremes of the Democrat Party AND the Republican Party.

Scott Jennings says that radicalized violence is PRIMARILY on the Left.

Who’s right? pic.twitter.com/miG6leVjA4

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 2, 2025

Ed: Tara isn’t entirely wrong, but violence is not as mainstreamed on the Right as it is on the Left. It’s certainly not nearly as romanticized on the Right as it is on the Left. 

===

If a right-wing movement had burned down a governor’s mansion, murdered two foreign diplomats & firebombed kids and elderly people at a peaceful protest — in the span of a few weeks — what would the coverage look like? What sort of “national conversation” would we be having?

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 2, 2025

Ed: That’s the answer to Tara Palmeri’s question. 

===

Update from Ed: I’m giving myself (and Seth Liebsohn) the final Final word, because RHIP.

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In 2021, California became the first state in the nation to mandate high school students take a one semester ethnic studies class to graduate. The class was set to begin this fall, i.e. the 2025-2026 academic school year. However, there are problems now because under the law, the class can’t become mandatory unless there is funding provided to schools to make it happen. And with California facing a big shortfall in next year’s budget (thanks in part to the decision to expand Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants) Gov. Newsom seems to be leaning toward not putting up the money.

Beginning this fall, students entering 9th grade would have been the first class required to pass a one-semester class at some point during their high school years.

But under the 2021 law, the mandate to reach 5.8 million students does not take effect unless the state provides more money to pay for the course. The funding would cover the cost of materials and the teacher staffing and training that go along with adding a new field of study.

Newsom’s office, which issued its May revision of next year’s proposed state budget amid a tightening financial outlook, did not respond to questions about why he has not included funding for the ethnic studies requirement that he approved, praising it as an avenue to “teach students about the diverse communities that comprise California.”

Some schools could still move forward with the ethnic studies class and it seems many have offered it as an elective for some time already. But without the money, the state can’t make it a graduation requirement.

There are really two likely reasons this is happening. One, as mentioned, is that California is broke and coming up with another $275 million to fund this is a significant amount of money. But the other factor that is almost certainly at play here is politics. 

Gavin Newsom has been making a concerted effort lately to present himself as a more moderate Democrat. He’s clearly thinking about running for president in 2028 and while far-left Newsom might be able to win a Democratic primary, he’d probably have a tougher time winning a general election. And so, you have him coming out with statements some consider shocking, such as the admission that having boys compete against girls in sports was “deeply unfair” or admitting that California seems to struggle to get things built (like high-speed rail).

There are a couple other obvious political factors as well. One is the re-election of President Trump who has made opposition to DEI a focus of his early 2nd term. And another is the fact that the public at large seems less enthusiastic about Black Lives Matter-style indoctrination than they were in 2020 and 2021 when this was passed. The curriculum for this mandatory class seems like one destined to create another showdown with the federal government.

Some religious and political conservatives view the state’s guidelines for ethnic studies as the kind of “woke” ideologies in education that President Trump has vowed to eliminate as he seeks to do away with diversity, equity and inclusion programming in schools.

California’s ethnic studies curriculum guide embraces pro-LGBTQ+ content and speaks of connecting students to “contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice and an equitable and democratic society, and conceptualize, imagine, and build new possibilities for a post-racist, post-systemic-racism society.”

The way the ethnic studies requirement is set up, California provides a sample curriculum but school districts aren’t required to use it. Instead they can modify it or choose a different curriculum provided by some outside group. That means, in some cases, districts may opt for a less extreme curriculum that isn’t focused on the war in Gaza. But it also means that in some cases, districts will opt for a more extreme version.

Take San Francisco for instance. SF has has had ethnic studies classes in the curriculum since 2015 but in 2021, when Gov. Newsome signed the state law, San Francisco upped the ante and required students to take an entire year of ethnic studies to graduate. And as you can imagine, the classes being offered there are not toned down at all. On the contrary, some of the material reads like a satire of left-wing extremism.

Last July, parent Viviane Safrin wrote a memo, obtained by The Standard, to school officials articulating concerns about ethnic studies material that had been posted to the district’s Online Resource Library. The flagged material included presentations equating capitalism with racism and exercises in which students rank various racial, socioeconomic, and gender identities based on the amount of power they have in the world today. One assignment had students role-playing as Israeli soldiers herding Palestinians into refugee camps.

Safrin said in the memo that the curriculum teaches “a contentious ideological framework” that lacks “open inquiry” and “factual integrity.” She noted that only “four lessons out of 55 highlight contributions by ethnic groups,” and the word “hegemony” appeared 81 times…

“They are taught how to organize — what it means to resist,” Safrin told The Standard. “They’re taught about dominant and counter narratives. It’s an upper-level college course for one way to examine history, but it is not teaching any actual history.”

One exercise still in use places the Red Guards, a student-led paramilitary organization from Mao’s Chinese Cultural Revolution, alongside the U.S. civil rights and feminist movements as emphasizing “the resistance that oppressed groups have shown in history.”

“I would not place them in the same category,” Stanford sociology professor Andrew G. Walder, author of a book on the Red Guards, said. “They would belong in a different unit on authoritarianism and violent political extremism.”

Another current exercise has students read a 2012 article called “Straight white male: The lowest difficulty setting there is” and asks, “What would white males need to give up (or relinquish) in order to make a more equitable society?”

The district has refused to accept criticism, in part because of a study that found students with a GPA of 2.0 or lower were more likely to graduate high school after taking the class. Despite this, the SF Standard spoke to parents who were not happy about it.

“SFUSD is a religious institution,” said one parent who noticed that her kid was being taught that Genghis Khan was actually peaceful. “They’re teaching unfalsifiable ideas.”

Pity the poor students of San Francisco, but the rest of the state may be spared, at least for this coming year, thanks to the state being broke (and the Gov. wanting to run for president).

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A little over a week and a half ago, I told y’all how British police were crackin’ the case of the weirdest firebug infestation ever to plague a British Prime Minister…if ever one had.

Over the course of four days, various vehicles and properties all came under firebomb attacks, and every last incident had something to do with Keir Starmer having once or currently owning whatever was in flames.

🚨 PICTURED: The damage caused to Keir Starmer’s North London home after it was set on fire earlier today

📸 Peter Macdiarmid/LNP https://t.co/4FeJwZDr2g pic.twitter.com/Kj0Jyxoh05

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) May 12, 2025

Naturally, the authorities were horrified – who was hunting down the PM’s belongings and homes, flinging Molotov cocktails at them, and, most importantly, why?

It got even weirder.

In the course of the inquiry, the crack investigators of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism teams had, during the chase, scooped up not one, not two, but three young men in their mid-twenties, and all of them Ukrainian.

…Roman Lavrynovych, 21, Stanislav Carpiuc, 26, and Petro Pochynok, 34, were all handed charges by the Crown Prosecution Service relating to the fires.

Lavrynovych was charged with three counts of arson with intent to endanger life.

While Carpiuc – also arrested at a London airport, this time at Luton – and Pochynok were both charged with conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.

Freakishly enough, all three had modeling aspirations, and there were rumors of them being what’s known as ‘rent boys,’ or young male prostitutes.

OKAY

Three gay rent boys set fire to Starmers houses and car and no one is asking any questions. WTF pic.twitter.com/O5xPd75bae

— Steve Delaney 🇬🇧 (@Wokewaster) May 30, 2025

Weirder still, how on earth did these foreign men know about a Jeep that had formerly belonged to the PM or a house he’d renovated for a rental property, or his former residence, which his sister-in-law had occupied since the Starmer’s move to 10 Downing Street?

There are a lot of unanswered questions.

It has led to speculation it was a foreign operation – the Russians, maybe.

I’m hearing Government officials are investigating possible Russian links to the arson attacks at properties linked to Sir Keir Starmer, it has been claimed.
The big question….
So why is Russia using rent boys to attack Keir Starmer????? pic.twitter.com/X4SDupSoDO

— 𝕍𝕠𝕚𝕔𝕖𝕆𝕗𝕋𝕙𝕖𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕠𝕥𝕥𝕖𝕟 🇬🇧 🇿🇼 (@GiftCee) May 24, 2025

The Russians, of course, have nyet to say about it.

And then, today, lo and behold – they’ve scooped up another suspect. Police nabbed him at an airport.

A fourth man has been arrested over suspected arson attacks on two properties and a car linked to Keir Starmer.

The 48-year-old was arrested at Stansted airport in Essex on Monday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.

Now, he’s much older than the other three being held, and there’s no name yet, but how many people were involved in this, for crying out loud?

A fourth man has been arrested in an arson probe into a series of fires at properties linked to Sir #KeirStarmer #StarmerOut.
The suspect, 48, was detained on Monday at London Stansted Airporthttps://t.co/PMtnANluyi
He was initially stopped by officers under schedule 7 of the… pic.twitter.com/i48NsFJK3n

— JulietteSchwartz (@Juliett59778255) June 2, 2025

…He was initially stopped by officers under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, before being arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life, Scotland Yard said. He has now been taken to a police station in London where he remains in custody, the force added.   

The probe into the alleged arson attacks is being led by Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command due to the properties’ links to StarmerPA The probe into the alleged arson attacks is being led by Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command due to the properties’ links to Starmer.

This is nuts.

And people have questions.

Fourth Man Arrested Over Fires Linked to Keir Starmer
Starmer says the attacks represent “an attack on all of us, on democracy and the values we stand for.”
this feels less like a broad assault on democracy and more like something intensely personal.https://t.co/62gh6gx5tg

— Labour Heartlands (@Labourheartland) June 2, 2025

In fact, the government has already snatched up one podcaster who was talking about the peculiarities of the case. They’ve charged him with a hate crime for answering the racist comments of a Muslim Scottish SNP representative, which has also effectively muzzled his speculation on the arson attacks. 

🚨NEW: Scottish podcaster and Youtuber Craig Houston has been arrested and charged by police under the Online Communications Act.

Mr Houston made a video on Islamic Glasgow councillor Soryia Siddique for her racist comments after she said she had been surprised by how “pale,… pic.twitter.com/JLxK06AaMC

— The Mercian (@TheMercianNews) June 1, 2025

…Mr Houston made a video on Islamic Glasgow councillor Soryia Siddique for her racist comments after she said she had been surprised by how “pale, male and stale” politics was. Siddique claims this video led to her being a victim of “Islamophobic trolls.” Mr Houston will appear at Glasgow Sheriff Court at a later date.

That’s a convenient tool they have there.

In the meantime, speculation runs rampant, and everyone waits to learn more about who it is they’ve detained.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “A fourth man has been arrested as part of an investigation into a series of fires in north London.

“A 48-year-old man was arrested on Monday, 2 June at London Stansted Airport. He was initially stopped by officers under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, 2000, before being arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit arson with intent to endanger life.

“The arrest is connected to an investigation into a vehicle fire in NW5 on Thursday, 8 May, a fire at the entrance of a property in N7 on Sunday, 11 May and a fire at a residential address in NW5 in the early hours of Monday, 12 May.

“The man has been taken to a London police station, where he currently remains in police custody.”

The pimp?

Fourth man arrested over Starmer firebomb attacks https://t.co/5gSkhwAY2p

— Zvonmir Boben (@andyben) June 2, 2025

Seriously.

Inquiring minds want to know.

This post was originally published on this site

Back in 2023, Elon Musk sued Media Matters over a report it put out claiming X was serving ads next to extremist content.

Elon Musk, as promised, is hauling Media Matters into court — alleging the liberal watchdog group “knowingly and maliciously manufactured” images depicting neo-Nazi and white-nationalist posts on X next to major marketers’ ads.

The complaint seeks unspecified monetary damages, as well as an injunction requiring Media Matters to “immediately delete, take down or otherwise remove” the article titled “As Musk endorses antisemitic conspiracy theory, X has been placing ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to pro-Nazi content.”…

According to X’s lawsuit, Media Matters aimed to portray the Musk-owned social platform “as being dominated by ‘white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories,’” per the complaint. “This November alone Media Matters released over twenty articles (and counting) disparaging both X Corp. and Elon Musk — a blatant smear campaign.”

The lawsuit didn’t claim the ads weren’t served alongside the content in question, rather it argued the outcome was manufactured by Media Matters:

Media Matters executed this plot in multiple steps, as X’s internal investigations have revealed. First, Media Matters accessed accounts that had been active for at least 30 days, bypassing X’s ad filter for new users. Media Matters then exclusively followed a small subset of users consisting entirely of accounts in one of two categories: those known to produce extreme, fringe content, and accounts owned by X’s big-name advertisers. The end result was a feed precision-designed by Media Matters for a single purpose: to produce side-by-side ad/content placements that it could screenshot in an effort to alienate advertisers.

But this activity still was not enough to create the pairings of advertisements and content that Media Matters aimed to produce.

Media Matters therefore resorted to endlessly scrolling and refreshing its unrepresentative, hand-selected feed, generating between 13 and 15 times more advertisements per hour than viewed by the average X user repeating this inauthentic activity until it finally received pages containing the result it wanted: controversial content next to X’s largest advertisers’ paid posts.

That lawsuit is still ongoing but Media Matters has already laid off a bunch of staffers last year because of the cost of defending themselves in the lawsuit.

Last week it was reported that the FTC is now also investigating Media Matters for allegedly colluding with advertisers.

The regulator said in a letter sent to the organization that it was investigating the group, which is aligned with Democrats, over whether it illegally colluded with advertisers, according to the people. The letter, a copy of which was seen by The New York Times, required the organization to share copies of its budgets, documents showing the effects of “harmful” online content on advertisers, and communications with other watchdog groups…

As part of its demands, the F.T.C. also asked Media Matters to turn over all the documents it had produced or received from X in that litigation.

The investigation is the latest example of the Trump administration’s taking actions against individuals and organizations that play critical roles in the infrastructure of the political left.

Today, it appears the FTC investigation has expanded to as many as a dozen other groups that target advertisers.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether roughly a dozen prominent advertising and advocacy groups violated antitrust law by coordinating boycotts among advertisers that did not want their brands to appear alongside hateful online content, three people familiar with the inquiries said…

Vanessa Otero, the chief executive of Ad Fontes Media, a media watchdog group, said the organization received a letter from the F.T.C. on May 20 demanding information about its business in relation to an investigation about “possible collusion.” Nearly a dozen other organizations also received such letters, two people familiar with the matter said.

The Times’ article doesn’t identify all of the other groups under investigation and the FTC is not commenting. So for now we only know about two groups, Media Matters and Ad Fontes Media. Given how long the legal case against MMFA has dragged out so far, it’s probably going to be a while before we see any of these investigations resolved.

This post was originally published on this site

Trump didn’t really turn his back on NATO, but he rightly decided not to let Europeans take the lead on NATO policies while simultaneously weakening their own militaries. 

Ever since the end of the Cold War, the United States has tolerated the systematic demilitarization of NATO countries. When Russian tanks were trained on Germany, that country and its neighbors stood ready to fight alongside the United States to repel Soviet aggression. 

Once that threat receded, so did the military capability of the NATO countries, putting all the burden on the United States to defend the Western alliance. Aside from basing rights, it’s really hard to see what our allies could contribute other than token forces should a genuine threat arise. 

This might be acceptable, in an odd way, if European countries ceded control of their foreign policy to the United States–you want to rely on our military, then you ought to defer to our policies–but that deal never seemed to have been done. Instead, what Europe got was a military umbrella; what the United States got was bitching, moaning, whining, and demands. 

Time and again Europeans were warned that the US had other priorities–you know, that “pivot to Asia” that has never quite occurred–yet NATO countries kept reducing their military expenditures well below their treaty obligations, and Spain–I kid you not–counts their “climate change” subsidies as contributions to NATO.

A British military spending boost, including new attack subs and long-range weapons, will make the U.K. “a battle-ready, armor-clad nation,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer says. https://t.co/O7BB2TcGuS

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 2, 2025

Now that Trump has shut off the money spigot, NATO countries are screaming “Betrayal!”–but they are doing something else as well: they are doing exactly what Trump wants them to. They may portray it as a rebuke to Trump and the United States, and complain that we are no longer a reliable ally. 

But the fact is that, for the first time in decades, they may actually meet or even exceed their treaty obligations for military expenditures. 

If it took Trump offending them to accomplish this goal, then offending them was the best gift an American president has given them since Reagan ended the Cold War and Bush I helped negotiate a non-violent deconstruction of the Warsaw Pact. 

As I wrote earlier today, Trump’s Ukraine policy doesn’t seem to be working–it sure looks like the heat in the war is turning up, not down–but his NATO policies are a smash hit. 

Not in the sense that anybody but Americans are applauding–quite the opposite–but Trump is achieving exactly the goal he was looking for: a Europe that can stand on its own two feet. 

I foresee no time in the next century when Europe’s security will be decoupled from that of the United States — we have interests everywhere, and Europe still matters quite a bit economically. If a major war breaks out there, we will get dragged in. 

However, if trends continue, we will not have to bear the burdens alone. 

Asia is where the real action is, and as harsh as it sounds, the United States has only the most abstract strategic interest in Ukraine and shouldn’t have to pour scarce resources into that conflict. European countries with far more significant strategic interests should be. We could be at war with China soon, and NATO will be of zero help there. Great Britain may pitch in, but, well, Great Britain. Not a big help there. 

We should be pouring resources into Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and South Korea, and expanding our ability to operate from small islands. We shouldn’t be sending tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to Europe. 

So if it took insulting our “allies” to get them off their asses, I say insult away, President Trump. 

This post was originally published on this site

Bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for them.

How good are the Iranians at dodgeball, anyway? They may be about to find out, according to Reuters. According to an Iranian diplomat attached to the talks, Iran may be ready to walk away from the table and call Donald Trump’s bluff. But it’s not really Trump’s bluff, and it’s not really a bluff either:

Iran is poised to reject a US proposal to end a decades-old nuclear dispute, an Iranian diplomat said on Monday, dismissing it as a “non-starter” that fails to address Tehran’s interests or soften Washington’s stance on uranium enrichment.

“Iran is drafting a negative response to the US proposal, which could be interpreted as a rejection of the US offer,” the senior diplomat, who is close to Iran’s negotiating team, told Reuters. …

After five rounds of discussions between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, several obstacles remain.

Among them are Iran’s rejection of a US demand that it commit to scrapping uranium enrichment and its refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium — possible raw material for nuclear bombs.

Interestingly, none of the major US outlets have picked up on this report, even though they routinely carry Reuters material. Perhaps they think that Reuters’ soucing is too thin, although this looks every bit as solid as the kind of rumor-publishing that the NY Times, WaPo, and CNN routinely do with the Trump administration. The impression this leaves is that the American media don’t want to publish developments that might justify a tougher line with Tehran, even if a tougher line is warranted. 

Israeli media outlet Walla reported today that the US may back down from its no-enrichment-at-all position, which administration officials deny:

The US nuclear deal proposal that was allegedly given to Iran would allow limited and low-level uranium enrichment, Walla reported on Monday.

Limited uranium enrichment would be for a “to-be-determined” period of time, Walla said. This proposal contradicts statements from top officials. 

The administration may deny it, but other officials have floated that idea in the American media before. And that may come in the form of an “interim deal,” Elliott Abrams predicts at National Review, via an understandably skeptical Scott Johnson at Power Line:

Think of an interim deal of, say, one year — during which a comprehensive agreement will theoretically be negotiated. Under this deal, Iran agrees to kiss and make up with the IAEA, allowing the full inspections it has never granted. It agrees to stop enriching above 3.67 percent. It agrees to export or down-blend most of its stocks of uranium enriched above, say, 20 percent. 

The Trump administration can call this a great victory that only the president could have reached. The Iranian program is frozen, they move back from being so close to ten bombs, and the IAEA can ensure that they keep their promises. …

What’s the problem with this supposedly temporary deal?

First, there will never be a final deal. Iran’s goal in an interim arrangement would be to prevent a U.S. military strike and enlist the United States in preventing an Israeli strike because, the Trump administration would tell the Israelis, “we are still negotiating.” Iran will play out the clock, hoping for the administration to be weakened by a defeat in the 2026 congressional elections and then gone after the 2028 elections.

Second, under such a “interim” deal, Iran would keep its centrifuges and — as we have seen in the last few months — can start spinning them whenever it wants. It would thereby again create hundreds of pounds of highly enriched uranium in just a few months.

The biggest problem with a temporary deal, Abrams concludes, is that the Iranians will cheat on it regardless. The latest IAEA report demonstrates that beyond any doubt. However, that’s the problem with any deal with the mullahs in Tehran, temporary or otherwise. Iran has cheated on agreements regarding nuclear development for well over two decades, and they are still cheating to this very moment. So what’s the point of any agreement without real enforcement backed by the threat of dire consequences, and why should we settle for anything less in the interim?

Scott points out that Trump may really be bluffing, since he’s not inclined to start wars and wants a “big beautiful deal” to claim victory. However, it doesn’t matter if Trump is bluffing, because Benjamin Netanyahu most certainly isn’t bluffing. Netanyahu would have already hit the Iranian nuclear facilities by now if Trump hadn’t pressured him to stand down in favor of the talks currently underway. Trump can’t let the Iranians continue to enrich uranium because Netanyahu will strike Iran even with that deal in place and let those chips fall where they may. This is an existential question for Israel, which cannot allow Iran to achieve nuclear-weapons status and just wait for the day the mullahs decide to take out Tel Aviv. 

The smartest outcome would be for the US to refuse the deal, keep holding Israel off for a while, and apply the “maximum pressure” sanctions that will cut off income to the IRGC and raise the stakes with Iran’s restive population, especially the democracy-oriented middle class of Tehran. It might not take much to tip this regime over in an economic crisis, especially one in which the IRGC finds its access to wealth and income cut off. Rather than talk about accommodation with the radical Islamists of the IRGC and mullahs, we should start orienting policy toward the people of Iran to encourage them as much as possible to make this their moment, rather than ours or Israel’s. The only way to secure this region from extremist nuclear blackmail is to rid it of the terrorist regime holding Iranians in their grip. 

This post was originally published on this site

Peace talks between Ukraine and Russia have once again resulted in no substantial changes. Moscow has refused to support a ceasefire despite pressure from President Trump.

The second round of peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in Turkey once again did not yield any ceasefire results on Monday and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated his demand that Russian President Vladimir Putin “must not receive any reward for [his] war.”

Despite an apparent memorandum of terms given to Ukraine by the Russian delegation, Moscow once again refused to agree to an unconditional ceasefire defined by a U.S. proposal and already agreed to by Kyiv. 

Following the talks – which appeared to last for less than three hours, though some reporting noted they lasted for less than one hour – the head of the Ukrainian delegation in Istanbul, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, said his Russian counterparts not only refused ceasefire terms, but also to a meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin.

There may be another reason the Russians are in a particularly bad mood today. On Sunday, Ukraine carried out an attack on Russian airbases that had been planned for more than a year. The plan involved sneaking armed drones into Russia by truck and then unleashing the drones near several airbases spread across the country.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said 117 drones were used in the so-called “Spider’s Web” operation by the SBU security service, striking “34% of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers”…

SBU sources earlier told BBC News that Sunday’s attack involved drones hidden in wooden mobile cabins, with remotely operated roofs on trucks, brought near the airbases and then fired “at the right time”…

“The most interesting thing – and we can already say this publicly – is that the ‘office’ of our operation on Russian territory was located right next to the FSB of Russia in one of their regions,” the Ukrainian president said…

The SBU estimated the damage to Russia’s strategic aviation was worth about $7bn (£5bn), promising to unveil more details soon.

Video of some of the successful strikes is circulating online.

Incredible.

Ukraine is destroying Russia strategic bomber fleet like its fucking nothing.

Amazing day. pic.twitter.com/cVYp2NqcrT

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) June 1, 2025

A drone leaving a truck.

Ukraine Drone Attack from truck 🚒 🚒 🚒 🚒 Near Russians Loc!!!#RussianUkraineWar pic.twitter.com/OaLAkoATel

— TAHIRMKHAN (@Huseeb59) June 2, 2025

There seems to be some agreement this was a big win for Ukraine symbolically and strategically.

“This is a stunning success for Ukraine’s special services,” said Justin Bronk, senior research fellow for air power and technology at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

“If even half the total claim of 41 aircraft damaged/destroyed is confirmed, it will have a significant impact on the capacity of the Russian Long Range Aviation force to keep up its regular large scale cruise missile salvos against Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, whilst also maintaining their nuclear deterrence and signaling patrols against NATO and Japan,” he said in an email.

The claim of 41 aircraft damaged has not been confirmed yet and as of today reports are saying 13 planes were destroyed (and an unknown number damaged).

According to an initial statement from the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff, the drones hit 41 aircraft. As of today, those claims have been reassessed, with Andriy Kovalenko, an official with Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, saying that “at least 13 Russian aircraft were destroyed.”…

The bombers of Long-Range Aviation that were primarily in the crosshairs of Sunday’s drone strike are among Russia’s most prized strategic aerial assets. Critically, none of these aircraft can be replaced quickly, and most of them cannot be replaced at all, since the production capabilities have long since ceased to exist. The option of bringing long-since-retired aircraft back into service is increasingly unviable. With such aircraft having been stored in the open for decades and scavenged for parts, the extent of work required to make them airworthy again would be huge.

Whatever the case, there was a significant dollar value to these aircraft and Russia has now lost a portion of their remaining stock of bombers. Russia also responded with its own drone barrage.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian authorities say 472 drones and seven ballistic and cruise missiles were involved in a wave of attacks on Ukraine last night.

This would appear to be one of the largest single Russian drone attacks so far. Ukraine says it “neutralised” 385 aerial targets.

The strike had the usual Russian propagandists on TV last night promising that the people responsible would all be shot, either on their knees facing a wall or with a blindfold. So not much appetite for peace on display from either side of the conflict at the moment.